We’ve just had lunch: tuna fish sandwiches and even some decadent potato chips, a true feast, especially since we are in Covid Lockdown. Still greedy, we then want something sweet to polish it off. We have some chocolate in the pantry, and I am surprised to find it is dark chocolate tinged with mint. “Why would we buy that?” I wonder, since usually it would be orange or raspberry or just plain glorious chocolate. Husband reminds me: “We are in a pandemic. And we’re eating chocolate!” He’s right; I know that. I am aware, too, that not only are we so, so fortunate to have chocolate, but to have any food at all–let alone 80% rich, organic, fair-trade, dark chocolate. Millions of people all around the world do not have enough to eat. In the United States we call it, “food insecurity.” In other places, they call it like it is: starving.
I think about how very much I have always taken for granted in my bourgeois life, long before this pandemic. Food. Running water, electricity, fresh coffee. If I want to make coffee, and I do, I do so by plugging my coffee pot into the jack, where it taps into the electrical current. Current I have because I can afford to pay for the electric bill in my house that is a home, not a shanty like the images I have seen in Africa (choose a country, not a continent, thank you very much). Okay, Nigeria, but many others would work, too, to make the same point. Or “the projects” in Chicago, Detroit, New York or anywhere. Or Mississippi, which is not only the poorest state in the US of A, it is really hard to spell.
My Spouse’s comment pulls me back to reality. He’s right, of course, and I should be ashamed. I do have so much, so very much. I think about how fortunate (and how spoiled) I am. I have a car. He has a truck. We have a guest room. We have a bedroom. We have a living room. There is nice furniture in every room. Books in our bookshelf. A flat screen TV. Funny, when I list it all out, one “small” thing at a time, it really does slow it all down, gives me pause. Pausing is good; it leads to gratitude.
We have a bathroom, too. It has running water, a choice of hot/cold and in between. Inside the bathroom we have toilet paper, even extra because we haven’t reached our last roll yet. We are hoping there will be some more TP the next time we go to Costco. (While it’s true that there might actually be a shortage of toilet paper because of the pandemic, it is also entirely likely that there will be more, a new stock, as there has been so many times, both pre and post-pandemic.
When I think about my house, I think about how well off I am. We are. Not in a snooty, “Our house is better than yours” singsong, but it might be. It’s small, which suits us, because a two-bedroom house with a small office is all we need. It also has a lot of charm because it’s a 1920 craftsman with excellent details, hardwood floors, and a beautiful window seat in the dining room that lets in glorious light. We have a cat, and he doesn’t need his own room, but he alternates between “his” guest room and “our” master bedroom. Sometimes he even lets us, his servants, sleep fully stretched out on our bed, even with our legs extended. Other times, though, he reminds us that he owns us, and he takes up the lower corner of the bed altogether and there is no denying who is in charge. Our master. Our cat.
Having a cat, too, is a luxury. Like running water or even filtered tap water that we sometimes give to him in his very own glass (he prefers it that way, and I prefer him to have his own glass so he doesn’t drink out of mine. He does it anyway). The beautiful, magnificent cat himself is an extravagance. We can afford to feed him. We can afford to take him to the vet, which we do, because, as I mentioned, he owns us. When we first met this glorious cat, we didn’t know how much he was going to become not just part of our family, but also part of our freedoms and our limits. If we have to go out of town, we pay someone to take care of him (more luxury). When he got sick, we took him to the vet and they explained that he actually has severe allergies that if left untreated become respiratory illness. Now he has to be on steroids, which we obediently dole out every other day in their necessary form (still more luxury).
Ah, but the cat. The glorious, priceless, irreplaceable cat. He has to be on steroids. He has to brushed–daily. He’s a Maine Coon, a very long-haired creature. A Maine Coon is a kind of cat that looks suspiciously like a Lynx. In fact, when he first showed up on our deck six years ago, we did not know if he was a house cat or a wild animal. It turns out he was both, because he had been a stray, or even feral. He hadn’t known any people, so technically he was a house cat, but more of a homeless house cat. However, he also was a wild animal. He is enormous. In spite of his size (and weight of almost 15 pounds–14.6 if you want to be precise, which I can be because we have taken him to the vet multiple times), he is “just a cat.” Even though he looks like he actually could be a lynx, as in the wilds of Andalusia, Canada, and the Himalayas, he is a regular house cat. As an aside, it turns out that lynxes are abundant in Canada but threatened in the US due to loss of habitat. (Did you know that?).
