Rosenbush Café

Tippy Van Hesling relaxes after prolonged meow

Tippy Van Helsing.

The First Born of a litter of six, April 30, 2006.

The first kitten to open its eyes.

The first kitten to mew.

Today, Tippy died from leukemia.

Tippy was that extraordinary variety of feline who, like his human companion, was vociferous and yet we clearly understood one another. I deduced early on he did not like his name since he yowled loudest when Tippy was uttered. In fact, if Tippy was awake he was mewing, meowing, yowling or articulating felinese with ease.

Brothers Tippy Van Helsing and Pink Martini (2007)

Tippy was a member of the Milo Institute of Feline Well-Being, a fictitious organization composed of felines primarily but open to all species, which I created in November, 2006 at the beginning of Rosenbush Café. With my mother dying daily from Alzheimer’s disease and no artistic life I gambled my imaginative inner voice on a blog and the first comprehensive story was about the MIFW-B and as the number of cats at both my suburban home and apartment business so did the membership.

Tippy remained at the house and during the last year of Frances’ life in fall, 2007, Tippy and his brother Pink Martini; yeah, love China Forbes and the Washington-based music group, kept me sane as I battled daily horrors watching my mother’s mental and physical disintegration.

In my childhood I was oft in company of some variety of ani-mule, as my dad often mused, and because my family owned Rosenbush Feed Store in Tuscaloosa, chickens, rabbits, cats, dogs, rats (not by choice but they do love grain) and the occasional horse – some farmers still came to the city in horse-drawn wagons and the city even allocated Horse Only Parking areas! – cow, raccoon, opossum (O is silent everywhere but in the State of West Ala), snakes, lizards and birds were my acquaintances. Sigh – such was the life for a shy only child of middle aged parents. Dad would not live to see me published, outside of the newspaper industry, and my mother was too far near the precipice of her journey to understand my writing about cat’s personified humanity. My aunt would have enjoyed the feline allusions and metaphors I expounded through their whiskered lips for she thought me a clever lad.

Sigh, again.

Alas, she died before her elder sister but had always been a kind soul towards the sentient and alter egos as well and she supported my writing from grammar school (what an absurd notion when a large number of college students starting at the Uni Wednesday will lack that communication skill, still graduate with degrees in bartending and dope smoking, and infest the workforce of Planet Bygone in their ugly clothes, uglier actions and obsession with me-me-me=me) and eagerly awaited an autographed copy of “A Cougar on the Loose!” (Unfinished-1972) which was half completed when I misguidedly transported it across state lines via duffel bag with clothes and marijuana; however, after the return trip dumped all, except the Columbian reefer, into the harsh wash cycle, Mud Room at 53.

During the later years, but now past to today since I rarely write on this blog because of terminal velocity and as I sit with Precious, the last recent, yeah, right – 2006 – cat to join the MIFW-B, playing paw bag with a curtain, I think of Tippy and Pink M sitting while I was writing and how they inspired this ordinary, non-famous time traveler whose TARDIS was deconstructing reality from madness, the desolation and desperation of hyperthymesia, and a dreadful pattern of repeating stories and embellishment nauseum sans ad to boredom and interstellar consternation.

I shed my tears earlier and now share my smiles and blessings to the life completed of a genuinely lovable spirit who never judged me nor I, him.

We should learn from that; we do not always.

The cat just is take them as they are or leave them to ponder the inept installation of shoe molding in a room, otherwise you become those who despise the cat, but love the dog!

Wholly misunderstood, good on you then mate, and that explains why I have fewer friends than fingers but profound pleasure from the companionship and purposeful singularity cats brings forth in moonbeams.

Goddesses watch over that soul and since I have faith in metempsychosis believe his essence will be reborn; not for me, for we already had our fantastic voyage.