Surrealist Café #2, Les Animaux
He stands on the chair beside me, nuzzling my writing arm. He is so glad to be released from his overnight stay in the kitchen. In spite of his soft bed, fresh water and food, his litter box in the petit coin, he’d much rather sleep on our faces. But we need sleep, too.
He sounds like a little fire. I put down my pen, pick up the pink brush, and comb his white and gold fur. He lifts his face so I can get at the thick Elizabethan ruff beneath his chin. Marley, Marley.
When he’s happy, the fur puffs up around his face, and he reminds me of a bumblebee, drunk on pollen.
It’s too cold now in Paris to leave the windows open. And anyway, Marley’s not as interested in prowling on the ledge since the Tourterelles were evicted.
<http://parisplay.squarespace.com/journal/2011/9/16/conversation-entre-les-tourterelles.html>
One morning, shortly after the first egg was hatched, we opened the curtains to see if their second egg had hatched. The older chick had been gobbling food for days.
The nest was gone. Gone. Our neighbors’ grimy window had been “cleaned,” that is, someone had opened it and rubbed a rag in careless circles, leaving swirls of dirt on the glass.
What had they done with the nest? Swept it out of the geranium box? Madame and Monsieur Tourterelle might have flown away, but the three-day-old chick could not have survived, and the egg would surely have smashed.
This was the first and only video we had of that chick.
We wanted to go down to their apartment and bang on the door. But the building is one adjacent to us, and we don’t have the entry code.
What kind of people, we wondered, cannot wait two weeks for two baby doves to gain the strength to fly, before sweeping aside a nest?
Had they seen Richard’s camera pointed at their window, and felt paranoid? No, he’d made sure there were no humans around when he photographed the doves.
So hard-hearted; they were hard-hearted. Can anyone be callous towards animals and birds, and tender towards humans?
What do you think?
To celebrate the life of the Tourterelles, and to kick off a second Surrealist Café event, in which you readers participate in Paris Play, we ask the following:
On Saturday, October 29th, at 1 p.m. in your time zone, go to your favorite café, and write or photograph or draw or compose a tune about an animal, or fish, or bird you see that day, or one who is dear to you, or an imaginary beast, or your totem animal. Write or photograph or paint from a human perspective, or from the animal’s point of view. Don’t be intimidated if you’re not an artist. Last Surrealist Café, every contribution was imaginative.
Send it to us by e-mail the following Wednesday, November 2 (absolute drop-dead deadline), and we’ll post the best work on Paris Play Saturday, November 5th.
Marley just leapt back on the chair, nudged my arm, and started purring like a bonfire, like a champion Swiss yodeler.
Reader Comments (24)
More on People vs. Pets
I first became aware that some people value their pets over principles when I had a dog. Licorice was so good natured. Mostly, she enjoyed experiencing her own athleticism, walking, running, scaling steep cliffs, jumping, and interacting with me. She was super adept and intelligent. When we socialized at dog parks she preferred the company of gentle, playful mates. There always seemed to be a bully dog in the group, threatening, snarling and causing fights with others. What nuisances. The owners of these dogs always had a defensive nature, like a co-dependent parent who is in denial that their child has committed a felony. If other dog owners scolded their dog away, they'd express anger at that person.
Dogs do seem to be symbolic of their owner's alter ego.
Yes, yes, yes, Marguerite Baca!
My favorite (horrible) example is as recent as last week, when two sets of friends took their respective dogs on a walk (they don't know each other but both, coincidentally, live in Santa Monica). Both were attacked by pit bulls. One friend broke his hand, trying to beat the thing away from his springer spaniel. In the other instance, the owner had a seven-month-old child whose face she held next to the pit's to "prove" he was gentle!
I have other friends who kept dangerous, unpredictable dogs on their property -- ones who had bitten people (including children) multiple times -- because they couldn't bear to put them down. Thankfully, they always had the $$ to pay off lawsuits before they occurred, and it was their extreme love of animals that prompted this -- but...REALLY??!!
Hi Marguerite,
Licorice sounds just like you! And aggressive dogs are such a boon to passive-aggressive people. They can sic their animal nature on others and profess innocence. Yet it's always obvious to everyone else, that the dog is an aspect of the owner, the nasty hidden part.
I'm just about finished with Jennifer Egan's novel, "Look at Me." One of the ingenious bits in the story is a "game" played by the narrator, a smart unconventional model, who cannot work in fashion after a terrible car accident. She moves through life looking for people's shadow faces, the face they hide most of the time. And aggressive dogs are a kind of shadow self.
Bullies. Aren't they fun?
XOXO,
Kaaren & Richard
Dear Anna,
Yikes. I wonder what it would take to wake up someone who parades through the world with a vicious attack dog. if enough of their friends put up a mirror to such aggression, would that do it? I wonder if it's extreme love of animals so much as it is having a way to attack others without blame. You could love an animal which isn't a bully, but maybe the fact that the animal IS a bully is WHY some people are so attached to it.
I saw a video yesterday about a man who was leaving for work, when his pit bull blocked the door and ran around in circles. The man finally followed him upstairs where he found his wife, who had just suffered a seizure and a stroke. If the dog hadn't alerted him in time for them to rush to the hospital, she wouldn't have lived. So not all pit bulls are attackers. Some are life savers.
Gee, I think I'll get a tiger.
Love,
Kaaren & Richard