Tale Of A Tail

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I am a cat’s person; owned and manipulated by a clever young male cat colored soft gray with a proud white chest that stands out like a starched ruffle on a lady’s blouse. He sports a white upward pointing arrow on his forehead between his eyes that melts down his nose widening into an upside down funnel shape, covering his mouth, engulfing his jaw, chin and softly settling onto his chest. In the center of all this white is a pert berry pink nose. His eyes are two green lanterns that pick up all available light in a darkened room and reflect it back as two glowing orbs. Because of his eyes Mr. Peepers is the name I gave him when he moved in three years ago. Today his body weight is only ten pounds even though he is a full-grown cat. His body length is longer than most cats with a tail that is bushy, white tipped as though it had been used as an artist’s paintbrush. Nature made him small, physically beautiful, and endowed him with an inquisitive, intuitive nature that sometimes gets him in dutch with other family members.

I remember the first six weeks that Mr. Peepers lived in our home. He had been a wild kitten living in the outside world with his wild mother. Mother cat spent many days during the previous summer months in our backyard. She always had her kitten with her. One day, after the winter cold had set in, an automobile claimed the mother cat’s life.

On my backyard patio stoop I kept a large cardboard box crammed full with warm blankets for the wild cats to find refuge in during cold nights. I knew the wild kitten would return alone that night to the security and warmth of the box. I waited until I was sure he was in the box; I carefully pressed down on the mound of blankets in the front of the box that obscured my view of the back of the box. To my delight there was a pair of large kitten ears visible followed by a pair of frightened bewildered eyes. I captured him gently, carefully lifting him out of the box, and took him away from the stinging cold night into the warmth of my home.

Through the patience of his adopted human family, Mr. Peter Peepers was ready at the end of six weeks to make his first visit to the vet. He had begun to relax and explore his new surroundings; I had waited for him to come to this state of acceptance before venturing out on a car trip.

The visit to the vet was uneventful until the doctor gave him his first shot. He had been nervous but steady as he stood on the cold metal examining table being poked and probed, weighed and inspected. At the exact moment the vaccination needle pierced his skin he let out a screech heard clear out to the waiting room four doors away down the adjoining hall. His small thin body became elastic, and shot out stretching three times its normal length. I heard the doctor say with a nervous sounding voice, “wild kitty.”

Since the early days, Mr. Peepers has trained me as well as I have trained him. When I am home alone during the day, Mr. Peepers is always near me. He sleeps on a big rust colored pillow on the couch next to my chair while I do my homework. If I am in the kitchen cooking, he is close by under the table always ready to rush out to greet me when I spot him there, and I acknowledge his presence. There are times when he will jump up to the kitchen counter if I say its okay to do so, and he will lean against me as I give him an open arm circle hug.

I truly am a cat’s person. I am trained to feed him when he is hungry. I book a kennel for both him and his lady friend cat if I am going away on a trip over two days in length. I always know when he wants or needs attention.

It takes patients and careful observation of a cat to understand his needs. In the process you realize that the cat is an intelligent creature. You might find as a result of your study that you become a cat’s person, the same as I am!

This has been a true-life story of Carol Garnier Dutra.

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

Note;
I wrote this short story when I was a student at Evergreen College; it was for my first English class, which was with Mr. Jacobs. I am reproducing it here as a tribute to Mr. Peter Peepers Dutra who shared our lives along with Ms. Whiskers Lou Dutra for many years back when my family lived in San Jose, California. Peter was the cat-son of one of Mrs. Gertrude Bold’s ferial cats. Mrs. Bold was a neighbor who lived on an adjacent street to the street we lived on, and she was the lady who kept many ferial cats in her backyard, and in her garage.

After his companion cat friend, Whiskers Lou passed away at the age of twenty (20) Peter grew depressed to the point that he stopped washing himself. I knew this was the case because he started to smell!
Healthy, happy cats always keep themselves clean and groomed; this is a cat’s true nature to be clean, proud of their appearance.

Because Peter stopped taking care of himself I had to take a clean washcloth and wring it out with water washing him off following with a towel dry so he would be presentable to be in the house.

I have known people to behave in this depressed manner after losing someone they loved; this was the first time I saw this behavior in a cat, and it tells me how intelligent cats are.

In time, our Peter Peepers grew ill, and left us to be with his cat friend, Whiskers Lou.

I will always be a cat's person thanks to this pair of sweet, loveable felines whom graced our lives for many years with their loving presence.
Carol
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The Scent Of Wild Lilacs Transports Me Back In Time ...

The scent of blooming, wild lilacs, drifting on gentle drafts of warm, spring air bring back fond memories to me of my New England childhood home, my first ‘real’ home where I finally acquired a bedroom of my own.

My happiest memories of my childhood start for me in 1952, which was the year I turned eight, and is the year when my father purchased our first family home that was located on the outskirts of the city of Lynn, Massachusetts. The 'country like' more rural than city street where we moved to was located where the cold, gray city streets of Lynn fell back onto the horizon, and the warm, funky Town of Saugus began.

When I turned eight years old, and my father bought our family our own home across town, the only thing I regretted about moving away from the old neighborhood was leaving St. Patrick’s; both the church and the school. After we moved across town my parents enrolled me in Burrill Elementary, which was the local public school for my new neighborhood.

The home my father bought us was situated on a large parcel of land, which was mostly undeveloped land still in the state that it had been in for centuries. Our back yard led upward; up into an area of hills that went up, and then leveled out only to start climbing again, up, up and then leveling out again. We didn't have city sidewalks on this street. The street where we moved to was paved with blacktop and a cement, half circle shaped gutter ran the length of our 'new' street to carry away both rainfall and snow melt to the sewer entrance located on the city street below.

