Pass along this article Dying cat finds an unlikely friend

(by Susan Wyatt, King5.com) to someone you know who still hunts…

A deer appears to comfort Sammy, who was critically ill with kidney failure (photo: Margie Scott).

BELLINGHAM, Wash. – Margie Scott was devastated when her 9-year-old cat Sammy was diagnosed with kidney failure, but she never could have predicted what would give her comfort during her pet’s last days. Scott, who lives in an apartment just south of Lake Whatcom, had adopted the long-haired white and gray cat when he was just six months old.

Last month, Sammy stopped eating his dry food and would sit in a corner for hours. Scott took him to the vet, who treated him for dehydration. But it wasn’t enough.

“He was better for awhile, but then he started going downhill,” she said. “He just had this haunted look in his eyes.” Because Sammy was declawed, he was strictly an indoor cat. But he always wanted to go outside. So, in his dying days, Scott decided to let Sammy spend some time outside each day. Sammy enjoyed his time outside the apartment, which is surrounded by woods and wetlands.

A family of deer regularly visits the complex, and one day, Sammy was sitting outside in the grass when two young deer happened by. Scott watched in astonishment at what occurred next. “One walked up to Sammy and they touched noses,” she said. “The deer jumped back and made a sort of a snorting noise, like he was sneezing. It seemed like he was taken by surprise,” she said.

What she saw next was even more surprising. ”The deer started licking him all around the head and neck, and Sammy just sat there allowing the deer to do this,” said Scott.

For several minutes, the young deer licked the small cat. Scott grabbed her camera and got a picture of the tender scene. “It was amazing,” she said. “I truly believe the deer was able to sense that there was something wrong with Sammy and that was why he started licking him, like he was trying to nurture him.”

Two days later, Sammy died.

“Typewriter tappers -
You’re all just crappers -
You listen to love with your intellect.
A4 Pushers -
You’re all just cushions -
Morality ain’t measured in a room he wrecked…
 
Typewriter bangers on -
You’re all just hangers on…

Is it in your heart or in your head?
Or does the truth lay in the centre spread?”

- Excerpts from Pete Townshend’s Jools and Jim, off of his brilliant 1980 album Empty Glass (www.petetownshend.com). The song is Pete’s attack on music journalism – a “don’t believe everything you read” song, written in response to several negative articles written about Who drummer Keith Moon soon after he died.

At two points in my life I briefly wrote music & film reviews, the first time for The New Hampshire, the University of New Hampshire’s student newspaper and then, a number of years later, for a website called seacoastnh.com. Luckily, we get wiser as the years pass as I now look back on those two stints with embarrassment – an instant “What was I thinking?” moment.

In hindsight, writing those articles were artistic dead-ends for me, exercises of me being a know-it-all-in-print. What is so clear to me now what should have been obvious then: Why should anyone care if I didn’t like a particular film or CD? Why should the fact that I was writing a review entitle me to think that my opinion had more merit than a reader’s opinion? What’s so wrong with letting people make up their own mind?

Along these lines there’s a wonderful British music magazine called Clash Magazine (www.clashmagazine.com) whose editorial policy is “if you’re in our magazine, it’s because we like you.” The magazine’s rational is simple – isn’t it far better to inform readers about a product that’s worthwhile, rather than something that has little to recommend? Allowing the reader the opportunity to read about the motivation behind a songwriter or filmmaker’s vision as opposed to the all-to-common sarcastic armchair critic that just about every newspaper these days not only employs but champions.

Today’s pedestrian ‘thumbs-up or thumps-down’ mentality has given way to the critic too often now becoming ‘part’ of the story. Newspapers routinely elevate the critic to the point of celebrity – as if the critic’s opinion has more merit that than the regular Joe who just enjoys going out to the movies every so often. In addition, it’s not uncommon for a newspaper to pit reporter against reporter reviewing a film. Have things fallen so low that we now debate film as if a film is a boxing match in need of a majority decision?

I have no idea why this is so. Is it that publications feel that by being overtly negative this will increase their sensationalism factor and, in turn, will boost advertising dollars? Or is there more truth than reviewers would like to admit in the notion that’s those who can’t produce or work in a field usually take an alternate route and end up writing about it? I know first-hand many newspaper reporters in New Hampshire who, for whatever reason, weren’t able to succeed in a certain creative field and eventually ended up trading in their dreams for the security of a constant paycheck. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the reason so many reviewers employ a built-in cynical attitude probably stems from sour grapes more than anything else.

My opinion has always been that since the arts fields are essentially about one’s taste that they can not and should not be judged. No two people enjoy all of the same things and why should they? I take pride in the fact that a great deal of work from filmmakers and musicians whom I admire is usually not “critically acclaimed” by the press.

In the end, far more noble is the publication who make the effort of researching unknown bands or filmmakers and subsequently bringing them to the public’s attention. Obviously this entails more time and effort but isn’t that one of the fundamental rules of good journalism in the first place?

Here’s a great excerpt from Neil Young’s keynote speech at the recent South by Southwest Festival in Texas. I think Neil’s views can be applied to any type of creative writing, whether you’re working on a script, book, poem or in Neil’s case, a song. For me, as I continue to write Death & Glory, Neil’s views certainly strike a nerve.

“The one constant is not to let yourself get distracted when a song is trying to find you. Once you have an idea with music, nothing else matters but that idea. Your responsibility to the muse is to follow it – there’s nothing more important. Commitments are one of the worst things for music making – they’re annoying. I’m proudest of my work when it comes really fast and I don’t edit it. It’s the purest form of creativity – you just have to be there. You can’t worry about the result while you’re in the midst of creating. Afterwards, you can always scrap it, record it or dump it in the editing bin but when you’re terrified, you know you’re on the right track.”

Ethan Gilsdorf wrote an informative article in this past Sunday’s Boston Globe explaining why films such as Capote and Brokeback Mountain are not independent films and defining what truly makes for an independent production.