HOME | DD

Description
I have always felt a particular attraction to felines; I think perhaps the reason is in their eyes, in some underlying, otherworldly grace and mystery intangible to us, but ever present and always intriguing. I've owned cats since I was a little boy, and I have three now.

Despite all this, I had never felt actual wonder a a cat before an incident that occurred several weeks ago.

I was supposed to be in school, of course. The few rare occassions on which strange things have happened to me have always occurred while I was technically supposed to be elsewhere.

I live in a middle-sized town, the kind that is just big enuogh to hide a few surprises even from a person who's lived there all his life. And that's what I was doing at the time; looking for surprises. I'd parked my car near the antique shops downtown, leaving it looking dented and forlorn, which is it's usual state of being. I'd passed the new library, for once resisting the urge to go in - I suppose I was in the mood for the outdoors. It was a typical summer evening - and I live in Florida, where 'typical summer evening' translates into 'so humid it is possible to drink the air if you need to.' The light was beginning to fade from the sky, so that everything had begun to darken and gray a few shades in color. There was thunder somewhere, not close, but present as a gentle rumble.

I glanced into the window of one of the larger pawn shops, looking for anything interesting and finding only a few ancient lawnmowers and a rack of threadbare overcoats that might well have been plucked from the corpses of the homeless people the police are always finding in little stands of trees at the edges of town.

I chuckled faintly at that grisly thought, moving on and passing a gymnasium-esque affair in the back corner of a strip-mall; on the window in bold letters was a sign proclaming it to be a branch of some famous martial artist's school. There followed beneath the name a list of whatever credientials I assume were relevant to the instructors, in rows of Korean words that meant absolutely nothing to me. I peeked inside, watching two girls about my age incomprehensibly standing on their heads. I nearly laughed out loud, and once again I opted not to enter.

When I turned away, however, I caught a flash of something colorful in the alleyway between the strip-mall and the next building, a tailor's shop with an old fashioned apartment over the store windows. Intrigued, I moved toward it, then stopped as it flashed again. I was close enough to make out the shape now: I was staring directly into a pair of unblinking feline eyes, bright yellow and peering curiously back at me from a purely black face.

There is something in the sight of such a jet-black imp that I have always found to shake one out of mental lethargy, dragging a man toward a desultorily childish thrill of discovery. This is what I felt when my new 'acquaintance' suddenly turned tail and began to pad away from me down the alley, around the back of the tailor's. I pursued, of course, rounding the air conditioners and avoiding puddles left by the recent rain showers, led onward by the glimsed flick of the cat's black, bottlebrush tail.

My guide whisked around another corner, obviously taking care to make sure I was following; then it stopped, pausing where it stood at the foot of a flimsy-looking set of old wooden stairs that lead up to the shop-owner's door. I observed a small ceramic bowl at the edge of the top stair, and toward this my guide ascended in typical lazy feline fashion. Once there, it turned it's eyes onto me again, flicking up it's ears as if to say, "Well?"

Feeling dubious, I obliged; I climbed the stairs cautiously, as there was no railing to catch hold of were I to lose my balance. I sat down beside my companion - the bowl was filled with until-recently-canned tuna, which the cat had already begun to eat of in delicate little bites.

Slightly put-out at this anti-climax, I sat staring moodily at a small white patch between what I now knew to be the female cat's shoulderblades. This was the only marking anywhere on her, from what I could see. And in this attitude, unmoving, I sat for how long I do not remember, waiting for her to finish her dinner. I was just moving on to thoughts of what to do next, when suddenly she stood up again, arching her back in that way cats have of looking completely uninterested in anything outside of their own bodies when food is not around. Then she hopped lightly off the top stair and back down toward the bottom, glancing up at me when she arrived there with the same imperial expression that had so caught my fancy before. I, beginning to feel impatient, but amused, followed.

Back around the tailor's and away she walked, never once quickening her pace so much as to lose me; indeed, it struck me that she was glad to have a friend to lead where she liked, and I hoped that there would at least be some reward for my own pains in store.

We had only gone twenty steps or so when we came up to a pair of fences, one of which was made of solid pickets of brown wood, and had fallen over so that it looked rather like a drawbridge leading up to the metal, portcullis-like meshwork that was the second fence. The cat crossed the drawbridge, passing easily under the portcullis, and beyond it sat down to wait for me to work out how to get past this obstacle, watching me with mild curiosity.

I could not get around the fences, since on either side was a rain gutter maybe four feet deep and currently flooded; therefor, I elected to vault myself over the second fence after gaining a firm foothold on the first. I have always been a good climber, so this was the work of only a minute or so - but upon dropping down on the other side of the obstacle, I discovered that my guide had vanished into thin air.

