Klarinet Archive - Posting 000058.txt from 1999/11

From: "Dodgshun family" <dodgshun@-----.nz>
Subj: Re: [kl] Cats <g>
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 00:47:49 -0500

> Cats are naturally empathic and they can't hide their feelings. I got the
> first of my two cats some months before I picked up the screech-stick
again
> (sorry, Shadow!), and at first she expressed her dismay by hiding under
> furniture or running into the next room. As I got slightly better at tone
> production, she came out of hiding and sat there listening, or at worst
> ignoring me. This horror act began again when I brought home the HUGE
> screech-stick last February; and again, she no longer reacts.

The older of my two cats will put up with anything except my sister's violin
playing....she likes the cello, doesn't object to the bassoon and can handle
the clarinet (although she prefers the bass clarinet). The younger one,
Smudge (he's only a year old), protests violently to anything higher
pitched - bassoon, cello and b-cl are fine, but clarinet and violin are not
popular!

> On a more serious note...Pushkin, the older cat (she is now 6), the orange
> one you will see on my website, is a great people-cat, the kind that is
more
> and more being brought into hospices as a companion for the aging or
> terminally ill. During the winter of 1997, as my throttling-up divorce
was
> taking its financial and emotional toll on me, I'd come home in a hideous
> mood, get vaguely drunk, and collapse in a chair in front of the computer
> (where I'm sitting now). Pushkin would trot over and jump into my lap,
> insist on being petted because somehow that "dumb" animal knew that
stroking
> her was good for both of us. They can "read" pain and they know how to
> provide a special kind of therapy.

I've often thought that I'd be lost without cats. They seem to have insight
into how you're feeling and will react to you accordingly. Mind you, Smudge
likes nothing better than to curl up in someone's arms and will sit with you
for as long as you're prepared to hold him! He never fails to cheer me up
if I'm feeling down.

> They also make unerring music critics:-)

Oh yes. One of our other cats (now gone to the Heaviside Layer (who knows
their T.S. Eliot?)) used to sit in on my brother's cello practice and flick
his ears every time Andrew played a note out of tune!

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