THE ABILITY TO MOVE ON

The food was good, but I daydreamed throughout the meal. There was new year's festival music on the speaker system in the restaurant, and I could not help but remember when.....


Actually, I’ve been in a mijmering-mood all weekend. Remembering people who used to be important in my life, and though they no longer live, still are important.
My mother, who passed away in 1977. My grandmother, 1981. My father, 1990. My brother, and my father's second wife, 1993.
I miss them all. And I'm grateful that I knew them.

Of course, I also miss our cats.
Baines, a big fluffy tomcat who loved music. When my brother played an instrument, Baines would come from the bottom of the garden running all the way up to the house.
Dorothy, who was adventurous and very affectionate.
Her daughter Narnia figured out how to open and close doors - we didn't discover this till one day she brought her babies inside. A brilliant and creative puss indeed.
Narnia's grandkittens, however, were goofy. Quite likely the feline genetic stock in that part of the world was getting exhausted.


FELINE DREAMS

This morning I reread both volumes of a manga about a cat who several years after her death comes back as the twin-sister of her human, who is now in the last year and a half of high school. The cat looks in every way like a sibling....... except that she still has cat ears.
Oh, and big breasts, unlike her flat-chested sister. Gotta keep the teenage boy-audience entertained, even though it is a manga meant for girls.
There is no fan-service. No revealing nudity, no gratuitous views of panties or cleavage. No sexual innuendo. The one male high-school student who crops up in the lives of the two girls is clearly a geek, and NOT a love interest.
The story line, told through sometimes baffling four-panel strips, is aimed clearly at females.
The ending is extremely touching.
It brought tears to my eyes.
I admit to being a softie.

Actually, their home-room teacher is the most intriguing part of the tale. She's a dysfunctional gambling addict, whose teaching-subject is world history. But she is not above using her students grades as suggestions for lottery tickets, and when one of her colleagues invites her for cherry-blossom viewing, she arm-twists him to go to the race track instead. At one point she encourages cheating on tests to make it more likely that she'll win a bet. Her view of ethics is that as no bribes were involved, and there is plausible deniability, her hands are clean.

The twin-sister who is a cat is, unfortunately, not the best student in class by a wide margin.
It is her problem with tests which highlights the teacher's moral failings.


As I said, the end is touching. It is a fitting and happy conclusion to the tale, but it results in the other characters' memories of the cat-girl's previous two years among them being erased, and her friendship with them having to start anew.
The cat-sister does not remember either.
But the human sister cannot forget.

Memories bring sadness. Memories also give one pleasure.
Memories create a sense of belonging, of stability.

Without memory, nothing is new.


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