Off on the other side of the street that was at the end of our street, which was called Oakland Avenue, was Boston Street. Across Boston street was the Saugus River, which I am sure is still flowing today to the Atlantic Ocean carrying excess rainfall and winter snow melt the same as it did back when I was a child living on Oakland Avenue.

Before moving across town I had been a ‘city child' living the life of a city child in an apartment, which was called a ‘flat’ back when I lived in the inner part of Lynn. There were sidewalks to walk on in front of our city apartment, and there was snowfall in the winter on those city sidewalks that needed to be shoveled off.
When my father moved our family to our own home in the more countrified part of Lynn I was transported into a different world from the one I had known and grown up in for the first eight years of my life.

One of the many changes I experienced was there were no sidewalks in front of our new rural home to shovel snow off of.

In addition to the new environment in my outside world was the addition in my life of a new indoor environment in the form of a bedroom of my own, which was one half of a finished attic.

I went from not having any privacy in my life to inheriting a private bedroom that was two or three times the size of ordinary bedrooms! Each of my brothers also got their own bedrooms in our own home.

Everyone in our family was happy while we lived there.

I remember that first summer in my new neighborhood I became entranced with the visual beauty of the woods that started at and were a part of my back yard. The heavy perfume of the wild lilacs growing in my father's wood added to my enchantment.

I took silent possession of these woods.

These woods became my playground for the years from age eight to fifteen, every year, from spring to winter and then back to spring again.

Often during the hot humid days of summer, I would pack charcoal pencils and a pad into my knapsack, and head to the cool refuge of my tree canopied wood. In quiet, shaded areas I often found lily of the valley flowers growing that I would sketch. Delicate silvery white, lace edged bells suspended and drooping on slender stems rising from the soil. On my forays I also often found hot orange colored, bell shaped tiger lily flowers, half hidden within cool earthy smelling, shallow furrows. I soon learned to enjoy both of these hidden flower prizes while they remained in their original homes. Once picked from their original earthen homes, they faded fast and died!

I loved my woods, and all I learned treking through it, listening, watching the creatures and plants living and growing there, taught me about the cycles of life within nature. I loved all the natural lessons of nature that I learned because they showed God’s Love to me, in His miracles of renewal in nature in our world. This was definitely one of the happiest and most learning times of my life.

I have read that during the last Ice Age, glaciers spread over New England with heavy ice flows moving downward with such force that they actually cut off the tops of mountains, and leveled out what was previously land with high mountains. That explains for me the topography of my back yard wood that I loved so much as a child.

The land where my wood existed contained along with all the growing flowers and small creatures living there, many trees, which included pine, birch, chestnut and oak trees. There were large, rounded boulders too that I would climb, many were over 15 feet in height, and must have weighed tons. This wood, my woods was where several dozen large, wild lilac bushes grew; and were visible from our back porch. Both purple and white varieties of lilac populated this area. It was an amazing sight every spring to look up from our back porch, up into my woods, and see the purple and white colors take form on the wild bushes as the heavy hanging clusters of flowers formed. While my visual sense was overwhelmed by the color, my sense of smell was also overwhelmed with the sweet perfume emanating from these bushes that were trimmed only by the forces of nature; hence their wide and tall stature.

During the winter all of my trees and my lilac bushes alike, which were bundled up in my wood, were encased with sparkling fairy like crystals of ice, and often they were packed with heavy snow. So the miracles of rebirth, re-leafing and re-flowering that took place every spring were indeed miracles from God.

For anyone reading this story that has lived only on the hot and dry West Coast of the U.S. it may seem strange to think of rain fall in the summer but that is what it does in New England; it rains during the spring and summer months, and often the rain comes down while the sun is shining.

I remember it raining several times a week during the summers that I lived there. Summers in New England were always hot and humid with sudden drenching bursts of rain that often ended as fast as the storms started. Sometimes loud claps of thunder could be heard with streaks of lightening that would stretch across the now darkened sky looking much like a heavenly release of anger.

Large drops of warm rainwater that I called angel tears, would fall from the darkened clouds hitting the ground; splashing out into many more drops of warm rain spreading outward; then finally soaking into the ground. I loved to walk in the rain back then despite the danger of summer electrical activity. I still love the sound of rain hitting the pavement, hitting my roof, even today.

Lilacs need a lot of water, heat, and they also need shade from the drying sun to thrive. Our wild lilac bushes in my wood had all three conditions. The tall mature trees shaded the many wild bushes with their spring, summer leaved canopy, and the frequent warm summer rains kept the bushes green and lush looking, full of fragrant scent and deep color throughout both the spring and summer months, all of the years that I lived in this home.

I remember during both in the spring and in the summer my mother opening her upstairs, kitchen pantry window, which faced my wood, to allow fresh air to enter the house, and I will always remember the heavy, sweet fragrance of our lilacs drifting through that pantry window; filling our home with their sweet fragrant presence.

This story is my true life memory of where I lived from the age of eight to fifteen; this story is my memory of our New England home that was filled with the sweet scent of wild lilacs every spring and summer. And this story is also my memory of the home my father bought for my family where I finally got both a bedroom and a woods of my own!

I will always remember the joy my whole family felt while we lived in our New England home... My father passed away on Friday March 13, 1959, and I was only fourteen years old. I got to live in my much loved New England home up to six months past my fifteenth birthday. This was when my family moved to New York State, and a whole new adventure awaited me there.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

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Freedom Is Spelled C-A-R....

I found myself thinking today about what an acquaintance said to me recently about her mother, who was getting up in years, and realizing that she was having problems driving, this lady's mother knew that it was time to stop driving her car. She then gave her car away to a close, family member, who was much younger than she. My immediate response to this story was my saying, “How could your mother give up her ‘FREEDOM’?”

