The outer wall has been rebuilt. The plasterer comes next. The main door’s been repaired and re-hung, and boasts new hardware. The ruined handmade screen door’s still waiting for attention. Local artisans at Ace Welding have carefully repaired my antique iron fence; Les has reset it into the front garden.
Progress!
But I live down in Saginaw much of the time. There’s still plenty to do at our little farmhouse while Sunnybank is recovering.
I decided to ‘bottom’ our 8 x 5 mudroom. (The English call cleaning a room from top to bottom ‘bottoming.’) This job would be an archeological dig, for sure.
I unearthed legions of dead boots, tiny mittens and dog-chewed hats, moth-eaten picnic blankets, old records albums, collected duck feathers and pinecones, coats we’d forgotten about, far too many hangars- till the place was stripped. I hoovered away two decades of insects, cobwebs and dust, damp-mopped the floor, and then had a think.
Here was a narrow, rarely used little room with a small, high, six-sided window, which offers all but the vertically challenged a nice country view.
We made it our exercise room.
In went our ancient treadmill. A monitor, CD player and some earphones (to keep the machine’s noise down) allow us to enjoy old movies, documentaries, etc., while trotting along.
***
Now comes the ‘meat and potatoes’ part. I call it-
Cat-astrophe! (from a feline’s point of view)
Cats are the ultimate narcissists: they spend a lot of time on personal grooming.
A dog’s idea of personal grooming is to roll on a dead fish. James Gorman
It’s early evening in Saginaw. I’m shocked, and more than a little unnerved, having just witnessed a quick-as-lightning drama.
Earlier, I’d dragged a big black sack half-full of discarded clothes and hole-y, frayed towels outside onto the backyard deck. I hadn’t tied it closed; more stuff would go in there. Now, gazing outside, I noticed Brer Fox, a frequent visitor to our three-acre property, watching it from about two feet away, with intense concentration.
And no wonder! That sack was alive with motion!
What happened next occurred at warp speed.
The black plastic writhed. I saw a cat’s arched back rise up for just a blink from the baggy depths, in pounce-posture! There was a horrified squeak. An unlucky, desperate mouse bounced out of that bag as though on springs, landed on the deck still alive- and was instantly snatched- and swallowed whole- by the incredulous, delighted fox.
The sight was stunning.
A millisecond later the furious cat shot out of the bag, landed where the mouse had touched down before being vacuumed up, and found himself facing the fox. Both were massively startled. Cat, fur stiff with rage and humiliation, held his ground and snarled. His tail looked electrified.
Brer Fox, mouse-replete and unrepentant, trotted off with a satisfied smirk.
His dinner had disappeared; Monsieur Feline knew exactly where. Acute disappointment expressed itself as an angry yowl- but suddenly, he noticed me. Nonchalant indifference fell over Sir Cat like a mantle. Paws were cleaned and whiskers preened just so. Dignity and composure restored, he ambled off.
(Mouse? What mouse? It never happened.)
But his flat ears and lashing tail betrayed the lie.
I stood there, wistfully reflective about wee Mousie, who, to paraphrase Petronius, had abruptly ‘gone over to the majority…’
A weaker paw, a slower jaw, a chance to live, for that mouse-in-maw... Ah, well.
Captain Hook died because he wiped with the wrong hand…This incident was another demonstration of just how tenuous life can be. A moment’s inattention- and foxes- can stop time forever, in the blink of an eye.
This will take some time to digest.
(Did I really mean to say that?)