About two years ago, I lived in a house with a garden. Everything that died on my kitchen table, went back into the earth. I’m not talking about the fancy ‘go-go green’ composting bins, or artisanal organic manure. It just meant dumping vegetable remains into a far, forgotten corner, and feeding leftover bones to cats that came and went. Some days, just to play around, I threw things straight out of the window – a squishy slice of orange, rotten tomatoes, watermelon seeds and the like. Some of it was eaten by snails, some turned to dust and some, some blossomed into real, living things. I had a shrub of tiny tomatoes, an enormous pumpkin and a straggly papaya tree growing awkwardly in odd places.
The garden was chaotic and unruly, like a jungle, through which cats wandered in and out, like ancient predators.
Cats are beautiful, sensual creatures. They move and flex in ways that are unimaginable for us, mere mortals. It helps that they have 230 bones, versus just 206 for you and me. And since we are talking about cats and their bones, here is an interesting incident that happened way back in the 1800's..
An Egyptian farmer, digging and turning the soil, made a morbid discovery. He found hundreds of thousands of mummified cats buried in his village. Surprised, and perhaps also a bit overwhelmed with the sheer number of dead cats, he loaded the whole thing onto a ship, and sent it to England. The strange consignment of over 180,000 ancient cats was auctioned on the docks of Liverpool in 1890. Guess what they used it for?
Most of the cats were ground up and sprinkled over fields, as fertilizer!
My first reaction when I read this, was that of regret. Anything that speaks to us of the past is precious, and must be preserved. However, after the initial sense of dismay, it somehow also began to feel right.
The cycle of life continues. Dust to dust…
What about you, how did it make you feel? Do you like holding onto the romance of the past, or do you shrug your shoulders and move on?
Quick disclaimer - I now live in a very tall building, with glass balconies and manicured lawns. Garbage collection here is serious business. Trash is segregated, packaged, colour-coded, and handed over to a man in uniform. And as tempted as I am, I don’t throw anything out of the window anymore.
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