As an American living in rural California, where public transit is just now beginning to become a more common, daytime sight, freedom to me is being able to get into my private vehicle, and drive to wherever I wish to at any time of the day or evening with no restriction.
I know that my immediate response to the story I heard about the lady's mother, who gave her car away came from my experience with my late father-in-law, who lived well past his ninety fifth birthday but had to give up ‘his freedom’ ten years before his passing.

My father-in-law was able to maintain his ability to drive, ‘his freedom’, well into his late eighties when he began to develop an age related condition that affected his central vision.
My father-in-law's villain that took away his freedom was a disease called macula degeneration, which was likely caused from working outside all of his life. My father-in-law was a dairy rancher, and he wore eyeglasses to correct his vision that didn’t have U.V. protection built into the glasses because knowledge about what bright, unfiltered sunlight can do to our eyes is a more recent discovery. In years past we didn’t know that unfiltered sunlight, viewed on a daily basis could harm a part of our internal eyes called the macula, which when harmed causes loss of central vision. This villain, this lurking enemy of freedom strikes us when we least expect it, when we are well into our final years.

I will never forget how sad my father-in-law was when he realized that his days of freedom were over, he had lost his ability to drive his own car to wherever he wanted to go, whenever he wanted to travel.
I will never forget how we all suffered along with him as he struggled with his discovery.

Freedom to roam where we wish to in our cars, when we wish to, is as American a concept as Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken is. When the time comes, it is as difficult for us to give up our freedom to drive our own cars, as it is to give up breathing.

Enjoy; be happy, enjoy your American freedoms; enjoy life.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

Time Waits For No Man Or Woman...But Time Stood Still On September 11, 2001...

Today is September 10, 2010, tomorrow is September 11 the anniversary date of the most horrific event I have ever witnessed in my entire life. I found myself thinking today of an old phrase; “Time waits for no one,” when I was a youngster that phrase was rewritten and sung in a song by Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones musical group;

“And time waits for no man, and it won't wait for me
Yes, time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me

I witnessed nine eleven via my television from the comfort of my home, which only adds to the horror of what I saw that day. Here I was safe, far away from the suffering, the crushing, fiery deaths of so many of my fellow Americans, and all I could do was stare wide eyed, in disbelief at my television set.
Time stood still for me that day.

I remember that day here in California going out in my car to take care of necessary things I had to do, and leaving my car’s head lights on in the bright sun light to show my feeling of oneness with all the other drivers, who also had their car head lights on that day. We all acted as one to show our comradeship with each other, and our comradeship with those fellow Americans who lost their lives in New York City and Washington D.C. that day on September 11, 2001.

Time was suspended, it seemed that time did wait that day, not just for me but for all Americans that day; it was like the Earth had stopped spinning around our Sun. Here in California we were all like Zombies moving about not thinking about our own problems that day but instead thinking of those people three thousand miles away on the East Coast of our country, who were destroyed by the senseless acts of so few uncaring individuals, who had no regard for the gift of life that our Lord has given to all of us here on Earth.

I will never forget what I saw that day, and I don’t want to forget what I saw.
History is a lesson for those of us who live through it to survive, and history should never be forgotten because as soon as we forget history, it will come back on us, and hit us smack dab between our eyes, again!
Do not forget!

God Bless all who suffered on September 11, 2001. God Bless all who survived, and are still suffering from injuries sustained from the rescue efforts made on that day.
God Bless all of us who remember, and still sit quietly remembering that day, shedding tears over what we witnessed from so far away.
God Bless all of those, who were in New York City and Washington D.C. on that fateful day, who still remember.

As long as God is with us we will not allow this to happen to us again; we will not allow time to stand still for us again, here on our Earth!

Thanks for reading,

Carol Garnier Dutra

Time Waits For No Man Or Woman...But Time Stood Still On September 11, 2001 was re-published in The Colorado Lookout for October 2010. The Colorado Lookout is the official publication of the U.S.S. Colorado Alumni Association Inc.

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

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Bi-Coastal Pooch

I love cats but while I love cats I have also loved two dogs in my life. My first dog was a solid black, Cocker Spaniel that my parents bought for me as a companion dog when I was between the ages of four to five years old.

In my family I was an only child with two grown up brothers; both were students in high school when I was born. I also had an older sister who was eighteen years old when I came along in the family, and she was living in Nova Scotia, Canada.
I was an only child with three grown up siblings.

This was why my father felt that I needed to have a companion to keep me company, and he chose a friendly, black, male puppy, a Cocker Spaniel as my dog that I named Black Pal, and alternatively I called my dog Little Pal.
My older brother Bobby (Robert Steven) had a beautiful white, Spitz, purebred dog he called ‘White Pal’ so you get the idea of where I got my dog’s name!

When I was eight years old my father bought the family a home that was located on the outskirts of the City of Lynn, Massachusetts where Lynn bordered with the Town of Saugus. Early one morning, shortly after we moved to our home, my father went out on an errand to the local hardware store that was just over the boarder in the small Town of Saugus.
He saw Little Pal following him but he didn’t think that anything would go wrong.

When my father reached the end of our street he crossed the major thoroughfare, which is called Boston Street. Black Pal followed, and was struck by a car. My little friend was gone, and my father felt terrible that it happened because my dog followed him that morning.

My father told my mother to make sure that she took me to a pet store to pick out another dog. I chose an orange colored, male, Wire Haired Terrier that I named Sandy McTavish MacGregor Garnier. Sandy McTavish MacGregor Garnier is the doggie, who later became my bi-coastal pooch.

