Homes, Houses and Abodes

Does this door entice you in? Does it entice you to explore its rooms and muse about its history: all the lives that have been lived within its walls, the tears cried, the laughter shared and the pictures painted?

I am attracted to houses - stone cottages, city dwellings, wooden cabins. I'm drawn to photos or paintings with houses in them. I automatically reach for a novel with a picture of a house on the cover. A house holds, within its walls, many secrets and stories. When we travel, I keenly search out houses to explore and their history to be discovered. On a solo trip to London, shortly before M and I married, I toured as many homes as I could.

I visited Charles Dickens' house in Bloomsbury and walked miles across London to look inside the home of a historian whose name I forget. I also searched out Elizabeth Barret Browning's house on Wimpole Street and Virginia Woolf's on Gordon Square. As both those homes are privately owned, I had to be satisfied with the view from the curb. I took the train out of London to Hampstead to be inquisitive at Keats House, the home of poet, John Keats. I toured Anne Hathaway's cottage and Warwick Castle.

A great disappointment on that trip was my visit to Shakespeare's abode at Stratford-upon-Avon. My memory of this hundreds year-old house is of the large cement sidewalks, a modern day moat, to accommodate the hordes of tourists. The house stood empty and overused, devoid of any personality, like a woman who has been visited by too many men.

Aix-en-Provence is Paul Cézanne country. The famous painter lived and worked here for almost all his life. On a sunny Sunday afternoon M and I walked out of the city and up the hill to his house which, one hundred years before, was in the country, not the suburbs. I was delighted as I walked into his overgrown garden. I couldn't wait to explore the rooms of his stone cottage.

M waited in the garden while I entered between the red doors to enquire as to the cost of exploring the home. For 8 Euros, I would only be able to see his studio upstairs - it was sizeable and probably filled the breadth of the home, but I was not interested in that alone.

I wanted to see past the small entrance hall and the living room, which now served as the reception area and gift shop, to the other rooms: to the kitchen, the dining room, and the views of the garden. I declined the entrance fee. I settled for what I had already gleaned of the home: its black and white tiled floor in the entrance, the living room with its fire place, large window and double doors. I photographed the red front doors as a memento.

I don't just enjoy other people's homes. I enjoy my own too. I am a home-body. As much as I enjoy traveling, I love to be at home, pottering away and spending time enjoying our private space. Coming home is the best part of having been away. It's good to be home!

As Daydreams Draw Flame

Monday, Monday. The day I plan my work week and the time that nostalgia seeps wistfully into my thoughts. Pushing aside the demands of the day and the week, I treat myself to a visit to a far away land, fun memories and sunshine.

Yesterday at church, we caught up with our friends, Morrie and Em, radiating sunshine from their Mexican bronzed faces. I longed for sunshine, beach sand, the taste of the sea salt on my lips and its sting in my eyes. I longed to plunge under a wave headed resolutely for the shore.

I longed for cloudless blue skies and the roar of the ocean in my ears. I longed for the squelch of my feet into wet sand as waves frolic at my ankles and retreat. Frolic and retreat. And the excitement of a rogue wave which splashes all the way up our legs and wets our shorts. Fun! We laugh, we smile and we walk on - M, mom and me.

This morning, I escape to the verandah of the house my parents rented on the Natal Coast, where we drank our morning cup of tea, ate breakfast, sipped beer shandies, watched the waves below and the Vervet monkeys in the garden. I hear my brother's voice as we discuss the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and he reads his favourite poem, #34, "As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame ..."

I escape to the kitchen table, where as sous-chefs, our work done, we sip red wine while master chef Mark orchestrates the ingredients in the pot on the stove. We sip companionably and talk at length. I watch the geckos catch bugs attracted to the light. Their suctioned feet are steady and sure against the window. Their bellies: white and flat against the pane of glass.

My memory catches fire. My daydreams draw flame.

The chime of Oma's clock in the dining room, a rogue wave, splashes me awake. The beaches walked, the poetry discussed, the books read, the dinners cooked and the night-time geckos hastily recede. Monday, Monday.

Feathers or Fur

The rage in the cage episode interrupted my explanation of how, as a cat person, I now have a bird as a pet. So I resume...

After we were left petless with K2's move to kitty heaven last November, I noticed how much I missed her companionship. I missed her greeting at the door, her twirl under the desk to be noticed while we worked and just her presence whether she was washing or sleeping. I realised how good she was for us. How good and healthy it was to have a pet to nurture and care for.

M and I were in agreement that we didn't want another cat while we live in an apartment. We want our next cat to know what it is chew on a blade of grass, roll in the sand, climb a tree and have a butterfly flutter past her nose. A dog was never an option for us, not with our busy lives, apartment living and having to walk a dog in the rain. A bird was the next option. A perpetually caged bird didn't grab us. No, we would want her to be able to spread her wings and fly.

