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About Us
My Love for Amy, Zane, Animals & People
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This blog is dedicated to love, love between people and love between people and their animals. I write it knowing full well that every pet owner feels the same way about their pet or should - pure love!
To all you commitment-phobic men out there reading this, I would like to say "WAKE UP! Marriage is wonderful! Stop acting like you think marriage is the end of your life - it's the beginning!"
I say this for selfish reasons - I'm tired of having to explain to incredible, smart, talented, kind, pretty, sexy self-sufficient women who want to share their love with a man why this and that guy has acted like a total asshole. And I hate having to say "Men are jerks!" and mean it. Don't get me wrong, I'm a jerk, too, sometimes, everyone is. But not when it comes to the important stuff and especially commitment. Amy's my girl and I'd not only die for her, I live for her. We have a storybook romance because we are present with each other every day. We care about each other and we're each other's best friends. Now guys, that isn't too hard, is it? Treat your partner the way you want to be treated and/or the way you treat your best friend, your favorite relative - or your favorite pet! It's a start! OK, now that I've got that off my chest, I'd like to tell you about Zane and our animal brothers and sisters.
A few years ago we created the "Animal Powers Meditation Kit," the followup to our "Chakra Meditation Kit." We have sold 70,000 copies of "Chakra Meditaiton Kit" - which comes with my killer guided meditation CD (The music by our friend Luigi G. Collarullo from Milan is incredible and I"m the Barry White of the New Age!) as well as seven art Contemplation Cards by Amy and a full-color guidebook and seven chakra candles, is all you need to do the exact same Chakra meditations that Amy and I do almost every day. It was the Main Selection of One Spirit Book Club- a very big deal - and "Animal Powers Meditation Kit" was also the Main Selection for One Spirit Book Club, another milestone for Zerner/Farber Editions, publishing arm of our mom 'n pop conglomerate.
I mention "Animal Powers" because I was thinking about animals more than I usually do and I have to say that their purity and sweetness brings me to tears. I've never been so emotional about a book and I'm always laughing at myself because of it. The bittersweet nature of life is always with us here at The Enchanted World because we are painfully aware of how lucky we are and that it can all be taken away from us in a second, either by accident, medical diagnosis, or what is called in legal English, an "Act of God," though I don't think that there's any God or god or Goddess that wants to do me harm.
They better not be because Zane will protect us, just like I would protect Amy from ANYONE or ANYTHING, or as much as I can. Amy and I are totally "over the moon" gaga about Zane, our incredibly handsome tabby cat.
Zane is a gift to us, as all animals are to all people and I don't mean the kind of gift that you get to keep. We don't own Zane, he owns us. He sort of owns our car, too, because our license plate is "MR ZANE".
We now have "Cat Butler" at the top of our resume because we do pretty much what he wants. Zane is very smart and ever since he's been a kitten he's done his best to communicate to us and I think that almost all cats do this, too. It is a shame to see a cat that no one is listening to. We love communicating with Zane and he listens to us. He comes when we call him, which is a big deal when you're as paranoid about something happening to your beloved cat as I am. And if we say, Zane, go see Monte or Amy, he goes to us! It's so great!!!! Well, it's kind of great, but we can't say Zane sit in our laps or enjoy being picked up because that ain't going to happen. He loves us, but he shows it by flopping and letting us pet him and sleeping with us or staying near us when we work or loving to go for walks with me - which I love too.
Zane, on the other hand, is practically barking commands like a drill sergeant! Time for fun! Let's go for a walk! Where's my food? Not that stuff, I want .....! Where's the treats? I want to sleep in a chair just like the office chair you're sitting in, move the other one over here.
He also tells us when anything is out of place - he's a Feng Shui cat! I'm serious! If something is not right, he notices it right away. If we have clutter under our desks or anywhere, he'll bring some manner of rodent in and let it loose under there and we have to tear everything out and put it back right, after we net the rodent and take it outside.
Zane is a shaman cat. We consulted a pet psychic to find out if Zane wanted a playmate. "No," she said, "he doesn't want a cat though a little white dog would be fine! Zane is a shaman, only the second I've ever encountered, and all he cares about is your spiritual growth. By the way, he's more like a dog than like a cat and he even loves to get wet!" She was totally right! Zane and I go out in all kinds of weather and he thrives on it. He loves to get dried off, too!
And with me or without me he is on constant patrol of our neighborhood and especially on our little 1/2 acre Enchanted World and Amy's sister's property next door - Zane's World! He knows every tree and plant and shrub. In fact, I think that they speak to him because twice, during snow storms, he's come into the house totally agitated and gone and sat under a chair right in front of us, looking at us like we're crazy to not be under the chair with him. And twice, about ten minutes after he's done that a huge tree branch has come crashing down, one hit the house and the other just missed it! He's like Lassie!
But he's not fond of dogs or any other animals. I've seen him come rocketing out of his cat door at least three times to confront big dogs that have wandered into our backyard. He turns into Halloween Cat and won't back down and the dogs have either lain on their backs and shown him their throats in surrender or he has chased them off.
He liked his little sister, Lacey, but she was killed by a reckless driver when she was a year and a half. We were devastated and showed it. We felt like we wanted to die. We were inconsolable. I cried like an Arab woman, I wanted to die. It happened on the day of our last book signing for "Love, Light and Laughter," our autobiographical relationship book and we had to go because we had over seventy people coming to it. It was in Sag Harbor. We were very sad but our friends were quite understanding and did what they could to help us feel like living again.
