Tales From This Side

We said goodbye to Darwin yesterday, who in his short, five month tenure with us still managed to become a fixture in our house. Darwin was, for a cat, incredibly old, and the part of his story that we know is a sorry one. At some point in his life he had developed kidney disease, which causes cats to urinate frequently and not always in the litter box. Peeing around the house caused his family to evict him to their barn. At some point after that, his family sold the house and moved, but they left Darwin. Acts like this defy my comprehension and reinforce my uncertainty about a shared, inherent goodness in our species. Neighbors later found him sleeping in the middle of the road and delivered him to the animal hospital where Lauren works. The neighbors related the scant bits we know of his story; veterinary records confirm that Darwin was 20 years old when he arrived in our care. Lauren’s hospital agreed to keep him as a “hospital cat” for the remainder of what time he had left, which ...

Much ado has been made of late concerning the automated speed cameras that have been installed in Washington, Connecticut, the first of their kind in this state. I was happy to hear about these. People drive far too fast in Washington; in fact, people drive far too fast in most of the small, rural towns in this state. Giving people a reason to slow down even a little bit is a good thing. I have good reason to be invested in the well-being of Washington. Although I am not currently a resident, I work there and my family has deep roots in the town. My great, great grandfather was Headmaster at The Gunnery (back when they called it “The Gunnery,” at least), and I’m a former English teacher at the school. My mother was raised in Washington in a house that her father, my grandfather, built there. I’ve worked for years at one of the town’s small vegetable farms. I imagine that I’ll someday again be a resident, living in the house in which my parents currently reside, so I like the idea of pe...