Chuck, Ramsesses the Great, and the gods

             Visitors to Egypt—even rascal cats—come to Egypt to see at least two major sights: the pyramids at Giza and the Temple of Luxor. 

We didn't even have to emphasize to Chucky that a trip to Luxor Temple will be like nothing he has ever seen before because he wanted to come.

“Remember the pyramids at Giza,” Dan asks. "On all that sand?"

 

Chucky nods.

“Imagine a complex, filled with gigantic statues.” 

“Luxor" Dan explains, “was the capital of ancient Egypt back in the day.”

“1300 BC,” I chime in. “That’s even before ancient Greece had its Golden Age." 

But Chuck isn’t here to see the temple. He has only one thing on his little cat mind: Ramesses II.

Ramesses II was the pharaoh who ruled for 66 years. A real mover and shaker. He built the entire temple complex.

Chucky knows all of this.

Actually, the people built the complex, but not for the Egyptian people. This place was built for the pharaoh and the priests, a place where they could come and meet with the gods in private. 

Which means they actually believed the gods were there, in the inner recesses of the temple.

Dan tells Chucky that this temple complex was dedicated to the gods. BUT everything—the statues and the drawings (called reliefs on the walls) celebrate the Pharoah Ramesses II.

But, again, Chucky knows everything about this pharaoh, and he can’t wait to see Ramsesses. 

I am in awe of my first view of the temple complex. Humans look like insects in comparison. At the entrance we spot the infamous obelisk on the right and know there is a companion obelisk to this one in Paris.

        As we continue to walk, we spot some of the columns of the temple that have survived.

    

This place is bigger than I expected. I turn to Dan. "I think Chuck needs to be in the backpack, or he'll be trampled because everyone is looking up."

Dan agrees. Chuck is not happy. He prefers to be on his own. He wants to scamper off and sniff. But the temple is very crowded. Finally, we compromise. He climbs into the backpack, but positions himself so he can look out and see the sights, on the lookout, of course, for the Pharaoh.  

We walk around toward the entrance. Now we can see the obelisk more clearly and also some of the statues that are positioned in front of the temple. 

        

 

Finally, we are smack in front of the entrance and facing Ramsesses II. 

        Well, the truth is I'm facing Ramsesses. Dan is kind of walking backwards, so Chuck can see what I'm seeing—his hero. 

         Dan is an expert on Ramsesses. He read his entire biography in French and begins to share with Chuck even more tidbits of his life:

        He is fourteen years old when he becomes pharaoh.

    

        He is married to the famed Nefertari, his first wife and favorite queen. Even after she died, Ramsesses continued to have statues dedicated to her, reliefs done of her. Scholars say he was obsessed with her. 

         Supposedly he is the pharaoh associated with Moses in that wonderful Hollywood movie The Ten Commandments. Ramsesses is the pharaoh who rejects a Moses who demands over and over again--Let my people go--but there is no concrete evidence to support that connection. 

        Ramsesses lives to be 96 years old, has over 200 wives and concubines, 96 sons and 60 daughters. He lives so long that his subjects believe that when he dies the world will come to an end.

        There is no ancient site in Egypt that does not make mention of Ramsesses the Great. 

        Chuck becomes more interested in Ramsesses. When Chuck gets excited, he wants to be walking around and sniffing. That is what is happening now. He begins to meow. The crowds around us moves on to tour the temple.  

        "All right. All right. Just for a minute or two." 

        Now that Chucky's paws are on the ground, he darts over to Ramsesses, sniffing at the base of the magnificent statue. 

         Dan and I are gazing around. We walk around the temple proper and begin to examine some of the walls. The reliefs tell a story of the pharaohs interacting with the gods. 

        Don't worry, though, I have my eye on Chuck. There is no way he is getting lost here. I'm soaking up all the Egyptian history and lore and watching Chuck at the same time.

        In fact, I notice him move away from Ramsesses. I notice him move away from where we are. It is a big complex and he seems to be on some kind of mission. Moving faster now.

        "Dan, it's Chuck."

      

        Chuck can scadaddle rather quickly when he wants to. He is racing now as if being drawn somewhere toward the temple. Suddenly, he seems to disappear around a corner.

        

         "Oh, no." My greatest fear is that he'll go inside, and we'll never find him. Because we've been warned to go in the temple as a group. Don't wander in there alone. An errant thought enters my mind. Chucky in there alone. This temple was built for the gods. Maybe there are still some spirits there . . . some forces . . .

          Dan breaks into a run, headed in Chuck's direction. In a minute Dan disappears. 

          I hold my breath. Now both of them could be headed toward disaster. I try to wait patiently. Everything is going to be okay. There has got to be some reasonable explanation why Chuck ran into the temple. Dan will find Chuck, and they will be back. I know they will. 

