The Many Voices of Isabella

I think the most exciting thing to happen around here lately occurred this morning when Isabella did something completely unexpected: she let me sleep.

She first tried to wake me up around 3:30 a.m. Normally, once Isabella decides it is time for breakfast, she can be very persistent. This morning, however, she apparently reconsidered. She settled down beside me and patiently waited for me to wake up on my own.

That led to two surprises.

The first came when I rolled over and felt something furry beside me. Usually, if Isabella is that close to my head in the early morning hours, she is meowing at me and doing everything she can to wake me up. Instead, she was just lying there quietly.

The second surprise came when I looked at the clock: 4:45 a.m.

She had let me sleep for more than an hour after her first attempt to wake me. Since she had been such a good and patient girl, I got up and fed her before making myself a cup of coffee.

All of this got me thinking about something I’ve wondered about for years. I have a question for all my fellow cat owners out there: Have you ever had a cat that whispers?

Isabella does.

In fact, Isabella seems to have five different levels of meowing, and after ten years together, I know what most of them mean.

At the quietest level, she whispers. Sometimes almost no sound comes out at all; other times she makes a tiny little “ack ack” noise.

The next level is a short, high-pitched meow. It’s still very soft and usually just enough to let me know she wants my attention.

Then there is what I think of as her unhappy meow. It’s slightly louder and has a plaintive quality to it, almost as if she’s crying. This is the sound she makes when something is not going according to Isabella’s plans.

After that comes what I would consider a normal cat’s meow. Oddly enough, this is probably the one I hear least often. Even at her normal volume, Isabella is usually fairly soft-spoken.

And then there is THE MEOW.

Isabella reserves this one for those moments when she can hear me but can’t see me. If I’m on the other side of a closed door, for example, subtlety goes right out the window. She also uses it when she’s in her cat carrier and the carrier starts moving. Put that carrier in a moving car, and Isabella makes sure that everyone within hearing distance knows exactly how she feels about the situation.

The whispering, though, is unlike anything I’ve ever heard from another cat I’ve had.

My previous cat, Victoria, had essentially one volume: loud. She was part Siamese, and instead of a traditional “meow,” she had that distinctive Siamese “YEOW!” If Victoria had something to say, there was never any question about whether you were going to hear it. Isabella, by comparison, has an entire vocabulary of little whispers, squeaks, cries, meows, and, when necessary, full-volume protests.

I think anyone who has lived with a cat long enough eventually learns that cats have a language all their own. We begin to recognize that one sound means “I’m hungry,” another means “Where are you?” and another means “Something is terribly wrong, and by terribly wrong I mean that you’ve closed a door between us.”

They learn our language, too. Maybe they don’t understand every word we say, but they certainly learn particular words, sounds, tones of voice, and routines. Somehow, over the years, we develop a language together.

This morning, though, Isabella didn’t need to make a sound at all.

She simply curled up beside me and waited.

For a cat who usually believes breakfast should be served promptly at 4 a.m.—if not earlier—that may have been the most eloquent thing she could have said.

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The Human Seasons

The Human Seasons

By John Keats

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
    There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
    Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
    Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
    Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
    He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness—to let fair things
    Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
                He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
                Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

About the Poem

We often speak of life as a journey, but John Keats imagines it as something more cyclical and familiar: the changing seasons. Within every human life—and perhaps within every human heart—there is a spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

Spring is the season of discovery. Everything seems fresh, beauty is easily found, and possibility stretches in every direction. Summer takes those early impressions and lingers over them. It is a season of fullness, when we savor our experiences, revisit our dreams, and allow ourselves to believe we might reach something close to heaven.

Then comes autumn. The restless wings begin to fold. We become less determined to chase every beautiful thing and more willing simply to watch as life passes before us. Keats does not portray this as bitterness or defeat. There is contentment in it—a quiet acceptance that we do not have to possess every pleasure or follow every path. Some things may pass us “as a threshold brook,” noticed but undisturbed.

