Fiction: Unraveled
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.
haiku 117
midnight storm —
cat uses shoe
as a pillow
haiku 75
office sounds —
computer whirrs
cat purrs
Protect Your Pets from 4th of July Dangers
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.
haiku 34
so near the curb
at the hospital
little black cat
Fiction: Beevey
Beevey woke up. Large, dark eyes opened in a thickly furred head. Something had changed, Beevey – short for Black Velvet – knew.
The cat listened for a moment. Both the adult humans were still asleep. So he unfolded himself from the closet floor and set off into the dark to peruse the rest of the upstairs.
Beevey padded down the hall to the baby’s room. With the aid of a soft night light, he hopped up on a chest of drawers and looked down into the crib. The little girl was also asleep. Of course, had that changed, there would have been lots of noise and one of the adults would have gotten up.
Fiction: Appeasing the Appetite
The mouse’s eyes darted around. He had been maneuvered into a corner and there was no way out. He looked up and up again. There towered a great gray cat with evil and hunger in its eyes.
“Oh, please, please, Mr. Cat! Please don’t kill and eat me!”
The cat was amused. “Whyever not? I am hungry and you are food. This has been the way of things since our kind first shared the earth.”
“Please! I … I could pay. I could get something for you that you wanted,” the mouse pleaded.
“You are what I want,” the cat replied reasonably, and he lifted his right forepaw for the coup de grâce.
Fiction: Papal Bull
Not recently, Carmine, a white and tan cat, woke especially early and spent the morning in prayer, punctuated by the occasional quick glance at where his tail should have been.
When he felt as prepared for his journey as any cat has ever felt, he slipped away from the barnyard and wandered down the dirt road toward the port.
NEKWE
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