Cat on a Wet Tin Roof

     One of my cats just did something unanticipated, which is no surprise since cats traffic in the unanticipated, but different than the usual preternatural cat athleticism and wild-hairicism, though not that it was all that exciting.  It was more like a suspenseful episode in a continuing series, like the episode in which heavy Tiger jumped three and a half feet straight down from our deck, legs extended outward, and flattened an unsuspecting possum nosing around underneath, causing them to face off closely, hissing and growling respectively.  But that's a previous episode.

     In the light rain just now, right before dusk, and a few hours before heavier 100% chance thunderstorms move in, I spot Tsavo on the flat roof over my neighbor's cozy screened porch, which is attached to the much larger cottage, which itself has a sloped metal roof, which by now is already slippery.  Tsavo has already discerned all this and that he's stranded.
 
     My strong silent type is plaintively mewing assertively.  He won't chance across the slippery roof to his usual access tree at the other end of the cottage.  He also doesn't trust me to catch him if he jumps while I stand on the top porch step.  My reach is about a foot short to earn his trust, though he's testing out the possibility with a front paw resting on the palm of my hand.  I love the soft feel of his padded paw.  His touch is light as a soul and endearing.  I admire his intelligent caution.  Such an interesting complicated being packed into such a lightweight form.

     Tsavo retreats a foot or two from the edge.  Now, peering down at me, with his eyes alone he urges his not quite tall enough friend to "Get me down!"
.
     Without access to a ladder, I have to find something he'll be comfortable stepping onto, something not unfamiliar, maybe irresistible.  An actual light goes on behind my eyes toward the middle of my head, and I go home and find a cardboard box about his size, bring it back, hold it up to him, and he doesn't hesitate, gets right in, and relieved revels in his deliverance, instantly curious about the box smells, who if anyone might have occupied it previously, notes a distant trace of catnip, and just plain wonders at the thrilling uniqueness of his own situation looking out on his woods from a bobbing box, the roof dilemma already a past episode.

     Feeling him step quickly and fully into the box held over my head is sweet validation.  Not only is he safe, but we've again reaffirmed our bond.  We've forged it first thing in the morning scanning the creek from the deck for signs of deer and coyote, exploring woods and flood plain in all seasons and weather, walking on vertical logs, him quickly and skillfully and me gingerly and clumsily, playing hide and seek among tall sycamore trunks, rolling on leaf-strewn ground rubbing and butting heads like lions in a pride, our heads turning together toward unexpected sounds, sharing eye contact in the pauses between his acrobatic jumps among high branches, scaling steep slopes together, me grasping at worn stumps and straw to pull myself up through the loose dirt and Tsavo waiting below then dashing suddenly quickly upward past me doing a dusty actual breast stroke through the dirt, his chest rubbing against the ground and his gaze fixed ahead, and my trusting he'll always come home when ready and possible and he trusting in his safe home permanently reserved, and then precious shared bed time together when it suits him.

     This evening, I hadn't let him down, except literally, and he had again honored me with his trust, and we wouldn't be stuck out in the thunderstorm with a metal roof in common, in all a further bonding experience neither one of us was very interested in pursuing.

     Tsavo stayed in the box even after I set it on my neighbor's patio and was eventually carried home in it, as if it were a sedan chair, with his head sticking out looking upon his realm, which is appropriate for a cat I call King of the Forest.  He often gets the royal treatment, though none quite as literal as on this evening's stroll home.

     Thank goodness he went for the box gambit.  I was about to call the fire department.  Thank goodness for cats and their obsession with boxes, and for timely little flashes of good luck.

     As we approach the deck of my cottage, Tsavo suddenly jumps desperately out of the box, scrambling up and over its sides, and sticks the landing on solid earth, one more small unanticipated jump for Tsavo, and one giant leap for catkind.  He once again is grounded, in more ways than one though, as it's time for him to come in for the night.

 

                                                      [The photos are from drier times.]

