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Old women talk about old things: history, myth, magic and their
checkered pasts, about what changes and what does not.

Friday, April 19, 2013

BOB as GOLLEM, or LOVE YOU, MOM!


 
 

Returned from a 4 day road trip—3 of which were mostly road. The cats missed me, but particularly Bob, because he welcomed me home in his usual over-the-top Uber feline way. Hadn’t been in the house again for more than an hour, when I heard keening outside the door. It’s “Tigger’s” wurra-wurra-wurra, deep, and, somehow, both penetrating and nasal. Nasal of necessity, because he only makes this yeowly cry when he has some pitiful victim clamped between his jaws.  Yesterday, amid the blooming daffodils and the greening yard, the red buds getting ready to burst and send the human community into a coordinated allergy attack, was the last day for a poor young bunny, probably  little more than a month old.

 I foolishly opened the door and Bob rushed in carrying it, a tiger with head held high, proudly bearing prey. The sad little head and ears dangled on one side of his mouth, the adorable baby legs on the other. I ran to catch him and he dropped it at my feet. When I gathered the body up in a napkin, it was still warm and floppy. I wanted to cry.

“Damn you, “ said I, which was not the response he was looking for, even though I didn’t really push the regret and sadness I felt into the words. After all, he’s not a kid, he’s a cat, and, in his feline way, he truly meant to say "thank-you" for my return. I placed the corpse back outside on the porch. Bob followed and lay down beside it. He stretched out, head up, like a Serengeti predator relaxing with a fresh-caught antelope. As I gave him a quick stroke, I realized that like the LOTR’s Gollem, he’d brought “master” a lovely present.  
As Peter Jackson wrote for his Gollem: “Eat them! Eat them, they are young and tender!”

~~Juliet Waldron

Come, Time Travel with me

1 comment:

  1. Juliet, I loved your Bob story. Isn't great how our cats reward us with their gifts? We once had a neighborhood stray cat that wanted us to take her in. So every night while we slept, she gathered small chunks of kindling to leave on our doorstep. We tossed the kindling on the wood stove every morning, and finally decided she should be allowed inside. She always headed straight to the wood stove where she curled up on the rug and enjoyed the fruits of her labor. Later the story was published in Cat Fancy magazine!

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