When I first met my future husband, he asked me to go for a walk.
"Sure," I said.
"I’ll go get the kittens," he said.
And so we set off, him holding two kittens in one hand. Who goes for a walk with two kittens in one hand?
Listener, I married him, and since then I’ve been living with cats and learning from them. What does the world look like, smell like, sound like when you're less than a foot tall? And what am I to them?
I knew how to be outside in nature, but how to bring nature inside? I would arrogantly stride through a forest's living room, but I'd never reciprocated, inviting the forest into mine.
But cats, besides being puddles of warmth purring by a fire, are excellent at bringing the outside in.
I’ve opened a desk drawer only to have a chipmunk dash out and run across my hand. I’ve stared into the eyes of a flying squirrel balanced on a curtain rod. And once found an enormous green frog under the kitchen table, as confused as I was as to what it was doing there.
Cats have their own rituals. Sometimes they also participate in ours.
One Christmas, our cat darted past to deposit a mouse under our tree, pausing to arrange it between my gifts for my husband and his for me.
One Mother’s Day, I was presented with a grey squirrel, a vole and a mouse all in a row, in case I wanted to stuff one inside the other, like a rodent turdunken.
They give us gifts of perception, too. One cat’s big eyes and big ears alerted me to the dozen deer standing sentry in our backyard. And no one is better than Miss Rose at tracking the path of the sun across the bed.
Poppy’s favorite thing is to climb up on our roof as if on the prow of a ship. What is she seeing? A fox flickering in the pergola? A squirrel on its trapeze?
Maybe the question is: How is she seeing? With her ears, nose and whiskers all focused, keenly scanning the horizon? My husband says, "I think she’s on the lookout for pirates." And I agree. It’s been smooth sailing ever since she climbed aloft.
Susan Johnson teaches writing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