Wire Haired Terriers were originally bred as ‘ratters’. They are aggressive enough to go after rats and kill them, thus this breed of dog protects food crops when in storage from infestations of rats, among other rodents. Terriers in general are good protection dogs for children, and they are loyal to their human companions. Sandy was sometimes difficult when he insisted that he wanted to accompany me to school. I had to sneak out of the house every morning, and the first thing I would do when I returned from my school day was I would take my Sandy out for a walk. During the day my mother would often tether sandy on a very long chain in our back yard so he could have some sunshine, and be able to relieve himself. I had the chore of cleaning up after the little guy, and I didn’t mind because he was such a friendly, special dog.

After my father passed away in March of 1959 my mother and I moved to Poughkeepsie, New York, with both of my brothers. After living in the city of Poughkeepsie for a couple of months we moved to our new home in the Town Of Poughkeepsie that was called Red Oaks Mill.
Sandy moved along with the family to both locations in New York.
I remember the warm summer night when someone entered our open garage, and crept down our basement stairs hiding in our dark basement much like a rat would hide and wait for their chance to do damage.

My mother was in the habit of watching late night TV in our split-level family room, which was adjacent to the garage, and above the basement. There was a locked door between the garage, and the family room. My mother watched Johnny Carson, and before Johnny was host of the Tonight Show my mother watched Jack Parr. Sometimes I would stay up late and watch TV with her, especially in the warm summer months.

We kept a large cage with birds in our family room, a pair of parakeets I named Sam and Abie. My Sandy McTavish MacGregor stayed in this large family room at night. Sandy was tethered on a long leash yet he could reach to the door that was between the garage and the family room. From this vantage point he could also reach to the first two carpeted stairs that led upstairs to the third level of this split level home.

I remember that night; my younger, older brother Bob first came to the room my mother and I occupied, and he woke us up.
He told us that he heard Sandy growling!
The door to the downstairs family room was closed, yet my brother could hear my dog growling.

We all got up, and made a lot of noise to try to scare off any intruder(s), while one of my brothers called the police. Back then all phones were in-house phones; we didn’t have cell phones back in the summer of 1961.

I remember how afraid I was as I stood in back of my brother Bob as he opened the door to the family room. Bob had a baseball bat in his hands in case he had to use it. He flicked on the lights, the light switchs were located both at the top of the stairs, and at the bottom of the stairs. We couldn't see anyone in the family room but we could see that our back door was wide open. And when we checked the 'locked' door between the garage and the family room we found that the locked door was open; it looked like the lock had been jimmied.
On the railing leading up the stairs from the family room to the kitchen there was a burn, a large burn like that from a cigar, not a cigarette. Cigar smoke was in the air. The rug was also burned below the railing, and there was ash on the rug. There was some blood splattered on the linoleum leading to the open back door.
Sandy was unhurt!

It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened. My brother Michael remembered that he had the garage open earlier that evening, while he was working on the front lawn. Someone entered our garage unseen, and crept down the stairs to the lowest level in our house, and hid in our basement. Sandy saved all of our lives that night.
We all believed this to be the case!
So when my brother Michael, my mother and I moved across the country to California in November 1962 we took our Sandy McTavish MacGregor Garnier with us. Sandy earned his keep that night back in the summer of 1961 when he saved his family from the intruder, whom I have since thought of as being like a rat, hiding in the dark basement waiting until he could come out of hiding, and do his harm.

My Sandy became a true bi-coastal pooch when he moved out to California with his family!

It was during the winter of 1964-65 when one night I returned home from a date, and I opened my front door; Sandy ran past me out into the night, and down Blossom Hill Road, which is where we were living then. The night was dark, and I was young so I didn't try to follow him. In the morning I went out in my car, and looked for him. I looked and looked, and called his name but I never found my Sandy.

My mother told me that when dogs get old, and they know that their ‘time’ is coming that sometimes they will leave the family they love, and search for a place to rest in peace, away from their family. I don’t know where my mother got this idea that old dogs go away from their homes to die, but it helped me in some way to endure the pain of losing my brave little terrier, Sandy McTavish MacGregor Garnier; my Bi-Coastal Pooch.

This has been a true life story from my life; Carol Garnier Dutra.

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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Singing In The Rain

Back when I worked in a company where the first floor lobby was closed down to visitors as well as other employee, I occasionally would take a short ‘day trip’ in the elevator that fronted on the closed first floor lobby.
I did this at times when I was feeling particularly stressed out.

This sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it? There was a ‘reason’ behind my madness.
I knew that the elevator in this particular building would open to an empty lobby.
No other employees would be mulling around in the lobby. Ditto for visitors; not a soul would be around to hear me, as I would burst into song in the elevator as it traveled from the second floor to the first floor.
Not a single soul would hear me, as I exercised my vocal cords.
La, la, la,

I'm singing in the rain
Just singing in the rain
What a glorious feelin'
I'm happy again

Singing In The Rain’ was one of my favorite songs to sing in that elevator as it gently cruised down to my destination; which was the first floor.

I'm laughing at clouds
So dark up above
The sun's in my heart
And I'm ready for love

I’m singing in the rain, singing in the rain, what a GLORIOUS day, singing in the rain. The elevator door would open on the first floor; I would look around…
Good, not a soul in sight; no one heard me!
Now push that button and back upstairs I go…

Let the stormy clouds chase
Everyone from the place
Come on with the rain
I've a smile on my face
I walk down the lane
With a happy refrain
Just singin’ singin’ in the rain,

la la la, I’m HAPPY again!

By the time I got back to the second floor and the elevator door would open, all my feelings of pent up stress would be gone!

I really was ‘HAPPY’ again.

Singing in the elevator was ‘my key’ so I could return to my desk and my job, and have a productive workday.

Today I sing in the shower when I am feeling a level of stress. Singing in the shower works just as well as singing in an empty elevator that opens onto an empty lobby.

Singing in the rain, what a GLORIOUS feeling!

