Today as I drove into town, I noticed the lilacs were in bloom, and thought about Memorial Day when I was a kid. Memorial Day meant marching in the village parade with a bouquet of lilacs that my mom picked, in my Brownie/Girl Scout uniform. We lined up at the school and marched to the cemetary, where after the many speeches, we walked among the tombstones to place our flowers on a grave that bore a flag.
I don't recall anyone sitting us down the week before in our Brownie meeting, explaining the meaning of Memorial Day. I do recall being told only to place the flowers on a grave with a flag. I remember one year, in my walk through the cemetary, all the flag marked graves had already had flowers placed on them by other young marchers. Beginning to panic, afraid of doing something wrong, I put my flowers on an unmarked grave. Why I didn't just double the flowers on a grave bearing a flag, I don't know. I assume I thought that with limited gifts, it was better to spread them out, rather than favor one site more than others. I'm pretty sure I had no idea what wars we were honoring, or what it meant to "give lives for our country."
We certainly do, now.
Today I went out and looked down on my own small little graveyard. It is a cemetary for cats. Actually, it's a cemetary for people who don't own the land they live on or who are physically unable to bury their own cats. Our own pets are also buried there, and some rescued cats that didn't make it. Spring weeds were overtaking it, and it seemed like, on a day requiring meditation, weeding a cemetary, even if only for cats, was a good and decent pursuit.
Ruffian the rescued ranch fox, whom I had for twelve years, and three FeLV positive Motley Crew kittens, are buried here.
A willow marks the grave of two FeLV positive Motley Crew kittens.
The light was lousy for an "after" shot this evening, but I couldn't count on myself to get a photo tomorrow a.m. At least I managed to carve out small space from the weeds, prune back some of the shrubs, and clean things up a bit.
3 comments:
I like your feline memorial garden. I have all our pets cremated, as the ground here is so hard and dry that it would probably take a backhoe to dig a hole. The only animals I've been able to bury are oranda goldfish, which I always bury under a particular eucalyptus tree. The tree is always in good health, and I like to think that the fish are now an actual living part of the tree.
I need markers like that. Any suggestions about where to find cat statuary? I'd like to mark where we placed Colin, Rags and George. Damn, I miss them.
I don't like a lot of the cat statuary I find. Usually I stumble across it. I really like the figurines at the link below, but I don't know how they would put up with weather. But they are gorgeous. I am lusting after "cat circling" but probably won't get it for a long while, so I may as well share. This will probably run off the page, so you'll need to copy/paste.
http://www.shirleyscathouse.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=21_58
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