A big yawn, Alfie. A very long year is picking up its pace and soon enough the snow will enchant us both. The heart mends, stitch by stitch. Don't stick out your thumb like that -- it looks like you're hitchhiking -- and I'd prefer you to stick around.

If I gave it any thought, all sorts of songs would come to mind. Instead, and because of this September-to-October, I remember two album covers: the Beatles on the cover of "Rubber Soul" -- and the Rolling Stones on the cover of "Between the Buttons"... autumnal, almost wintry images, 1965, 1966, when boyhood was first erupting in glory.

It's an open secret that summer is over but you wouldn't know it around here. Look at these people shivering in their shorts and t-shirts. I won't need a sweater for weeks but I went scrounging around the place to find one. My old fisherman's sweater, my favourite, still has burrs stuck to it.

Some Lines From Posts I Didn't Finish:

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My apartment faces south towards the lake. When I lived in Little India I could walk down there daily, smelling proudly of curry, tumeric and cumin...

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It isn't you and me, Fanny, sitting in this chair at the window, so full of old twilights. A glass of wine teeters on the windowsill. Your little sister is purring. You are welcome, most welcome into this household, Alfie. All living things are starved for goodwill...

The Toronto Film Festival came and went and I didn't see a thing. I was preoccupied. More on my mind lately is whether to see the remake of "Brideshead Revisited." The reviews have been ok for the most part, but...I dunno, I don't think so. I associate the original Brit mini-series with my happy university days, not to mention autumn itself and old friendships. I feel the same about "I, Claudius." As far as I know, no hack director or rich producer has thought of remaking it. And rightly so.

It isn't autumn quite yet, but it's in the air tonight.

I hear a cat's meow of complaint from the kitchen. Like church bells and bagpipes, the sound is most tender when heard from


afar.

"What's it all about, Alfie?"

Queen and River is one of the bleakest street corners in the city. It's grey and industrial, spread out and partly boarded up. If you take a few steps in any direction, it gets dangerous. This is where the angels shake out their rugs and fly home. It's also where the Toronto Humane Society is located. You see where this is going...

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"Alfie" is usually considered an affectionate diminutive word for Alfred, but Alfreda is the female version of Alfred. In other words, I think the name "Alfie" is perfectly fine for a girl. Besides, I like the song...

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A "Hemingway cat" is a polydactyl cat. That means the cat in question has more than four toes on at least one paw. There can sometimes be up to seven on all four paws, but usually it means one extra toe on each front paw. Thumbs! Such is Alfie. This may come in handy for opening the door for me when I come home with the groceries. Ernest Hemingway was given one by a sea-captain and ended up with thirty. Papa Hemingway had a fondness for polydactyl cats...

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We're getting to know each other. It was only last night I brought her home on the streetcar and she peed in the cat-carrier. Tonight she's nudging me, wandering around and marking her territory. By no means, I tell her, by no means are you a replacement for Fanny. The answer is no. A successor? I'm not going to second-guess her or myself. She was in the shelter for quite a while and now she's out and about in this apartment. An hour ago she hopped up to the windowsill to survey the Danforth, and she's head-butting my ankle as I write...

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"What's it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What's it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give
Or are we meant to be kind?"

Why is it that music, the music we love best, will grab us by the scruff of the neck and lift us up? Nothing has changed when the song is over. We come down to where we were...the kitchen table, let's say, or a window seat at the pub. It's not as though the rain is less mournful when it falls on these old redbrick buildings. No, but music is more than a balm to numb a wound. It's proof positive on a moonless night. The rain is falling on a grave I dug in tears, but I find myself growing more and more certain of something: sorrow is very near to the centre of things, but it's not at the very centre.

It's raining on the shops, the taxi lights, and my living-room window. It's a pleasant blur at this time of night and this time of year. A chill in the air will towel down the neighbourhood by morning, and that's when I'll fill my bags with apples and tomatoes, red and green peppers, onions and mushrooms. The little markets open early around here, so early that most folks are still pressing their snooze-buttons and rolling over. Me, I expect to be out the door before the morning lark demands my undivided attention.

Fanny moons the Athenians across the street, then curls in my lap. It's a long night but a happy one with winter coming. Fanny sleeps on the rads, firm and toasty, half-remembering snow. We're so much alike, this tempermental cat and I. She's going to be young and beautiful forever as I slowly and inevitably begin to resemble Mr. Potatohead. I used to hold her in the palm of my hand and set her down in the big empty ashtray. The old Greeks, pissed as pilgrims, hang out at the Athens Restaurant and Bar. They see Fanny's silhouette nightly in the window. They used to talk about her, now they sing about her as I do.

My beloved Fanny, my boon companion for so many years, died tonight. I picked her up in my arms and shook her, thinking it coundn't be true. I wept as I'm weeping now.

I cradled her to the church parkette, and in a flowerbed I dug a grave, a deep grave, with my own hands. I still have the dirt up to my elbows and on my knees. Oh Fanny, I don't like the ways of this world.

Anyone who has a bedside bookcase will know that this is where we keep our favourite books. In my case, one of the books is an old paperback (copyright 1935) called "Herbs and the Earth" by Henry Benson. A blurb on the front cover tells us that "a gardener, philosopher, and poet describes and gives the histories of his herbs."

Henry (we're on a first-name basis now that he's gone) quotes from the Bible and Shakespeare. He quotes from Paracelsus, that legendary defender of the most outrageous claims. Even the colour of this book -- a faded yellow -- pleases me.

We are walked through the seasons, taken by the hand as it were, as these lowly, sometimes tasty, often helpful things come and go: such things as Angelica, Bee Balm, Goat's Rue, Sweet Maudlin. It's a calming book and ought to be near at hand.