On Feral Kittens, Both Real And Imagined
Originally published at Elizabeth Genco. You can comment here or there.
One of my favorite quotes comes from speculative fiction Grand Doyenne Ursula Le Guin and can be found in a wonderful book called How To Become A Famous Writer Before You’re Dead by Ariel Gore:
“Where do I go to write a story? I don’t. I just sit here, waiting and waiting and waiting til the story begins to come to me. Then I sit very, very, very still and try not to scare it off. If I grab at it, it might run under the sofa and hide, or escape entirely. Stories are like feral kittens. You have to be very patient and careful and quiet and put out little bits of chicken on the floor.”
If you’ve hung around me for any length of time (reading this blog counts) and we’ve talked about story (ditto), you’ve undoubtedly heard me use the feral kitten metaphor at least once - it’s one of my favorites.
Well, yesterday, while on a “thinking walk” (or “writing walk,” depending on my mood) in Prospect Park, I saw a real feral kitten.
Truth be told, she probably wasn’t feral - not completely. Yet. More like just abandoned. But she was TINY. I’m no kitten expert, but from her size, I’d say she couldn’t have been more than 6 weeks old. And she looked at me with a kind of quiet resignation that contained either the will to survive, or a will that had given up. (I couldn’t tell which.)
Of course, I wanted to catch her.
We started with the stare down, which quickly grew boring for both of us. Not having any chicken, I held out my hand and made those annoying clucking sounds, which all animals know really means, “Come here, so I can have my way with you.”
She wasn’t having any of it. She sat comfortably on a log about 10 feet away, a barrier of green bush and brush between us, staring blankly (with a side of victory).
After another stare down (in which my mind turns this feral-kitten-catching thing into a test, like the kind given by researchers who have something to prove, and frantically searches for answers) I decide that there are only two possibilities. Either she runs deeper into the woods or I can maneuver her into running out onto the asphalt footpath, where I might have a fighting chance.
5 minutes later, she is gone, and I am calling Leland to tell him that I have ruined a perfectly good pair of yoga pants.
Maybe I’ll bring chicken next time. Or maybe not. Perhaps feral kittens choose us, in that divinely inspired way, not the other way around.
I think stories are kind of like that.
Picture is from The Cat Connection - i.e., NOT the feral kitten I saw (I didn’t have my camera with me).