May 09 2009
Supper Surprises
I was making dinner, and I heard someone calling what sounded like my name, louder and louder. You know how it is: one minute you’re peeling garlic* and the next minute some guy’s going all Marlon Brandon on your ass. I dropped my pungent peeling and went out on the porch to investigate.
The girls were all agog as a young man chased his red pit bull into the backyard. “Excuse me, miss”, he gasped as he ran past the porch, calling his dog again. Her name turned out to be Sadie, not Suzy, and as he walked past me with her, I said how beautiful she was. “She sure is!” he laughed, relieved to have her safe again.
I went back to my interrupted dinner preparations, smiling and thinking how a dog can make your whole day by just being, when I heard June making her unmistakable “Look at me, I caught something” noises. Though the inconveniences of my tiny residence are many, mice aren’t among them, so what June usually “catches” are her toys and sometimes a stray moth, so I figured it was nothing to stop zesting lemons over.
When I heard something clunk on the floor, I looked over and saw June standing victoriously over an avocado. I had put it in the sun on the porch to ripen, or at least soften up, and June had seen it, gone after it, and then brought her kill to show me. It’s so funny how wild instincts are still alive and well in house cats, no matter how tame their existence.
*I often wonder how many hours, or possibly days, of my life have been spent peeling garlic. Maybe it’s better not to know.