Thursday, January 21, 2010

I can call Repentance with a song

In a household where I regularly visit lives a cat named Repentance (acquired, so I am told, at a time when the owner had a dog whose name was Faith). I am, miraculously, not allergic to this cat, which is pretty nice-- I even tried petting him the other day, which went fairly non-sneezingly.

I decided to try something that used to work on my mom's cat, and also (though I wasn't doing it intentionally) worked on the cows that live near my grandma's house: I sang to it to call it. Sure enough, it came. The first song we tried (myself and the small child who was with me) worked pretty well-- "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"-- but the second one, one of my favorites from my childhood, worked even better. The version I learned as a child was adapted for the Primary Children's songbook from a longer piece (which I learned during voice lessons I took a couple of summers ago) by Felix Mendelssohn, from his oratorio Elijah. The words go like this: "If with all your hearts, ye truly seek me, Ye shall ever surely find me, Thus saith our God. Ye shall ever surely find me; Thus saith our God.

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