Bijou lay in the middle of the living room, exercising the principle of center control as a chess player would. Her humans sat on the couch in front of her. They exchanged occasional words, but the cat did not recognize any of them, nor were they in tones that attracted her attention. She stretched her legs out a bit more for comfort and to take up more space.
“Okay, let’s just see what happens,” the male human, Seamus, said. The female human, Ruri, sighed.
“Pumpkin! Pumpkin! Come here, kitty, kitty, kitty. Pumpkin!”
As twilight approached, Karen zipped up her jacket against the chilly wind and searched for her cat. He had managed to slip past her as she gave a candy bar to an early trick-or-treater.
Karen pulled the flashlight from her jacket pocket and used it to search the places where evening’s shadow had already fallen. When she reached the end of the block, she aimed the light at the porch of the long-empty house just in time to see Pumpkin enter through a broken window. She huffed and trotted up the sidewalk.
It was an early ranch-style house and wouldn’t have required much work to make it look nice again. But silly rumors about odd noises and spooky sights combined with the horrible economy to keep the “For Sale” sign permanently at curbside.
Karen was surprised that the real estate company hadn’t put a lock box on the door. The doorknob turned easily and she went inside.
“Pumpkin?” She walked in, shining the light around the floor. “Kitty, kitty, kitty?”
She turned to look down a hallway. There was Pumpkin, placidly considering the ghost at the far end.
in the street
small wide-eyed cat
sees nothing
after the hairball
combing kittens worth of fur
off my shedding cat
power outage –
cat inspects
oil lamp
Margaret busied herself with her knitting. When the dark green sweater was finished, she would send it, along with some other homemade treats, to Paul Jr. He could wear the sweater under his army uniform and be just a little warmer while he strove to make everyone safer.
At the rap of the door knocker, Coral, the family’s cat, leaped off the couch and trotted into another room. Margaret set her knitting aside.
She picked it up again hours later, long after the army men and then the Rev. Hauser had gone. She had done her work so well, but it had been fated to be wasted.
She took up her scissors and snipped the yarn close to the sweater. The ball dropped to the floor, and as she went toward her bedroom she kicked the yarn out of her way. She folded tissue paper around the unfinished sweater and packed it away in a shirt box.
The young man had been gone for months; he was out of Coral’s thoughts unless she walked past his bedroom and caught his scent. All she knew was that she had a new toy, and she played with it all night.
midnight storm —
cat uses shoe
as a pillow
office sounds —
computer whirrs
cat purrs
Leaning once again on the cat side of catsignal, another big holiday is coming right up. While fireworks and big gatherings can be fun for humans, it’s another story entirely for our companion animals.
As they so often do, the good folks at the Humane Society of the United States have placed the common sense of the subject in terms so plain and firm that all I need to do is link to it and you can read there how to keep your pets safe and happy this Independence Day weekend. Go for it.
Posted in Catsignal content
Tagged 4th of July, cat, dog, holiday, Independence Day, pets, safety
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Copyright © 2008-2011 Bryon Cannon.
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