you don't hear meowing much around here anymore...
Remember the crazy cat lady on the Simpsons who was always throwing felines at people and yelling gibberish?
She lives two blocks from us. Let me explain.
On Sunday afternoon, Alan and I decided to take a turn around the neighborhood. A few days before this, he had seen a collarless little black cat diving into one of our Dumpsters and wondered if it might be homeless, so as we started out on our walk he said (half-seriously), "Maybe we'll see that kitty again, and we'll take it home with us." Not two minutes later, I nudged him and pointed to a parking lot across the street, where a lone black cat was sunning itself on the tarmac. At least, it looked alone.
We approached as casually as we could, being careful to avoid eye contact with the little tygre. It was a handsome cat, large and muscular, and he didn't seem to mind that we were getting close. Then, we noticed another pair of glowy eyes in the bushes nearby, at the corner of the apartment building. Rapt, we quietly circled the cats. The bush moved, and in the afternoon shadow, we noticed another feline form, this one Russian Blue.
That was when it became a lot like that scene with the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, because just when we thought we were watching them, there were twice as many circling, ready to swoop in and devour us. The longer we stood there, the more cats appeared; soon there were six little pairs of glowy pale green eyes slinking into formation, out from behind cars and sheds and Dumpsters and bushes. Most of them were black and looked like tiny panthers, with a couple grey-blues. They were all every bit as well-fed looking as the first one we saw. We backed towards an empty, wooded lot next door. Naturally, we were thrilled and terrified all at once, and couldn't stop watching.
Just when we were about to cut and run, an old, semi-toothless woman appeared around the corner and the cats ran up to her, swarming at her feet as she cooed at them and emptied a small fry pan of scrambled eggs onto the tarmac for them to scarf up. "It all started out with one!" she insisted to us. She said they had been coming around for years, and seemed utterly befuddled as to why they kept coming back.
All in all, there were seven cats hanging around her back door, and the land lady was pissed about it (I wonder why??). We chatted with the woman for a few minutes and then scooted away, our romantic notions of picking up a wee, sooty kitten from the mean streets a bit shaken.
She lives two blocks from us. Let me explain.
On Sunday afternoon, Alan and I decided to take a turn around the neighborhood. A few days before this, he had seen a collarless little black cat diving into one of our Dumpsters and wondered if it might be homeless, so as we started out on our walk he said (half-seriously), "Maybe we'll see that kitty again, and we'll take it home with us." Not two minutes later, I nudged him and pointed to a parking lot across the street, where a lone black cat was sunning itself on the tarmac. At least, it looked alone.
We approached as casually as we could, being careful to avoid eye contact with the little tygre. It was a handsome cat, large and muscular, and he didn't seem to mind that we were getting close. Then, we noticed another pair of glowy eyes in the bushes nearby, at the corner of the apartment building. Rapt, we quietly circled the cats. The bush moved, and in the afternoon shadow, we noticed another feline form, this one Russian Blue.
That was when it became a lot like that scene with the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, because just when we thought we were watching them, there were twice as many circling, ready to swoop in and devour us. The longer we stood there, the more cats appeared; soon there were six little pairs of glowy pale green eyes slinking into formation, out from behind cars and sheds and Dumpsters and bushes. Most of them were black and looked like tiny panthers, with a couple grey-blues. They were all every bit as well-fed looking as the first one we saw. We backed towards an empty, wooded lot next door. Naturally, we were thrilled and terrified all at once, and couldn't stop watching.
Just when we were about to cut and run, an old, semi-toothless woman appeared around the corner and the cats ran up to her, swarming at her feet as she cooed at them and emptied a small fry pan of scrambled eggs onto the tarmac for them to scarf up. "It all started out with one!" she insisted to us. She said they had been coming around for years, and seemed utterly befuddled as to why they kept coming back.
All in all, there were seven cats hanging around her back door, and the land lady was pissed about it (I wonder why??). We chatted with the woman for a few minutes and then scooted away, our romantic notions of picking up a wee, sooty kitten from the mean streets a bit shaken.