Finally, there is winter, when age, loss, illness, and mortality become harder to ignore. Keats gives winter only two lines, but they carry the weight of the entire poem. Winter may not have spring’s excitement, summer’s abundance, or autumn’s tranquility, but it is part of being human. Without it, we would “forego” our mortal nature; we would cease to be the fragile, temporary creatures we are.

Although Keats presents these seasons as stages of a lifetime, I think we experience all four many times. A single year can contain new beginnings, periods of abundance, moments of withdrawal, and stretches of cold uncertainty. Sometimes they can all occur within the same week. We may feel young and hopeful in one part of our lives while experiencing winter in another.

Perhaps the comfort of the metaphor is that no season is unnatural. We should not expect ourselves always to be blossoming or producing. There are times for growth and times for rest, times to spread our wings and times to fold them close. Each season belongs to us, and each has something to teach us about what it means to live.

“The Human Seasons” is a fourteen-line sonnet built around an extended metaphor comparing the four seasons of the year to the stages of human life and the changing states of the human mind. Keats wrote the poem in 1818 and included it in a letter to his close friend Benjamin Bailey.

The sonnet follows a largely Shakespearean rhyme scheme, moving through three quatrains before concluding with a rhyming couplet. Each of the first three seasons receives several lines of rich imagery, while winter is compressed into the final two. This sudden brevity reflects winter’s starkness and brings the poem directly to its central truth: mortality is an unavoidable part of human nature.

Spring represents youth, imagination, and an effortless receptiveness to beauty. In summer, the mind “ruminates” on the experiences gathered during spring. Keats’s unusual phrase “Spring’s honied cud” compares thought to something slowly and pleasurably savored. The image may not sound particularly elegant to modern ears, but it suggests the mind nourishing itself by returning again and again to youthful dreams.

Autumn brings stillness. The soul folds its wings and becomes content to observe rather than pursue. The “mists in idleness” anticipate the lush seasonal imagery Keats would later develop more fully in his celebrated ode “To Autumn.” Winter, however, offers no comforting imagery. Its “pale misfeature” suggests age, physical decline, and death. Yet Keats does not treat winter as an error in the cycle. It is precisely what makes us mortal—and therefore human.

About the Poet

John Keats was born in London on October 31, 1795. After losing both parents while still young, he trained as an apothecary and surgeon but ultimately abandoned medicine to devote himself to poetry. He became one of the major poets of the English Romantic movement, although his literary career lasted only a few years.

Keats’s poetry is known for its sensuous imagery, emotional intensity, and meditations on beauty, imagination, nature, love, and mortality. His best-known works include “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” and “To Autumn.”

During his lifetime, Keats endured harsh criticism and achieved little of the recognition he would receive after his death. He also suffered profound personal losses and failing health. After developing tuberculosis, he traveled to Italy in hopes that its warmer climate might help him recover. He died in Rome on February 23, 1821, at only twenty-five years old.

Knowing how short Keats’s life would be gives “The Human Seasons” added poignancy. He wrote knowingly about life’s winter even though he himself would scarcely have time to pass beyond its spring. Yet in that brief spring, he created poetry that has endured through generations, allowing his thoughts on beauty and mortality to outlive the mortal life from which they came.

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Black Cats Make Mondays Better

It’s Monday again, but today is also National Black Cat Appreciation Day. If ever there were a reason to make Monday a little brighter, celebrating black cats—especially my Isabella—seems like a very good one.

Black cats have long been associated with superstition, particularly the belief that they bring bad luck. Although most people probably do not take those old stories seriously, the stigma has never entirely disappeared. In shelters across the United States, black cats are often overlooked in favor of cats with more colorful or distinctive markings. Some people still avoid them because of superstition, while others simply do not notice how beautiful and expressive they can be.

Anyone who has ever shared a home with a black cat knows there is nothing unlucky about them.

Isabella has been part of my life for more than ten years now, and I cannot imagine my home without her. She wakes me around four every morning to make sure breakfast is served promptly, and she has perfected the art of finding exposed skin when gentler methods fail. She has her routines, her preferences, and very definite opinions about how our household should operate. As far as Isabella is concerned, I merely live here to meet her needs.

