3 realities. The everyday consensual. The Eleven Islands. The future.
Author: Rita de Heer
Writing is what I do. What I think about. What I meditate on. What I dream up. Listen to. Imagine. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I eat. And I walk. Pull out environmental weeds. There are a thousand more things I do, though writing comes into a fair few of those things too.
Caterpillars, that is. I wish they would just hurry up and pupate. They’re so exposed. And they’re doing weird stuff like this … (this photo from indoors looking out)… three congregating at the top of the largely denuded bush?
The one with what turned out to be a tiny white spider moult stuck on its back, is still eating. There are maybe six whole leaves left and a few halves.
Below, photo snapped from afar, number four is still eating …
I wouldn’t have been able to get citrus leaves till tomorrow, so I told my contact don’t worry we’ll have to let nature its way. They’re still a worry.
Although we are more or less back to normal, there is a slight flavour of a new normal. For one thing, the old woman still has not tried to pick me up. A good thing that.
For another, she made my puzzle board about six times harder to find kibbles on. Not so good.
Everything is a different height and there is a little person sitting on it staring at me.
Another good thing is that she made more room at the edge of the balcony for me to sit and peer under it at the people passing by. I’m OK with that now.
I’ve been here four and a half months and I think I’ve done pretty well getting accustomed to some of the strangest things a cat has got to put up with. I mean, who has ever heard of puzzle boards for the likes of us?
And do you know, the only time I get a swag of kibbles in a bowl is at bedtime?
And then there five. Caterpillars. Another one fell down and …
But managed to climb back up, slowly and laboriously, arriving much diminished. Losing about a quarter of its weight, it looks like.
Picking up some fluff on its back—I’m afraid that if I tweezer it off I’ll do it a worse injury—but after half an hour back up there with its mates, eating eating eating to make up for lost time.
I don’t know what happened to the ones missing. The Asian gecko got it? A noisy miner snuck in? The Moggy cat taste tested them? Though they must’ve been on the ground already.
Things are not so good between Moggy and me. I’ve been put on antibiotics, the deepest scratch is not closed yet. But my whole hand is not swollen any more.
This all happened on Saturday evening, it’s now Wednesday. Monday Tuesday Wednesday I was out of the house for hours at the time and it’s hard to ‘read’ a cat the best of times, let alone a cat who seems determined to stay a stranger.
In all that time, three and a half days, I have not tried to touch her. I’ve got admit I’m more hesitant now. She does lay in wait round the corner sometimes and lash at my ankles. Most recently, I gave her big voice and she looked shocked.
Various people in my immediate and not so immediate circles are saying I should trade her in, and that animals from Rescue Centres do not always transplant well into a home situation. Moggy was a stray rescued from the streets and was in the cattery for 100 days.
This afternoon she seemed ill at ease and down in the dumps. Is it possible cats can get depressed? I don’t know. But I thought to try to cheer her up. Got some kibbles, and spread the towel over my knees.
She jumped onto the couch without needing encouragement. Took kibbles from off my knees and from my hand, though she did flinch away a couple of times when I moved too fast and unexpectedly.
And I flinched when she moved fast. Looks like we’ve got to rebuild trust. And I have to put a few expectations out of my mind. I have a wilder animal than I had expected to get.
Of course I regret that I can’t expect cat cuddles. Or that she’ll probably never want to have anything to do with the kids. Even just stroking her is a no no at the moment. How we will get her to the vet will be traumatic. See? She does need training.
I thought at about three years old, as the cattery said she is, I thought be able to train her to accept a harness and take her outside to sit in the sun. Since we don’t have any coming into the apartment. I might get a sun lamp instead.
I thought I could train her to climb a cat tree to the new shelf I had installed, to sleep there. She barely jumps up. I’ve offered her the patio table, and I often put kibbles on a high stool on the way to the tabletop. No go. She leaves them.
Right now because of that little training session getting her to eat out of my hand, she made the tiniest purr of approval and jumped onto the back of the couch there to doze. Probably 30 cm/12 inches distance. I have to take that as a plus on the way to better things. She’s been with me for four full months.
With only about thirty leaves remaining and six voracious appetites still working hard to gather enough energy for the next stage, I’m starting to wonder which of them will win the race and which will fall.
Two large large, four medium large, one still black and white and looking anorexic. Fifty or thereabouts leaves remaining on the bush and it’s looking quite bedraggled.
With so much less vegetation to hide in, makes me wonder what daredevil bird will snap them up.
Rita de Heer 