The Fringe Quarter

The swamps are full of bodies
the thickets thick with thieves
connected and corrupt nobodies
with secrets up their sleeves
they operate in shadow
with shady go-betweens
they come from every walk of life
and navigate the seams
their world is one of traitors
from the streets up to the cream
they live one lie to another
their world one big crime scene
some eke out merely fortunes
some sneak into your dreams
some get away with murders
so vile you want to scream
some crimes are crimes of passion
and some just money schemes
these saboteurs assassinate
and steal away your dreams

we live our lives for others
for love and self-esteem
yet must always be aware of these
who are not what they seem
you cannot live on bread alone
or love alone it seems
but we all deserve some hope and peace
without some secret team
to steal away our dreams
especially in midstream
and we're always in midstream


Indian Cove
Austin, Texas
November 4, 2014

The Rise of Beauty

I love caterpillars.  I mean really love, admire, and beam.  I watch as they walk many of the hundreds of thousands of deliberate directed steps they take in their busy active lives.  I follow them, through grass, over twigs, around small rocks.  I watch as they drop down - rappel through thin-air - from high branches, roof edges, car bumpers - they're everywhere! - having secreted their own thread by which to descend partway and sometimes entirely to the ground, and then millimeter by millimeter ascend their strand, inchworming their way upward no matter how long it takes - what heart they have, what determination, how soon would we tire, give up, or say fuck it and just hang there? And sometimes they do, just to rest a spell - and finally get up there, all the way back to the heights (First, they had climbed the tree!) and do it all over again, in the process acquiring enough thread to weave their own cocoon (talk about self-made, bootstrappers!) and wait, just wait, interminably wait, but not idly, allowing the magic of transformation - Jesus has nothing on the caterpillars - to make the amazing life changes we cannot even begin to truly comprehend (so we go, gee isn't that amazing, and mean it, yet have no idea, no idea how that would feel, what that would be like), and then to emerge finally(!) and find that they'd accumulated the muscles of lifelong bodybuilders and use them to - FLY!  I CAN FLY! - and fly they do, everywhere they go, with their little legs nimbly walking upon occasion just for convenience and necessity - or how much is it nostalgia? - and fly some more, fly everywhere, until they can't.

That's where this brief story begins.  Though caterpillars live long and prosper, chewing loudly (to them) their way to vibrant health and maturity, walking their way around their big world, climbing and rappelling, climbing and rappelling, waking up gloriously, mysteriously, as gods of flight, a leaf diet giving way to oh so sweet nectar of the gods with only a short time to savor savor! - it's no wonder they always appear so enthusiastic in their flight paths to every flower in those paths - and even with our happy appreciation for their multiple unique phased lives, deep down we consider them a sort of down-to-earth science fiction being - their very real deaths come very quickly.  And this is where we truly begin.

The small orangeish and dot-marked indescribably delightful butterfly is fluttering on the ground in the garden, near the lantana, the oregano, the mistflower plant, the flowering season over.  Fluttering not in exhilaration but desperation.  It has lost its ability to fly, its muscles atrophied, its godgiven indefatigable momentum depleting rapidly, the life force intact but lessened.  Yet it flutters almost nonstop.  What used to be easy with effort becoming impossible.  It certainly doesn't keep it from trying. What energy!  Even now!  Still something's gone wrong.  Terribly wrong.  I'm vulnerable like this.  I must gain air.  Ending up resting a second or two on its side. Then fluttering more.  Too weak to stand in the slightest breezes, whereas before it rode them like zephyr hawks.  Now fluttering, fluttering.  Tiny ants are nearby.  This must not be the butterfly's fate.  To be slowly bitten alive.  Death doesn't require that much efficiency.  They're already gathering and approaching, arriving one by one.  The butterfly, not giving up, flutters to no avail, movement now limited to a few centimeters in any direction, the fluttering dwindled.  It's antennae now wave from side to side.  It's long thin tongue, rolled in a perfect spiral at its tip, earnestly flails in the garden air, its last nectar having already been taken.  Life has been so sweet.