Still, she is also my companion. She makes an ordinary day less lonely and a difficult day easier simply by being near me. She can be demanding, stubborn, affectionate, funny, and endlessly entertaining—often all within the span of a few minutes. She brings far more love and happiness into my life than any superstition could ever outweigh.

Black cats are not bad luck, sinister, or somehow less worthy of affection. They are simply cats, each with a personality entirely their own, waiting for someone willing to see beyond the color of their fur.

If you are ever considering adopting a cat, do not pass over the quiet black one watching from the corner—or hiding beneath a chair while her brothers run around the room. I am so glad I reached down and picked up that quiet, frightened, and beautiful little cat named Bridget. Of course, that name would never do. Bridget became Isabella, and she came home with me.

Mondays may not always be worth celebrating, but black cats certainly are.

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Healing for Body and Spirit

“‘But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,’ declares the Lord.”

—Jeremiah 30:17

Yesterday, I took a bad tumble while hiking, leaving me scraped, bruised, and aching all over this morning. It brought to mind the comfort Scripture offers whenever we are hurting, whether those wounds are physical or emotional.

Some days, we simply do not feel well. Our bodies ache, illness drains our strength, or an injury reminds us that we are more fragile than we would like to admit. At other times, the wounds are hidden—grief, loneliness, disappointment, or the quiet exhaustion of carrying too much for too long.

God cares about all these wounds. Jeremiah’s promise of restoration was originally given to a people who had suffered physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Their healing would not happen all at once, but God had not forgotten them. He was still at work restoring what hardship had broken.

James also reminds us that we do not have to endure suffering entirely alone: “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them… And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up” (James 5:14–15). Prayer does not always bring the immediate healing we hope for, but it places us—and those we love—within the compassionate care of God and the supportive embrace of our community.

Whether our pain is physical or emotional, we can turn to God when we feel weak. Healing may come through medicine, rest, time, the kindness of others, or strength enough to face another day. Whatever form it takes, we can trust that God sees every wound, remains beside us in our suffering, and continues the patient work of making us whole.

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Moment of Zen: My Type

Yesterday, I wrote about how my tastes have changed over the years and how who a man is has become far more important to me than what he looks like. Still, if I had to describe the physical “type” that has consistently caught my eye, it would be a handsome, blue-eyed blond with a naturally athletic body. This may be one of the hardest Moments of Zen I’ve ever created because my taste in men is actually quite varied. The men pictured in this post are arranged roughly by age, from youngest to oldest, not in order of preference.

Creating My “Type”

I began by giving ChatGPT a collection of photographs of men I find particularly attractive. Some represented my ideal face, while others showed the body type I prefer. Rather than reproducing any one man, ChatGPT identified the qualities that appeared repeatedly and combined them into a fictional version of my “ideal man”: blue eyes, sandy-blond hair, a strong jaw, broad shoulders, a muscular but natural build, and a warm, quietly confident expression.

The Face

The first image concentrated primarily on his face. I used photographs of men with the facial characteristics I have always found most attractive: striking blue eyes, short blond or light-brown hair, strong features, light stubble, and a masculine appearance that still feels friendly and approachable. He was dressed in a pale-blue shirt to create a polished portrait without distracting from his face.

The Body

For the second image, I added photographs representing my ideal body type. I wanted someone muscular and well-defined, with broad shoulders, a strong chest, a narrow waist, powerful legs, and some natural body hair—but not someone so heavily muscled that he looked like a competitive bodybuilder. Placing him shirtless beside a lake allowed the image to show his complete physique in a natural outdoor setting.

In Briefs

The final image brought the face and body together while revealing a little more. I asked for the same fictional man wearing only a pair of navy briefs. Because some of my reference photographs contained nudity, the image generator initially refused several attempts. Recasting the scene as a tasteful swimwear portrait on a lakeside dock finally worked—and gave me one last view of the man who is, at least physically, very much “my type.”

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