Serenity… refocus – seek joy – thrive

The black cat that lives on my patio doesn’t belong to me.

He doesn’t belong to anyone – although he seems remarkably well cared for, for a stray. His thick, glossy fur on his large, muscled frame alternately reflects and absorbs all light as he wanders, strutting through his half-wild life as a part of the neighborhood he’s foraged in since he was small.

There is nothing special about my patio; like all the others in this 8 plex it’s a small square with pebble stone paving, and open to the courtyard so that we can look out at the bushes and any flowers the neighbors have planted. The elderly woman who lives across the way has the best patio, by far – all sorts of interesting things: hanging plants, flowers in pots, a bunch of different wind chimes, a bench and a bbq. Me, I have a small 3 legged table that I shove into the corner so that it will stand up, and a black folding chair with a cushioned seat. She is not as fortunate in her view out of her window as I am in mine.

And I guess I should say I share a chair, because it no longer appears to belong just to me.  If I peer through the patio window at night, sometimes I can make out a dark shape on the chair, almost blending in until he lifts his head to give me an unconcerned stare out of brilliant green eyes.

I wasn’t surprised to see him there, even the first time. I’ve pretty much come to expect that, wherever I live, a black cat will at least come visiting in a memorable way, if not take up residence.

The last one wasn’t mine either. She wasn’t a stray and she only came to sit outside my patio door (a different door, a different place) with a purpose.

When I first glanced up and saw her sitting there looking in my window – tall and delicate with silky black fur, jade green eyes and a golden pendant around her neck – it was the morning after I discovered that there were kittens behind my fireplace.

Well, I didn’t realize they were behind the fireplace at first – I just heard the mewing. My cat has been fixed since she was  young, so I knew they weren’t her doing. And, strangely, they weren’t the black cat’s doing either – I’d seen her around for months, and she hadn’t been pregnant (unless she carried them all in back or something, like some women do).

Anyway, the kittens were there, and for as many days as it took to first, figure out that they weren’t going anywhere on their own and then for the maintenance person to find them and figure out how to extract them, the cat would appear each morning to sit right outside my patio door, just waiting.

Once the kittens were gone, she was too.

The one before that was born on my patio. Its mother (again, not my cat) was one ugly cat – orange and yellow and brown, with a funny smushed face. She was wild and never let me get near her but still I fed her, when I could,  just because she was so ugly I was afraid no one else would, and she didn’t  seem all that good at scavenging.

She repaid me by having a kitten on my patio. Just one. A little black ball of fluff, with green eyes. After a few weeks, though, she picked it up by the scruff of the neck and toted it off to some better place she’d found, I guess. Anyway, she didn’t come back and neither did the kitten.

I was moving soon myself, so I just silently wished them well and continued to pack.

Funny to think that I’ve never actually owned a black cat, but I always seem to have one around.

(picture above of the cat is from Flamingo Patterns)

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 12:52 am and is filed under edited to add, first draft, life, random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.