By Any Other Name (A Dolby Story)

When I had finally convinced my husband that
a) we COULD have a cat in our college-owned apartment
b) we SHOULD have a cat to enrich our lives and
c) we WOULD have a cat before the end of 1995
our friend, Linda, let us know about a brand new litter of kittens in the neighborhood.

I went with her to the house in downtown Grinnell, Iowa and there, in the back three-season porch, was a proud mama cat and five adorable furballs. Two were colored like gray tabbies with longer fur and three were black and white short-hairs. It was the latter I was after and I knew which one I wanted almost immediately. He had four perfect white socks, a straight, white stripe down the center of his nose, a little white ‘beauty mark’ above his mouth and a white collar under his chin. I also knew I wanted a male and I was delighted that this kitten, with whom I was immediately smitten, fit the bill.

I brought him home and introduced him to Dan. We didn’t name him right away. We had generated a list of possible names, all taken from literature or music, and we figured something would just ‘fit.’ At first Dan wanted to name him “Sinatra” since he came dressed in a natural tuxedo but I vetoed that immediately with a few choice judgments about misogynistic drunken ne’er-do-wells. I can’t remember any of the other names on the list except the one we finally chose.

Thomas Dolby is a British musician who is unfortunately best known for his eighties new-wave hit “She Blinded Me With Science.” As the wife of a music fanatic, I’ve learned to go much deeper into a musician’s catalog and what I most loved him for was an album called “Astronauts and Heretics.” Though it was released in 1992, it is still one of my favorite albums of all time.

The second evening of our new kitten’s residence in our apartment, Dan and I left him alone to go to dinner in the cafeteria. I was nervous about it—he was so tiny after all, and had just been taken from everything familiar. Still, we had to eat and off we went.

When we returned home, the kitten was no where to be found. At first, we casually poked around in every nook and cranny in the apartment—under the hutch, the bed, the desk, in the bathroom, in the back of the closet. No cat. I started to worry. Sure, he was tiny, but he shouldn’t be this hard to find. We continued to search, calling out “here, Kitty!” with increasing panic.

Then we heard him. It was the first time he’d made any sound and it was astonishing in volume and timbre. A rich, deep, clear meow that sounded like it was coming out of the walls.

We followed the sound. Or we tried to, but the more we went where we thought it was coming from, the more it seemed to come from everywhere at once. Presently, we narrowed it down to the kitchen—surely that was its source. But search as we might, he was not to be found in that small room.

Finally, I got down on my stomach on the kitchen floor and looked under the cabinets. What I found was that there was a 1½ -inch gap between the top of the mop-guard and the bottom of the kitchen cabinets. It was an impossibly small opening, but with my ear to it, it was clear that the kitten had squeezed through.

How on earth were we to get him out???

In the end, I opened the cabinet under the sink and pried up the bottom. There, covered in dust and shaking was a tiny black-and-white kitten with huge eyes.

I snatched him up and cradled him in my arms, brushing off the dust and cooing reassuringly. This was, of course, more for my benefit than his. If he got in there, he could easily have gotten back out. But as unfamiliar as he was with this new environment, he might not have wanted to.

Relieved, Dan and I processed what had happened. The experience of hearing his loud meowing coming from the very walls had been extraordinary. “It seemed to be coming from all over the place,” one of us said. “Just like Dolby Surround Sound Stereo,” said the other.

We paused.

Thomas Dolby. Dolby Surround Sound. Dolby.

We knew.

By the end of his second day with us, Dolby had chosen his own name, and it was to fit him perfectly all the days of his life.

White Vans

I took an Animal Behavior class in college. I was fascinated to learn that much of what we observe in the creatures around us boils down to calculus. Take a squirrel, for example. The scurrying behavior of the little grey furball can be quantified by a mathematical formula demonstrating that a squirrel naturally (and without a calculator) will gather the maximum amount of resources it can use with the minimum amount of energy output. Maximum energy in, minimum energy out. Calculus.

Squirrels also gather and bury acorns all over their territories during the fall, which they then access in the winter. They’re not smart enough to remember where they buried every single acorn. But they WILL naturally remember a sufficient percentage of their hiding spots to provide the necessary resources to get them through the winter with the least hassle. Maximum energy in, minimum energy out.

I am reminded of this concept every time I find myself multi-tasking. I make a list of items I need from four different places, look at my schedule and my gas gauge and decide in which order I will visit each location, taking into account weather and traffic patterns and whether any items I will be gathering have special temperature requirements (I don’t buy ice cream first in the summer, you see.)

The problem is that I’m not very good at calculus. It is at these times when I’m aiming for maximum energy input with minimum energy output that things inevitably go wrong. I forget my checkbook or the coupon I needed. I find out the one item for which I stopped at Cub is actually sold out. There’s an accident on the freeway and I sit for forty-five minutes in a four-lane parking lot. Inevitably, I’m irritated, tense, sometimes even near tears, especially when I have an absolute deadline like my kids’ school bus delivering them to my home.

One morning, probably a year or so ago, in the midst of one of these frantic, mathematically flawed rampages, I found myself driving west on 494 with my shoulders practically in my ears. As the highway wrapped northward and rush hour traffic whipped around me suddenly I spied in the rear view mirror a white van. In short order, it passed me on the left, followed, maybe 30 seconds later, by another white van. A caravan? I mused. But they had different logos on them. A moment later, I spotted a third white van—with yet different distinguishing marks. I smiled at the coincidence, happy to be thinking about something besides my stress levels. And then a fourth one passed me. Shortly after, yet another white van (a minivan this time) eased into position behind me in my lane.

I thought, What does this mean? (I am Lutheran, after all). Five different white vans all around me in the middle of my self-created insanity. What were the odds?

A very clear message came through: “Slow down. Nothing you’re doing is that important. Look around you.”

My agitation evaporated. With a sense of refreshed perspective, I relaxed in my seat. Traffic moved smoothly. I got my errands done and got home in plenty of time for whatever was so important that I have no memory of it now. That day I saw several other white vans, trucks, pick-ups, even mail trucks, and every time, I felt a renewed sense of peace.

I am not a squirrel, of course. But I suppose it’s when I’m running that ‘maximum input-minimum output’ wheel that my behavior is most animal. Instinctive, rather than thoughtful. Many, many times since then I have had moments of stressful rushing and been passed at just the right moment by a white van. I don’t necessarily believe that God somehow orchestrates traffic to present me with these vehicles. What I do believe is that God used that odd experience with the white vans to snap me out of my self-absorbed, power-mad, hyper-orchestrating long enough to remember what’s important.

And it ain’t calculus.

Fund-Raising Part IV

The final chapter. :)

Fund-Raising Part III

In an attempt to "work smarter, not harder" I recycled most of the images for today's comic from the last two. I'm not sure I saved much time. And I clearly suck at free-hand computer drawing. But, of course, this series is about school fund-raising, not comic strips. Okay then.