Saturday 4/22/23
The letter moves a little, then a little more, making its way across the floor so that the cat may read what the mouse has had to say.
Even old and sick cats don’t miss much, and a little is always a good start, no matter how big you are.
The mouse blows again, harder, and then as hard as possible, straining, a faint wind that almost sounds like a song—a song of existence—whistling through her front top teeth.
The cat, on its side, with its back to the fire, a shoulder bone jutting out from her patchy, beige fur like a root under baked soil, opens an eye. Just the one.
What have we here? the eye seems to say. A morsel?
Then that old tricky mouse comes into focus.
Ah, that morsel!
There are certain things that old cats and young cats see the same way when they’re being true to themselves. It doesn’t matter this kind of cat or that kind of cat. You’re just a cat who knows what really matters about being a cat. At any time, in any place, at any age.
That’s how every cat may be connected to every other cat. It’s all about knowing what’s important. Mice are the same way, but with mouse things. The same as people with people things.
Sometimes it’s surprising how many mouse things are people things and how many people things are mouse things, and even mouse things can be cat things. Depends on how you look at it. And what you try to understand.
* from "What the Mouse Knew"/The Solution to the World's Problems: Surprising Tales of Relentless Joy