While you sing along with me just imagine Gene Kelly doing his tap, tap, tappity tap dance as you sing…

Carol Garnier Dutra

I'm just having a silly memory day; singing, singing in the rain.

Events in this short story came from my life.
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra



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Big, Bad Leroy Brown Dutra...

Fifteen years ago this summer, my husband, our son and I adopted a beautiful ginger colored kitten, a male, whom I named, “Big, Bad Leroy Brown Dutra”. I gave the little guy that name because he was anything but big or bad. In truth Leroy was a ‘pussycat’ in the full sense of what that word implies. He was gentle, and grew to be a medium sized, kind, ‘knowing’ cat. The years passed in peace with Leroy , and all was well in our little kingdom. We moved in 2004 to Paradise, here just outside of Hollister, California.

We were happy until late June 2009 when my husband and I discovered that something was wrong with Leroy Brown’s mouth. Leroy was drooling excessively. We tried to get an appointment with his vet, Dr. Mel White, the same Dr. White who travels around Hollister and Salinas in his big, white custom mobile animal clinic, that has all the beautiful cat and dog paintings on the exterior..

Dr. White was ill the summer of 2009, and could not attend to Leroy so my husband and I chose another vet to take our ‘cat son’, Leroy Brown Dutra to see, and have an evaluation of what was causing his excessive drooling.

We took Leroy to the Hollister Animal Clinic, and under the care of Dr. Jerry Leroux, Leroy ended up having two (2) surgeries to remove a salivary gland cancer that was growing under his tongue. In between the two (2) cancer removal surgeries Leroy underwent a cryosurgery procedure to remove cancerous tissue that was trying to regrow under his tongue where the first cancer was removed. Dr. Leroux was confident that Leroy had a chance to live a longer life because Dr. Leroux had been successful with this type of cancer surgery in the past; mainly on dogs with salivary gland cancer.

After Leroy’s second cancer surgery, while he was still in the care of Dr. Leroux at the Hollister Veterinary Clinic, the door to Leroy’s recovery cage was opened, and he was allowed to jump from the cage. The woman caring for Leroy chased him around the tiny clinic. When she caught Leroy his heart was beating wildly because he was only two (2) hours away from the surgery he had undergone that morning. Leroy Brown Dutra was fourteen (14) years old when he passed away that day, September 18, 2009 in the Hollister Veterinary Clinic.

When my husband and I traveled to the clinic we were greeted with seeing our Leroy, our ‘cat son’, lying dead on a white shroud in the doctor’s shabby, back room where he operates on animals. We were NOT told first that our dear Leroy Brown was dead before we saw him lying there. You can read our story in our 'Inquiry Blog' at, http://leroybrowninquiry.blogspot.com/.
After you finish reading this Blog entry you can click on the title; you will be taken to Leroy Brown's 'Inquiry' Blog.

As a result of what was done to our Leroy, and what was done to my husband and I we are committed to undertake a task to make it mandatory in the State of California that all persons who attend animals in a clinical setting MUST be certified by the State of California.

If you had a child in the hospital wouldn’t you want all of the nurses caring for that child to be 'registered nurses' meaning that each nurse had passed his or her state certification test BEFORE each nurse was working in the hospital caring for your child?
Well, many of us feel that our companion animals are much like our 'adopted' children, and these companion animals we share our lives with, deserve the same consideration in an animal hospital setting as our human children deserve in a human hospital. Both deserve to be cared for by people who are state certified to do this care, and these people should know what they are doing!

The women who worked for Dr. Leroux at the time our Leroy was killed in the Hollister Animal Clinic was NOT state certified. None of the women we saw that morning when we brought Leroy into the clinic, were state certified to care for companion animals. The woman who caused Leroy's death didn’t know that she had done something wrong when she chased him around the clinic two (2) hours after his surgery.
This happened to our cat, he was terrorized in that clinic and killed that day, because the woman taking care of him was NOT certified by the State of California.

We have been in touch with San Benito County's State Senator Jeff Denham’s office. One of the senator's aids has been in touch with us, and he told us that it is too late in the senator's term to do anything about mandating state certification for animal clinic workers. Senator Denham has ‘termed’ out because he has served eight years in the senate.
My husband and I will be working on this issue in the coming year with the incoming senator for San Benito County. I will post our progress on this issue, as it happens.

Thanks for reading,

Carol Garnier Dutra
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

P.S. Please go to...
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/increase-californias-animal-cruelty-laws

PLEASE sign the petition to Increase California Animal Cruelty Laws to protect all dogs and cats wither they be in a private home or in an animal clinic...they need to be protected with stronger laws in the State of California.



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Food For Thought

Food is nourishment; food for thought is knowledge. Knowledge nourishes the brain much like a taco nourishes your being. Back when I was a child knowledge was learned from reading books; books with paper pages and covers telling what was inside the book conveyed by either a picture or a descriptive phrase. Today many of us get our food for thought via the Internet on either our computers or our savvy phones. But for the life of me I don’t understand how you can get much nourishment for your brain from reading what is printed out on the screen of a tiny cell phone.

I find myself preferring to do research on my computer as long as I am able to find reliable, trustworthy sites with bona fide information that is not provided solely for the purpose of selling widgets or wazzy-wids at an online retail store. Good research information sites are available, and it helps to know how to search web site addresses for clues as to where sites originate. I learned the hard way that you need to know from where a web site is coming in.

I know that I have taken to spending many more hours reading research material on the Internet rather than going to the local library checking out armloads of books like I used to do. It is less strenuous to ‘search’ online than it is to lug home armloads of library books. Yet still I pray that ‘books’, those with paper pages and covers either soft or hard covers, are never fazed out of existence like books were, in Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451".
There are still times when I take one of my books from a shelf in my library, and open the cover just to read a story; not to do research.
Books are still for reading stories.

