Van Cats and Dorothy

My wife, Dorothy, died peacefully in her sleep on May 24, 2018. She was 86 and had for some time been a victim of Parkinson’s Disease, which progressively robbed her of all normal abilities to function. (Fortunately, she had some truly devoted caregivers.) 

We had been together for 51 years, living in Santa Barbara since 1973. Before then, she had never been a full-time resident, but her family roots go back in this area for generations. Her great-grandfather, Charles P. Low, had been a clipper-ship captain in the China trade, and, after retiring in his 40s, he settled in a large house on the Mesa. He was active in the community, and had, in fact, been one of the founders of Santa Barbara Cemetery, where Dorothy’s ashes will now rest.

Dorothy herself was an extremely lively personality, with many interests, which I admired and marveled at, but couldn’t always share or even keep up with. I have often written about her, but would like to offer here, as a tribute to her memory, one piece that I wrote 15 years ago:

•••

Monday, October 27, 2003

Dear Friends,

Dorothy and I recently returned from a British Museum tour of eastern Turkey. If you like long bus rides, punctuated by opportunities to clamber about the ruins of old churches, castles, and other edifices, this would definitely have been for you. I myself was there mainly to accompany my remarkable wife, who had actually done the same tour less than two years previously, and liked it so much that she wanted to share it with me. 

To her, however, one of the high points of the whole trip had nothing to do with old ruins. It was an unscheduled visit to a research institute in the city of Van, which is on a large lake of the same name.

The Institute (part of the local university), which Dorothy had discovered almost by accident on her previous visit, is devoted to the study of a certain kind of cat, called the Van Cat, which apparently originated in that region, and is still celebrated as a local symbol, but has now become popular among cat fanciers all over the world. Two odd features of Van Cats are that they tend to have one eye blue and one amber, and that they are supposed to enjoy swimming and playing with water.

The Institute building was closed, so we didn’t meet any of the staff – but we did meet about a hundred of the cats, who were in attached chain-link enclosures. They were all white. Dorothy wasn’t able to pet any of them, as she would have loved to do – but at least she could stroke them a little with her fingers through the fencing, and coo to them in the special language she reserves for cats. And she seemed to feel that this alone had been worth hiring the car, and driver, and guide, to bring us here – even worth taking the whole two-week tour a second time.

I have been observing this woman for some 37 years, in my own personal research institute. To me, she is a true wonder, a phenomenon of nature, especially in her boundless capacity to be enthusiastic. This applies not only to her love of travel and of cats, but to all her other numerous passions. These include her absorption in big national or international events (she made a special trip to Hong Kong, just to be there when it was handed over to China), her devotion to figure-skating, her interests in geology, archaeology, space exploration, plants and gardening, plumbing, her love of shopping, banking (even doing income taxes!) her interest in celebrities, her joy in any kind of social activity, and her almost mystical adoration of breakfast. 

But I’m not even scraping the surface. She always needs to have some older person to be taking care of, some good cause to help, some civic activity to be busily involved in. With all this, you might think she is in a constant flurry – but no, she is equally passionate about relaxing.

It is truly a privilege (though sometimes bewildering, and often exhausting) to be able to share any part of my life with such a creature. She will be 72 on December 8. (And I will turn 70 the following day). The thing she most hates to hear me say is, “What does it matter?” – because to her, EVERYTHING MATTERS!

All the best,

Ashleigh Brilliant