My heart is burning as I imagine being home. I don’t know its nooks and crannies, I really don’t know its noises in the middle of the night – but I will.
There’s an old bird’s nest I salvaged from the hedge I desperately want to cut down. I have been keeping it in the shed for a month now waiting for picture time. It’s made with scraps of plastic, styrofoam and string – an amazing feat. We hate ourselves for the trash we make – but I think that bird really appreciated its sturdy nest. I was awed.
There’s a little cat who lives in the pasture and barn like a wild thing – wild but needy. We have named him Reginald. He’s small but huge – huge paws, huge head – white with gray and black mottling in places. We had glimpsed him but only at a distance. Like a little rabbit when our presence was revealed to him he fled. However our first night he came into the backyard and sat, crying to us through the kitchen window. When we went out to him he fled, but we left him food and water. Later when I went out again and looked around, he was simply lying in the pasture. He appeared terrified but purred and dragged his head along the ground as though longing to be petted. I’d never seen an animal like it. I reached out to him, and he rubbed along my arm, leaping away at my every flinch of movement, but returning quickly. I coaxed him over to the barn where we had laid food and he began eating voraciously, all the while starting at my every sound or movement. The next morning he was lying out in the middle of the pasture when I went to my car. It was almost unnatural the way he lay, so white along the grass.
His combination of wildness and desperation for affection seems straight out of a novel from one of the Bronte sisters – perhaps we should name him Bronte.