For many years now, our house has been the setting for drama. Much of it involves the humans living in it – my parents and myself, now my father and me, with an occasional feline thrown in for good measure. And sometimes there will be an external factor who is adopted into our family, but seen only transiently. They come, sleep, eat, sightsee and bond, then go back to wherever they came from, motley experiences under their rather tighter belts to tell the folks at home about.
Thus it was with my Soul Sister, aka SS, who was on a fairly long visit to us a few years ago. She had always participated, albeit occasionally with some trepidation, in whatever crimes I was wont to commit and had been a good friend, wonderful cohort and about the closest I had to a sibling at the time. She and I did many things to collectively and singly annoy, confound, amuse and amaze my parents, and a lot that they never discovered. But that’s what friends are for, aren’t they?
An explanation: A high point of our décor in the living room wherever we lived has always been the arrangement of two Chinese rice paper globe-shaped lampshades, one very large, the other smaller, sort of like a planetary satellite. They hung, one higher than the other, on one side of an antique Persian carpet, and served to not just illuminate, but be a Zen statement of serenity and neutrality in a fairly vibrantly hued space. They attracted a great deal of attention, since the large one was unusually large, and always were the focus of all eyes, and so much nazar, or the evil eye. One night, sprawled in the oversized revolving chair placed below the shades, SS stretched her preternaturally long arms and made violent contact with the bigger globe. In simple terms, she punched a great big hole right through its side.
The conclusion of that story was happy – she managed to find a shade of the same size and shape and we were back to status quo, quad erat, etc.
But history, as Santayana didn’t quite say, has a way of repeating itself, even when fondly remembered. This time, it was a cat of the feline species wot dunnit. Our kitten, funny, obstreperous, playful, affectionate, curious little beast that she is, decided that there was something about the lampshade that needed closer examination. For weeks, ever since she was big and brave enough to climb on the top of the back of the chair that is now placed under it in the apartment that is now ours, she has perched there and gazed up at the globe – which is (or was, as the case actually is now) old and battered and needing replacement, as are all of us. She chirps hopefully at it, communing with whatever shade may dwell within the rice paper confines of the lampshade, seemingly planning a visit. We usually watch her carefully when this happens, knowing that she will, soon enough, want to explore further.
That ‘soon enough’ arrived a few days ago. My father had retired for the night and was reading in bed. I had retreated to my room to get set for the night. Teeth brushed, face washed, I was doing my usual careful search for a new wrinkle that I was sure I had, when I heard a louder than normal ripping-of-paper sound - the kitten has a large and noisy paper bag that she plays in and on, so crackling paper is not unheard in our house, but this was unprecedented. I waited a tiny moment, then ran to scope the situation. There, where it always hung, was the large Chinese rice paper lampshade. But there was only half of it suspended from its almost-invisible wire. The rest trailed in a long extended spiral across the carpet on the living room floor, ending somewhere under the armchair. The kitten was sitting under the dining table, her ears laid back against her little head, her eyes wide, her tail fluffed into a bottle brush and standing straight up. I reached down and grabbed her, to find that she had a bamboo-wire ring around her neck, frilled with torn rice paper.
The giggles welled, but I managed to summon up enough self-control to call my father out in a sober and unmoved voice. When he shot out of his room, wondering what the new crisis was, he found me staring at the carnage, not sure what to say or do. His expression broke the dam; I started giggling, unable to stop. My father laughed, exclaiming at the damage. The kitten, held securely under my arm, squeaked indignantly, protesting the provocation from the shade inside the shade that had made her finally crack and leap upwards for a direct confrontation with the spirit. Once de-frilled, the debris cleared, she crawled under the sheets on my father’s bed and stayed there all night, sobered by what she had done and scared by how the shade had reacted.
Today I went in search of and found a new shade to replace the old. It is smaller and will be hung higher, which should keep it safe…until the kitten is old and big enough to reach out to the new shade inside, that is!
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