Frogs and Ravens

Cross-Species Play

The cat and I have developed a game.  Most of the time when I play with the cat, it is me taking advantage of her instincts to provide entertainment.  I trail a feather along the back of the chair, roll acorns at her feet, toss milk bottle rings in the air for her to catch. 

This game is one that she helped invent.  It is a game with rules, designed for two players taking turns.  It is fascinating to me that such a thing can exist, between two such different creatures, one a tall bipedal primate with lousy stalking skills and the other a small black feline who is not always very bright, even by cat standards.

The game is a combination of tag and hide and go seek.  One person hides behind the edge of something - a door, a wall, a piece of furniture.  The other slowly sneaks up.  Both players are hoping to catch the other one unawares; the hider by peeking out while the sneaker is still mid-sneak, the sneaker by surprising the hider first. 

Usually she is the one who hides, and I'm the one who "sneaks," poorly, in squeaky clogs over creaky wooden floors, my big two-footed self ill-suited to quiet dashes.  I'm almost always caught. 

Sometimes, I'm the one who hides, peering around the edge of the door in an enticing manner until she begins her creeping attack.  Last night I was hiding behind the bathroom door, and she kept creeping, and running away, and creeping back.  I had been looking around the edge of the door at head-height, and she was beginning to catch on, watching that spot before I'd even poked my head out.  So - a new strategy.  I hunkered down, and looked around the edge below the doorknob. 

I surprised her, but she had quick reflexes and leaped at my head, feet and toes spread wide.  Yikes!

I decided to go back to peeking out above the doorknob.

She leaps four feet into the air!

I startle!

I think she won that round.

Quiet Season

Life these days is measured in small, subtle increments, and it doesn't seem to offer enough substance for writing. Only little drips and drops fall onto the page, instead of fluid outpourings.

The weather is quiet and overcast. The birds are few and repetitive. The routine of our days is, well, routine, centered around the needs of the cat, our bellies, teaching, and the yearning for sleep and idle moments of television.

I spent today thinking about my shoes. They are a pair of navy blue pumps from Aerosoles, with a low heel and a "kiltie" decoration across the toe. I admire the way they look on my feet, the loveliness of the blue, the contrast of the fringe and brass studs. My feet complain about their rigidity along the heel-line, and the pressure they exert on the sides of the toes (they are still new, this being their first real wearing). Walking to and from campus, I shed them in favor of my patent-fake-leather Birks; at home I shift into my house shoes, a well-loved pair of flip-flops with woven tatami soles. I live in dread of their wearing out; I have yet to find another pair with the same sort of sole.

One evening I found myself with ink-black fingers and lines of darkness under my nails, throwing ink-soaked paper towels repeatedly into the garbage. I was clever enough to put a plastic bag under the inkpot when I hunkered down to doodle in my sketchbook; I was not clever enough to anticipate that the cat, seeing me on the floor occupied with something other than her, would try to lie down on the inkpot. I am grateful that the cat did not get in the ink. I am regretful that our new rug is now marred by a spot that looks like an out-of-place shadow that never moves.

I have been cramming information about French and Spanish frontier activities into my head, fodder for this week's lectures. I am both glad that the lectures are so short, so I can do this in haste, and sorrowful that the class is too busy for a leisurely exploration of these stories. At least I am not teaching one of those thousand-years-in-15-weeks courses.

I tried cooking some black-eyed peas the other night. The pods were so lovely - long and green with purple stripes - and the peas themselves intriguing little nuggets of pale green with dark spots and a coating of green-white pith. I pan-cooked them in oil with a bit of butter and garlic, and some water to steam them. Alas, the theory was better than the practice; they remained chewy and challenging to eat.

I went to the ceramics studio last week, riding my bicycle there for the first time. The hills in town are much more daunting than they look from the car or on foot. I carved and smoothed the pinch pot and lumpy cat sculpture of last week, and began a small container out of slabs. I've given up going in there with any deliberate projects in mind; instead, I seem to be working my way through all of the skills that have grown rusty with disuse, recapitulating the process of being a new student.

When I have quiet moments, and when my hands are not tired from writing paper comments and lecture notes, I work on a moss-stitch cardigan. The yarn is a deep blue called "Blue Ink" and although the progress is slow, it is satisfying. One little bump at a time, the sweater grows.