You might call my first computer a Frankstein because it was composed of many pieces that were joined together for the first time in one machine! I loved that computer, and used it as my highway to the ‘library’ of the Internet world up to sometime in June 2004.

In June 2004 I was shopping on EBay, and I strayed from the ‘safe and familiar’ pages venturing instead to their ‘China’ pages. I saw a deep green, jade pendant that was particularly appealing to me so I sent an inquiry to the seller asking how much it would cost me to have the jade pendant, the one I liked, shipped to my address in California.

I committed a cardinal sin when I made the mistake of setting up my account on EBay so my email that was sent to my mail box on EBay, would be forwarded to my ‘personal’ email account at my I.S.P., which at that time was a small, private operation located in San Jose, California.

My Frankstein, bits and pieces computer was old as computers go. Frankie was seven when the dreaded Chinese code, that was sent all the way from China, into my mailbox, ended its existence.

I spoke in person with the man who headed my I.S.P., and he told me that when I opened my mailbox, on that day, he saw immediately a copious amount of traffic travel from my computer, and pass through his server.
To where it went he did not know.

I told him that what he saw pass through his server was more than just traffic; what he saw pass through his server 'was'
MY COMPUTER!

Everything was taken!
My programs, all of my artwork, all of my compositions, and even my email contacts were taken by the code that was sent to my computer that was sent all the way from China. The loss was devastating to me! Who would do this to me? All I did was ask the price of shipping a deep green, jade pendant from a Chinese ‘seller’ on EBay, to me in California.

In time I learned that a ‘mass surveillance’ computer program similar to NarusInsight was in use by the Chinese government. The purpose of this program was to capture information on the Internet via emails on Chinese dissidents, who were sending information back and forth between them selves trying to set up a revolution against the Chinese government! At least this is what the news article I read said was going on.

So were Chinese dissidents working on EBay posing as ‘sellers’ of deep green, jade pendants that would be wanted by me in California?

Did the Chinese government’s agents think my asking how much it would cost to ship that beautiful, deep green, jade pendent to California was somehow a code for “how many Chinese dissidents does it take, working on EBay, selling deep green, jade pendants, to overthrow the Chinese government?”
Is this what they thought?

I couldn’t salvage anything from Frankie; nothing was left; the rogue code broke through my ‘fire wall,’ and completely wiped my computer out. Because the code broke through my security, and collapsed my ‘fire wall’ I know that code, because it was that powerful, had to be sent by a government agency...an agency in the Chinese government...who else would destroy my computer when I asked how much it would cost to send that deep green, jade pendent to my address in California?

I complained to EBay about what happened to my computer, it was completely gone, and my complaint letters were met with silence on the receiving end.
I did receive one return correspondence from EBay stating that I should have let the email go into the EBay mailbox, and not have had it forwarded to my personal mailbox.
Since they felt this way why did EBay have the option open to forward all email to my own personal mailbox?

I find myself still preferring to do 'research' on my computer as long as I find trustworthy, reliable sites, and when I want to read a book I prefer the kind of book that is made out of paper; printed with ink.
As for shopping I am much more careful these days. No more shopping for me on web sites originating from China on EBay or on any other web site, that sell deep green, jade pendants.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Events in this short story came from my life.
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

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There’s No Place Like Home; Home Sweet Home...

I was thinking the other day about how when my husband and I were very young; our son was a baby, and we yearned for a place to live where the landlord wouldn’t raise our rent every year. I remembered how we dreamed of reaching that land over the rainbow, that place in life, where skies are blue, and the dreams that we were dreaming would really come true.

Back when we were dreaming our dream one of our favorite pastimes on the weekend was to gather up our son, who was still in diapers, and the three of us would pile into our Austin Healy Sprite, and go out for the day with a picnic lunch packed in the tiny trunk of our sports car. Down the freeway we would travel to neighborhoods in distant towns so we could look at and wish on stars that we possessed a home such as those we were looking at. We dreamed, we dared to dream, that some day we would live in such a place, which was just over the rainbow for us, at that place in our time.

Our dream had to be put on hold while we went about living very mundane, every day lives working at jobs that didn’t pay nearly what we were worth, and in my husband’s case going to school at night after working all day then working on homework assignments on the weekend. At least I had finished business school before I married, and started dreaming of rainbows and blue skies.

We settled for a small home built in the city, one that my husband built for us. It was not nearly as grand in style or size as those we gawked at on our weekend motoring trips but it was home sweet home for us for a very long time.

We continued to take weekend trips to the beach, motoring over the Santa Cruz Mountains to reach the beach of the tiny coastal town of the same name. When snow was flying on the wind in Lake Tahoe we would pack our suitcases into our tiny black Sprite, and follow the wind to the snow. To get over the icy mountain roads, silver colored, steel chains had to be applied to our tiny car’s wheels for traction, much like we applied long, smooth, wax covered skies to our own feet so we could traverse the packed snow.

We both continued to be frugal, which is a nice word for expressing that we were ‘cheap’ taking lunches to work, not going on expensive holidays every year. I sewed most of my clothes the first ten years we were married. I wished on many first evening stars during those years we lived in the city.

In time our small city nest that my husband built for us, appreciated in value as sometimes happens with small city nests located in small cities that grow up to be big cities.

When the grown up city became too noisy and too dirty for us we decided to follow those blue birds we often heard about in song that fly over rainbows. That’s what we did, we flew the coop just like those blue birds do, and we went right over that rainbow landing in Hollister, California where our dream that we dreamed as youngsters has come true.

There is no place like home; home sweet home.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Events in this short story come from our lives, Richard Dutra and Carol Garnier Dutra.
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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Lulubel...What's In a Name?

