Most reading this will know that Animal Rescue and Bengals in particular are my passion in life. At the moment I still don't know if I can face going back to the county shelter again, the sheer amount of unnecessary loss of life might well be just too overwhelming and I still need to think about it.
In the meantime my work with Great Lakes Bengal Rescue continues and as a new Director I hope to really make a difference in the years to come.
But back to that loss of life, how can we stop the tide? Because honestly, the loss of life is a Tsunami not only of abuse and neglect, lack of training, it is also one of ignorance, stupidity, lack of caring.
I wonder how much of that Tsunami is unseen. How many animals out there die of starvation, or pyometra from a womb infection left untreated, or are abused and quietly buried in backyards. Or the age old drowning the kittens and puppies in the bucket syndrome. How do we stop the tide?
The only clear way is to educate and spay and neuter. We need to go into schools and teach kids about responsibility towards living creatures and taking care of them properly. We need books for children that spread the message. We need spay and neuter clinics, because if they can work in Mexico, then they work here too.
If we care we can do more than watch those terrible commercials with those despairing faces of dogs and cats while the soundtrack moves us to tears. We can foster, we can donate locally, we can pledge money to spaying and neutering and we can talk to people.
I hear it over and over, oh I got this kitten because they were trying to get rid of them. Or, I got this puppy from this guy whose dog had puppies and he was trying to get rid of them. Instead of that I want to hear, can you tell me where I can get a kitten or puppy for my family?
I heard breeder say the most responsible thing I have ever heard this week. She said, 'I breed to order, I am not going to breed just for the sake of it, I am only going to breed if there are homes for these kittens.' If we were not talking on the phone I would have hugged her.
Perhaps it seems overwhelming, maybe it seems impossible. But we just have to stop the tide.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Winter Thoughts
It has been so bitterly cold the last couple of days and I have had so many things tumbling around in my head I want to get out.
The first of these is that my life comes to me in flashes and it seems to me maybe that is what they mean when they say your whole life flashes before you right before you die. I mean think about it, some people go out in a split second, some die slowly, so I mean, sometimes that movie must run awfully fast. But no, I think it is more like as we age our life comes to us in flashes and some things we forget and some things we remember because all of it becomes just too much for our brains.
So my life isn't going to be some sequential journey like the biographies you read of the stars, you know, parents, your birth, childhood, events etc. This is going to meander like a creek that has forgotten it is supposed to have any forward momentum.
So this bitter cold brought on a memory of one walk home from school. I can't say how old I was but it was somewhere in the early 1960's. At that time I wore my Mum's winter boots, I don't know why, but I do know they were suede and didn't come up very high, they zipped down the middle at the front and they got those white marks on when they got wet. The other kids all laughed at me for wearing them and I told them I was grateful for all the sacrifices my Mum made for me.
At that time girls had to wear skirts down to the knee and knee high white socks for school year round. What kind of sadistic person dreamed that one up I will never know, but that is how it was. Girls didn't wear trousers even in the dead of winter. So this one particular day I am walking home and a hail storm starts. The misery of it has stayed with me to this day as the wind whipped the falling hail stones and the hail stones whipped my legs, stinging every bare inch of skin until I was sobbing. I don't know how many times I made that journey, how many times I made that walk, but that is only one of two that I remember to that particular house in the four years we lived there.
The other walk also sticks in my memory and I am not sure what season it was. All I know is that all the kids were talking about the accident outside school. Leasowes Primary school outside the infant school, Stafford, 1960's. It was a little boy no more than 5 or 6 I believe. He had come out of school and so the story went saw his Mom and ran across the road and a car hit him. I think the enormity of it was just too much for us kids and I went with the others to look at him. It was a terrible sight, he was lying on his back, eyes closed if I am remembering right because what I really remember is how white he was, chalk white, even his lips and all this dark stuff on the road and at that point I guess the ambulance had arrived and they realised other kids were just staring. They covered him up, he was dead. If his Mum should ever read this someday, I just so wanted to run to you and hug you and I just don't know what I would have said.. there were no words. But know that he probably saved countless lives from that day onward, that he truly became an angel. Because as dippy as I can be wherever I have crossed a road in whatever country I have been in, your son has been right there in the back of my mind and I am sure in the minds of children and their children, not forgotten, nor the harsh lesson his death taught us.
Life is full of lessons, and I learned one of my biggest ones in another winter.
One of the things snowfalls were great for was sledding. At the third house I lived in we had a great hill that was just made for it. One day I was out there with my boy friend and we decided to race each other. I am a pretty competitive person and I was very determined to win. At the bottom of the hill was a row of people's back gardens and their fences were all wood paling fences, light posts strung and held in place by wire. I think I thought what was going to happen was that the fence would stop the sled and I would win, so when he shouted, brake BRAAKKEE. Guess what dear friends? Yeahhh I didn't. What I did not think of was that yes the sled would stop but the momentum was going to carry me forward off it, my mind just is that way, so I was surprised when my head hit the fence hard. Ohhhh the pain.. I think I screamed in agony and all I could do was roll around and hold my head yelling and probably crying too. It's a wonder I didn't split my skull.
