Nothing that would stop the rotation of the earth, to be sure, but I know whose eye is on the sparrow and it reminds me of things.

I remembered the wet summers which would lead to hundreds, if not thousands, of salamanders crossing the roads back home on the farm. They would seem to mindlessly cross the roads from one slough to the next, endless mind-numbing quantities of them, the roads becoming littered with run-over bodies by the end of the day.

This was distressing.

I like salamanders.

Dad would say to me, as I’d drive slowly and try to swerve and miss the little crawling critters, that “there are thousands of salamanders! You can’t save them all!” The suggestion was that I was being a little silly.

Probably true.

“It matters to that one,” I would respond as I swerved around yet another amphibian. I couldn’t save them all, but I could spare one. It wasn’t so much that, again, I thought something cataclysmic would occur if I killed a salamander, but I just think we should be conscious that we wield a kind of life and death power and be purposeful about it.

There are billions of human beings. I am just one of them.

Today I received an encouraging phone call I greatly appreciated and, though I hadn’t realized beforehand, probably needed. Today’s mail brought an anonymous surprise, one I seem to get about once a year or so. Besides being a great puzzle to me (I’ve saved all the envelopes as if one day I was going to somehow CSI my way to figuring it out) — who is sending them? is it the same person? how can I say thank you? — it, like the phone call, is a periodic reminder of the power we have in our actions and words, and how they can promote a sense of life or a sense of death in another human being.

We can waste it by never speaking and giving action to things that breathe life into another. We can abuse it by speaking and giving action to things that create death in another.

Life or death, easily doled out.

We can’t save all the human beings — we weren’t meant to be the Savior — but we can build life in the few that cross our path.

It matters for that one.

In that ever-happy land between awake and asleep, depending upon how you emerge into it, what’s really happening takes on meanings that later make no sense. Having been awakened in displeasure, I tried to clear my head and put the situation in context.

I staggered over to the open window. “Princess?”

Princess is the name of a neighbor’s cat. I made the assumption that that was the animal making the noise, though Princess was likely somewhere safe inside.

“Meooowlllrr.”

“Shaddup!”

I went back to bed.

Of course not, if you’re wondering if the noise stopped.

I tried to ignore it, to no avail. So, I muttered under my breath and tripped over a pile of clothes as I made my way back across the room to shut all the windows and block out the sound. I could hear the cat yowling as it walked around the corner of the building. My hopes that it went away were dashed as I heard it come back around, the noise almost stereophonic as the animal apparently was hoping to relive the final parade around Jericho before bringing it down.

I tossed. I turned. I adjust pillows. I told myself that I didn’t really hear it and that it didn’t really bother me.

The problem with trying to sleep when you are suddenly overly aware of a noise is that, no matter if the noise bothers anyone else or not, or if it would bother you any other night, it suddenly takes on the urgency of being the only obstacle between you and much-needed sleep.

At last I could take it no longer. I had tried to ignore it, and it was now nearly 2 a.m. The cat was still out there, either telling an epic story or with the worst personal gas problem ever. No doubt sent by the devil, the beast had worn me down. I reached into my nightstand and pulled out my heavy black Maglite.

Whenever I hold the Maglite, I feel like hitting things.

I threw on a pair of sweatpants, wearing the tank top I was sleeping in, and scrounged around in the dark for flip flops. I fumbled with the door locks. Standing on my front steps in the cool night air, dressed as I was, I imagined for a moment that I appeared as a disheveled character dreamed up by Tennessee Williams.

Tripping down the steps, I turned the flashlight on and started waving it about, trying not to look like Neighborhood Watch High Alert material. I heard the cat go silent. Around to the back I went, keeping the light out of the windows of my basement neighbor who was, probably, laughing his head off and watching me in the dark.

A streak of white and gray zipped away from the house and disappeared into the lilac bush.

“And don’t come back!” I whispered loudly. For once, the entire neighborhood was silent during the night, and this cat decided to come and share his pain.

I went back inside, locking the doors, changing my clothes, putting away the flashlight, and settling back into bed. The silence was enticing. I began the annoying procedure of arranging the pillows in whatever manner the moment called for to get me back into dreamland, pulling the blankets up around me and slowly drifting back into sleep.

It was 2:15 a.m.

And then I heard the meowing begin again.

Click to see more pictures.

My cat Brutus was home. He was time. He was a friend. He was a geographic place. He was safety. He was habit. He was happiness. He was consolation. He was companion. He was comic. He was antagonist. He was from a certain time in my life. He created laughter and destroyed shoes. He was no loneliness. He was soft when things were hard. He was quiet when life was loud. He was mine. He made me happy just knowing he was alive.

He was just a cat, I guess, except to me.

