Three in the morning is good writing weather. Sleep evades me, the room is flooded with moonlight, and Aqaba Thomas, the Cat Unexpected, is sitting on the window sill, silhouetted in the silver light, as still as a shadow. Fifty meters from where he’s sitting right now, he was attacked by an animal in the woods, nearly killed, and Aqaba may or may not be thinking about this right now. It was a full moon the night he was attacked, and I wonder if the moon triggers memories of that morning.
I drift towards sleep, not quite there, not awake, and listen to Wrex snoring. The night is silent except for this sound, and a moment later, sleep flirting with me now, Aqaba jumps up on the bed, purring loudly, and I pet his head, finger and thumb on the side of his face then brushing back as he pushes forward. I do this until he starts to slobber, and now I have a cat sleeping beside me, a warm spot near my ribs, and I can feel the purr.
At no point in time during the twenty plus years that I’ve lived here did I think a cat could survive living in my house. Abbi Gale the Cat from Hell came with me, and disappeared. Wakita, a stray who wandered up tried to survive Sam, Sam, The Happy Hound, but he, too, went missing. Sam wasn’t interested in sharing space, or a yard, or a planet, with a small mammal. Sam treed the neighbor’s cat, Climber, and would have waited at the base of the tree until one of them died of starvation. I intervened but Climber stayed in the tree for another hour. Cats know which dogs mean it.
So twenty years passed without a cat here. I found a dead cat in the woods when Sam was still here, buried the body outside the fence, and never spoke a word of it to anyone. My neighbor’s never asked, and I assume they realize that small mammals in the woods are living on borrowed time. Climber disappeared one night, and I still miss him. Climber was the cat who was in the well house with me when I took the pressure switch off and water sprayed out everywhere. He never quite trusted me after that because it was cold that morning.
An orange cat appeared in the front yard a decade ago, and was gone the next day. That made me miss having a cat all over again. Cats are different forms of energy than dogs, just like a female dog is a different form of energy than a male dog. It’s like sharing time with a woman over sharing time with a man. Even if you’re just hanging out with the woman, and physical intimacy isn’t an option, the energy they bring to the room is different. I’ve been tree cutting with two different guys in the last week, and miss the woman I once sawed with, many years ago.
Aqaba stops purring and sleeps now. I’m going to get up and write, but sleep ambushes me, and when I awake it’s past five. Wrex thumps his tail once or twice, waits for an invitation or some sign I’m awake, then joins me, laying down so as to miss pushing the cat. Wrex is like that. He has manners and won’t invade personal space. He gets belly rubs before we get up. It’s his ritual.
Breakfast for everyone, even me, and then writing. One meter southwest of where I sit, and one meter up, a cat sleeps in his tree. Aqaba is a good Muse, and he knows it. He guards the words as I write them, never bats them around, even though he would like to, and needs to, sometimes, and he sleeps through the sound of the keys tapping. The moon has set, the morning dark until the sun rises in another hour or so, but Aqaba cares not at all. He’s home. He’s safe. And he knows it.
Take Care,
Mike
The Hickory Head Hermit 