Let's just say physics was never my strong point.
The first of these is that my life comes to me in flashes and it seems to me maybe that is what they mean when they say your whole life flashes before you right before you die. I mean think about it, some people go out in a split second, some die slowly, so I mean, sometimes that movie must run awfully fast. But no, I think it is more like as we age our life comes to us in flashes and some things we forget and some things we remember because all of it becomes just too much for our brains.
So my life isn't going to be some sequential journey like the biographies you read of the stars, you know, parents, your birth, childhood, events etc. This is going to meander like a creek that has forgotten it is supposed to have any forward momentum.
So this bitter cold brought on a memory of one walk home from school. I can't say how old I was but it was somewhere in the early 1960's. At that time I wore my Mum's winter boots, I don't know why, but I do know they were suede and didn't come up very high, they zipped down the middle at the front and they got those white marks on when they got wet. The other kids all laughed at me for wearing them and I told them I was grateful for all the sacrifices my Mum made for me.
At that time girls had to wear skirts down to the knee and knee high white socks for school year round. What kind of sadistic person dreamed that one up I will never know, but that is how it was. Girls didn't wear trousers even in the dead of winter. So this one particular day I am walking home and a hail storm starts. The misery of it has stayed with me to this day as the wind whipped the falling hail stones and the hail stones whipped my legs, stinging every bare inch of skin until I was sobbing. I don't know how many times I made that journey, how many times I made that walk, but that is only one of two that I remember to that particular house in the four years we lived there.
The other walk also sticks in my memory and I am not sure what season it was. All I know is that all the kids were talking about the accident outside school. Leasowes Primary school outside the infant school, Stafford, 1960's. It was a little boy no more than 5 or 6 I believe. He had come out of school and so the story went saw his Mom and ran across the road and a car hit him. I think the enormity of it was just too much for us kids and I went with the others to look at him. It was a terrible sight, he was lying on his back, eyes closed if I am remembering right because what I really remember is how white he was, chalk white, even his lips and all this dark stuff on the road and at that point I guess the ambulance had arrived and they realised other kids were just staring. They covered him up, he was dead. If his Mum should ever read this someday, I just so wanted to run to you and hug you and I just don't know what I would have said.. there were no words. But know that he probably saved countless lives from that day onward, that he truly became an angel. Because as dippy as I can be wherever I have crossed a road in whatever country I have been in, your son has been right there in the back of my mind and I am sure in the minds of children and their children, not forgotten, nor the harsh lesson his death taught us.
Life is full of lessons, and I learned one of my biggest ones in another winter.
One of the things snowfalls were great for was sledding. At the third house I lived in we had a great hill that was just made for it. One day I was out there with my boy friend and we decided to race each other. I am a pretty competitive person and I was very determined to win. At the bottom of the hill was a row of people's back gardens and their fences were all wood paling fences, light posts strung and held in place by wire. I think I thought what was going to happen was that the fence would stop the sled and I would win, so when he shouted, brake BRAAKKEE. Guess what dear friends? Yeahhh I didn't. What I did not think of was that yes the sled would stop but the momentum was going to carry me forward off it, my mind just is that way, so I was surprised when my head hit the fence hard. Ohhhh the pain.. I think I screamed in agony and all I could do was roll around and hold my head yelling and probably crying too. It's a wonder I didn't split my skull.
Let's just say physics was never my strong point.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Back to the Beginning
I changed the title of my blog to the name my sister called me.. Bengala. At a guess, it is a cross between Bengal and Svengali, I didn't ask.
It was also my sister who encouraged me to start writing again, she feels I have a real talent for it and it is true, I have always wanted to be a writer, there, I said it. And it isn't just because I hope it would make me enough money to buy my own island, although that would be nice.. goes off into a dream world for a moment to an island populated almost entirely by Bengals and Cocker Spaniels.
Seriously though, when Charles Dickens penned that little tale called A Christmas Carol did he ever think of a time when that book would be almost as famous as the bible and spawned a considerable number of movies starring some pretty big names? Nope. I can tell you what he did. He sat there, in a dimly lit room, paper before him, likely a pen and quill and an idea came to him. What if there were a man who was so stingy, so cynical, that even the spirit of Christmas could not bring light to his soul? Ahhh.. spirit? Hmmm.. a ghost? How about three? Christmas presents! Christmas present.. the ghost of Christmas present!! For in such a way a writer's best works are born.
I was born near Christmas, Mum said I was supposed to be born on Christmas Day but I wanted to hold on for Christmas dinner, I used to think that was THE most yucky thing to think about, now she is gone I suppose it brings me comfort. From that point forward I spent my life right up until I met the tall, dark, handsome one in a mix of a fantasy world and a real one.
