Little Sabrina jumped up onto the keyboard of my computer this morning and performed one of her special edits on what I was writing. Tap on the keyboard, and away went what I was writing.
With her second tap, she popped the music program on, and Dave Van Ronk started crooning out the words to Stealing – “Stealing, stealing, pretty mama don’t you tell on me. I’m stealin’ back to my sweet old used to be…”
The music and words transported me back to the 1960s and the front room of my friends Bob and Chris’ Baltimore apartment. An impromptu jug band is around me, and we are all soulfully wailing out the song to the thump of a washtub bass, jug, and a washboard. I’m on guitar, and Bob is singing lead on this verse. Thump. I’m back fifty years and more later, still singing the words to a bemused kitten. How this kitten triggered a shift of this intensity into the past, I don’t know. One minute, I’m writing a post on growing up, and the next, I’m embarking on a journey. The rehearsal was for a performance at the old Crack of Doom coffeehouse that evening. The morning following, I was departing to return to Boston and then Portland. In Portland, I’d start the path to an infatuation with coastal Maine, serious woodcarving, and eventually college. But that night, I was still a relatively young Folkie hoping for a good string of gigs at coffeehouses, a recording contract, dates with adoring young women, and many exciting road trips I’d memorialize into song. OK, the fantasies were heavy on the adoring young women. Part of me wished that I could steal back to that time and enjoy the passion we had.
The kitten is now on my shoulder and gently touching my throat. This is probably her first exposure to music and a human singing. Like me all those years ago, she has a lot to learn.
Well, as Herman Melville said. “You know nothing till you know all, which is the reason we never know any thing.” But Sabrina is purring in my ear that if she doesn’t get breakfast there’ll be more keyboard tapping, and who knows where that might lead.
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Coco did that and posted a word in my “Blossom” game before I was ready. Lost me ten points! Once right after my husband died, my cats walked over my open computer keyboard on the desk in my room and when I arose, this message was on it: “Once a wife, no regrets. Gone.” So so strange.. I swear this is a true story. Cannot imagine how it could have happened.
I agree some strange stuff happens around cats. and I respect their ability to tune in on the weird and bizzare, but my two new kittens mostly try to login to the computer at night. I worry that they’ll take over.
Nice post
I love that song — I know it through Arlo Guthrie. My dog Teddy loves my singing. I can’t carry a tune but to him it is a sweet sound. Lucky for me, the dogs stay off my keyboard but my cat Triffid of song and story would curl up on my Amiga (!!!) keyboard whenever he was ready for me to stop what I was doing. A little differently dangerous in those days of floppy disks.
The song was a regular with a lot of folk performers years ago, I think it was an old Gus Cannon song from the ’30’s