Feline

To us its an innocuous house cat. But to the rabbit it's something entirely different.

Friday the thirteenth, not that it matters. I open the front door to walk to the bus stop. As I turn to lock it behind me, I notice the temperature. “September chill’s in the air,” I think, reminiscing over a lyric from a lost classic song by a great band that never quite made it. Technically, summer has nine more days, but I’d guess the thermometer would have shown something in the sixties had I cared to look. The first gentle breeze of autumn accompanied the dip in the mercury. Summer or not, the weather pattern has changed.

In August, people looked forward to these temperatures. Six weeks later, they will complain that they’re too cold. A few weeks after that, the temperature will rise again when summer teases its one final appearance of the year. People will act surprised when it does, as if this somehow doesn’t occur every year. As sure as the winds pick up and pack a bite in November, and as sure as the rains will soon begin again, it’s equally sure that nature will provide us the annual respite that we used to call Indian summer. Summer proper has left us for another year.

It takes but a few moments to form these thoughts, yet I’m at the bus stop before I finish contemplating them. It’s just a block away. Despite this urban cityscape of brick sidewalks and busses, nature still simmers beneath the surface, and finds little moments to percolate.

I reach the bus stop at the same time as a cat. Its collar labels it as domestic. It’s a petite thing, this cat. While she looks like a mature adult, she’s not the typical bloated house cat. There’s no distended belly dragging on the ground from spaying and overfeeding. Nor does she show signs of malnourishment. Rather she was likely just the runt of the litter. Her white and brown-orange coat has the dingy gray of an outside cat, but yet she shows all the outward signs of a healthy and well cared-for animal. I think I know which house claims ownership to her, and if so it’s a house with two little girls who love the cat very much even if they’re too young to know how to express their feelings in a way the cat will appreciate.

The cat sees me but pays me no attention. Instead, she ducks into a narrow yard between two houses. She stops about ten yards in, turns around, and sits. Cats find these places because they feel secure. Indoors, she would find this sanctuary curled up in a box, or next to an armrest where she’s sheltered from things behind her which she can’t see. It’s a predatory instinct. The cat can survey its territory, ambush any prey which avail themselves, and all the while feel protected. The wee beast sees me, but feels no need to alter its morning due to the presence of a mere oafish human. Should I care to disturb her, she knows she could scamper away with minimal effort.

I make silly mewing noises at the cat. Somehow, I’m rather good at this. Many cats expressed curiosity, some even alarm, when I call out to them. This one ignores me. She’s looking in my direction, yet paying me no heed. She’s looking past me. I’m early, the bus won’t arrive for several minutes, and thus the cat provides an agreeable diversion while I wait.

I continue to make the futile cat noises for a minute or so. Finally, she gets up and starts walking towards me. The cat walks next to me, on course to pass a foot or two away from my shins. When she does, I reach down and scratch her head. Even now, she barely reacts. Most house cats like this would enjoy the attention of the scratch on the head. Even if she didn’t want the petting, she would scurry away and indicate her displeasure with some sort of obvious gesture; at minimum a hostile look and sometimes even a hiss. This one stopped for a mere fraction of a second, then kept walking. She doesn’t rub against my leg – I’m not part of her territory. A couple feet later, she froze. Her front paw hung in midair. She made nary a twitch – not even her ears.

A few seconds passed and she resumed walking along the exact same path, heading into the street. My bus was due any moment, but I couldn’t hear it yet. Nor could I hear any other traffic. The cat sensed – with senses far more acute than mine – no danger from the morning road warriors. I’m sure the cat had enough awareness of its surroundings such that she would have moved if a vehicle threatened it, but she now existed without the street. She did not amble. Rather she walked a straight line. She didn’t look around; her head stayed fixed forward. When she reached the center line, she froze again. Her dingy white and orange fur made stark contrast against the bright yellow asphalt.

Then, I heard a rustling in the shrubs across the street. The cat charged. Yet she didn’t bother to accelerate to full speed. The rabbit in the bushes saw her long before she could get close enough to present an actual threat. The cat knew this and made just a passing effort at an ambush. Of course, this still presented enough of a threat to drive off the rabbit, despite the fact that it was the larger of the two creatures. In a frantic burst of energy, it hopped away down the nearest rabbit hole. The rabbit is nature’s refrigerator. If it wants to live, it can’t ignore even halfhearted measures like this one. It can’t fight, and it’s not even all that good at running away. For rabbits to survive, they must breed like, well, rabbits. It survives by producing offspring faster than predators can eat them.

The cat continued its apathetic charge across the street and onto the sidewalk, slowing down the entire time. Finally, in an indifferent trot, she found a new place to survey her territory under the protection of a grocery-getter. Here, its orange-brown haunches would blend much more naturally with the fecal colors of the minivan and shadows would mute its white foreparts. The now forgotten rabbit might have to do without breakfast, but it would live to eat dinner.

A loud, obnoxious rumble violated the scene. The bus had arrived and nudged Wild Kingdom back to the recesses of my mind, which modern man decrees as its rightful place. When I get to work, I don’t bother to share these observations with my coworkers.