To be honest, I wanted the pet. M wasn't interested in one at all. Once I heard that my friend's female parrotlet was up for adoption, it sounded like it was meant to be. Missy, as she was named then, was purchased to be a companion to Vivienne's male parrotlet. But Poots is a confirmed bachelor and didn't take to the intruder. After trying it out for seven months, Vivienne's husband decided enough was enough with unharmonious relations in their bird world. Missy was on her way out.

It took some discussion in our household for M to agree to take Missy in as our pet. I was sure she would be an effortless pet. How much could there be to cleaning her cage, changing her water, keeping her seed supply topped up and enjoying her company on our shoulders? She came recommended as a sweet companion full of fun antics. Vivienne was delighted with the prospect that the bird she had come to love would not be sold to a stranger. It was a perfect scenario: made more perfect by M finally agreeing to share our lives with this bird.

My picture of perfection didn't last long. Brooks' pecks turned into bites. Yesterday I was bitten solidly on my wrist. M was bitten even more solidly on his hand. I was less than impressed. My disillusionment with my new pet sent me scurrying to google parrotlet behavioural problems. This is just not on. If Brooks is to stay a member of our household, I have to understand her better and she has to shape up or ship out.

Apparently, her behaviour isn't uncharacteristic and yet, she can be trained to be an obedient loving contributor to our household, devoid of bites and full of tricks. It will take time and training. So much for hassle free but, then again, isn't she too cute on the apron?

Brooks Take Two

It's a week since the green bundle of feathers that is Brooks joined our household. She enjoys company, whistles happily to herself while she preens and sleeps contentedly through the night hanging from the top of her cage.

She also disciplines us with sharp pecks as she sees fit. She sees fit to do so if M holds the telephone in her shoulder space or my movements are too rapid when she sits curiously on my forearm. A peck of that nature leads to a time-out in her cage.

In one such time-out session, Brooks hung cutely in her cage, eye-balled me, and chirped loudly. She wanted the door opened; the time-out had been long enough. No, you're not coming out now. She didn't care for the reply and showed her displeasure with a hissy fit.

Astounded, I watched as she crashed around her cage, pecked angrily at the beads on her swing, swung at the cuttlefish and scrapped her beak against it in a fit of anger. She hopped from branch to branch pecking wildly at anything in her way.

She was mad! I laughed; I couldn't believe my eyes.

Next she made me out to be a liar. The same temper tantrum tyke settled on M's shoulder for two hours that evening, not budging, falling asleep with her head tucked into her back feathers between her wings - an absolute angel.

Tantrum? What tantrum? Who's going to believe a story about rage in the cage from such cuteness?

At this stage, she hadn't pecked M yet, and so who was to be believed? Well, well - a bird with a feisty personality - this could get interesting!

Brooks

She sits on my shoulder, a small collection of vivid green feathers. She makes a scraping noise with her beak. Her eyes are shut. What she is up to only she knows. I'm still clueless when it comes to the avian world.

Brooks, the parrotlet, is a sociable bird. Her light pink beak is showcased against the varying degrees of vividness in her green feathers. Two racing stripes, turquouise blue, streak from her eyes and become muted among the darker green feathers of her back. She likes to be in our company, whether on our shoulders or heads, hiding in my hair or sitting on top of her cage. She also sits happily in her cage, door open, so long as we are around.

Leave the room and the search is on to find us. We can count the seconds to when we hear her exit from the cage and the flutter flutter of her wings as she negotiates the doorway and views one of our heads as her landing strip.

She's not a cat. She's not a dog. She's my first bird.

I have been a cat person, sine the age of nine, when Maplotie (meaning 'of the farm') came to live with us. Maplotie, an ordinary looking stray cat, was happened upon in the countryside by a friend of my mother's. Uncle George took pity on her and her kittens, packed the feline family in his car, and headed home.

At the time, my parents had bought a home with an open veldt (field) across the street. Concerned at the prospect of rats in the roof, my mother agreed for Maplotie, so named by Uncle George, and the last of her kittens to come and live with us as our rat catchers and rat deterrers.

I was smitten with Maplotie and her dark ginger kitten the moment they arrived in our household. With the originality of a nine year-old, I named the kitten, 'Tiger'. Maplotie didn't stay with us very long. Being adventurous and nocturnal, she left one night on her hunt and didn't return.

Tiger, though, was an intrinsic part of my childhood. He instilled in me a great love for the independence and companionship of the cat. And so, why now, am I a friend of the feathered foe? Read on...