Friday, October 5, 2007

Floating On Gravity


I’ve told you about the kitten that lives across the street. She’s not too tiny anymore, and I think she’s got a friend. Watching them play reminds me of nothing I’ve ever done. It’s like watching a hunt where no one gets killed or a dance that makes its own music out of silence.

It’s just before complete night, and the cats are bouncing all over the yard. They’re here! Poof! They’re gone. Hey, there they are! No! They went that way! Wait! Where’d they go? And then. Surprise! Here they are again.

The speeding cats blend with the fuzziness of dusk before the moonlight arrives, but you can still make them out as they tumble over each other and scatter the fallen leaves from their final sleeping place on the autumn grass. If there’s such a thing as a cat laugh, they’re doing it.

I wouldn’t know how to be a cat.

To be a decent cat, you need a certain lightness of foot and slightness of body that allows you to sit on gravity as though it were a comfy recliner or a magic carpet. Shane has some catlike qualities, even though he’s big and, well, a little clumsy sometimes. You see, it’s not just graceful anti-gravitational moves that make a cat; it’s attitude. And Shane is surrounded with a definite feline aura that demands you keep your distance until he comes to you. Or else.

Now, I know that if I were to trot across the street to play with those cats, they’d run away from me, never get to know me, or learn how much I admire the way they scratch their claws into the laws of physics.

But, if I sit here for a long time and remain very quiet, watching their every move without scaring them, someday they might come over to say hello.

And then, who knows what friendships might be born?

Best wishes, Juno

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