Love

A small, unnamed alley comes to an end on the other side of our backyard fence. Don and Karen live in the second house south of our fence on the west side of the alley, a pleasant ranch house with an inviting front porch.  On the side of their house closest to us, just inside their fence, there’s a grand oak tree.  It was probably there when the Coast Miwok people dominated the area, before the Spanish came.  Its branches reach out over more than half their roof, and at this season, with the acorns ripe, Don says it sounds like the house is under attack, with a constant barrage of thonks on the roof. The huge trunk goes about 15 feet up, nearly straight, before it branches.  It was there, high above me in the crook of the main branches that I found our cat, Hazel.

Hazel had stayed out all night Friday.  When I opened the back door to let Charlie out for a pee at about 3:00 Saturday morning, I called to her, and heard her distant cry in return.  She was clearly somewhere south of the house, definitely alive, almost certainly scared and thirsty, but there was no way I could find her in the dark. I went back to bed and waited for daylight.  In the morning I went out into the back yard and called to her again, and again, she answered – so, alive still, and somewhere south.  I walked around to the street behind our house and found the alley (which I had never explored) and walked toward our back fence, calling to her and searching.  Her cries led me to her, getting louder as I got nearer.  And there she was, fifteen feet up, looking small and scared.

I called Jay, and he drove around with our extension ladder while I knocked at the door to ask permission to go into the yard for the rescue. Don and Karen couldn’t have been nicer – a slightly odd way to get to know neighbors.  They opened the side yard gate for us and kept their dog inside. I went up the ladder first, but couldn’t reach Hazel.  Jay tried, and reached her, but couldn’t get a good enough hold on her to get her to let go of the tree which she clung to in terror.  Don recommended Cresco Equipment rental where we rented a 30 foot ladder. Jay carries good, sturdy straps in the pickup, and knows how to secure a huge ladder – one of many things I admire about him.  With the right ladder, and no fear of heights, it was a minute’s work for him to get Hazel wrapped safely in her bed and down out of the tree.  We thanked Don and Karen with a bottle of Crown Maple Syrup (the best), zipped Hazel into her carrier, and drove her home.  So much for a lazy Saturday morning.

We adopted Hazel from the Cooperstown SPCA just after Christmas of 2018, our second wither in Upstate New York. We were living in a wonderful house Jay named Sunnyhill, on 21 acres of a cleared hilltop that had once been a corn field. We had mice.  I don’t really mind mice, although their droppings are a bit of a mess.  We put all our food into plastic bins, so that wasn’t a problem.  The mice did find Charlie’s kibble, of course, and stashed it away for future needs.  We found a handful of it in Jay’s briefcase, and a bigger stash between the couch cushions.  But the last straw for me was when the mice got into a chocolate bar I had foolishly left out overnight.  We needed a cat.

Although we wanted a mouser, we decided that it would be easier for Charlie to adjust to a kitten.  In a room full of cats and kittens, Hazel caught my eye, one of five tabby siblings about six weeks old.  I picked her up and held her against my chest in one hand, which she barely filled. She settled against me immediately, closed her eyes, and purred.  They told us her name was Hazel, but by the time we got her out to the car in her new carrier Jay had changed it to Hazel Tov.  When we told Rabbi Molly the name, she sang, “a blessing on your head Hazel Tov, Hazel Tov” to the tune from Fiddler on the Roof.

I had assumed that it would be a while before this tiny kitten became a hunter, but apparently mice don’t know the difference between a kitten and a cat.  One whiff of her and they were gone, setting out to find another home for the winter.  From the day we brought her to Sunnyhill until we moved back to California some two and a half years later we never saw signs of another mouse.

Charlie had always slept with us.  On cold nights he would burrow under the covers between us and sleep up against my legs or down between our feet.  Hazel was busy at night, but she would often join us, usually in the early hours of the morning.  She liked to sleep on Jay’s pillow, right next to his head.  But sometimes she would push her way under the covers and sleep for a while between our shoulders. Charlie wasn’t thrilled, but he accepted Hazel as family, only growling if she intruded on his territory. We four were a little island of warmth in a sea of winter.  

When Covid came, there were a great many days when it was just the four of us on the hill.  Hazel and Charlie were the live entertainment. While we lived on Sunnyhill we kept Hazel indoors.  The fox would have easily carried her off if the eagle didn’t.  She was safer, if less content, indoors.  She sat at the east facing sliding door in the dining room for long stretches, watching bluebirds hop on the back lawn and kingbirds land on the wire fence that the previous owner had built around her horse pasture.  Hazel managed to get out three or four times, but Charlie helped us corner her while she was still a little disoriented by the vast space.

We came to California in a caravan.  Jay had Charlie in the pickup, and Hazel rode in her carrier on the front seat of the Prius next to me.  I covered her carrier with a blanket and she settled right down and rode silently, probably asleep, until we stopped.  It was July, so we were stopping in hot weather.  We couldn’t leave the animals in the cars at all, so I carried Hazel in her carrier everywhere I went, restrooms included. Most days, it was a minor inconvenience.  It meant we had to find a little shade where we could eat outside.  But at 122 degrees in Arizona, shade was no help, and air conditioned restaurants didn’t allow animals.  So our stops were as brief as possible until we made it to a hotel. Freed from her carrier at night, Hazel explored each new place. She was a good traveler. 

At home in Pleasant Hill, it turned out to be nearly impossible to keep her inside.  The screen door in the kitchen was designed in such a way that she could slip out the bottom, and we were unwilling to forgo a little breeze in order to keep her in.  So Hazel became an explorer, staying in the yard for the first couple of days, but then broadening her circle day by day.  She likes to follow Charlie and me on our walks.  If she hasn’t followed us, she is often lying in wait for us, leaping over Charlie when we return.

I loved Hazel from the first time I picked her up. I suppose loving her is no greater mystery than loving Jay or Charlie, which is to say they are all equally great mysteries.  I can’t tell you why I couldn’t sleep worrying about a cat I could hear but not see at three in the morning or why we would trek off for a ladder to rescue her.  I think about all the stories that branch off of this one, the story of Crown Maple syrup and my sister, the story of people who we did see during Covid, the story of why we went south through Arizona in 122 degree heat, of why we moved to New York and why we came back to California.  They are all stories about love, love that unfolds in the choices I make each day.  The root, the trunk, and the branches of my life all seem to be about love, the mystery of it, the wonder of it, the joy of it, and sometimes the ache of it.

Post Script – Three days later, on Tuesday, I found Hazel high in the tree at the end of our driveway.  Jay was able to stand our ladder in the bed of the pickup and reach her, but she scratched great gouges in his arm in her terror.  The screen door of the kitchen stays closed.  Hazel is an indoor cat again, loved, but not loose.