Lulubel…I saw this license plate today in Hollister on a new mid sized sedan, a really good-looking car in a medium charcoal gray color. I thought to myself, “Charcoal gray is a masculine color for a car yet this car sports on it’s license plate a feminine name, lulubel. I assumed that lulubel was the name of the car, and not the owner. For some reason I can’t fully explain, I thought of Shakespeare’s quote:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Shakespeare lived in a ‘simple’ world where the ‘action’ was always between human personalities. There was no TV, no radio or computers to give information, and confuse issues. Star Trek’s aliens and “Scotty Beam Me Up” were not even remote thoughts in the mind’s of the people who inhabited Shakespeare’s world and his mind, yet he or the group of men who penned with the name Shakespeare, all knew human nature, and human nature doesn’t change, ever!

What is in a name? Advertising people will tell you that a ‘name’ can make or break the sale of a product. If you see a beautiful girl in a movie, and you scan the credits for ‘her name’, and she has a name that doesn’t suit her appearance you will not make a connection between her beauty and or the talent of the girl, and her name. She will not be memorable! That's why so many actors change their names when they join SAG.
A 'name' can make or break an actor's or a singer's fame today.

It’s the same with a product…a product has to have a name that links it to the product in the consumer’s mind. Safeway sells a ‘store brand’ water they call ‘refreshe’. Water called refreshe makes a ton of sense because the name links the product in the consumer’s mind with the product. You are refreshed with water. Water is ‘life’;(another possible name) ‘purified water’ refreshes you. Do you ‘see’ the cycle that is started in your mind by such a simple choice of a ‘name’ for a ‘simple’ product?

Lulubel is an unusual choice of a name for lulubel the charcoal sedan, but since she is named lulubel, she is a lulubel, forever.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Lulubel is real, she is a new, medium charcoal, gray sedan; Lulubel drives around Hollister, California with her owner.
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

Love Is Not Having to Say Your're Sorry...

Love Story, a movie staring Ryan O’Neal and Allie McGraw made back about twenty five years ago, was based on those eight little words; love is not having to say you're sorry.
Is that what love is about?

My husband and I knew an older woman who lived in our neighborhood, in San Jose, who kept 20 feral cats in her garage and back yard. Because she passed away many years ago I will use her real name, which was Gertrude Bold.
I am sure that Mrs. Bold loved her cats because she gave them all a home, and she fed them, which was not a cheap task to accomplish even back when all of this went on.

Mrs. Bold loved her 20 cats but she didn’t have her cats vaccinated against common cat illnesses, and as far as anyone knew she never took any of her cats to a veterinarian, which everyone in the neighborhood figured was because she couldn’t afford to do this.

Mrs. Bold’s cats used her back yard as their litter box.

In the warm summer months it became a real nuisance to go outside, and smell the stink these cats made. I found this situation disturbing because all the cats I have known in my life have been ‘clean’ to the point that they wouldn’t defecate, and just leave it in the open, but Mrs. Bold’s cats followed this behavior.
But still we know that Mrs. Bold loved her cats; that was why she kept them all…in her yard and in her garage.

One day Mrs. Bold’s cats started to die off from an illness. The neighbors and my husband and I began to see dead cats here and there around the neighborhood. It was very upsetting because we didn’t know why Mrs. Bold’s cats were dying off!
As far as I know no one approached Mrs. Bold to ask if she knew that her cats were dying off. We all knew that she loved her cats; this was why no one in the neighborhood complained about the 20 feral cats Gertrude kept in her backyard, and in her garage.

I managed to capture one of Gertrude Bold’s ill cats, a large ginger tom my husband and I called Thomas O’Malley, which was the name we gave to him whenever we would see him traveling around the neighborhood. Thomas O’Malley seemed to be the leader of the pack of feral cats, and because he appeared to be the ‘lead’ cat, my husband and I called him Father O’Malley at times because his behavior was like that of a father, both a cat father and a father, in the religious sense.
On the other hand there were times when we would say; “There goes Officer O’Malley”, because Thomas, at times, seemed to be a cat police officer, mediating squabbles between the members of the gang of feral cats that lived in Mrs. Bold’s back yard and in her garage.

I took Thomas O’Malley to our veterinarian at the time, a Dr. Anderson who used to have his practice in a small building down the street from San Jose High School. Dr. Anderson ran some tests on Thomas O’Malley, and he found that Thomas was suffering from feline leukemia. So we were sure that since Thomas had leukemia that the other feral, neighborhood cats that Gertrude. Bold cared for, in her garage and in her back yard, must have been dying off from the same illness.

Dr. Anderson was a very kind doctor; he tried to save Thomas O'Malley but it was too late. Thomas O’Malley died from the feline leukemia.

My husband and I really didn’t know Thomas O’Malley, he never lived with us, he was a neighborhood feral cat who lived in Gertrud Bold's back yard, and in her garage, but we could see from looking at Thomas that he was ill. We tried to help him. I guess this was a form of love on our part to care for this cat, when he wasn’t our cat.

Love is not having to say you’re sorry. Love is just doing what you can for another, even when the other is a neighbor cat.

This is a true life story.
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall

Rain, as I am sure you know, in that common metaphor refers to adversity.
Adverse events often happen to us while we plan out what we really want to happen in our lives. It is how we handle those adverse events in our lives that determine how strong each of our human spirits will become.

Adversity in one’s life can make or break a person’s body, mind and spirit. The person who rises above adverse circumstances in their life is a spiritually stronger person than someone who has always had everything come smoothly to them in their life.

Today in the world we live in now, the ‘rich and famous’ Martha Stewart is an example of an individual, who had everything in life but suddenly faced an adverse, life-altering event. She rose spiritually above her adverse circumstances. Ms. Stewart, who was a stockbroker herself in her younger years, was convicted in a well-publicized case of receiving ‘insider’ information on a stock so she knew when to sell her stock before the price fell. Her conviction resulted in her being sent to a federal prison located in rural West Virginia to serve out a five-month sentence.

