This journal entry is posted for everybody who likes cats, especially for Nancy and for my friend Taylor Hill, whose 72nd birthday is today. I took the photo above of Nancy and her Lucky in November. The arrogant cat below belonged to Imbi Friedberg. The cats at the end of the BLOG entry live free and wild on the jetty at the mouth of the San Diego River.Looking through my journal from 1990 the other day, I came across a poem I wrote about a cat I once knew. I have never really forgotten Cat, but I hadn’t thought of her for quite awhile; and now the memory of her is especially fine, so I share it here on the BLOG:

No Strings Attached

The cat that sleeps most of the day on my porch
doesn’t belong to me so I don’t know her name.
From among all the other houses on the street
she has chosen my house for her daytime naps,
and I’d like to know what it is that brings her here
to pace back and forth before she settles down
over in the corner by the flower pot with daisies.
I don’t know her name so I call her simply Cat.

But it’s clear that she is anything but a simple cat.
Like her cousin lioness on the plains of Africa,
she possesses any territory she wants to own.
When I invade her space late in the afternoon,
she chooses sometimes to acknowledge me
with open eyes and stretching, purring, licking,
but usually she simply flips her ears as sign
she’s heard me coming...nothing more than that.

Detached may be the word that fits her best,
or perhaps aloofness or smugness or snobbery
I should choose to describe her lying there
owning what she has not paid for in any way
that I know of unless she catches mice
to earn the right to occupy my porch
so she doesn’t have to feel beholden.
Does she assume I’m grateful that she’s there?

The thing Cat and I have most in common
is not the porch or yard or driveway to my house
but something else that I have tried to put my finger on.
It’s the detachment, I think, that links us to each other.
Our relationship is one that has no strings attached.
She comes and goes at any hour she pleases
with no excuses ever needed for being late
or leaving early or not even showing up at all.

Saturday, September 1, 1990