The Nature of the Animal

music Just remembered I used to like this track. It reminds me of waking upo in my sunny mini-penthouse in Shepherd's Bush

12 February 2022

It is 0620 and I am lying in bed, on a Greek Island, face to fur with a cat, reading Guardian food porn and wondering ‘what just happened’?  As most of you know, Al is in hospital here in Heraklion, Crete, waiting for what turns out to be a double bypass.  Coronary arteries apparently have an inconvenient design feature that means, like traffic, they bung up at junctions.

We have been here for almost a month, while Al underwent investigations, monitoring and just plain waiting for a slot in the schedule.  3 days ago I moved from the AirBnb flat to a small, solar powered house, not far from the sea.  Although I was reluctant to make it, It turned out to be a really good move.  For some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, it feels much more like home.  I have a garden, wild with some struggling young trees, a sliding gate behind which I can park the car, a washing machine and a workable kitchen.  The bedroom is small, but comfortable, the air source heating unit copes pretty well in this chilly winter, and it’s quiet.  Life has taken on a rhythm of early mornings, probably down to the furry alarm clock, but also my preference.   Tea in bed with the papers, then yoga, shopping, Greek, depending on what seems most important at the time.  I shop early because the supermarket is huge and almost deserted at 0800.  It is more important than ever to keep the dreaded virus at bay.  If I catch it now, there would be a serious knock-on effect - not being able to visit Al, take in clean clothes, water food etc all of which are pretty necessary.  Let alone the pleasure of company. 

 

And how’s Al?  

After all that’s why I’m writing this!  And probably why you’re reading it!**
He’s taking all this remarkably well, he claims because he isn’t yet taking it seriously.  I don’t think that’s quite true, but we are moving into a new phase.  The waiting time stretched out as if it would last forever. I invite you think about it like a long queue for a roller coaster, or a sky dive, or Oblivion, the vertical drop ride at Alton Towers. So far we have been shuffling along, maybe chatting, reading a book (or Facebook, how times have changed) with a kind of infinite feeling, all the time in the world.  Then you’re just one car load away from the thing you’ve been waiting for and that’s when the dread and anticipation kicks in.  Well, this is not exactly like that, but it’s as near as I can get.
If there aren’t too many emergencies, Al’s operation will be next week, by which I mean next Tuesday or Wednesday.  He is being ‘prepped’ with lung conditioning exercise and some different drugs.  It will be a double bypass, apparently because of the exact geographical situation in the vicinity of his heart.  Enough detail I think.  On the bright side, we expect that the parachute will open and he will float down to the sunny uplands on, let’s say, Thursday.  I will report back. Sorry for the mixed imagery, but I’m sure you get the idea.  

Of Cats and Wo/Men
INFP A/T
Those 6 letters won’t mean much unless you’re into personality theory and / or the work of C. G. Jung.  Hey, that’s what Google’s for, right?
Unfortunately no-one has yet devised a personality profiler for cats!  One thing I find interesting about Felis catus is that depending on where they are, not just the personality but the whole animal changes.  Here’s a quote from a recent Animal Behaviour text _“Life in proximity to humans and other domestic animals has led to a symbiotic social adaptation in cats, and cats may express great affection toward humans or other animals. Ethologically, the human keeper of a cat functions as a sort of surrogate for the cat's mother.”_
This is interesting.  It is how our cat behaves indoors, when he’s a house cat.  

Right now, he’s on my lap, sleeping with one paw over his face.  Yes, cute!  But take him outside and he behaves like a kid in a playground affected by sudden deafness.  He doesn’t quite treat me as a stranger, but he’s a bit like a human five year old who doesn’t want to put his coat on. I let OC go outside for the first time today - I knew it was what he wanted most in his little cat world - at least when not sleeping or eating.  The downside is that he now reaches inside himself and finds a loud plaintive MIOUW-OUW when he catches sight of the outside world through a window.  All this seems completely driven by a chemical bath mediated by sensory input and is as elegant an example of the interaction between nature and environment as you can find in your own home.  Excluding yourself, of course.  In some ways, the parallels are not too hard to find.
This brush with death - not too strong  a statement - has caused me to feel the hormonal / neural /chemical bath that my cells live in.  Fear, relief, wariness, love and a kind of absent mindedness that I think means that part of my brain is busy ‘coping’.   If you allow it in, yoga trains the mind-body in perceiving internal states and maybe this is playing a part in my experience.  

SEGUE back to Al
I visited this afternoon, and we sat in Reception - too cold and cloudy to be outside, but the reception area is huge and very sparsely populated at the weekends.  Al talked to me about his brother Eric who lives in Brazil.  Eric has also been in hospital recently - nothing life threatening.  We talked about the imminent operation.  Al’s sanguine.  I am just scared.  
We get back to  Cardiology and find that the nurses have been looking for him to change a thingy on his wrist - and he needs a CT scan.  The nurse in charge asks me if I am Al’s wife.  I say yes and I am swiftly co-opted to push him in a wheelchair down to radiology.  Something you need to know is that in Greek hospitals, care as opposed to actual nursing, is expected to come from the patient’s family - wife,  mother, sister etc.  Not yet clear what happens to women who fall sick!  (I realise this is a bit sexist, but most of the patients are older men and its really hard to imagine them doing the job.) Hiring a private nurse is also an option, but I trust myself to do what’s needed .
 

One of the things that we can share is the view of the snow covered mountains to the South of Heraklion.  This is what I could see from the garden this morning.

more soon