Saturday, November 21, 2009

Pale and Precious: A Post For Puffelina


Puff….

Puffy. Puffelina. Puffalong Cassidy. The Puffinator. Puff…
One wisp of a syllable, but dang—you can build on it, it can become anything you want. The tofu of names.

I am writing this on the anniversary of the death of my cat Puff, and—no, no, this won’t be a downer, I promise!—I wanted to see if I could find words for just a sliver of her silver energy.

See, Puff was fancy. Born to a stray tabby living in a warehouse in Brooklyn, a litter of random-bred kitty royalty—lynxpoint twin girls, 1 flamepoint boy, 1 snowshoe and a tuff lil’ tabby. It kinda sounds like a Jesus story, but hey…cats can be our saviors for sure. Puff was one of the lynxpoints. I mean, they were the Cullens of kittens, lookswise. (Hmmm…cats ARE vampiric! Carnivorous and crepuscular…)

That’s it! She was so crepuscular, more so than any domestic cat I’ve known, shimmering brightest at twilight and early dawn. Her eyes in the dust/dusk of 4 a.m., cool and bright, surrounded by whispers of silver.

Maybe less is more--here, and with cats in general. They move so economically, their one outfit is perfect as is…why would they need a tome? Puff’s more of a poem than a rambling blog entry. More Christmas than 365 days-a-year. Yes, that’s it…

“The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow, Gave the lustre of midday to objects below.”

Of course I’d find her in the last place you’d expect! She was indeed much more like the moon than the sun, gray-white segueing to the suggestion of yellow-brown wolf in certain light. Sky-colored eyes holding the promise of day.

Lustre! She leaped in lustre, she bopped into the kitchen when she heard a can of tuna being opened in lustre, she Monstered* in lustre.

And yeah, if I’m the “object below,” she definitely made me shine a little lighter/brighter.

Thanks, my girl. You know I love ya.

* Monster=dance move she created. Four paws on the floor, jump straight up, make scary Thriller face.

Also Pufferesque: “Pale and Precious,” The Dukes of Stratosphear
She blows the stars out of the sky/And lights the sun with her bright eyes.