Chloe announced to me several days ago that I should take a bath and make myself pretty because we were going to a special event; I didn’t really think she meant it. I don’t get out much, and we cats can be "subject to violent anxiety at any uprooting."  * 

Well, today we motored in a car into Williamston and gathered on the lawn of the Episcopal Church of the Advent. Now that I am a published author I have obligations.

Chloe told me that she went to the Blessing of the Animals at Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City and they had giraffes, elephants, chickens, snakes and most of the animals that Moses had in his ark. I have never seen an elephant and was looking forward to seing one. I haven’t even seen a chicken. I am a wee bit disappointed that I could not see an elephant.

Anyway, there were some very poorly behaved critters at our blessing. I am dignified.  I am a cat of integrity.  I know how to act.  I did not say a word, I did not bite anybody, I did not growl. My new friend Izzy bit Susan.

Here I am with the Reverend Jim Horton and Chloe. We attended what appeared to be a Fur Ball Festival on the Feast of St. Francis, patron saint of animals, birds and the environment. I rather liked his prayer; we could all learn from St. Francis.

I have now been blessed and I have to admit I feel like a new Fur Person. I wonder if I have to do this eight more times?

 P.S. I just received a letter from one of my admirers telling me that it was Noah on the ark, not Moses. Forsooth, I could have sworn it was my namesake.

* The Fur Person by May Sarton

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If you have ever spent any amount of time around the sea and in waterways, you will know that the locals have their own navigational aids. In North Carolina’s Outer Banks on the island of Ocracoke you will see empty Clorox bottles bobbing in the water. You have to ask a local in order to know if the bottle marks where you should go or where not to go.

All over the Florida Keys and in the Caribbean sticks and now some PVC pipes are swaying in bodies of water, sometimes the only guide you might have.

Well, in the Upper Florida Keys there is a cut from the bay near Tavernier Creek to Cowpens** that is called Toilet Seats. It is marked with some bright-painted toilet seats and some derelict toilet seats, but all of them are clever.

My Friend Joy (from my earlier boating days in the Bahamas) and I have put several toilet seats in this cut, but they have not fared too well with the blows and hurricanes that whip through the Keys.

Our toilet seat was painted with "Chloe and Joy, Eau de Toilette", weren’t we clever?

                                                                                                                                                              I remember other catchy quips painted on the seats: Ed’s Crapper; Royal Flush; Pottying in the Keys; Baron’s Throne; Louise and Tammy’s Turd’le; Doug and Vickie’s Hook, Line and Stinker and others that the sea has claimed.  

I have to give credit to the great skipper Patrick who stopped, backed up, moved left or right for me to get just the right shot.  Thank you, Chico.

This really is folk art, and I love it! Art and the sea is thalassa therapy for this NC innkeeper.

** Years ago, natives corralled the manatees,  also known as seacows into pens for food. This area is now called Cow Pens. More local lore is that sailors long at sea looked upon the manatee as mermaids. Now do we believe that? They must have been at sea a very long time.

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