Shedding the Wild

It is Tuesday and time to write a 'Slice of Life." 
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I gazed out the window while chatting on the phone with a friend, and froze mid-conversation – uh! I’ve gotta go! I’ll call you back! Sorry! – and I immediately disconnected. I was astounded at the sight. He was sitting right at the corner of our shed, not quite licking his paws, but as if this was where he belonged, as if he didn’t have a care in the world, as if his owners hadn’t spent the last week plus looking furiously for this little fellow. Oh my goodness! There’s Dear One! In our backyard!

I wrote last week about my neighbor’s cat slipping from their house during a plumbing fiasco, and the sad unease that had settled over all of us when the cat could not be found. This seems the perfect story for today’s slice: Dear One is back home, safe and sound. 

On EthicalELA’s #VerseLove on April 7, the host James suggested honing in on “a fleeting moment, [where] everything seemed glorious and wonderful and possible.” Finding the lost cat was exactly this, as if everything was back in place as it should be. I had fun writing my first Chōka poem in response to this prompt, about the cat coming back. (As explained on #VerseLove, Chōka is a Japanese style of poetry, of indefinite length, consisting of alternating lines of 5 and 7 syllables, with an extra 7-syllable line at the end.) Here is my poem:

you are home again

cold rains bruising breeze
where have you run to for warmth
days of wondering
you slipped out an open door
away from two who
love you feed you tend to you
little cat dear one
everyone’s looking for you
seven days of sad
fearful nights as foxes creep
never you, no you
what can we do but accept
your forever loss?

wait, that’s YOU in our backyard
sitting so pleased with yourself

What I did not express in that poem, however, was the wild fiasco of the chase to catch the cat. Oh my! Seriously, someone should have filmed the adventure for the sheer humor of it. 

I dropped my phone call without explanation and phoned my neighbor, who did not answer. I cautiously opened my back door, stepped out into the cold, muddy yard in my socks, called out softly to Dear One, only to send the cat running away, under our shed. I yelped “STOP!” (not an effective word for a cat, in retrospect) and ran to my neighbor’s house, who – thankfully – was out in his backyard. 

“Quick! Come! He’s in my backyard!!” 

We raced back towards the shed and got down on our bellies to look under it. Together, we tried to cajole the cat to come out from the back recesses. We tried to stretch our bodies long and wide enough around the circumference of the shed to limit the cat’s exit, both of us pleading with tsih-tsih-tsih, kitty-kitty-kitty. My neighbor raced home to collect the humane cage that he’d set up in his backyard, in hopes of catching Dear One. We searched for rocks and bricks to block some of the gaps under the shed, hoping to funnel him towards the cage. We tried to gently poke and prod Dear One, singing and cooing his name, and we offered him food, all to no avail. Dear One watched us with wide scared eyes.  

My husband returned home from an errand at this point of the chase. He’s unable to see my neighbor at the far end of the shed, and instead finds only me, crouched, talking to someone invisible. He paused. Then, he asked – “uh, is everything alright?” 

No time for small talk! Tony drops what he was doing and joins us, trying to bring Dear One back to safety. “Anxious” has been the cat’s personality since his earliest days, and this situation had him cowering and overwhelmed; he was not coming out from under that shed.  

We step back to rethink, reevaluate. I retreat for a brief moment and put on my shoes. Then, the grand (and ultimately successful?) plan: Tony and I will block the sides of the shed while our neighbor sprays a bit of water onto Dear One with the hose – gently, oh so gently. The cage is placed “at the exit.” 

Ready, set, let it flow!

In a heartbeat, Dear One surprises us, finding a new and unexpected exit from beneath the shed (makes his way out of no way) and we are all three wildly chasing him along the tight squeeze behind the shed.

(I am immediately reminded of a wayward preschooler who slipped out the school gate towards a very busy road, and it was ‘all hands on deck,’ chasing the errant fellow.)

FINALLY, my neighbor scoops him up – only to have a very frightened Dear One howl, scratch, and bite him. OUCH!! He pops the cat into the waiting cage. 

My neighbor’s eyes glistened with joy.

It feels like a small miracle, a hard-earned one, to have that cat back home.

Just today, I returned home from a walk to see Dear One cozily asleep in the front window of his home. My neighbors say that he has been so happy to be home again – purring all the time, staying close by their sides, and demanding to be petted. He has lost a good bit of his anxious aloofness, wanting their company. He has also lost a lot of weight after a week on his own, and they are spoiling him with his favorite foods. All is right with the world. 

One wonders what went on while he was ‘in the wild.’ 

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