Introducing Martha Kane’s Cats

Yes cats know what time it is, but not by looking at the clock the way we do.

They are far cleverer than us humans as they know the time and the changing seasons by instinct.

Do cat know what time it is?

Thank you Elisa i wish that were possible because i don’t have much help with all the work except for my wonderful partner Richard who works as hard as i do. Still dear, the thought that you would if you could is the next best thing,and if you’re ever in Malta i will hold you to your offer !!.

Thank you Sylvia for you very kind comments and don’t worry about not being able to use pay pal to send a donation . We all do what we can ,when we can and your offer to paint portraits is very interesting if we could find a way to get it done. Kitty appeal also has a bank account ,the details of which can be found on the Kitty appeal web site along with my e-mail address , so please feel free to get in touch .

I would love to be there helping out with the cats. Give me cats 24 hrs a day and I’m happy as can be.

Yes Michael I enjoyed very much seeing those lovely photos. Thank you for sharing them

The cats all look so content and relaxed, you obviously have a great affinity with all felines.

Have you ever read Robinson Jeffers’s poem ‘Woodrow Wilson?’ Jeffers assumes the voice of President Wilson who, although he has died, retains a faint thread of awareness which lets him grieve that his death took away his chance to achieve all he had hoped for. I could type the poem, but don’t want to violate copyright laws, so can only clumsily paraphrase what Wilson says in a dialog with an unidentified ‘voice.’

He lies in darkness, crushed by the realization that not only has everything disappeared, he half remembers the darkness that engulfs him. The voice replies that man only briefly forgets this darkness. Wilson is inconsolable and says that he thought he was called forth to do good. But his work ended before it was finished, and his life was pointless. The voice answers that all things emerge from the dark to be themselves – nothing more: mountains to ennoble the earth with their grandeur, flowers to brighten it with color, birds to revel in their flight. All arise from the abyss for only one reason: to be what they are. His tragedy was that he required a ‘huge delusion of some major purpose’ for his self-expression. The voice chides Wilson by asking how he could have imagined that God ever needed his help. (Jeffers was an atheist: his version of God was Nature.) Wilson finally understands this, and his anguish ‘buys peace.’

You and Richard are flowers in a weed-patch.

I can only afford to send you enough to feed one of my cats gourmet fare for 8½ days. What I cannot afford is $45.00 to wire you that inadequate sum, nor have I ever used a ‘charge card.’ Contributions to Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta can be made simply by mailing them a check. Couldn’t a check be mailed to your bank?

One further question: I’m a good artist, and if you would like them as a gift, I would be honored to draw your life-sized portraits in black & white charcoal. No frontal view please –three-quarters only. But I’d need 4 x 6-inch, clear, close-up photos. My portraits are freehand: I get a good likeness without tracing the image.

Chances you have no time or interest in posing, nor would I know how to get photos from you, nor your portraits to you, as I don’t post my e-mail or snail-mail address on the Internet.

Kindly advise, if you have a free moment from all your hard work.

Best wishes to you both,

Sylvia

Dear Martha,

As to what makes people the way they are, mechanists might attribute it to their biochemistry. Years ago I had two Chihuahuas from the same litter: ‘Slocum,’ who was shy and retiring, and ‘Snabby-Lou,’ who swaggered through life with his knobby little elbows akimbo, a sparkle in his eye and a feisty, fun outlook.

It would seem your health is enough to contend with, without the added burden of caring for cats who have nothing and no one but you and Richard. Have you ever thought that the absence of caring for anyone beyond oneself and one’s family is conducive to survival? From a rational standpoint, it would seem ample to feel our own pain without having to feel the pain of others. As often as not, people who haven’t a twinge of pity except for themselves and their families go to their graves in tranquil contentment, lifelong strangers to the emotional, physical and monetary drain known to people afflicted with compassion.

I know I’ve quoted this writer before, but will quote him again: ‘Pity is more promiscuous than lust and – unlike lust – it doesn’t diminish in later life.’ [Graham Greene] Can you deny you’d be better off in every way if you’d shut your eyes to suffering, and focused on your own needs? And of course you’ll deny it because you’re driven, worn out and restored by your tenderness and pity.

I once had a jovial, hardworking neighbor devoted to his family. Yet he and his wife wouldn’t have thought of feeding their hordes of cats that nothing to eat but leftover popcorn and stale hotdog buns he tossed in the road for the birds to pick at. The toddler kittens – fluff-balls that fit in your hand – crouched in the road, gumming popcorn with their toothless little jaws. When I asked him about this, he glared daggers at me,laughed and retorted, ‘Those cats are fine! They can catch mice!’ I reported him to Animal Control, though I knew what happened to the cats and kittens. But death can be a merciful release.

I grow vegetables, and used to drive out to a rabbit farm to shovel manure for my garden. The people who owned the farm had some large male rabbits crammed into wire-coffin cages so tight the rabbits could barely turn around. These people were what a psychologist would have deemed ‘well-adjusted.’ The parents and their teenaged children were boisterously happy, involved in their outings, their church activities and family get-togethers.

You know you won’t win. Your four decades of dedication are a flicker in the darkness. You’ll be as forgotten when you die as if you’d never existed – a fate we all share sooner or later. Cats will keep on being neglected, breeding and starving. Glaciers will advance and recede. Rivers dry and disappear. Tectonic plates float and rise and sink and rise. Malta will probably be swallowed by the sea. And the atmosphere could sizzle someday with radioactive fallout.