Noodle and Linguine

In which I did a thing...a ridiculous thing.

Address to the Beasts

For us who, from the moment
we first are worlded
lapse into disarray,

who seldom know exactly
what we are up to,
and, as a rule, don’t want to,

what a joy to know,
even when we can’t see or hear you,
that you are around,

though very few of you
find us worth looking at,
unless we come too close.

To you all scents are sacred
except our smell and those
we manufacture.

How promptly and ably
you execute Nature’s policies
and are never

lured into misconduct
except by some unlucky
chance imprinting.

Endowed from birth with good manners
you wag no snobbish elbows,
don’t leer,

don’t look down your nostrils
nor poke them into another
creature’s business.

Your own habitations
are cosy and private, not
pretentious temples.

Of course, you have to take lives
to keep your own, but never
kill for applause.

Compared with even your greediest
how Non-U
our hunting gentry seem.

Exempt from taxation,
you have never felt the need
to become literate,

but your oral cultures
have inspired our poets to pen
dulcet verses,

and, though unconscious of God,
your Sung Eucharists are
more hallowed than ours.

Instinct is commonly said
to rule you; I would call it
Common Sense.

If you cannot engender
a genius like Mozart,
neither can you

plague the earth
with brilliant sillies like Hegel
or clever nasties like Hobbes.

Shall we ever become adulted
as you all soon do?
It seems unlikely.

Indeed, one balmy day,
we might well become,
not fossils, but vapour.

Distinct now,
in the end we shall join you
(how soon all corpses look alike),

but you exhibit no signs
of knowing that you are sentenced.
Now that could be why

we upstarts are often
jealous of your innocence
but never envious?

- W.H. Auden

You all have borne with me through thick and thin, and thus you have earned, I believe, a silly tale to lighten your spring day.

Yes, it is true, that some part of this originated on April Fool’s Day, the most sacred holiday to anyone with Ehrenfeld blood in their veins. But there is no fooling here, except that I am a Fool, as you shall soon see.

So:

Given, as you know, that we have had a hellish run here in Chez Ehrenfeld, we were long overdue for some wish fulfillment.

We also - have I mentioned? - have two kid birthdays back-to-back: Vee turns 14 on April 5th, and Ash turns 11 the day after.

Cue the madness.

In January or thereabouts, Vee began asking for a turtle for her birthday. Why did she want a turtle? As far as I can tell, she wanted a turtle solely to name him Sheldon. Because that is an excellent name for a turtle.

But remember, if you please, that I am the daughter of preeminent turtle scientist, Dr. David Ehrenfeld. And lo, I knoweth that turtles take a LOT of work, and are very gross, and also can give you salmonella. So no turtle.

Then our eyes turned to tortoises, but they are also Too Much Work, so that was a nope. And Vee was adamant that Sheldon is NOT the name of a hermit crab, so that brilliant idea was nixed as well.

Fine, so we started looking at snakes, who cannot be named Sheldon, but which are Excellent Pets nonetheless. And Vee figured she could be a total badass by FaceTiming her friends with a large snake wrapped around her arm.

I made some inquiries in the neighborhood, to see if Vee could practice feeding someone’s snake, and wouldn’t you know, our lovely neighbor Anouk was looking to rehome her beloved snake, who is Very Sweet despite being Very Much A (Ball) Python.

And so, on April Fool’s Day, no fooling, to our current menagerie of one dog and one cat, we added a snake, who Vee brilliantly christened Linguine Mabel Ehrenfeld, and who will retain, as a nickname, her original moniker - Nini.

Welcome to our home, Nini! I’m so sorry I will never see you again, friends who are terrified of snakes!

Now you would think that is plenty of madness for one year, but you would be vastly underestimating the extent to which these past many months have ground us all down to dust. Thus, when Ash, who loves all animals, began requesting a pet of her own, I found it very difficult to say no.

She started with rats, which were a hard no, as they are smelly and need much care and live lives that are nasty, brutish, and short. Sloths, her favorite animal, were out of the question for obvious reasons. Being naturally cat-inclined, she then began begging for a kitten. And as I am Soft-Hearted and A Glutton For Punishment, I finally acceded to her pleas, and we started searching shelters.

While visiting some kittens last week, who turned out to be far too feral, she briefly fell in love with a puppy she immediately named Jasper:

And obviously I fell in love too. I mean, look at him! But thankfully he was too young for adoption and thankfully my more sober angels prevailed, and we did not adopt him.

But it was only a couple of days later that one of our kitten applications was accepted, and this past Friday, the world’s most freaking adorable kitten arrived in our home and our hearts. His name is Noodle Caboodle Ehrenfeld, nicknamed Nunu, and omg I may die of happiness holding his teeny tiny, long-whiskered, heart-racing, fluffy body in my arms.

Never before have I been so enthralled by whiskers.

So here we are. In a tank with two locks in Vee’s room, Nini sits coiled, perhaps picking up faint kitten traces in the air with her flicking tongue. Down the hall, closed in Ash’s room, Nunu bounces around happily, wrestling with his favorite toy, a little stuffed lion (how’s that for irony). And downstairs, Tinker the Dog and Will Feral Tomcat the Tomcat snooze in the sun, resigned, it seems, to sharing their space with these two new arrivals. I like to imagine that they know that the love we have for all animals is endless, and that our hearts will never be too full for them. Because the truth hidden in this wild adventure is simple: that it is our pets who have rescued us, and who remind us daily that the love we offer them - yes, even the snake - is the balm we need ourselves, to heal our battered hearts.