“Against the iceberg of
her smile,
I sailed the Titanic of
my hope.”
B. Landon
Building
Great
Sentences
Of the three, more so than even Thomas Stearns (t.s.) Eliot might have
written in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, Hannah dances to her own rhythm.
Yes, cats are the most unique of domesticates, or at least
in my life experience. They seem so
self-absorbed as to make one wonder whether they do not sense the worlds in
which they live were made expressly for them!
Hannah is a little older than me, as these things go – she 70
to my 66. It is an odd calculus used by
cat breeders, but it goes a little like this:
2 human years = 24 cat years
4 human years = 35 cat years
6 human years = 42 cat years
8 human years = 50 cat years
10 human years = 60 cat years
12 human years = 70 cat years
Next year, she will have slipped further ahead, with an ever
increasing rate of acceleration I will be unable to catch.
She is unpredictable in all but three things: eating, relieving
herself and hunting. When she is hungry,
she is an unrelenting pest. Little does
it matter to her that her plump frame is in constant need of ‘weight management.’ When it comes to her ‘personal business,’ she
is pretty personal. In spite of the
house having only two, very openly placed litter boxes, I seldom catch her ‘in
the act’ as it were. This leads to the
third…her instinct for the hunt.
The hunting ground…
A surrounding wooden fence neatly marks the backyard of our
little home in Southern California, like all of the houses in our neighborhood. While varying in height, depending on the
neighbors surrounding us on three sides, they are of sufficient to keep all of
the cats contained. They DO NOT,
however, keep away the dozens of birds that daily find their way to the bird
feeder hanging from the tree on the northwest corner of this little patch of
land, nor do they keep a broad variety of lizards from climbing on the fences
and small concrete boarder built as a barrier on a little hill behind the
house. Occasionally, a stray cat has
wandered into the yard, but if Hannah is in the area, it seldom makes the
mistake of returning.
Over the years we have lived here, one of my favorite small
entertainments has been to watch Hannah try to catch these backyard
visitors. She strikes the pose: frozen
position, laser like focus, and then slowly she moves “…step by step, inch by
inch…” with the most amazing deliberateness, she reaches into some prehistoric
instinct and stalks the creatures, quietly gliding across the lawn like a canoe
slipping through the water of a lake on a quiet summer’s morning. In fact, the primal survival display is
exciting to watch.
As she approaches her prey, I find that I cannot keep from holding my breath or keep my heart from racing. Finally, she reaches calculated position, freezes once more, giving the appearance for all the world that she has stilled her breath and stopped her heart from beating – locked…unmoving…ready. Then comes the ‘tell,’ as her tail begins a slow twitch at its very end, signaling she is ready. IT’S TIME - SHE POUNCES!!
As she approaches her prey, I find that I cannot keep from holding my breath or keep my heart from racing. Finally, she reaches calculated position, freezes once more, giving the appearance for all the world that she has stilled her breath and stopped her heart from beating – locked…unmoving…ready. Then comes the ‘tell,’ as her tail begins a slow twitch at its very end, signaling she is ready. IT’S TIME - SHE POUNCES!!
In almost every case the result is nothing, nada, an empty
net, her paradise lost yet once again.
The birds fly off, the lizard slips into a crack in the wall or over the
top of the fence and she finds herself empty handed – better said ‘…nothing in
her paw…’
The thing is, it doesn’t seem to bother her one bit. As soon as it is clear her grasp has found
nothing but air, she pauses for a moment with a bit of a confused look on her
face – yes she does have facial expressions after a manner – seeming almost to
shrug her shoulders and saunters back to where she began the hunt. Failure for her is nothing more than a small
way station on the road to success. The
next time the opportunity arises she goes at it with the same enthusiasm and
focus.
Entertainment alone…
The reason I enjoy this ‘dance’ so much is that she is
really not a very good hunter. While she
has good agility for her age, she is not as quick as she was in her earlier
years. Had we lived in this environment
during her youth, I have little doubt our back door would have been littered
with feathers and lizard carcasses brought to us as presents, after having
played unmercifully with them. Now? She goes at it, but with the rare exception
of a small lizard (we hasten to release unharmed), these events are simply good
theater.
That would be until this past week.
When we first came here, we would not let the cats out without supervision. As time passed, and it was clear they could not escape and not successfully hunt, we began letting them out on their own to play, or lie in the sun – something they seem to really enjoy – and try to hunt. In fact, by now the birds, which used to fly away when Hannah got within 10 feet, simply ignore her until the last minute, before taking flight.
When we first came here, we would not let the cats out without supervision. As time passed, and it was clear they could not escape and not successfully hunt, we began letting them out on their own to play, or lie in the sun – something they seem to really enjoy – and try to hunt. In fact, by now the birds, which used to fly away when Hannah got within 10 feet, simply ignore her until the last minute, before taking flight.
By 4 O’clock in the afternoon, I have typically been up in
the neighborhood of 11 hours, maybe a little more. It is not uncommon for me to take a break to
sit on the couch, extending that break into a comfortable 20 to 30 minute nap. You know, to prepare me for a totally
non-productive evening to follow.
Hannah was out, I was ‘resting,’ only to be startled awake to
the sound of her banging away at the base of the TV stand on the other side of
the room. She was walking around the
cabinet, focused at the small gap between its bottom and the floor. In the haze of returning to consciousness, I
thought she knocked one of her toys out of reach and was trying to get to it.
More than met the eye…
Molly came in the room, saw Hannah’s behavior, smiled and
then…and then saw the feathers on the floor!!
Apparently what was under the TV cabinet was NOT a toy, but a bird. Had it been hurt? Was it dead?
When Hannah’s name was called, she briefly looked my way with an
expression I can only describe as, “HEY YOU, stay out of this! I brought this thing in the house and it’s
mine!”
That didn’t last long as I chased her into the bedroom, shut
the door and returned to the living room.
By now, Molly was on the floor with a flashlight probing the darkness
under the TV, when she saw the reflection of two quivering eyes of a small
bird. She gave me the flashlight, and
sure enough Hannah had actually caught a small bird, brought it in the house to
show us the fruit of her labor and let it get away from her.
Not knowing its condition, and because I could not reach it,
I took a broomstick and gently touched it from behind. At once, it slipped out from under the
cabinet, flew across the room and hid behind a chair. Good!
It was not badly injured. Next,
we opened the sliding door to the back of the house and I slipped around behind the
little creature. She took one look at me
and was airborne again, but this time out the door into the California
sunshine, and what appeared to be points west!
The afterglow…
A little later, when Hannah was released from her
confinement, she returned to the cabinet and spent the next 20 minutes or so
peeking under the piece of furniture.
Eventually she gave up, wandered over to her food bowl and began asking
for her dinner.
In the end the little bird escaped, and we were grateful it
did so without apparent harm. But Hanna? For the next few days, she seemed to have a
little more bounce in her step, a little sharper flick of her tail, a bit of a
brighter sparkle in her eye. She seemed
to say, in her own way, “Look pal, I may be in my seventies and am not always
successful, but let there be no mistake mister, I STILL HAVE IT!”
And so she does…
- ted
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