Nude cats and 9th cousins

In the past few weeks six of my friends have died. It has been a tough start to the year. Some of the deaths were expected, but not all. One friend was told on Tuesday that she had two weeks to live, and she died two days later. I know that at my advanced age many of my friends will travel the path before me. But it is still a shock and a grieving process. I sit quietly and remember the last time we met. I think of their smile and their laughter and hope that they are beyond pain and trauma wherever they may be. One car accident, one heart attack, one Covid, two cancers and one kidney disease. Some much younger than me and others older. One particular man was born on the very same day as myself, same year, same place. We were twins in a sense. It certainly makes you take stock of what is important. I was reading about a mining accident in South Africa that was averted by the quick thinking of a brave man. The cage that takes the men to and from their diggings, was damaged and they were hanging over a deep pit by a thread. And he climbed down perilous paths to help his fellow workmates. The drop below him was the height of two Eiffel towers, 1.6 km or almost a mile deep. One brave and quick thinking man stood between the miners and certain death. Mario Cockrell carried his mates on his back down and across the pit to safety, and all done with a broken hand and bleeding palms. He never faltered even when his muscles screamed for release. Even when the pipe he was clinging to was slick with his own blood, he went on. He laid his own body over the chasm so that his workmates could use him as a bridge. Men larger than him, men heavier than him, he carried. 'He's not heavy, he's my brother.' is the song that comes to mind. It's good to read of great feats of bravery and compassion. It gives us all a goal to strive towards. By the way, that rescue was in 1993 at the President Steyn gold mine in Welkom, South Africa.

My cat is in the nude again. At the beginning of the year, my very black cat suffered an injury. Two broken teeth, a bit of concussion and a lot of hurt. Perhaps her darkness had contributed to her injuries, so, off to the shops to buy her a reflective collar. Which did actually work. For two days. And then she lost it. I bought another one and this one stayed on for a month. But now she is nude again. I can imagine that her reflective collars are decorating the wilderness outside our back door and one day I will look out my bedroom window and see the trees festooned with sparkling cat collars. All tinkling their little bells in the breeze. I am seriously thinking I might need to buy the collars in bulk. I will plop a box full of collars on the supermarket checkout and the person will ask if I am buying supplies for a cattery. Nope, just one very agile and adrenaline junkie cat. My other kitty, Shadow, has been happily sporting his cat collar for ages. Not damaged, not scratched into shreds and still looking quite snazzy and bright. Okay, I shouldn't compare cat against cat. But come on. The collars are pretty. Pinks and blues, fishes and butterflies adorn the band and the bells are a variety of colours. I was once sewing a series of quilts for an Eastern European country's poor and homeless. Sadly the quilts were not reaching their target of disadvantaged people. We would parcel them up, send them off and they would vanish. Finally we discovered that the border guards at said country had opened our parcels and helped themselves. The pretty quilts, lovingly crafted by myself and various friends now adorning the well paid and well fed and housed border guards homes. We had to strategize. And the solution was ugly. Yup, ugly quilts that corrupt border guards would not lust after. Browns and grays, dull flowers and harsh stripes of multi-clashing-colours. Some quilts still got lost, but the bulk got through and I suppose they did their job of keeping the chill out of the war ravaged and homeless folks they were intended for. A few years later we made baby quilts for mothers who arrived at hospitals to give birth and had nothing to wrap their little ones in to take them home. Out came the pretty little designs. The gentle, soft colours and the beauty was back. Sadly there are avaricious people wherever you go and some of those quilts ended up in the wrong hands and sold for a profit. Well of course it was a profit, the seller had no input into the cost at all. Or the hours of work. Or the emotional connection to the hard work. We would sit and sew and imagine the joy on a young woman's face as she carefully protected her child from the night air. I suppose we still got the joy of creation and if it did end up being sold nefariously, well, that was not our fault and not our guilt to bear. We had done our bit. It sort of reminds me of the beggars in Africa who do not want food and will throw it in the gutter if you offer it. Rather wanting money and telling you loudly and angrily that a hot pie and a drink is not what they need. I worked in a bank in South Africa and each Friday a woman dressed in rags would put her bag of coins on my table to be deposited into her account. She looked like she had not eaten a square meal in her life, and yet her bank balance was healthier than mine. All right, I know, I spent my money on pretty clothes and paying my parents board and lodging, but still, her account was certainly not impoverished. I received a message from a person on a family history site saying 'Hi, I am your 9th cousin.' Nothing more. No statement of how we were connected, no mention of where he was from or which branch of the family they were connected to. Not keen to reveal too much of my own personal information I asked 'Where are you from? Which country? England, Australia, South Africa.' Naming a few of my ancestors' stomping grounds. His reply, 'No, none of those.' Well, I was obviously not getting anywhere fast. After several similar messages backwards and forwards with no clarity and no real information. I flat out asked who our common ancestor was. He replied 'Thomas Turner Alkin.' Okay, that is a start. There are actually three of TT Alkin's on the family tree. So, I said 'The 1759 or the 1830 or the 1890 one.' You see, two of us can play that game of limited information sharing. He gave me the answer of which one it was and then said 'If you research him, you will find my tree.' Well, I personally don't care about your tree. Yes, I am mean sometimes, but he had been pushing my genealogical buttons for much too long. I am a very calm and considered person, but enough is enough. I said 'Oh, TT who is the son of ... husband of .... and father of ....' His very unhelpful reply was 'Yes, you have the same information as me.' No mate, you have sucked that information off my research that I have painstakingly collated over the past 40 years. When you say you got the information off X, Y or Z .... those are me, myself and moi. I poured over microfilms and microfiche until I went boss-eyed. I have agonised over who fits with which family. I have read ancient wills and court documents. I know that X was a silk merchant in Russia and that Y was descended from gypsies. There are a thousand little details that have never made it onto that family history site and if you had been a bit more courteous, you might have been privy to that information. Oh dear, there I go again, on my personal hobby horse. But my 9th cousin can stay removed and distant until the end of time. I will go back to illustrating my daughter's book ... bilingual book .... with multi-cultural illustrations and zone out and calm down as I take my paintbrush for a wander across the paper and destress from dealing with 9th cousins. As I decide if I want the drawing to be vibrant and colourful or muted and desaturated I can disengage my anxiety. I will take deep breaths and stare off into the gully to see if I can spy the cat collars. The cicadas are buzzing, the air is warm and life is good. Now all I have to do is put another collar on my cat and my day will be done.

