The world outdoors comes in, and we travel out . . . at least in our imaginations.
The air is fresh, the smells are sweet, and the birds chirp incessantly, their music drawing us like Sirens. Each day, new leaves appear, new flowers bloom, and new songs fill the air in a busier and more active chorus than that we heard the day before.
Even here, in this cool northern clime, the freshness of the air sings to us of magical, transcendent possibility. We can imagine the glory of Remedios the Beautiful, hanging washing on the line, when suddenly, surrounded by butterflies she simply ascended, leaving the dull earth below. In spring, all flights are possible.
And so it was last week, that my own Remedios the Beautiful was drowsing at my feet, in the relaxation of feline torpor, when her bumbling brother Paxil began to climb the chair behind my head. Distracted from my computing, I grunted my inarticulate irritation, just loud enough to suggest to him the advisability of dropping lightly to the floor.
This feat he accomplished, landing . . . alas . . . within inches of the drowsy Remedios.
Nothing awakens a cat to action like terror.
Before her eyes were open she had leapt halfway across the room, and in a single bound, while opening those eyes, she cleared the other half to land lightly on the trunk before the window.
Without pause or hesitation, for eyes so newly opened, have not apparently yet focused or communicated to the brain, she launched (like a character in a weekend cartoon) her little, fiercely muscled body directly into the screen that separated our world indoors from the springtime opening up beyond.
There was that odd, surreal, cartoonish moment when--for a split second that hangs in freeze frame of the memory--cat and screen hung together, suspended . . . now nearly a foot beyond the outer wall.
Then gravity returned, and cat and screen disappeared to earth below.
By the time I got outside, she was slinking back toward the door--her tail like a bottle brush, four times its usual size. She investigated the first floor window--not the one from which she launched a floor further up, but still well above her outstretched nose--with a mournful howl, then let me usher her back into our familiar confines.
The screen was replaced, order was restored, but springtime remains a beacon for the curious.
Remedios resumes her perch.
Shiva contemplates the impossibility of the tale he has been told.
And from time to time, Remedios reminds herself of how the impossible becomes real, and cats fly, and springtime is once again--like her--in the air.
I like this post a lot. I can see Remedios hovering in the air like Wile E. Coyote. And speaking of...where are the coyotes?
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