        Chuck has not been abducted by the gods.

        Sure enough, I see Dan emerging, unscathed from the temple. He's waving. Chuck is following close behind.

          "What was that all about?"

          Dan lowers his voice. "The kid wanted some privacy."

    

          "What?"

          "Let's just say that all that water he drank earlier, well, he suddenly realized he needed to use the restroom facilities."

            What???? "Chucky, I hope you didn't . . . take a whizz . . . in the . . . temple."

                    Chuck has his lips pressed together. He looks up at me. He's not saying anything, but I can guess what he's thinking. "Mom, a boy has to do what a boy has to do."

    

           

                  

        

         

        

        

The Rascal Cat Can't Sing!

    "Egypt is more than just pyramids," I tell Chucky as we're in the midst of our next adventure. This morning we're 60 miles northwest of Cairo, visiting a famous monastery called Dier Anba Bishoi in Wadi El-Natroun, surrounded by a desert consisting of salt lakes and salt flats. The Egyptians used to extract salt from here. The Christians established their monasteries here dating back to the 4th century.

        Dier Anna Bishoi or St. Bishoi Monastery is named after patron St. Bishoi, who immigrated here and lived in solitude. It is one of five churches and is used only in the summer. It is an oasis with greenery and palm trees.

 

   

        Everything about this place is old. We move from room to room. Chucky is in seventh heaven. The priest takes one look at Chucky, assumes he is a cat who lives at the monastery, and doesn't give him a second glance. Which is good news because this place is a wonderland for Chuck. He is sniffing to his heart's content. 

             We're greeted by a very charismatic priest who gives us a tour and recounts some of the highlights of the monastery's history--the destruction that was done and the many restorations over the thousands of years. Most notably there is a well on the property called the Well of Martyrs where, you guessed it, martyrs were thrown down to their death centuries ago. Today the well still produces fresh water, which is considered to be a miracle.

  

        We pass ancient signs, frescoes, pottery laid out on tables that was used centuries ago and realize that even though this place is a working monastery, it is in many respects also a museum of sorts. 

        Out of the blue, and this is how the universe works, at times, we're invited to a baptism. Now I've attended plenty of baptisms in my day, but never one in a monastery in a desert in Egypt performed in Arabic. 

        Out of nowhere, or so it seems, people have arrived and are filling up a beautifully decorated room--standing around, waiting for the ceremony to begin. Dan and I, and Chuck melt into the crowd. 

 

       

         Another priest arrives and the baptism procession begins. 

              There is incense, cymbal clanging, clapping, singing, chanting and an overall festive atmosphere. Dan is busy snapping photos. I'm in awe, watching everyone as they gather around the parents and the newborn.

        And then I hear him. At first--what is that sound? It's not quite singing--a kind of mixture of mewing and meowing and . . . "Chuck, shshsh."

        But Chucky, who is plastered to my side (thank God), is swaying in time to the chanting that is reverberating through the room. But his singing sounds more like caterwauling. Which is getting louder and louder.

        I'm not going to panic. But I imagine a cat interrupting a baptism would not face an easy fate. I can see it all now--masked men swooping him up and dropping him in the Well of Martyrs!

        I have to get him to stop singing. But he is just so darned cute. I hate to interrupt his reverie. Is anyone else noticing that he's horribly off key? The rascal cat can do many things well, but he can't sing!! 

          I kneel down next to him. "Chucky, no more singing, honey."

          He looks up at me.

          At that exact moment, everything around me goes quiet. 

          I place my finger on Chucky's lips. 

          The priest recites a prayer in Arabic. 

          Chucky goes silent. Is it a miracle? Or . . . I look over my shoulder. Dan, Mr. Hero Man, holds out a luscious treat and Chucky, needing to make a decision, chooses to eat and not sing.  

          Crisis is averted. No masked men will be coming for Chucky. The Well of Martyrs will not claim another innocent victim. I heave a sigh of relief. 

           We've learned one valuable lesson: the rascal cat can do many fabulous things but he can't sing!

Chuck's Almost Trip to Yellowstone's Hell

 

    Sometimes it makes no sense whatsoever to bring a cat with you when you are on tour, especially when you go to a place like Yellowstone National Park.

      Let me explain. 

      Yellowstone intersects three states--mostly Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. It covers 3500 square miles and is fondly called a wilderness recreation area, home to wild animals like grizzly bears, wolves, bison, elk, and antelope. It has one of the largest petrified forests and over 250 waterfalls. Plus canyons, mountain ranges, and lakes. 

