Curly Jo Cometh

I can’t apologize for the bad blogging. This is about the yoga, people!

And it is about the wedding dress, and the miles of silk, and the motorcycle ride to the bird sanctuary, and the pool, the little kitten that we rescued, our street dog Skip, the tea/coconuts/breakfasts/lunches/dinners, the massages, famous Indian photographers, soon to be famous American writers, the work…and again, the kitten.

What will we do? We are madly in love with a tiny orange and white kitten that by all rights should be dead. She was certain road kill about ten nights ago when two kooky western yoga students swerved to avoid her on their motorcycle. She was in the middle of a very busy, very scary road that we prefer to avoid at night…and usually do. Frank asked me if we should stop and I said no. An emphatic NO because the scooter/motorbike/rickshaw/car/rock truck/bus right behind us had already hit her, for sure. I didn’t want to see it and I didn’t want Frank to see it. But he couldn’t help himself and pulled over about 100 yards ahead. I stayed with the bike and he went back to see the carnage in the dazzling headlights of an insane Indian highway.

I can’t tell you how surprised I was when Frank stepped out of the gloom with one of the smallest, loudest kittens I’d ever met. The warm, clean, and well fed little beauty that is, right now, dreaming away in Frank’s chair, gives no hint at the starving monster he plucked from the road. Up from the pavement, into a plastic Indian shopping basket, and off on the back of a motorcycle to what I can only imagine is a paradise compared to the ditch she was born in.

We spent the next two hours bathing her and plucking off a couple hundred fleas that she was hosting. We weren’t as accommodating as Curly Jo, and the fleas “breathed their last” following a long dunk in the bath or by tweezer squish. We got them all and it was easy to confirm because her wet scraggly white hair and tiny pink body provided no camouflage. We dried her and fed her and she curled up in the crook of Frank’s neck for the entire night.

Ten days later, Curly Jo is box trained and de-wormed (Google up a cat tapeworm if you’ve never seen the result of ridding worms from a pet…think sci-fi channel) and getting a little fat. The best thing is how pretty she is now. She’s a little swan from the ugliest duckling. And she is a rascal, flying through the house without a care. What will we do? We leave for Thailand to get married in less than a week. She is too young to give the rabies vaccine so we couldn’t take her with us even if we were headed straight home to the US. I’m hoping for a miracle…like someone who lives in Mysore fulltime, to fall in love and make her their own. Samia, our Seattle Ashtanga Yoga School comrade and Mysore housemate will take care of her through February for which we are so thankful. And maybe some miracle will happen. No telling.

The wedding prep is absolutely terrific. I can’t wait to send pictures of our outfits but its probably bad form to post those before the ceremony on February 20th. We worked with our friend and favorite silk and sari shop owner, Sawood to design and make our special wedding clothes. He is one of the several brothers that operate a Badsha Silk Shop and the eight store operation is an institution in Mysore. Even though Sawood swears that he doesn’t compete with his brothers and if we buy from them it is just like buying from him, we buy from him. David introduced us to Sawood last year and we have never done our silk business with anyone else. His dream is to be listed in Lonely Planet and while we want all Sawood’s dreams to come true, I’m happy to have a no-pressure friend in the silk business that I don’t have to fight my way through American/European/Asian/Australian/Israeli super trekkers to buy incredible silk saris—a certain result of being profiled in “the Lonely”.

We leave for Bangalore on Saturday morning (February 4) and on to Bangkok that night. Thailand is a whole new adventure and we are incredibly excited to organize our big party and share the ceremony with our friends and family. But leaving Mysore again is almost too much. We’d like to stay. It is simple; this is a good place for us and getting better and better everyday. Maybe next visit we collect Curly Jo and Skip, and introduce them to a little Groundwarner. Miracles can happen.

Much love from Mysore. Frank promises pictures soon and practice is going well.

Rebecca