MINN'S MARKER

 

C arrived in Lansing from Paris with three cats: Tomi, Molls and her son Minn (Minnaloushe). In fact, she had mid-wifed his birth. Minn was very much one to go out on extended patrols, sometimes overnight or even a couple of days, much to C's concern both in Paris and Lansing. We'd go out looking for him often finding him lounging under a shrub by the medical building. The shrub was dubbed Minn's bush. 

We moved to our current home in May and Minn died that September, having perished in morning traffic on Canal Rd. (5 lanes wide). I buried him in the lily of the valley but for some reason, we didn't put up some sort of marker. Now, having lost Bin and Tomi and both of them have shrubs planted on their remains, it finally occurred to me that Minn needed something and I found this nice concrete-cast statue. 

 

His name-it's from a W.B. Yeats poem:

Cat and the Moon (1919)

The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.