The View From Here

Our neighhour two doors down has a large cinder-block shed at the end of his garden, spanning its width. A grey plastic gutter runs across the front, just under the lip of the roof, feeding into a matching plastic cylinder-like channel on the left hand side, which drops down at a right angle into a wide-mouthed blue plastic or fibreglass barrel.

On a ledge beside the barrel, jutting out from the side wall of the shed, sits Milo, one of our four feral cats, investigating this barrel, perhaps testing for quality, before lapping up his fill from the stream of rainwater that trickles down. He stops, every few moments, his stare darting around, on guard for intruders on his territory. For pesky humans.

And now he’s seen me. He sits large, bold and upright, a formal posture, on the adjacent shed; that of our next door neighbour. His black coat and white chest like a natural tuxedo. His serious green eyes intent, piercing through me. How he can spot me here, behind my computer and partially obscured by a pull-down blind I cannot explain. Cats do have better eyesight than we do.

And look now, he’s joined by two other members of his family. Magic, the matriarch, surveying the area, quenching her own thirst from the water barrel, her coat of velvet black as coal glistening even in the dull dreary light of this midwinter’s day. And sister Mags, streaks of brownns both dark and light sneaking across the patchy lawn of the nearer garden, leaping suddenly to surprise her surly brother, pawing at him playfully before bounding away to the refuge of the futhermost corner of the larger shed where she sits, curled up tight, watching.

Of course no family gathering would be complete without Matilda, the most curious, most adventurous of the bunch despite being the most petite. She stretches her delicate frame gracefully, like the most fragile ballet dancer, and greets her mother, her sister and brother (those two, almost twins despite the size difference) before vanishing just as quickly as she appeared, behind Maggie and the far wall of the large cinder-block shed.

Now the rest have disappeared. Perhaps to survey other quarters of their small kingdom, here in the middle of suburbia. Or perhaps they’re just out of my vision, at the patio below my bedroom window, awaiting their evening meal.

Fri 10 Jan 2003 at 17:08   ·