So, when he first suckered us into devoting our lives to him, we honestly didn’t know if he was a wild animal or a house cat, hence his dumb name: Lynxy. It took only one year of feeding him every single day before he would deign to let me almost touch him. After that, it took weeks for him to come into the house. Eventually he even let us pet him, though it took a very long time. Now, not only does he own us, he owns both bedrooms, the living room, and the bathroom. He likes to make sure we keep the bathtub accessible for him, too, just in case he wants more water than what is available in his glass or mine. Sometimes he likes to drink out of the water that is in the bathtub; he skims with his little cat-tongue just the water left on the surface of the tub. In summary, he owns all of the water in the house, whether for drinking or staring at for his own amusement. Yep, he owns all water and all glasses in the house, anywhere. And everyone and everything else.
A little known fact about Maine Coons is that they actually like water. A friend of mine has a Maine Coon also. Unbelievably, hers gets into the shower with her, even when the water is on. Lynxy hasn’t gone that far (I’m sure he could if he wanted to), but he does like to go into the bathroom when I’m taking a shower, just to be where the action is. Maine Coons, unlike normal cats, aren’t bothered by rain, either. If it rains and he’s outside, he’s just as happy to sit outside, raindrops a fallin’ on his head. No problem. He’ll sit there– in the rain–no typical cat-freaking-out-to-water whatsoever. He’ll just sit there, quite content. The first time it happened we thought he was just dumb. (He is very pretty). However, as we learned more about our spectacular feral-cat-becoming-domesticated, we found out that yes, they do actually like water. Cool. So yeah, he owns us.
The luxury of being owned by our magnificent creature would almost make me feel ashamed, because I am sure that the sum of his annual pet food bills would probably be able to completely rehab any one of the apartments in a Detroit project– or a Nigerian shanty. Or both. If I weren’t so in love with him, I could argue to myself that I should give the cat away and give the money we spend on his food to a starving family in the Appalachians. With the money we spend on his hard food alone, we could pay for an entire family to eat/go to school/go to college—and buy books—for an entire year, if not a lifetime. As horrifying as that sounds, I know, too, that I will never do it. I could never give him up. Never.
With two exceptions (my wonderful husband and my 17 month old gorgeous, funny, talented, smart niece), Lynxy is the most extraordinary creature I have ever known. I have once thought that if he dies, I die. I am utterly besotted. I have had cats before, even cats I also truly loved. Yet Lynxy is like no other. Is it is beauty? Yes. Is it his brains? Well, no, not so much. Is it because he sleeps right next to me when I don’t feel well? Yes. Or is it because I have epilepsy and the day before I have a seizure he’ll bite me to warn me? Yes, yes, and yes, all that and more. All of these are the reasons I could never give him up, and why I have to be so grateful every single day that I have him, the second most precious thing in my home: Lynxy. The first, of course, is my husband of 21 years.
My husband who loves me, who teases me, who jokes with me. My husband who reminds me of how very much we have to be grateful for. So here we are, in the middle of a pandemic, and I have just re-counted my blessings. My many blessings which include: my wonderful home, both master and guest bedrooms, my bathroom, which includes the tub Lynxy likes to climb into to lick water from, the couch where he likes to relax, the “Admiration Ottoman,” as we have named it, because that is where he likes to be groomed, brushed and admired further. My blessings include the window seat in our sweet little dining room, where Lynxy likes to stretch out, when he isn’t on the mantle. It includes all of our books, which make us look like fancy intellectuals and the hidden flat screen TV, so people will never suspect that maybe we aren’t that intellectual after all. My gratitude includes the 1920s table which matches the style of the house….and so on, and so on, and so on. There really are so many blessings to be grateful for, not least of which are my husband and our cat (in that order). Barely.
Beyond all this extravagance of the electricity, the stove, the refrigerator, the cell phones and the cell phone charger, the coffee pot, the dishes, the wine bottle stopper and more, there is yet still more. Let me not forget an entire pantry full of food, with everything from a few bags of potato chips to canned goods, bottled olives, spaghetti sauce and gluten free pasta. (That pasta will probably be there indefinitely, unless the pandemic “shelter in place” lasts like a year and a half. Have you ever tried gluten free pasta? It’s disgusting). Then, if we were to go down to that micro level, there is even a small bottle of capers in the refrigerator, just in case I feel like cooking some fish with a lemon-and-capers sauce, which I probably won’t, because I don’t even like capers. That’s probably why there is still a bottle of them in the fridge. My husband likes them, though, so once in a while I will cook it that way, just for him. It’s still a pretty full bottle.
I didn’t even explore the other many things yet: inside the still very full, still very stocked refrigerator, there is also a freezer full of frozen delights. Frozen, ready-prepared main meals to cook during this apocalypse, all without having to actually cook. Ice cream treats, frozen bananas coated in chocolate, frozen fruits for making smoothies, frozen strawberries also coated in chocolate.
Now back to the pantry, where it all began so long ago: organic, fair trade, dark chocolate with a tinge of mint. Yes, chocolate in a pandemic! I think I’ll live. At least, I hope so!
