One of my heros is Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame - a serialized radio show that he hosted for many years. It was based on the old time radio variety shows from the twenties and thirties and all the way up into the fifties when television finally took over and killed them off.
The Prairie Home Companion had alot of singing and musical guests and featured 3 segments of storytelling (my favorite part): Guy Noir - Private Eye, The Lives of the Cowboys (Dusty and Lefty) and ofcourse The News from Lake Wobegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”
Lake Wobegon was a mythical small town somewhere in the hinterlands of Minnesota and the simple common stories of the simple common people and the simple common adventures of their simple common lives. It was fascinating. To hear about Pastor Inkvest and his congregation and the strawberry crop in the garden of Mrs. Onderdonk and her niece who had come to visit for the summer from the big city and the Chatterbox Cafe where the local gossip was conveyed and Jack from Jack’s Auto Repair, who would check your oil and clean your windshield while he filled her up.
But this isn’t about Lake Wobegon, this is about how much we enjoy stories. We are storytellers. That’s what sets us apart from the monkeys and the rest of the animal kingdom. That and our tool kit: wrenches and flashlights and computers and cars and spaceships.
The stories of our lives are endlessly wonderful and amazing and interesting and inspiring like my story about Tee Tah the cat.
About a week ago I attempted to take Tee Tah to the vet. She had an open wound on her leg that was seeping. There was a strange unpleasant odor about her. When I discovered the wound, I was alarmed and realized that she needed to see a vet as soon as possible so that whatever was going on wouldn’t get worse. So I picked up Tee Tah, who is the gentlest and grooviest of all the cats in the tribe and tried to put her in the pet carrier. She did not want to go in there, she clawed and flailed and spread her legs and successfully resisted all my attempts get her in. I realized that the pet carrier was too small so I got the live trap, which is much larger, used for catching racoons and other varmints and releasing them elsewhere.
She didn’t want to go in there either. I mean she really, really did not want to go in there. I called the vet and told them of my dilemma. My cat has this open sore on her leg and I’m concerned about it but I can’t get her in the cage. They suggested wrapping her in a towel so she couldn’t struggle and get away.
That sounded like a brilliant idea so I enlisted the help of my neighbor’s daughter who used to play at my house when she was young and I figured she owed me a few favors. So she came over as scheduled the next morning and we had a plan. I would hold Tee Tah, she would wrap the towel around her and we would put her in the cage. Fool proof. We got her semi-wrapped up and in the cage but at the last moment she escaped before we could latch the door. This scenario repeated itself two more times, each time my frantic cat growing more and more frantic.
Alright, this is cat against man and we are smarter and stronger. We’re going to win, I told myself. Sophie offered to get her kennel which was bigger still and had a larger opening and I thought that was a fine idea. I had closed off the doggie door so Tee Tah couldn’t get outside and she brought the kennel over and we assembled it and went looking for Tee Tah who had taken refuge on a shelf in the book room. I gathered her up, Sophia wrapped the towel around her but when she saw the kennel she peed all over herself and me. That was gross but we got her in there, finally, and shut the door before she could get out.
“Ok, we’ve got this.” I said. “Yes!” I picked up the kennel and carried it outside to put it in the car. Tee Tah, who had been racing back and forth, jumping around, went right through the back of that cage in some kind of a Houdini magic trick and escaped into the wild outdoors. Disappeared would be a better word. I don’t know how she did it, but I didn’t see her again for 3 days.
When I finally did see her, she was sitting in the driveway. I got a tube of antibiotic ointment ready and sat down on the porch nearby, about 15 feet away. I intended to treat her with it. I thought maybe that would be the best I could do. But as soon as I unscrewed the cap she turned and ran off, back to her wild haunts.
Four more days passed and I’m thinking, oh my God, she is off somewhere dying of systemic infection or maybe cancer and I don’t know where she is and I can’t help her.
I sort of said a prayer to the cat god or somebody and wished her well and felt bad but strangely calm. I had done everything I could. Animals have their own ways.
Yesterday Tee Tah walked into the house when I opened the back door, jumped up on the table and stared eating Meow Mix from the bowl.
“Tee Tah!” She was alive and looked ok. I petted her and she accepted it and looked at me the way she does with her big dreamy eyes. I got a flashlight and inspected the wound. It was healing, scabbing over and growing smaller. She was healing herself, somehow, like she had been trying to tell me she would. I don’t know how she did it. Maybe she found a healing plant or a healing spot or maybe she just needed to fast and chill out and meditate the way cats do.
Here’s another story; it’s very different. An animated short from Bastiaan Schravendeel. It’s called Blik. About a little boy’s first romantic love. It’s fictional, it never happened even though it’s happened many times.
And here’s a third story. This one was developed by the Blender Foundation in the Netherlands as a way to demonstrate their free open source animation suite called Blender so others could use it to tell their stories. It’s also fictional - a street urchin adopts a baby dragon as her pet. The plot is as powerful as any you’ll ever find anywhere, including Hollywood. It’s called Sintel. Fourteen minutes and forty eight seconds of compelling as hell storytelling.
Three stories, one non-fiction, two fiction. Dragon girl, little boy with a toy and a story about a cat. What do they have in common? Nothing, except that humans created them and humans listened to them. There is a direct connection between someone’s creative mind and someone’s receptive mind. A communion.
We used to have communion in Baptist church once a month where we would eat the body of Christ and drink his blood. I know, sounds gothic, but the idea was to symbolically, you know, commune. With Jesus. I don’t think I ever communed but that was the intent, ritualistically speaking.
Communion. Maybe that’s what we’re missing these days. Our national myths are all screwed up. Is America the hero of the world or the villain? Depends on who you talk to. If you talk to me I’ll tell you that we’re all the heros. And we’re the villains too. Choose your part. Select your avatar for this 3-D adventure game for real. No time outs and no reset. The pages are being turned, the story is being told. And the story is being told by us, the humans.
Here’s a link to the theme music used for this week’s newsletter. Mar G Rock - Be With You
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Tee Tah the cat and other amazing stories of wonder and awe