Brown - Animal magnetism: my life with creatures great and small

P urring, deep rumbling, is my first memory of life. Mickey, a long-haired tiger cat, provided the purr as he slept in my cradle. Mother called him an Angora. These days people call them Persians.

Looking back, I realize that my whole life has been lived with and through animals. Other peoples significant dates include first kiss, first physical congress and attendant drama, first marriage, first child, first jobwell, you get the idea. For me, its first cat, first dog, first horse, first cow, and so on. And each of them taught me something.

This book is about the many lessons Ive learned, the animals who have loved me, endured me, and taught me, and my bottomless love for them in return.

The past rides on my shoulder like the parrot my paternal grandmother kept. What a chatterbox that bird was. Never on good terms with the old biddy, one summer I taught her parrot to say unchristian words. The past is like that: whispering, chattering, squawking, and often the very things youd prefer not to hear or remember.

As Mickey was first, let me start there with what he taught me. He could run, jump, hear, smell, and probably taste better than I could. Id crawl on the floor to try and catch him. Hed let me reach his luxuriant tail, then hop away. Taunting me gave him great pleasure.

Mickey taught me how to play, and how to see the world through all of my senses.

Once I could walk without falling down, my life became an endless stream of adventures. Back then, I lacked a sharp sense of time passing and had no concept of deadlines. It was a delicious state that modern life quickly obliterates. Mickeys timeframe was my timeframe. My goal is to return to that early delight, that freedom from the clock, and to be more like cats. Its a formidable task.

Mickey and I took our constitutionals, Mothers term. Hers covered more ground: four miles in the morning and two or three at sunset. Mickey and I loitered under lilacs in bloom. Hed leap straight up to catch a black swallowtail, which usually got away. Wed climb maples and oaks. Wed jump into leaf piles in the fall, which meant that Dad had to rake them all up again. He never minded, and a few times he jumped in with us. Mickey played catch with my jack balls. Wed read together and we always slept together. I still need a cat for a good nights sleep.

My Aunt Mimi (Louise to those of you who have read the Six of One series) had many dogs throughout her life. She had a lovely Boston Bull, as large as a boxer, named Butch. Butch and Mickey coexisted, since one sister was usually in the company of the other. And the three of us were fast friends, showing that different species can indeed get along.

My aunt conceived of herself as the Virgin Mary but she had also conceived two daughters. Mother called her Divergent Mary. Her dogs played as important a role in my life as my own pets did. Usually I trained her dogs, too. Never could train Aunt Mimi.

One day when I was eight, Mother took me by the hand. Mickey, now an elderly gentleman, was failing. She placed him in his little crate and we waited atop Queen Street Hill for the bus. Only rich people owned more than one car. Dad needed ours. The veterinarians office squatted close to the Mason-Dixon Line. I remember walking into the tidy white clapboard building, a sense of foreboding filtering through me. I was determined not to cry.

Mother accompanied Mickey. I languished in the waiting room. When she came out, Mickey was wrapped in a lemon-yellow towel in his crate.

Once home, the sun still bright, we buried him under the large blooming crabapple tree up by the old pasture. The air carried all the messages of spring, Mickeys favorite season. Not until the last pat of the shovel did Mom give way. I let loose, too.

Mickey taught me my first great lesson in life, which is that one animal or person can touch many others. Id thought only of my relationship with Mickey, not Mothers. Not once did it occur to me that she loved him before I came into the world. He was her shadow then.

To this day I dont like lemon-colored towels. I adore tiger cats and crabapple trees. A tiger cat is sitting with me now. If I can find the money this spring I am going to realize a dream and line one of my farm roads with crabapples. Mickey would approve.

Not all the animals I have learned from were mine. And some of the most profound lessons came from spending time with people who were blessed with the gift to understand and appreciate Gods creatures.

My grandfather kept foxhounds given to him by his brother, Bob, who was a kennelman of the Green Spring Valley Hunt. PopPop Harmon returned from World War I a far different man than when hed entered it. As long as Big Mimi was alive, she held him together. She died in 1948 and he went to pieces, drinking enough to float a battleship. Couldnt hold a job so he made a little money entering hunting contests.

When I visited, he put the liquor aside. Not until I was an adult did I fathom how he protected me from his affliction and what it must have cost him to do so. If I was especially good I could eat with the foxhounds and sleep with them, too. They were American foxhounds (along with some Crossbreds), which is what I now have in my kennels for the Oak Ridge Hunt Club. Through PopPops hounds I learned the basics of canine communication, which is quite sophisticated.