Puzzled, I moved away from the fences, searching for, and a moment later completely forgetting about, the black cat.

Because, just a few feet to my right, beyond a lump of dense bushes, was a patriarch among cedar trees. It was crooked and gnarled, twisting rather than reaching toward the sky, with a trunk that would have taken three grown men to encircle with their arms. Hanging from it's bare limbs were a plethora of bangles, chimes and decorative bird-feeders, creating gentle, soothing noises each time the breeze picked up.

I approached, feeling a sudden awe about the place that took my breath and prompted my feet to tread as quietly as possible. It was so lovely that, as I walked the tree's circumference with my eyes fixated on it, I did not see and consequentially collided with a brick structure about my waist-height. I pulled back indignantly, looking around to see what had so uncomfortably impeded my progress, and with a gasp found myself in the house of God.

I was in a church, closed in by a Sanctuary of foliage and fencing and the back walls of shops, but it was a church nonetheless. I had run into the pulpit, which was nothing more than a well-formed stack of loose bricks with a board on it's top - this was facing what were unmistakeably pews, longer boards set ontop of smaller stacks of bricks, stretching for several yards in each direction. They were held down with all manner of things, flowerpots and even a barbell, made beautiful by how incredibly makeshift everything was. I moved as though hypnotized into the center of it, taking a seat on the middle pew and looking around me in nothing less than astonished, thoughtless wonder.

I sat for a long time, inhaling the scents of the grass and the mushrooms growing beneath each bench, listening to the wind and the wind chimes in the tree, my eyes closed and my fingers running slowly over the surface of the rough wood beneath me. Eventually my mind wandered back to the she-cat who had lead me here, and so my train of thought came around and into reality again. When I stood up, I felt as though I had slept for a week, the deep, dreamless, restful sleep one has after a long illness.

When I looked at my watch, only fourty minutes had passed.

I left that place with a gentle smile on my face, thinking perhaps I knew a little of what the Buddha had known before he died. Heading back to my car, I caught one last glimpse of the cat, sitting atop her stairs again beside her bowl, watching me frankly with eyes that were speaking most eloquently.

They said: "You're welcome."

Description
I have always felt a particular attraction to felines; I think perhaps the reason is in their eyes, in some underlying, otherworldly grace and mystery intangible to us, but ever present and always intriguing. I've owned cats since I was a little boy, and I have three now.

Despite all this, I had never felt actual wonder a a cat before an incident that occurred several weeks ago.

I was supposed to be in school, of course. The few rare occassions on which strange things have happened to me have always occurred while I was technically supposed to be elsewhere.

I live in a middle-sized town, the kind that is just big enuogh to hide a few surprises even from a person who's lived there all his life. And that's what I was doing at the time; looking for surprises. I'd parked my car near the antique shops downtown, leaving it looking dented and forlorn, which is it's usual state of being. I'd passed the new library, for once resisting the urge to go in - I suppose I was in the mood for the outdoors. It was a typical summer evening - and I live in Florida, where 'typical summer evening' translates into 'so humid it is possible to drink the air if you need to.' The light was beginning to fade from the sky, so that everything had begun to darken and gray a few shades in color. There was thunder somewhere, not close, but present as a gentle rumble.

I glanced into the window of one of the larger pawn shops, looking for anything interesting and finding only a few ancient lawnmowers and a rack of threadbare overcoats that might well have been plucked from the corpses of the homeless people the police are always finding in little stands of trees at the edges of town.

I chuckled faintly at that grisly thought, moving on and passing a gymnasium-esque affair in the back corner of a strip-mall; on the window in bold letters was a sign proclaming it to be a branch of some famous martial artist's school. There followed beneath the name a list of whatever credientials I assume were relevant to the instructors, in rows of Korean words that meant absolutely nothing to me. I peeked inside, watching two girls about my age incomprehensibly standing on their heads. I nearly laughed out loud, and once again I opted not to enter.

When I turned away, however, I caught a flash of something colorful in the alleyway between the strip-mall and the next building, a tailor's shop with an old fashioned apartment over the store windows. Intrigued, I moved toward it, then stopped as it flashed again. I was close enough to make out the shape now: I was staring directly into a pair of unblinking feline eyes, bright yellow and peering curiously back at me from a purely black face.

