“No, no sister. How easily you acquiesce to change! We ought in the choice of a dwelling to regard above all the healthfulness of a place in Nature. By that, I mean its capacity to regulate both nourishment and breeding so that we live within its means and allowances.”
“I think the new Custom Sensibel has inaugurated giving the female the right to regulate her breeding will bring peace to the frenzy of mating,” Twitch said. “It puts the would-be mother at the centre of the responsibility of populating a territory. No act even simulating procreation can occur without the female’s consent. And raccoon women can now mate with whomever they desire. The other being willing.”
“I do not know whether I should be pleased or no. I brought Sensibella up to marry a man, not a city.”
Now it’s Nimbletoes, the youngest of Pawsy’s daughters. She too had grown up during the summer. Slypaws sensed the volatile temperament of a young adult.
“How was school today, darling?”
Nimble avoided the adoring gazes of three mothers by looking across the water at the bridge. “Okay.”
“Just okay?” Pawsense said. “Didn’t you experience joy today?”
A shrug.
“I asked if you felt any joy.”
“Get off the limb, Pawsy! Just because you teach her the word, it doesn’t mean she’s going to feel it,” Slypaws said.
“Of course, it does. If she knows the word joy exists, it’s easier for her to recognize the emotion and embrace it. My children know all about joy. Prying open their first clam. Popping their first organic waste lid. Eating their first Delissio pizza. Joy! J–O–Y … You know what joy is, don’t you, honeytoes? Didn’t I teach you all the things you can do in order to feel joy?”
“I guess …”
“Think of something that happened to you today that gave you joy.”
Nimble said nothing.
“She can’t think of anything,” Slypaws said.
“Try harder, sweetie.”
“I … I helped an elderly Raccoon lady across the street.”
“See! I told you she knows what joy is.”
Nimble’s eyes were still fixed on the bridge.
“What is it, child?”
“May I go to the City, Mama?”
“No, of course not. The place is full of flotsam and detritus of the sort that bobs in the wake of a revolution, and is unfit for one so tender in years.”
Slypaws felt the growl begin in Nimble’s tail. A strong, snorting, imprisoned noise breaking its way out of unfathomable dungeons through every possible outlet and organ. Travelling forward through her body gathering power from every sinew in her loins and upper musculature until it reached her heart, draining it of hopelessness, to emerge in a howl that could be heard as far away as the French bridge, the horizon of the girl’s lost freedom. The deepest, the oldest, the most wholesome sense of the value of Nature – the value which comes from her immense babyishness.
“WAAAAAH!!!”
“Quick, honey. Remember what I told you to do when you’re upset. Name the emotion.”
“?”
“By naming it, you distance yourself from the unwanted feeling, thereby gaining control over it.”
“WAAAAA!!!”
“Don’t you think she ought to feel the emotion first, before she analyses it?”
“Thanks for the consult, Sly. But you know zot-all about anger management.”
“She’s not angry. She’s miserable.”
“No, rather she simply needs to regain her inner balance, don’t you, love? Now, do what I told you and put a paw on the emotion so it won’t push you off the limb.”
The cub looked her mother in the eye. “I … am … feeling … miserable.”
“Indeed, we can all see that, darling. But what’s the emotion that’s making you so miserable. If you name it, the nasty feeling will go away.”
“Do you really think cubs should psychoanalyse themselves, Pawsy?”
“Just say SCAT,” Twitch said.
“Know thyself. It is the key to self-knowledge, something in which you, dear sister, are sadly lacking, having the worldliness of a clam.” Then, to her daughter: “Try to attach words to your big bad feeling. Hint: if you can’t name the emotion, name some object that feels like your feeling and can speak for it. That’s what artists do. Cousin Touchwit deals with her emotions that way. She’s one of those so-called Makers.”
“I am feeling like the last High Liner Frozen Fish Stick left in the world, thrown up by a Drooler dying of rabies. I feel like Uncle Wily when he was run over by an electric car and became a smear with two eyes looking up to the sky and asking the question ‘Why?’ I am feeling like I cannot endure one more moment of my miserable fucking life until I go to the City and make a world for myself … There! That is how I feel!”
“See? It worked,” Pawsense said. “The examined life is worth living after all.”
Sister Goodpaws appeared again and curtseyed.