I would ask my parents for Brutus updates when calling home, still trying to garner up the courage to ask my landlord if I could please have a cat. Brutus got into the butter, I’d hear, or he figured out a way to get the lid off of his food bin. They’d put the phone up to his ear and I’d talk.

He’d chew my flip flops. For a year we had to make certain the bathroom door was closed, because he would somehow shred an entire roll of toilet paper despite not having front claws. He’d crawl into bed with me at night and take up all the room, or burrow down into the blankets. If my door was closed, he’d lie on the floor and shove his paws under it to get my attention. In the mornings, he’d wait at the bottom of the stairs, ready to eat his second breakfast. If you stood up from the good chair in the computer room, and returned even a half minute later, chances are he’d taken your seat and was pretending to be asleep. For a while, he was active in trying to get the lid off of the treat jar. When he was a kitten, I would put him in a sock or a small knit hat and we’d play on the floor of my room. Every year he got two haircuts from my sister, once at Thanksgiving, and once at Easter.

Pets die.

Nubby, our childhood pony, died alone in front of the red gate in late summer, the foxtails waving in the breeze, snagging our ankles, as my sister and I stood crying, bridle in hand. Snuffly, the miniature dachshund, was put to sleep, my dad handling all the details, burying her where she would be safe. My treasured horse wandered out by the trees, knees crumpling, dying gaunt and alone. Baby, a Shetland pony, stood covered in flies, his eyes and his old soul already gone, dead by the time we got back with the gun. Shep’s life started to seep away, and dad took the awful memory so that she could go. The day-old foal died in the barn, his mother watching over him. Munchkin had a stroke one average afternoon, and I held him as he died. Jesse, the last of the childhood horses, was put down and returned to the earth. Brutus died alone at a vet clinic, only six years old, health problem undiagnosed.

When my sister called me at work last week to tell me Brutus had died two days earlier, I leaned against the mop and started to cry. ”We didn’t give him a very nice haircut,” I said through tears. “He died with a bad haircut. And I wasn’t there when he died.”

I struggle to think and write this in past tense.

Brutus had been there many times over the years when I would sit on my bed and cry about the things that words had yet to discover. It was nice to have another living thing around, because I was often lonely. It seemed wrong that I wasn’t there much these last two years of his life. Giving up treasured possessions when you don’t feel ready leaves gaping holes that need to be filled wisely.

Just a cat. But a huge, gaping hole.

His death marks yet another closing door on the past. I can’t go back. I do not like what is in front of me, but the things I want to go back to are fading, one by one. There’s nothing to go back to. Change rushes in as a flood, washing away the landmarks, leaving pillars of salt. It is the loss of a pet, a friend, and a place and time that I knew, all in one.

Brutus is buried next to Snuffly. This means a lot to me.

He recently purchased a bird feeder, and while at the store, was amazed by the large sized bags of bird feed that were on display next to the feeders.

“Why would you ever buy that much bird seed?” he asked.

At the farm, we had many, many bird feeders. I was very aware how much bird seed you could go through in just a few days once the birds found your feeder. “Believe me, you can easily burn through a lot of seed in very little time,” I replied.

Armed with a very nice glass and copper bird feeder and small bag of bird seed, we left the store.

The next time I saw him, I was informed that the blackbirds had discovered his feeder and while they were too big to easily sit at it and feed, they’d figured out a way to perch one leg on the feeder, flap their wings, shake seed onto the ground, and eat. In short, they were eating the feeder dry and making a huge pest of themselves.

“Birds are smart creatures,” I said. It’s one of the fun things about bird feeders, watching how they behave with each other and their attempts. “Doesn’t matter if the bird feeder wasn’t meant for them. Birds will figure out how to get the seed.”

I didn’t bother mentioning how much fun he’d be having once a squirrel or two was introduced into the mix.

I watched with amusement as his exasperation grew as blackbirds hovered around the feeder and on nearby branches.

He pounded on the window. “Go away!” he’d holler, eventually opening the sliding deck door and hollering out the door to scare the blackbirds away. Other birds would come, to — finches, chickadees, sparrows — but they don’t like to hang around when the big blackbirds are fussing around the feeder. “They’re eating all of the bird seed!”

“Now you know how a farmer feels in the fall when his sunflower field is getting sacked by the blackbirds,” I joked. “You are such a home owner.”

There were further mutterings about the use of guns, blackbird cannons, and the use of Flock Buster, though I’m not sure any were the proper response to a handful of birds eating all of the food out of a bird feeder.

Regardless, the seed is all gone, as are the fickle birds save a few now-disappointed finches.

“I’m going to wait a while before I fill it again,” my friend said.

Feel the farmer’s pain.