Sentience

Bleeding Heart Bonanza – Photo: L. Weikel

At least twice today I found myself contemplating the sentience of certain Beings that share my home with me. Well, one of them lives outside, just off the edge of my porch. The other – whose specific identity remains uncertain – can be confidently narrowed down to a field of three who do, in fact, reside in our home with us.

Notice I’m not questioning their sentience. Ha – at this stage, I wouldn’t dare. I’m merely contemplating it. Perhaps even celebrating it. Most definitely acknowledging it.

Floral Proliferation

My first appreciation of the sentience surrounding me has to do with the continued astonishing proliferation of our faithful Lamprocapnos spectabilis – our bleeding hearts. (Sort of a little disquieting to speak of how these flowers are flourishing when you consider their common name. Do we really want to celebrate the proliferation of bleeding hearts?) Hmm. Bears some reflection.

Beyond the wisdom (or lack thereof) in speaking of bleeding hearts with such great affection, I want to point out that my Lamprocapnos spectabilis is utterly delighted by having such lavish attention paid to it. If I didn’t know better (which I don’t), I’d say my tiny bleeding heart that I first began writing posts about a month ago is loving all the attention. This plant is becoming ginormous. ‘Flourishing’ barely covers how well it’s doing and how abundantly it’s bestowing its beauty upon us.

And while I honestly feel as though it’s growing noticeably bigger this year than it ever has any other year, there’s yet another reason why I feel this particular bleeding heart plant is responding to the appreciation and attention I’m lavishing upon it. That other reason is the white bleeding heart plant that’s only four or so feet away from the red one. I’ve been paying but a fraction of the attention I’ve paid to the red bleeding hearts to the white ones. And quite honestly? That plant is not thriving, at least not even close to how well the red one is doing. It’s doing ok, but the difference between the two plants is stark.

I’ll take a photo tomorrow of the white plant for comparison sake tomorrow.

Not So Subtle Dig

The other example of sentience in our household today was something I observed in our bathroom, where we keep our cats’ litterbox. In fact, when I saw it and the reality of what I was looking at sunk in, I had to check with Karl. I thought for sure he’d done it as a joke or something.

But no.

One of our three cats was either sarcastically sending a message that the box was not cleaned out satisfactorily or s/he was snidely being helpful. We’re pretty sure it was Tigger. Precious is too paranoid to take that much time aiming a poop. Cletus would rather fling his or leave it on our pillow (not that he’s ever done either of these things – I just have a feeling his sentience would more likely express itself in one of those ways). Tigger is the only one who would politely, if passive aggressively, express either displeasure or a sense of humor in that manner.

Either way – the careful placement of the beast’s solid waste directly onto the scooper was a marvel of both adept rear placement and not-so-subtle snarky sentience.

Yep. These are some of the weird things I occasionally contemplate.