      All of that makes Yellowstone a dangerous place to visit. Especially with a cat. But when Chucky announced he wanted to see the very thing that makes this park so unique, well, we should have turned around and went home. 

      Yellowstone contains at least 10,000 thermal features including geysers, hot springs, mud spots and fumaroles. In short, these are like cracks into the inner earth allowing gasses and boiling liquids to reach the surface. 

      Touring this part of Yellowstone is no joke. If you wander off the boardwalk by accident, fall into a thermal feature, stick your finger into what appears to be an innocent puddle of water (which tourists have done) . . . well, let's just say you may not live to tell a happy story or any story at all.

    

   "Should we even take him (the rascal cat) with us?" I was having second thoughts even from the beginning. I know that most people think of Yellowstone and imagine subalpine forests, lodgepole pines,  and grassy meadows. It can be a beautiful place. But that's not where we were going.

    "All I can say is--you'll have to tell him," Dan declared.

    Needless to say, I chickened out. Chuck had his heart set on seeing the part of Yellowstone that some visitors described as going into the depths of hell or to put it more mildly into another world. So we packed him up, read him the riot act, and warned him to stay on the boardwalk at all times. 

      The first image we saw when we arrived at this dangerous part of Yellowstone sent the message loud and clear.

    At first I thought it was the bones of some animal, who had tried to escape some horrible fate, and had not made it.

    "Get a hold of yourself," Dan said. "It's 

just some branches."

     He was right, of course. 

   But the landscape only became bleaker with each step along the boardwalk that we took.

      We began to feel like, indeed, we'd landed on another planet. I was reminded of those early photos of the moon landings. Those stark ground photos which showed no signs of life. This landscape before us was different but equally eerie. No plants. A few dead trees. But no sign of life. 

      Of course, the only difference was this landscape had a kind of weird beauty caused by the variety of colors on the dead earth. Aquamarine to dark blue. Yellow. Orange. Red brown to burgundy. Even I got caught up in taking photos. A kind of beauty existed in the dead surroundings. 

     That is when it happened. And it was all my fault. I was supposed to be keeping my eye on Chuck. I took on the responsibility because Dan loves to take photos. I figured I'd be the logical one to make sure Chuck stayed on the boardwalk, the safe space. As we ambled along, I reasoned, there would be no birds, no animals to distract him. 

     What could he possibly find interesting out here in this barren landscape?

     I constantly underestimate this cat.

     As I looked around now and did not see him, my heart skipped a beat.

     Please God, no.

     I peered out over the landscape to see if somehow he'd wandered out there. Was is possible?

         

     I couldn't see him anywhere. No Chucky. 

     Of course, I imagined the worst. Somehow, without our noticing, he'd spotted something or smelled something and jumped off the boardwalk. He was down there somewhere. 

    Dan had another idea. "Maybe he crawled underneath the boardwalk." 

       

      Some cats like to be high and some cats prefer to be low. Chuck is one of those cats who prefer to be on ground level. We knelt down and looked underneath the boardwalk. No Chucky.

     

       I had to remain positive. "He usually listens to me . . ."

     

     "Except when he doesn't," Dan whispered.

     "I told him a thousand times not to get off this boardwalk."

    "We'll split up. You go this way. I'll retrace our steps and see if he's behind us."

     I raced ahead. The boardwalk curved to the left. The landscape remained much of the same, but with the fear of losing Chucky, I hardly noticed.

       I made promises to myself. If I find this darned rascal cat -- alive -- I promise I'll be the best mom in the world. I'll take such good care of him. I'll never let him out of my sight. From now on . . .

       An orange and white mass sat serenely on the boardwalk about 100 feet ahead of me.

      "Chucky," I screamed out his name. 

      There he was. As calm as can be. Staring out at the bleak landscape, as if under some kind of spell. He'd run up ahead and now saw something, who knows what out there, and was just sitting back, enthralled.

     Dan came up behind me. He pointed to something in the distance. 

"I think it's a hawk. Can you see it?"

     But I was too worked up to even want to see it. "That darned cat.

He'll be the death of me," I said to no one in particular because the 

    

     boys were distracted and were not listening. 

     "It's a red tailed hawk," Dan said to Chucky, who nodded. "They're common in the park. But not in this area. Good job of spotting."

      And, darn it, if that cat didn't start purring, imagining himself, no doubt, as some kind of hero. It didn't matter to him that he'd almost given me, his human mom, a heart attack. 

     Show off.

Fearless Chuck-Bird Spotter Extraordinaire

 

    Before Chuck fell head over heels in love with a raven, our rascal cat had a quite different experience with a bird, one we didn't anticipate, not in a million years.