In a statement issued after her release Martha Stewart said that she spent part of her time in prison thinking about her experience and writing about it. She went on about how bad the food was in prison so once she was released she now had a base to compare her rich life against what many less fortunate individuals have to eat compared to herself. She went further to state that she walked and exercised while in prison. Both of these activities help both the human body and the human spirit to bear up under adverse conditions. While she was in prison Martha was assigned to do common household chores, vacuuming and washing floors. A woman of Martha Stewart’s social status never does housework. I hope Martha also learned humility from having to do these common chores.

During her five months in prison Martha Stewart made friends with several of her fellow inmates. After her release from prison she has become an advocate for federal sentencing guideline reform particularity for drug offenders who she feels would be better served by rehabilitation than being incarcerated. Thinking about the misery of others shows how Martha Stewart’s spirit has grown in strength from her five month stay in prison.

After her release from prison Ms. Stewart looked back on her experience and did make the statement to the press that her experience was “life altering and life affirming”. This statement tells me that she grasped the positive side of her adverse experience.
Her spirit soared to new heights, and she resumed her career with her head held high.

Today I doubt that many people remember that the rich and famous Martha Stewart of both TV and magazine fame once served time in prison. When a person handles adverse events in their life as Martha Stewart handled hers, they find that most people forget the negative side of the event.

Each of us, whom has grown strong in the spirit, has had to overcoming adversity.
For myself it was a six-year struggle caring for my beloved mother whom I knew was terminally ill. I wanted to keep her on this earth as long as it was possible.

After my mother passed to God’s care I resumed my former life, working outside of my home, and continuing my education. Seven years later I was again faced with an adverse, life-affirming event in my life. Through an accident, 4 of the discs in my lower spine were severely injured. Once again I didn’t lose my faith in God. All throughout my life I have been a big fan of talking to God on a daily basis. He came through for me through another person who also believes in Him. Through this second person I found a doctor who was successful in repairing my discs so I was able to resume my life, once again. There was a ten-year gap in time from the day I was injured, to the day I realized that I was finally fully recovered. My spirit held me together; I never lost my faith in God throughout my personal ordeal.

Today my spirit is high on life, I know from the experiences of others, and from my own experiences that adverse events in our lives shape who we are in the spirit. While some rain must fall in each of our lives the positive effect of adversity, for each of us, is the strengthening of each of our eternal spirits, our eternal souls.

This story contains some true life events from my life.
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

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Que Sera, Sera...so why worry?

Que Sera, Sera, what will be will be, so why worry?
Live each day as though it is the last day of your life! Live in the moment!
This is the message that bombards all of us in the here and now of 2010.
We can’t change the world so why bother to try to change it? Even religious leaders have been heard, in these modern times, to utter the phrase; ‘live in the moment’.
Is it prudent to live for the moment, and not care about tomorrow?
Is not caring about what tomorrow will bring what is meant by the phrase ‘live in the moment’?

I think it is not a good idea to live just in the moment without giving thought to what tomorrow will bring our way. If we don’t make the changes today that are necessary to secure our future, our tomorrows may never come. We may not be able to stop oil spills from happening but we should insist that Congress put into action laws that strengthen how wells, especially wells dug a mile deep on the ocean floor, are dug. Methods of drilling on land are not good enough methods for drilling in the ocean. Thinking ahead of what ‘could’ happen is what has to be the motto for any endeavor that is undertaken in difficult to reach places.

We can’t do anything about volcanoes that erupt and spew ash into the atmosphere blocking out the sun’s rays stopping sunlight from reaching the earth.

Scientists have posed the theory that it was a massive volcanic eruption, thousands of years ago, that blocked the suns radiation from reaching the surface of the earth, the earth cooled, green plants couldn’t produce chlorophyll so they died off, animals that fed off the plants died off from lack of food, and animals who fed on the plant eating animals, died off because they had nothing to eat. Volcanic eruptions that spew ash into the atmosphere miles above our heads, thus blocking out the sun, is a happening that we can’s do anything to stop from happening. Perhaps in this case we can say; “Que sera, sera, what will be, will be.”

Back when I was born in May 1944, the world was no longer innocent. Two world wars had been fought. Millions of innocent beings had been led to their deaths in Europe, not believing that other humans could do such things to other humans; to innocents. Greed was at the center of both of these wars. Greed for more, and desire of what others have was what fueled both world wars.

Greed is what fuels what goes on today in Africa where male children as young as seven years old and upward in age to the teens, are kidnapped from peaceable villages where they were raised by loving parents, trained to be soldiers by the kidnappers, and forced to fight to the death against others whom they have no grievance against. Is this behavior of kidnapping innocents and forcing them to work for nothing any different for Africans today from the time, long ago, when these people were kidnapped by their own, sold as slaves to Europeans in return for gold coins, and shipped to far off lands where they were forced to work for others but never shared in the gifts that came from their labors. Is it any different today, in the here and now of 2010?

To the victors go the spoils. Is that phrase familiar to you? It means simply that those who win take all that had belonged to those they have vanquished, killed in the battle. This is the same today as it was two thousand years ago when the spoils of war were simpler real property, wearable and useable art, stores of and fields of eatable grain.

Will we humans ever learn that we are all here by the grace of God, and it is His Will to determine if we will survive to live our tomorrows. It is by God’s grace that we are still here today; but be warned, volcanic eruptions, oil spills, earthquakes and tornadoes are all within God’s will to control. How many warnings will He give us before we all stop being so greedy and start sharing with those of his children that have less than we do?

Que sera, sera, what will be, will be.

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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