We recently heard a volcanic eruption 2,400 km, or 1,480 miles away. The boom was clearly heard but the significance was not understood until later. A Tongan volcano had erupted under the sea. It reminded me of Krakatoa. No, I was not alive when that happened, but my father spoke of it often. Saying things like 'The sky was darkened all over the world.' and 'Sunsets were glorious after the eruption.' I always had the belief that my father had been alive when it happened. But no, that eruption was in 1883. Well before my father was born, even before his parents were born. We would walk along the sea shore in South Africa and pick up pumice. My Dad would turn it over in his hand and wonder if it was the distant residue of Krakatoa. Had this piece of pumice travelled the world on the tides and currents of the Earth's oceans to land at our feet at Klei Klip Kloofie? As my father spoke, I could imagine the shock and horror of that day. The shock wave hit London from both the East and the West. We heard of a ship's captain that sailed his ship through the burning ash in the Sundra Strait carrying his cargo of Kerosene. The Tongan volcano was not as devastating as the one on Krakatoa, but nonetheless, it was huge. A 57 year old Tongan man, Lisala Folau, is disabled and struggles to walk. He was working when the tsunami hit and first he climbed a tree to escape the waves. But when he got down the waves took him and he was submerged 8 times before clinging onto a log. 27 hours of swimming. But he survived. He reminded me of that pumice stone in South Africa, floating and drifting where nature decreed. Resilient and tough. Finding a way to keep his head above water when all around him seemed lost. Are we not all a bit like that pumice? At the mercy of fate? Or can we face life and be like the miner Mario. Don't look down at the chasm below us, ignore the aching muscles and do the best we can.