I don’t know if I have a gift or I’m an idiot savant or I’m Rico Suave or what the deal is. But last night, after dinner, which was a fattening hamburger because that’s what Hello Fresh sent me and I am powerless, after that, I took a walk.
Pretty much every time I take a walk in my neighborhood, something interesting happens. In this case, I thought it would be the cool car parked behind the Masonic hall.

“Ooo,” I said, and wondered where Gramma’s Eastern Star ring was. (I know where it is. I just meant it made me think of her mysterious Eastern Star activities. Eastern Star is like girl Masons. It’s the sexy Bugs Bunny of the Masons.)
But see how just beyond the car is another parking lot? That goes to a church, of course, because every freaking thing here is a church. Good GRAVY, South. At least in Michigan it went: Catholic church, bar on the corner. Nother Catholic church, nother corner bar. What this town lacks is any corner bar. Corner bars. Where everyone’s dad could be found!
I once heard that all men’s activities with each other are side by side. Sitting up at bars together. Sitting at sports events together. And all women’s activities are facing each other. Which is not true if you count pedicures.
My point is this. I walked on, to that parking lot, and I got the feeling I get. The “there’s an animal about” feeling. First of all, I heard a rustle in the leaves under the tree. Which could be anything: a squirrel, a drunk guy. In this hood it’s not out of the realm. But I stopped, because my feeling.

And here’s why there’s something wrong with me.
WHO ACTUALLY SEES THE CAT IN THERE EXCEPT ME. And this is my phone, zooming in on it as best I could. So it was even LESS clear to the naked eye. My eye wasn’t actually naked. It had on the cutest outfit.
“Hello, kitty,” I said, and remember a few years ago on Facebook, at the end of the year they’d take all the words you’d said that year and made a big circle out of them? And the words you’d said most were prominently displayed in larger font and bolder colors? And you’d be all, “Here’s what I said the most this year!!” and those of us who were sick and fucking tired of hearing about your kid Pevyn were not at all shocked to see a giant green PEVYN at the center of your circle?
If you did that for my whole life, for all the words and phrases from my entire existence, I assure you the biggest one would be, “Hello, kitty!” My first WORD was kitty. Go ahead. Ask my mother.
As I scanned the whole woodsy area, there, my eyes adjusted and I saw two more kittenish cats. I think this clear-as-a-bell one, above, might be grown up. And jaded. But the other two were smaller.
“Hello, kitties!” I said, in a shocking turn of events.
Now, feral cats would pick up their skirts and run. These two younger ones did not. Miss Camouflage, up there, never moved.

One even came out and started batting at the leaves. So I named him Russell. “Hello, kitty,” I said to Russell, and at this point everyone was bored with me and my conversational skills. I kept my distance. These images are of me zooming in as hard as I could.

This is the best photo I got, of Alexander Graham Bell, there, next to the telephone pole.
I sat with them for awhile, trying to remember if I own a — what are those called? A friendly trap. A jovial trap. Oh, hell, you know what I mean. And I do not. I borrowed the last one from an older man in my last neighborhood when there was a stray gray kitten, and he and I (the man, not the kitten) struck up a little friendship those last few months I lived there. I really, really liked his house, and he said, “Well, just hang on. I can’t live THAT much longer.”
That was nearly 3 years ago. I wonder how he is? That house had a screened-in back porch, which is one of my dream scenarios. Now that I’ve had a mail slot that goes right in the house, this is my next goal.
Anyway, cats.
I sat with them for quite awhile, and while they never let me pet them, they hung around, cautious but not horrified. They looked fed, and their fur was soft. There are houses behind this woodsy part, so I began to wonder if they lived in one of those houses. So I didn’t try kidnapping them.
Yet.
Ima go over there today, being some food and water, which is dumb cause they were clearly fed. But just in cases.
So anyway, that’s my latest in what is now 6 hundred billion cat sightings in my life. Does anyone need a cat? You know who doesn’t?
Luff,
Juan