Amy and I know that that kind of sorrow lurks behind every happy moment, but what are we supposed to do? We're all in the same boat, we're going to die, but we're going to live until we die and try to make the best of it. At least we face what's scaring us and don't bury it inside us the way so many people do. It surfaces in them as cruel or self-destructive behavior. I think selfishness and cheapness are mental disorders caused by thinking only about your own demise or not thinking about it but letting it get to you none the less. Compassion springs from remembering the fact that we're all going to die and are trying to do the best we can. It is written that the Buddha said that the mediation on death was the highest meditation and should be done constantly. That would exhaust me, at the very least, but I do keep it in mind as much as I can without having it paralyze my actions and depress my enthusiasm for life.
It breaks my heart to think that one day I may have to live without Zane. It breaks my heart more to think that he and Amy might have to live without me or vice versa. You never know what is going to happen, how things are going to play out. Just remember my quotable contribution to the English Lexicon: "Some people talk about 'unreasonable expectations. Well I believe that ALL expectations are unreasonable - no one is guaranteed another breath, let alone winning the lottery.
Amy and I feel like we've won the lottery because of finding each other and for having Zane with us for as long as possible. Sigh. Life isn't for sissies and animals know that, even rabbits. All animals are brave. They get out there and they do their best. That is a most powerful teaching, maybe the most powerful.
I like to think that Zane is like me in many ways. I'm very protective of those I love and even though I'm a sensitive New Age Guy, my Brooklyn boyhood (and I'm told I was a champion Roman gladiator in a past lifetime, though I'm not sure I believe in past lifetimes - more on that some other time) has me ever vigilant for any threats against those I love. I love being smart, spiritual and street smart. The highest compliment I've ever been paid was when my friend Yehuda Nir, author of "The Lost Childhood," who survived being killed by the Germans or the Poles or the Ukraines (not "The Nazis," as he always points out, "That lets them off too easily.") during the Holocaust of World War II by "hiding in plain sight" - when he was with the German soldiers, he pretended to be a Polish Catholic, when he was with the Poles, he was a German, same thing with the Ukraines (who killed his father) - Yehuda told me one day that he thought that I, like him, would have survived the Holocaust. I was humbled and in my heart I think he's right, though the proving of that would be an enormous and dangerous undertaking.
Well, I think that although he's given new meaning to being a spoiled cat, Zane would have made it as a Brooklyn cat. I've seen him run across our backyard at top speed to bite a raccoon on the butt, claws held high like some lion on Wild Kingdom TV show! The raccoon was trying to wriggle its way through his cat door to get Zane's food - big mistake! Racoons are very dangerous and can kill dogs, but this one took off at a gallop with Zane in hot pursuit! I couldn't believe my eyes, but I saw it! Zane's worse than a movie crew - don't mess with either of their food! When I worked in the film business, the only time I saw a crew walk off the set in protest and not come back to work was over food!
And Zane has a thing with Blue Jays, the juvenile delinquents of the bird world. They travel in gangs and they attack the same way, but Zane doesn't care, he swats them away like flies with his big strong paws. I once saw him checking out a Blue Jay sitting on the side opposite him of our bird feeder. Then, once he'd made up his mind to go for it, he ran at it, jumped impossibly high into the air and, like Michael Jordon, spun around as he floated past the Blue Jay, pulled it off the bird feeder, came down with it in its mouth and walked over to me, put it on the ground and sat on it! I raised the bird feeder up a lot higher the next day.
Zane knows that I love birds and so he doesn't kill them, or at least I thought so until he brought a big wookpecker into the house last week - maybe as a wedding anniversary present! Now if Blue Jays are juvenile delinquents, woodpeckers are Mafia hitmen! They have beaks that are lethal weapons and all the birds are scared of them. But somehow Zane brought one in the house and neither of them had a scratch on them - the poor thing might have been frightened to death by being brought into the house by a crazy 15 pound bobcat of a tabby. Or it could have had West Nile Virus or natural causes or something. I really don't know.
What I do know is that during the winter Amy walked into our bathroom at 7AM and there sitting on the shower curtain rod was a live, unhurt Blue Jay! Zane had brought it through his cat door and carried it upstairs without a feather anywhere!
He also came into the house to defend me when he heard me having an argument with the tile guy who did a terrible job on our kitchen floor - it looked like it was done by a particularly sloppy kindergarten class with a grudge against us, it was that bad! I watched Zane charge into his cat door for a change, and then start instinctually to run back outside, but force himself to stay to protect me and Amy! It was so amazing! He ran past me to get behind Amy and almost ran down his door into our basement, but he little guy forced himself to stay and glower at the offending tile guy! He's our best buddy!
When I grow up, I want to be just like Mr. Zane! I certainly want to be treated like him!!!
SUPPLEMENTAL: There is always the risk of hubris when you write about anything. Sometimes the minute the words are published you are forced by circumstances to eat them. Such was the case with little Zane.
My big strong cat was driven to distraction yesterday and driven to the vet today by me all because of a couple of overly aggressive Blue Jays who've become as addicted to Zane's good food as he is. We're going to stop feeding him outside because they're ganging up on him and he's on the horns of a dillema because he knows we don't like him killing any birds but these two are driving him crazy. I've reluctantly given him permission in every way to defend himself from the dive bombers. I hope he gets the message, even though I don't like to see anything hurt let alone killed. But we all have to defend ourselves against those trying to harm us. |
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