Felines, Fun and Funeral Readings
atA warm and wonderful welcome to the Antbeat blog on this sunny day in autumn. Sad to say, the beautiful summer is fading away, and also sad to say my blog does not leap onto the electronic page with the regularity and wit that I would wish. I do admire those people who blog away all the time, by night and day, constantly churning out breath-taking wit and pithy remarks. But here is some news… I have launched a new website of funeral readings – called www.funeralreadings.org and I hope it will prove useful to those good people and celebrants who have had enough of Henry Scott Holland who has been telling us for the past century “What is this death but a negligible accident?” Excuse me, but this negligible accident happens to us all… so why does everyone go on using this morbid little reading all the time? Maybe there are just not enough heartfelt and varied funeral readings around.
The two latest additions to www.funeralreadings.org took umpteen years to write, but I hope they are a touch fresher than “Death is Nothing at All. One was inspired by a scientist who wanted a reading for his wife that reassured him that consciousness doesn’t end with death, it’s called What If, the other is for a cat, because I know how upsetting it is to lose a pet. I am a cat person, which is OK, as Facebook and the world are awash with cats. Sadly the cat population is effectively seeing off the bird population, which is why I don’t have a cat anymore. My much-loved cat died many years ago, and I only had to think about him, and his crazy sense of fun, to appreciate how special he was. I’ve been told that the result is very sentimental, and that said I am (sadly) reminded of what Norman Mailer said about sentimentality, which is that ‘…sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment’ to which I can only reply that somebody, somewhere also said… ‘sentimentality is a disease you can catch from the Americans.’ If that’s the case, I reckon I watch far too much American Schlock and do too much of the music as well, so I am well and truly infected.
Anyway, sentimentality apart, here is my cat reading… and a picture of the neighbour’s cat, which is very glamorous. It is a very English cat, but I don’t know if it voted for Brexit.
He keeps trying to get into our house. If only my nephew wasn’t so allergic to felines this place would be populated by zillions of neighbouring cats, but thereby hangs another tail….or tale…
Cat, Friend and Companion
Life goes with scrapes
Doors, dogs, dicey streets
Happy holidays, sad workdays
And those skipping spirits
That cannot be ignored
Padding shared paths
Laughed and loved
Soft fur, loud purr
Teased and fluffed
With fleas and stuff
Saucers, special bowls
Impatient whiskers
Wicked ways
Pawing and bluffing
Yelling for nothing
Except food
My cat was a friend
And everywhere we went
My friend went with me
Even 100 miles away
Even when freer than free
We had connection
You will understand
When I say
I lost my best friend today
A small friend
Whose dancing spirit
Has curled up
Gone to sleep
And now holds a place in my heart
Gone, just for a moment
Never forgotten, never apart
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