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the home of more and more animals, who, I sometimes joked with my partner, had somehow gotten word that this was going to be a breakthrough book. They seemed to know I had managed to poke a hole through the membrane that separated me from them, and they roamed the land: slithering, crawling, stalking, flying, in a steady, amazing wave. I’ve written elsewhere of the captive horse looking for refuge that suddenly appeared, the flocks of wild turkeys, the feral pigs. The eagles, the snakes, and the hawks. It really did seem as if word had gone out: ‘There’s harmlessness over at Alice’s!’ I was in heaven and I knew it; I realised that this experience and others like it are ‘the gold and diamonds and rubies’ of life on radiant earth. On the day I finished the book, and while I still lived in it as an ancestor who was very tight with a lion, and as an even earlier ancestor who was a lion, I saw a miniature ‘lion’ lying in the grass as I walked up the hill to my studio. I knew it was time to invite into my life another cat. My partner was sceptical, reminding me of my poor track record. That I was often on the road; that I can abide only a certain amount of responsibility or noise. The yearning persisted. I was only too aware of my limitations and hesitated a year or more. I asked my daughter what she thought: was I mature enough to have this anticipated companion in my life? She thought yes. And so the two of us began making the rounds 138
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of shelters, looking at cats. Most had been abandoned, most were starved. Most were freaked-out but exhibited some degree of calm in whatever shelter they were in, where they were fed and kept dry and warm, and where, at the shelter we especially liked, there were young women and men who periodically opened the cages and brought the cats out for brushing, claw clipping, or a cuddle. It was here that we found Frida, a two-year-old long-haired calico with big yellow eyes and one orange leg. She was so bored with shelter life that on each of our visits she was sound asleep. Still, even in sleep, she had presence. We woke her up and took her home. Alas, like Willis, Frida was afraid of everything, even of caresses. She jumped at the slightest noise. For months she ran and hid whenever anyone, including me, came into the house. Brushing her was difficult because she could not abide being firmly held. Her long hair became shaggy and full of burrs. The guests who tried to pet her were scurried from; to show her dislike of them, she pooped on their bed. Much of her day was spent on the top shelf of a remote closet, sleeping. I named her Frida, after Frida Kahlo. I could only hope she’d one day exhibit some of Kahlo’s character. That despite her horrendous kittenhood she would, like Kahlo, develop into a being of courage, passion, and poise. When Frida wasn’t sleeping, I discovered the Universe had played a very serious 139

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the home of more and more animals, who, I sometimes joked with my partner, had somehow gotten word that this was going to be a breakthrough book. They seemed to know I had managed to poke a hole through the membrane that separated me from them, and they roamed the land: slithering, crawling, stalking, flying, in a steady, amazing wave. I’ve written elsewhere of the captive horse looking for refuge that suddenly appeared, the flocks of wild turkeys, the feral pigs. The eagles, the snakes, and the hawks. It really did seem as if word had gone out: ‘There’s harmlessness over at Alice’s!’ I was in heaven and I knew it; I realised that this experience and others like it are ‘the gold and diamonds and rubies’ of life on radiant earth.

On the day I finished the book, and while I still lived in it as an ancestor who was very tight with a lion, and as an even earlier ancestor who was a lion, I saw a miniature ‘lion’ lying in the grass as I walked up the hill to my studio. I knew it was time to invite into my life another cat. My partner was sceptical, reminding me of my poor track record. That I was often on the road; that I can abide only a certain amount of responsibility or noise. The yearning persisted. I was only too aware of my limitations and hesitated a year or more. I asked my daughter what she thought: was I mature enough to have this anticipated companion in my life? She thought yes.

And so the two of us began making the rounds

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