There is something in the sight of such a jet-black imp that I have always found to shake one out of mental lethargy, dragging a man toward a desultorily childish thrill of discovery. This is what I felt when my new 'acquaintance' suddenly turned tail and began to pad away from me down the alley, around the back of the tailor's. I pursued, of course, rounding the air conditioners and avoiding puddles left by the recent rain showers, led onward by the glimsed flick of the cat's black, bottlebrush tail.

My guide whisked around another corner, obviously taking care to make sure I was following; then it stopped, pausing where it stood at the foot of a flimsy-looking set of old wooden stairs that lead up to the shop-owner's door. I observed a small ceramic bowl at the edge of the top stair, and toward this my guide ascended in typical lazy feline fashion. Once there, it turned it's eyes onto me again, flicking up it's ears as if to say, "Well?"

Feeling dubious, I obliged; I climbed the stairs cautiously, as there was no railing to catch hold of were I to lose my balance. I sat down beside my companion - the bowl was filled with until-recently-canned tuna, which the cat had already begun to eat of in delicate little bites.

Slightly put-out at this anti-climax, I sat staring moodily at a small white patch between what I now knew to be the female cat's shoulderblades. This was the only marking anywhere on her, from what I could see. And in this attitude, unmoving, I sat for how long I do not remember, waiting for her to finish her dinner. I was just moving on to thoughts of what to do next, when suddenly she stood up again, arching her back in that way cats have of looking completely uninterested in anything outside of their own bodies when food is not around. Then she hopped lightly off the top stair and back down toward the bottom, glancing up at me when she arrived there with the same imperial expression that had so caught my fancy before. I, beginning to feel impatient, but amused, followed.

Back around the tailor's and away she walked, never once quickening her pace so much as to lose me; indeed, it struck me that she was glad to have a friend to lead where she liked, and I hoped that there would at least be some reward for my own pains in store.

We had only gone twenty steps or so when we came up to a pair of fences, one of which was made of solid pickets of brown wood, and had fallen over so that it looked rather like a drawbridge leading up to the metal, portcullis-like meshwork that was the second fence. The cat crossed the drawbridge, passing easily under the portcullis, and beyond it sat down to wait for me to work out how to get past this obstacle, watching me with mild curiosity.

I could not get around the fences, since on either side was a rain gutter maybe four feet deep and currently flooded; therefor, I elected to vault myself over the second fence after gaining a firm foothold on the first. I have always been a good climber, so this was the work of only a minute or so - but upon dropping down on the other side of the obstacle, I discovered that my guide had vanished into thin air.

Puzzled, I moved away from the fences, searching for, and a moment later completely forgetting about, the black cat.

Because, just a few feet to my right, beyond a lump of dense bushes, was a patriarch among cedar trees. It was crooked and gnarled, twisting rather than reaching toward the sky, with a trunk that would have taken three grown men to encircle with their arms. Hanging from it's bare limbs were a plethora of bangles, chimes and decorative bird-feeders, creating gentle, soothing noises each time the breeze picked up.

I approached, feeling a sudden awe about the place that took my breath and prompted my feet to tread as quietly as possible. It was so lovely that, as I walked the tree's circumference with my eyes fixated on it, I did not see and consequentially collided with a brick structure about my waist-height. I pulled back indignantly, looking around to see what had so uncomfortably impeded my progress, and with a gasp found myself in the house of God.

I was in a church, closed in by a Sanctuary of foliage and fencing and the back walls of shops, but it was a church nonetheless. I had run into the pulpit, which was nothing more than a well-formed stack of loose bricks with a board on it's top - this was facing what were unmistakeably pews, longer boards set ontop of smaller stacks of bricks, stretching for several yards in each direction. They were held down with all manner of things, flowerpots and even a barbell, made beautiful by how incredibly makeshift everything was. I moved as though hypnotized into the center of it, taking a seat on the middle pew and looking around me in nothing less than astonished, thoughtless wonder.

I sat for a long time, inhaling the scents of the grass and the mushrooms growing beneath each bench, listening to the wind and the wind chimes in the tree, my eyes closed and my fingers running slowly over the surface of the rough wood beneath me. Eventually my mind wandered back to the she-cat who had lead me here, and so my train of thought came around and into reality again. When I stood up, I felt as though I had slept for a week, the deep, dreamless, restful sleep one has after a long illness.

When I looked at my watch, only fourty minutes had passed.

I left that place with a gentle smile on my face, thinking perhaps I knew a little of what the Buddha had known before he died. Heading back to my car, I caught one last glimpse of the cat, sitting atop her stairs again beside her bowl, watching me frankly with eyes that were speaking most eloquently.

They said: "You're welcome."