Youtor
Cat Lullaby a song of goodbye
>> YOUR LINK HERE: ___ http://youtube.com/watch?v=_1tTCJtpN3s
Notes on Cat Lullaby. • • When asked whether his songs faithfully recount his own life experience, Fred Moolten often cites Cat Lullaby, first recorded in 2000, and re-recorded by Lisa Hindmarsh for the CD, No Other Prize in 2005. • • It's one of the most personal of my songs , he explains, and Lisa's rendition is magical in expressing feelings I poured into the words and music. • • I don't listen to Cat Lullaby much any more , he adds. The event happened years ago. I don't try to immerse myself in sad memories. Still, when I hear it, some of the ache returns. • • I suppose you have to call it a sad song, but when I was accompanying my pet to the veterinarian to be put to sleep, I wasn't trying to express sorrow. I was just trying to comfort him. • • It's a song of goodbye. Pets don't live as long as we do. Goodbye means that it's they who are leaving us, and not we who are leaving them. It hurts, but it's better that way, isn't it? • • Fred Moolten has said goodbye to several cats over the years. One was Morsel -- a beautiful, strong, and affectionate black cat: The photos in the video are not Morsel , he explains. Morsel lived before we owned a digital camera. We have a few, faded prints, but except for the mysterious glow of his eyes, they reveal nothing. The photos in the video are truer to him than the old prints. In those photos, what lives on are his grace, vitality, and joyous independence. • • When Morsel grew ill, he stopped jumping from the floor to the kitchen counter, and from there through an open window, where he could descend to the ground. At first, the vet clinic didn't know what was wrong, but later they found an inoperable tumor of the parathyroid gland that was poisoning his system with too much calcium. He stopped climbing, then stopped eating. He began to hide from us when we tried to feed him. Then one day, in his weakened condition, he contracted pneumonia, and we knew he wanted from us the final favor we owed him. We called the clinic, and put Morsel gently into a basket for his last journey to the vet. • • When we brought him home, I dug a shallow grave in the shade of some maple trees in our back yard. We wrapped him in a thin cloth, but that was all, placed him in the grave, and covered him with dirt. The idea of trying to preserve his remains in some way seemed wrong. Instead, we let Nature reclaim him, to transform him into earth, water, and air, from which life springs and returns in an eternal cycle. • • Some related links: • • More on Cat Lullaby, with listener responses: • http://bluesandfolk.com/catlullaby-sb... • • Fred Moolten songs and CDs: • http://bluesandfolk.com/sbnv.htm • http://bluesandfolk.com • http://cdbaby.com/all/fmoolten • • Lisa Hindmarsh: • http://www.lisahindmarsh.com/ • • Photography by • Chris Bloom: • http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigshock/ • • The Neepster: • http://www.flickr.com/photos/neeps/ • • Peter Smithson: • http://www.flickr.com/people/psmithson/
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