I have little moments to write about, but I can't seem to make them add up into anything larger. It's like my life, as I think about it.

Little Cat Feet, My A**

Anyone who talks about cats being light on their feet has never heard b on our wooden stairs. She has three modes of navigating them. Only one, the slow creep, comes close, but her pedal silence is negated by her plaintive, demanding yowls.

Usually, she surges up the stairs in a rush, muscular little legs churning beneath her while her head and torso race smoothly towards me. It is simultaneously amusing, endearing, and alarming. I've never seen her do this from below; she walks with me when I go down the stairs. Her running descents I've witnessed only from above, her little form rippling down the stairs, each foot hitting one step in turn, frantic motion and swift gliding serenity both, often with a skid at the bottom.

Her other primary mode is bounding up and down. Here she hits each riser with two feet at once, bobbing and bouncing like a feline cross between a rabbit and one of those plastic rocking horses on springs. The sound that accompanies this action is an entertaining cacophony of hollow thuds: boomp-bomp-boomp-bomp-boomp-bomp... When she does this, I know she's full of energy and wants to play. If I wish to sleep without the refrain of cat wails beyond the door, I know that I must first wave the peacock feather above her head, up and down, like a servant waving a fan above a maharaja's spoiled daugher.

The daughter probably makes less noise, however!

Nighttime Crazies

b - which is how I've decided to call the little black cat here - has developed a nighttime routine in which she, simply put, goes absolutely farkin' nuts. She spends about a half an hour to an hour with her eyes completely dilated, her brow furrowed, and her ears out to the sides, attacking prey and foes real and imaginary.

There's the soft catnip-filled mouse that she holds and kicks furiously (she did this with a pink Hot Cat "sausage" but it has disappeared somewhere - I'm hoping it didn't go down the ash grate in the fireplace). Another soft mouse, this one of suede with a long knotted tail, is for leaping wildly into the air in response to its being tossed and for dragging around by the tail. A furry ball and a bunch of tiny mice are good for batting under the furniture. Other mice with crinkly ears are perfect for batting and chewing.

And that's just the official toys. b has added to her repertoire rug surfing and rug wrestling, attacking an empty tissue box and scooting it about the room, and clawing and climbing into and scratching and biting a basket that used to collect newspapers for recycling. When these things get old, she'll dash madly about the house, ears all askew, paws thumping on the stairs, skidding as she rounds the corners (she has yet to get the hang of the wooden floors).

It's hilarious to watch - I egg her on by tossing mice at her, rolling balls, and stuffing the tissue box full of prey, while hiss-whistling through my teeth - tssss tssss tssss! The craziness has the added benefit of wearing her out so she won't sit outside the bedroom and yell when we're trying to sleep.

And to think that I was worried, when she was a visiting stray, by her apparent inability to play.

The Kitty Daddy

The little black cat is getting spayed this Friday, which can't come too quickly for me. Her "boyfriend", a large fluffy orange and white cat, has been hanging around enough that I'm starting to feel like the proverbial roommate whose housemate has an annoying boyfriend who is always staying over being a nuisance. He yodels and chirps endlessly at her, even when she's curled up, trying to sleep. He eats her food. He pees on the furniture. He keeps looking at me with wide eyes, amazed again and again that I'm not fond of him and keep running him off the porch. She mostly ignores him, but sometimes she sets up wailing, calling him to come get some food. Today she nabbed a wren right off the railing right before my eyes, and yowled repeatedly around her mouthful of prey until he showed up; they then disappeared into the bushes to eat it.

If the spaying doesn't do the trick, moving surely will!

LoCat

Cat Magnet

What is it with me? First there was TNC cruising in and out of my apartment every day. Now another of my neighbor's cats (different neighbor) is sitting outside my screen door, wailing at me in a horrible hoarse voice. I'd be flattered, if it weren't so gol-durned annoying!

Laptop

Kitties!

A great link from Kibitzing Shiksa:  Shop Cats.  It has pictures and bios of "working" cats from around the country.  (It also has the right attitude, offering links that say "Take me to the kitties!" and "Skip the formalities and go straight to the kitties!")

*falls over from the cuteness*

Must Be Friday

Doesn't this just make you want to be a cat?