Butterfly now finds itself on a giant outspread fleshy hand, lines running across it.  It's on its side, fluttering from moment to moment, though can't get up.  So it's helped to stand.  It actually stands on the palm, manifesting an unexpected stability, and now fully spreads out its wings as if gliding, or as on a branch, unfolding its wings and absorbing sunlight for warmth, for life, but now never to close them again.  And it has both, bright sunlight and warmth, as the fluttering becomes more and more intermittent.  The struggle is almost vacated.  It has given in, the fight over, is now mostly still, and then the tiniest of flutters, a quiver, as it enters its next phase.  Movement has ceased.  And then more time is given, to be sure.

Some still nights, halfway to dawn, usually in Springtime, especially a wet Spring, in that unusual quiet part of the night between dreaming and waking, you will hear a tiny munching above you from all directions.  Tiny but perceptible, and unmistakable.  The more you listen, the louder it gets, and is the only sound you hear.  It's a chorus, a symphony, a banquet.  You listen and hardly believe it, but it could be nothing else.  The gods are feasting.  The sky awaits.

From The Cat Comments Section
Entry 1
I love you little kitty
I even love your fleas
I love how loyal your love is
and I love how you say please
you are a constant joy to me
and a constant comfort too
you're always welcome by my side
no matter what you think or do
If you love a little kitty
and I hope you do or will
you'll be accepted as an equal
by someone in your windowsill
I hope you know that thrill
By
Cattius Maximus Anonymouse
18,124 C.E. (Cat Era)
Cat Cove
Sasscatchewon, Catada
North Americat
Cat Earth

Fear is a fiction

of inferred reality

a novel idea

entirely imagined

not at all real

merely a projection

of one possibility

out of countless

and internalized

as likely

by a hubris calculus

a vaunted rationalization

disguised as logic

present but

uncomfortable

in your own skin.

Fear is a friction.

Get it off me!

Larry Piltz

Indian Cove

Austin, Texas

9/12/2014

 

What We Did In Church Today

 

     On his release from overnight indoor sheltering,  Tiger, as he often does, first lingers on the covered deck for a leisurely drink of water that's mellowed overnight in one of the two bowls kept filled for he and Tsavo.  This morning the bowls had the pleasing allure of some rain that had splashed in before midnight.

 

     Tsavo almost always heads to a vantage point where he can survey the forest between cabin and shallow creek below, searching for whomever may be there, or may have recently passed through, because information among other things is deterrent and opportunity.  He's a cautious ranger of a cat, who knows his territory and his way around, and up and down many trees and their far-reaching branches, and he clearly discerns whose scents belong and whose aren't welcome.

     This morning Tsavo's on the back edge of the deck, sweeping the dense panorama with all his senses. The late rain was a thorough one, and since scents carry further than sight even moreso in the dampness, and ground sounds are dampered, his senses are naturally heightened accordingly.

     Tsavo doesn't have to stretch his senses far though, because 20 yards away two 6-point bucks and one 8-point are grazing and moseying along together this morning between cabin and creek.  This is very unusual, and Tsavo seems to do a doubletake upon sighting them, or it could be a heavy gulp.  I am watching him specifically and don't see deer till a minute later, and I have a surprised start myself and watch happily as they gradually descend to the floodplain, stopping here and there for a nibble, and disappear into further reaches of riparian church.

     Ten or more minutes go by, the cats are wandering off into the woods and vicinities of neighboring cabins, and I'm indoors and begun writing down a quick account about the bucks, when I hear a short high-pitched sound very nearby that could be a branch scraping the corrugated metal roof or, I worried, a cat shrieking in brief distress.  My diminished hearing can play tricks on me.
 

