warning: a brief, respectful mention of some biological necessities follows... delicate souls are asked to avert their eyes...

quite a few years ago, standing in line at the grocery checkout, the affable guy ahead of me was describing how his cat would only eat while he (the man) was standing right over it (the cat)... and he was asking me if i'd ever heard of such a thing. i had to admit that i hadn't... my own then-much-younger cat had not shown any such... neurotic inclination. so i thought nothing more of it... but...

over the past few years i've noticed this: when i step into the bathroom to... do one of several possible things that one does in the bathroom, the cat leaps in, too, and begins to chow down with feral feline abandon... uh... here's the set up...

close quarters without a doubt... and apparently odd behavior from the cat who obviously doesn't share our human squeamishness (and damn good healthy common sense) over positioning the intake near the outflow.

so... i've had plenty of time to ponder this mystery... and have come to the conclusion that what we've got here is some classic waterhole behavior... in other words, the cat is wired for this business.

picture this... maybe ten or twenty thousand years ago... back when the whole place was pretty wild, you know... there's just this one good spot for water... so, of course, all the critters in the neighborhood are likely to show up... and some of these folks are big - and hungry. so a trip to the waterhole becomes a fairly anxious moment for us smaller beasts. luckily, some of our tribe are larger than others... and though we're not a famously social crowd, we recognize that there's safety in numbers... so... whenever possible, we only venture down to water's edge when one of our kind has got our back...

i, of course, am that somewhat larger member of the cat's tribe... and deep in her dna she knows that, while i'm there, no larger predator is likely to snatch her away from her lunch... for his lunch.

what a privilege to find this ancient script acted out daily in my very own bathroom... an honor to serve such a noble function

i don't know why i thought to write about this today... it's not as if i haven't anything better to do... it's been a useful day, this labor day... no picnic, but i've managed to process a grand pile of paper (but not all)... i've read a bit in the odyssey (but nothing in non-school books)... i've stared out the window at rain... and now a pretty respectable sunset... and i've thought about the cat...

as far as i know, as of this moment, no one has yet claimed that brand new sunset boulevard dvd that i'm looking to give away... if it catches yr fancy, drop me a note with yr name and mailing address... if yr the first, it'll be winging its way to yr door in a couple or seven days...

In this broad earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed perfection.

Walt Whitman

 

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