March 4, 2016
Dear Everyone:
I bought the place I’m currently living in just over seven years ago.
Has it really been that long?
I’m not exactly sure when I put the first
bird feeder out
on my patio. Less than seven
years, at least. In any
case, I’ve had a lot of cats come to visit me since then.
Seems they’re attracted to wild birds.
There was a big, grey cat that I dubbed “Fuzzy Britches.”
Sometime later I found out that his “owner” called him
“Scissors”, probably because of that habit that he had of walking back
and forth between a person’s legs as he went along.
Then there was a quite lovely long-haired
tortoiseshell.
She was particularly fond of chasing squirrels up the nearby
tree. The squirrels always
won, of course, because they could go into higher branches than she
could and jump from one tree to another in a kind of aerial “highway
interchange”. It didn’t stop
her from trying. On the plus
side, she also knew how to get down out of the tree without intervening
help from any humans.
More recently, a short-haired
calico has shown
up. Originally she wore a
collar with a tag that read, “PJ”.
The cat was wearing a pink-and-purple harness, of the sort that
you might put on a small dog.
I knew it was a harness because it had a loop on the back to hook
a leash through. And it was
made out of some kind of elastic fabric that stretched around her body,
with spaces for her forelegs.
From that I surmised that her “owner” was an eight-year-old girl
who had a fondness for playing “dress up” as if the cat were a doll.
Every time I saw this cat she was wearing the same harness.
For weeks.
Imagine, if you will, that someone made you wear a
girdle
and wouldn’t let you take it off for a month or two.
Think you’d be happy?
I was pretty sure the cat wasn’t happy about it.
Over time, the edging became frayed.
Then, one day, she happened to come by on a day when I was
filling the bird feeders.
This meant that I just happened to have a pair of scissors, used to cut
open plastic bags of seed, on hand.
“PJ” jumped up on the cart, the better for me to pet her and,
purely by accident, of course, the scissors went “snip!” and the hated
harness slipped off. And
into the waste basket, under piles of empty seed shells in a matter of
seconds.
Whew! “PJ” was much happier,
judging by the volume of her purr.
A few days later, she showed up again, this time wearing a
skull-and-crossbones elastic harness, complete with pink tutu, and a new
collar and name tag. This
one read, “JP”. So maybe I
read the first tag incorrectly, or maybe “PJ’s” owner decided to change
her name. Certainly “JP’s”
owner didn’t show much more sense where cats are concerned.
The second harness did not last nearly as long as the first one.
In time, the harnesses stopped and the collar and name tag were left
behind somewhere. I figured
“JP’s” little owner’s parents finally put their foot down.
But then someone in the neighborhood told me that the real owner
was a grown woman in Building 7, who had three other cats, all of which
she claimed had been “fixed”.
If so, it doesn’t look like JP’s operation went very well.
Not judging by the way her belly hangs down and “sloshes” back
and forth as she walks around the neighborhood.
Even one of “Mannie’s Minions”, the guys who do all the
maintenance construction work around here, told me, in his opinion, JP
was “enceinte”.
(That’s Spanish for “JP’s going to have puppies”.)
Everyone in the neighborhood knows JP.
And why does JP keep coming around my place all the time?
Could be fond memories of my help with the harness.
More likely, it’s because of the unending supply of tasty little
birdies. I know she’s caught
and eaten at least three of them.
She can jump quite as high as the feeders, even in her current
delicate condition.
It’s all a part of “The
Circle of Life”.
Love, as always,
Pete
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