'Tis a gift to be simple

I hold a memory (be it a true or false one) of my parents' wedding, or hearing about it, that is.  The wedding was in my maternal grandparents' backyard one evening in early August back in the 1970s.  A beautiful picture floats around somewhere, complete with trees and sunsets.  From what I see and intuit, it wasn't an elaborate affair at all - elaborate has never been our style, anyway.  Rather, in keeping with the Shaker melody and its suiting words, it was "a gift to be simple."

Now I'm about to make an unlikely jump, so stay with me, dear reader.  It has to do with cats.  And primitive wall hangings.  And leftover yarn.  Do you see where I'm headed?

Our Seattle apartment is quite small, and comfortably furnished but humble.  I, myself of the open spaces, can tend to feel a bit cramped, and I'm sure that our younger cat Wyatt takes after me in this regard (not to mention his athletic ability and somewhat erratic mood swings).  He, however, has not followed me in regard to coping disorders.  While mine tend toward despair and sadness, his tend toward more manic manifestations, including frantic laps around the apartment, leaping over the back of the couch, and attacking scratching post, carpet, our older cat Betsy, and furniture with equal measures of reckless enthusiasm.  This is a problem.  As a result, we have protected our couches with tape, keep a squirt bottle handy for discipline, have given up hope of getting any deposit money back, and regularly wonder if Wyatt will mellow with age.

But now, there is a solution.  Or part of one.  Enter, primitive wall hanging.

Grandma Lu will remember this piece constructed out of scraps at the cabin a couple of years ago.  It's a little nine patch, and the main colors are light blue, navy, and what I think is known as mauve.  On Saturday I finally got around to hanging it up.  (Jamie likes it more than I do.)  Of course the dowel rod from the hardware store was much too long for this little piece, which, in the absence of a saw, I pared down to size using a pocket knife and a scissors.  The extra piece would have lived uselessly under the bed until our next move were it not for our trip to the pet store earlier that day.

Enter flamboyant, overpriced (elaborate?) cat toy.  For those of you non-indoor domestic pet people (most of my readership, I believe) you can indeed buy toys for pets.  These can be chasing toys, chewing toys, scratching toys, etc.  The toy in question is a feather tied to a string tied to a stick.  It runs about $7.99, less if you buy online (but then there are shipping costs).

Now do you see where I'm going?  When you add leftover dowel rod to extra yarn to rambunctious cat and mix it with simplicity and practicality and add a dash of bad photography, here's what you get:

I honestly think this is not unrelated to my parents wedding.  The legacy of the song lives on.

I have many more reflections on simple gifts: some more poetic, some more easily connected, but none, I think, more simple.  Tis indeed a gift.