I have a photo I won't publish here.. yet.. of my Great Grandmother Martha taken in 1915 in Dublin, Ireland, it is an old black and white of course, her grandchildren, my uncles and aunt are with her wearing pinafores to keep their clothes clean. There they are in front of a house on a street, probably their own terraced town house. At that time my grandmother Ellen was approaching her mid twenties, she would have 13 children in all, the youngest my Mother and she would watch seven of them die.
As I looked at her photo it struck me. This is my Great Grandmother but I don't know anything about her. Did she like to read? Could she read? Write? Did she love animals as much as I do? What were her passions? And finally....
I go forward many years to the year that we all went to the Ironbridge Gorge where the world famous Iron Bridge and Museum sites are. We are at the foundry, outside, I am with my ex husband, Mom and Dad and my two children. I am yet to be a grandmother, I don't have a thought that I will be divorced. We all realise that Dad, who was a bear of a man in every sense, is crouched and bent over with his hand on the wall, he almost looks like he is listening to something. Suddenly he says.. I wonder. Then.. louder.. I wonder.. we wait, silent, knowing that he will complete the sentence when he is ready. I wonder.. he repeats... what he had for breakfast and he turns and looks at me smiling. The man who laid this brick all those years ago, a hundred years ago.. what did he have for breakfast?
Everyone laughed but me. It hit me, almost knocked the wind out of me. It was magic. Dad had made history come alive for me, vital, living, a man had indeed simply gone to work one morning and he had laid this brick, he was long gone, but here was this brick, still there, a testimony to what he was. A simple bricklayer and yes.. what did he have for breakfast?
As I looked at the photo of Martha I wondered, what did she have for breakfast? What did she like? And that was where the idea was born to write about my life and our family. Perhaps some day I will have it bound for the children to come after me so that they will know my Mom and Dad, whatever I can remember about the people and happenings in my life, historical events.. anything.. that would not only bring history alive, but bring our family to life for them.
Otherwise... how will they ever know what I had for breakfast?
It was also my sister who encouraged me to start writing again, she feels I have a real talent for it and it is true, I have always wanted to be a writer, there, I said it. And it isn't just because I hope it would make me enough money to buy my own island, although that would be nice.. goes off into a dream world for a moment to an island populated almost entirely by Bengals and Cocker Spaniels.
Seriously though, when Charles Dickens penned that little tale called A Christmas Carol did he ever think of a time when that book would be almost as famous as the bible and spawned a considerable number of movies starring some pretty big names? Nope. I can tell you what he did. He sat there, in a dimly lit room, paper before him, likely a pen and quill and an idea came to him. What if there were a man who was so stingy, so cynical, that even the spirit of Christmas could not bring light to his soul? Ahhh.. spirit? Hmmm.. a ghost? How about three? Christmas presents! Christmas present.. the ghost of Christmas present!! For in such a way a writer's best works are born.
I was born near Christmas, Mum said I was supposed to be born on Christmas Day but I wanted to hold on for Christmas dinner, I used to think that was THE most yucky thing to think about, now she is gone I suppose it brings me comfort. From that point forward I spent my life right up until I met the tall, dark, handsome one in a mix of a fantasy world and a real one.
I have a photo I won't publish here.. yet.. of my Great Grandmother Martha taken in 1915 in Dublin, Ireland, it is an old black and white of course, her grandchildren, my uncles and aunt are with her wearing pinafores to keep their clothes clean. There they are in front of a house on a street, probably their own terraced town house. At that time my grandmother Ellen was approaching her mid twenties, she would have 13 children in all, the youngest my Mother and she would watch seven of them die.
As I looked at her photo it struck me. This is my Great Grandmother but I don't know anything about her. Did she like to read? Could she read? Write? Did she love animals as much as I do? What were her passions? And finally....
I go forward many years to the year that we all went to the Ironbridge Gorge where the world famous Iron Bridge and Museum sites are. We are at the foundry, outside, I am with my ex husband, Mom and Dad and my two children. I am yet to be a grandmother, I don't have a thought that I will be divorced. We all realise that Dad, who was a bear of a man in every sense, is crouched and bent over with his hand on the wall, he almost looks like he is listening to something. Suddenly he says.. I wonder. Then.. louder.. I wonder.. we wait, silent, knowing that he will complete the sentence when he is ready. I wonder.. he repeats... what he had for breakfast and he turns and looks at me smiling. The man who laid this brick all those years ago, a hundred years ago.. what did he have for breakfast?
Everyone laughed but me. It hit me, almost knocked the wind out of me. It was magic. Dad had made history come alive for me, vital, living, a man had indeed simply gone to work one morning and he had laid this brick, he was long gone, but here was this brick, still there, a testimony to what he was. A simple bricklayer and yes.. what did he have for breakfast?
As I looked at the photo of Martha I wondered, what did she have for breakfast? What did she like? And that was where the idea was born to write about my life and our family. Perhaps some day I will have it bound for the children to come after me so that they will know my Mom and Dad, whatever I can remember about the people and happenings in my life, historical events.. anything.. that would not only bring history alive, but bring our family to life for them.
Otherwise... how will they ever know what I had for breakfast?
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