spent about 3 hours yesterday stapling "lost cat" fliers all around town, came home, & of course the lost cat in question was sitting on the front porch, altho she bolted as soon as I approached.
at least I know she's still alive.
near as I can tell, she's been living in the weed-infested lot at the back of my house, among the charred & twisted remains of the garage that neighborhood kids burned to the ground playing with matches last year.
I flushed her out a couple of times, & the last time she ran around to the front while I was still in back & evaporated--she might've run inside & hidden again--I just don't know.
on the assumption that she's still out back, I put out some food in the front & the back, & some tuna (the solid white kind, which is all I had in the house, which I was kinda saving for myself, but whatever) by the access panel to underneathe the house, & sat out front to keep an eye out for her, with a foray out back every half hour or so.
it's probably just my imagination, but it seemed the entire time the other cats were sort of on guard duty, securing the perimeter to keep the new cat out of the house: one posted at the gap between the neighbors fence & my house on one side, one by the propane tank on the other side of the house, & one in the doorway--they switched positions every so often, but there was always a cat in each position.
I remember reading an essay a while back by, I think, Aldous Huxley, where he comments on a statement by DH Lawrence to the effect that the study of "primitive" peoples is useful to a novelist, or any student of psychology & the vagaries of human interaction, because it's like looking at "civilization with the lid off". Huxley (if it was Huxley) wrote that it's not really neccesary to go to the South Seas or darkest Africa to learn about humanity stripped down to the essentials--the raw self-interest, cooperation, casual cruelty, manipulation, sexual politics, what-have-you--just observe cats for a few days.
be that as it may, in a week I'm driving halfway across the country & I want to make sure things are relatively stable on the home front before I do that.
why can't they be more like dogs? dogs are EASY. dogs are tic-tac-toe.
cats are chess.
at least I know she's still alive.
near as I can tell, she's been living in the weed-infested lot at the back of my house, among the charred & twisted remains of the garage that neighborhood kids burned to the ground playing with matches last year.
I flushed her out a couple of times, & the last time she ran around to the front while I was still in back & evaporated--she might've run inside & hidden again--I just don't know.
on the assumption that she's still out back, I put out some food in the front & the back, & some tuna (the solid white kind, which is all I had in the house, which I was kinda saving for myself, but whatever) by the access panel to underneathe the house, & sat out front to keep an eye out for her, with a foray out back every half hour or so.
it's probably just my imagination, but it seemed the entire time the other cats were sort of on guard duty, securing the perimeter to keep the new cat out of the house: one posted at the gap between the neighbors fence & my house on one side, one by the propane tank on the other side of the house, & one in the doorway--they switched positions every so often, but there was always a cat in each position.
I remember reading an essay a while back by, I think, Aldous Huxley, where he comments on a statement by DH Lawrence to the effect that the study of "primitive" peoples is useful to a novelist, or any student of psychology & the vagaries of human interaction, because it's like looking at "civilization with the lid off". Huxley (if it was Huxley) wrote that it's not really neccesary to go to the South Seas or darkest Africa to learn about humanity stripped down to the essentials--the raw self-interest, cooperation, casual cruelty, manipulation, sexual politics, what-have-you--just observe cats for a few days.
be that as it may, in a week I'm driving halfway across the country & I want to make sure things are relatively stable on the home front before I do that.
why can't they be more like dogs? dogs are EASY. dogs are tic-tac-toe.
cats are chess.