     I run onto the deck calling for the cats, and down and away running across the floodplain, a tawny tan coyote, its still wet fur a light orangish tint, splashes across the creek and up the steep bank vanishing among the trees, boulders, and brush.  I have a clear but brief distant view and don't think it's carrying a cat but can't be sure, and the whereabouts of mine are unknown.

     I run down the slope through the obstacle maze of trees to creekside and hop onto a small sandbar, summon up a few loud fearsome guttural sounds, and throw several smooth well-rinsed rocks high against the steep opposite forested bank just for the effect of the noise.
 

     Coyote is already long-gone, and the bucks whose scents it had likely been shadowing gone even longer.  A coyote is no match anyway for a big buck, let alone three, though cats are another and vulnerable story altogether, for all their feline prowess.  I linger among the vines and black willows along the creek a while longer, thrashing a bit, like a wannabe Gorilla - a lot of nature is all about the show - and head home wondering what I'll find.

     Even though a cat the size of Tiger should have been easily spotted hanging from the jaws of a coyote, even from a distance, I am relieved to see him stretched upright on the deck.  His neck fur is raised a bit high, and mine still is too even as I enjoy my palpable relief to see him.
     

     He may have known something had been awry, because he normally will follow me down to the creek if I've gone on ahead of him.  It's one of his favorite places in the world, as he loves a good long drink of natural water that he can provide for himself.  A new other favorite is under the property's tool and junk shed, where only small critters can fit and where a low cool breeze obviates the summer heat.

     But I don't see Tsavo, and this does start to concern me, though he soon shows up in front of the cabin, sauntering in as if something momentous hadn't even happened.  He seems to wonder though what all the fuss has been about, as he'd undoubtedly heard Gorilla man crudely stalking the edge of the creek.  And his sixth sense - Perhaps the informed cumulative Meta-Gain from the sum of all his earthly ones? - must be at least as acutely keen as the others.

     Tsavo's face acquires a hesitating quizzical look, as if eyebrows are raised, and his head may tilt the slightest bit, when he's contemplating something he hasn't quite yet comprehended.  Perhaps he thinks it all might have something to do with the bucks, which it has, though not in a way he or any of us might suspect it would have happened on this typical day; typical in that it can happen any day, on any typical day, and can happen again, though not in the same exact way.

     This is what makes church so interesting.

     PostScript:  The cats were brought in for an hour of safekeeping.  Ersatz Gorilla went creekside again, quarter-inch frogs leaping desperately out of his way.  He was on a mission of protection.  He should be wearing a U.N. blue helmet on his big ersatz Gorilla head.  He was declaring a selective nature preserve, establishing a mental force field.
 

     He was giving fair warning and caution to all miscreant coyotes, bobcats, and feral hogs living their lives as nature intends, and that goes for you too, you two hooting hoot owls - you know Who you are - and sounding interspecial support far and wide to bucks, does, and fawns everywhere, to raccoons, possum, skunks, nutria, field mice, wandering dogs, hepcats, escaped ferrets, and all others within the sound of his tantrum, as he banged his special defensive six-foot steel pole against trunks, logs, and rocks but only briefly, his tender non-Gorilla hands suffering the consequences, and chose another rock to throw willfully and nihilfully - willy nilly -against the other bank, the eternal other, but it turned out to be heart-shaped so kept it for his dear Missus.
 

     So he went home and let the cats back out for a while longer, they having patiently endured their keep, till it's their time to come back in so as to allow the neighbor cats to go out and take their turn ruling the day, now that the coyote is gone.  But is it, or for how long?

     Post-PostScript:  Just so you won't worry, Tsavo and Tiger are back in now.  Someone delivering pizza and a Sunday U.S. Postal Service carrier have safely delivered their Sunday packages next door.  The neighbor cats are on patrol and are quite stealthy and themselves veterans of our day to day church.  All is well or well enough. The ersatz Gorilla selective sanctuary and cat social club seems to be holding.  So, Amen.

 

All photos are stock.  Directly above is Koko and her kitten.