    It all started the June we flew out to Montana to spend a week in Yellowstone National Park. We were staying in a small boutique hotel in Gardiner, the town closest to the park, when one afternoon we decided to go for a walk. We had our cell phone cameras, of course, and binoculars just in case we spotted any wildlife. We were due to start our tour in Yellowstone the next day with Gene, a true mountain man, and we'd heard through the grapevine that animals from Yellowstone park often wandered into Gardiner so we were prepared. After all, there are no fences separating the park from the town.

    Chucky came along, of course. He loves being outside. It wasn't long before we had our first wildlife sighting--a female elk, an extraordinary sight indeed. We're used to seeing squirrels and foxes in New Jersey. Maybe a bobcat once in awhile. And once in a great while, a bear. You never see an elk.

    We learned later that it's quite common for elk to leave the park, especially the mamas who are pregnant and about to deliver baby elk. They know the town is safer than the park from most predators. Chuck was literally in seventh heaven. Initially, we kept our distance, but Chuck had no problem moving closer. We've always considered him to be a kind of ambassador. Make friends, not enemies. That's his motto. 

    "Do you think it's safe?" I asked Dan. After all, a female elk can weigh up to 650 pounds. It is the second largest species of deer after the moose.

    "Let's wait and see what happens."

    "Okay," I said, even though not knowing very much about elk I began to wonder how would she react if she felt threatened. Would she charge without notice, crushing my poor, fearless cat? 

    But sure enough, as fearless Chuck moved closer, the elk, on notice, tilted her head this way and that as if considering how to handle this short bundle of orange and white fur. Seconds passed.  Then she leaped into the distance. She wanted nothing to do with Chuck. I heaved a sigh of relief. 

    I wondered how Chucky would take to being abandoned so abruptly, but I didn't have to worry. He was already gazing upwards, distracted. Something had flown onto a tree limb. Dan pulled out his binoculars.

    "I don't see anything . . ." Dan reported.

    "Something must be there. Chuck's been staring at that spot--"

    "Wow. Look at that. You should see this bird. It looks tropical."

    "Tropical?"

    Remember, we were in Montana. There is nothing tropical about Montana. Men wear cowboy hats and boots. Almost everyone walks with some kind of swagger. I felt overly dressed up because I wore mascara. 

    I grabbed the binoculars and peered through the lens. Sure enough, this was not your usual blue jay or robin. This bird was bright yellow,  and had black wings and an orange-red head.

    Chucky moved closer. The bird flitted to a nearby branch, and we lost sight of it. 

    "There it is," I said, following Chucky, whose glance tracked it like a laser beam.

    Dan pulled out his camera. I knew nothing about which birds lived in Montana, but if I had to guess, this had to be an unusual bird. 

    For the next half hour, no kidding, Chuck, Dan and I followed that 

darned bird. It flitted from branch to branch, and then much to my surprise landed on top of a rooftop before hopping down on a branch near a house. Dan was able to get some distant photos. 

    It seemed every time we honed in closer, the bird took off and flew further away. We still had no idea what kind of bird it was. 

    Later that evening, we went across the street to Pizza, Pasta, and Salad, the one restaurant that was still open, only to discover the only thing they were serving was pizza. As we waited in line for a table, we met a couple from down south who'd come to Yellowstone to bird watch. (Sometimes I think the universe deliberately sets things up so that you get some of the things you want.)

    You can guess what happened next. Dan whipped out his cell phone and showed the woman the photo of the bird Chucky had spotted. She nearly died. "I've been here in Yellowstone National Park for two weeks," she said, "looking for that very bird. That's a Western Tanager. How did you ever find it? They love to remain hidden."

    We could have told her the truth, but sometimes it's too hard to explain about Chucky. So we told her a version of what happened and left Chuck out of the story entirely. Excited that we'd actually spotted the bird nearby, she decided on the spot to postpone her trip back home so she could see the bird in person and get some photos. 

    Later, back at the hotel, Dan googled the Western Tanager, feeling like we'd spotted some kind of celebrity bird.

    "You're not going to believe this. The Western Tanager is a songbird, part of the Cardinal family."

    Chuck sat up when he heard that. 

    "If you actually spot one of these birds, and it's not easy, that lady was right, it means that change is coming your way. It's the universe's way of telling you to let go of things that aren't going well in your life. It's a time for a new beginning."

    We both looked over at our hero cat. Was seeing this bird a mere coincidence, or was someone through Chuck trying to tell us something?

    "Chuck, I want to ask you something . . ."

    Dan touched my arm. "Let it go, Kate."

    Chuck, oblivious to our existential angst, let out a big yawn and then stretched out his paw and fell instantly asleep.

Yeah, for Chuck a bird is a bird, unless, of course, it's a raven.