(Quick update– eyeball is back to normal. Thought you might like to know. Okay, on to the post…)
It’s summertime in the Seattle Metro area, and that means we residents are reaping the rewards of muddling through the gray skies and rain that are the norm for most of the year. When our weather sucks, it sucks, but when summer hits, boy is it it nice! For some, this means going to the lake and/or the park, for others it means hiking and/or camping. For me, it means my end-of-workday ritual of sitting on my back patio and drinking beer and NOT BEING COLD AND/OR WET.
The other day, however, I discovered the dark side to my exo-domicile activities… I have been making myself vulnerable to predators. In my case, three cats that continuously prowl behind the building in search of blood to slake their diabolical thirst. One would assume that means squirrels and birds, but I wouldn’t put it past them to make short work of human passers-by. Make no mistake, my friends– if they were bigger, they would eat you.*
These Bringers of Swift Searing Death are constantly criss-crossing the yard beyond my patio, forever in pursuit of something, only pausing momentarily to give me the stink-eye. The other day, however, they upped the ante. As I was unwinding with a lovely Red Hook ESB, I got the sensation that I was being watched. Glancing around the collection of potted plants, I at last found my observers: two black cats on either side of the potted blueberry bush, not two feet away from my chair, glaring at me intensely. No doubt, they were lying in wait until I nodded off in a false sense of security. Then, when my guard was down, they’d pounce from the shadows and eat like kings. My detection of them put the kibosh on their nefarious scheme, and they slinked away like a pair of sanguine ninjas…
My Would-Be Assassins
(NOTE: they were actually too fast for my phone’s camera to capture, so this is an artist’s interpretation of their approximate location and expressions of ill intent, as would have been seen from my seat.)
After I’d calmed myself down from this harrowing, near-death experience, I realized I had no idea what their names were. Doubtless, it was something wussy, like Suzy or Mr. Fuzzywinks. Thinking such pansy monikers were unworthy of their terrible nature (who would cower in fear from the wrath of “Twinkles”?), I decided to give them names that they’d likely give themselves:
Long Fang, the Blood-letter (black, long hair)
Ripclaw, the Merciless (black, short hair)
and Steel Talon, the Eviscerator (gray & white)
I’ve been trying to make it a point to address them accordingly whenever I catch them scoping me out. Perhaps this due deference will convince them that I am no threat. Or at the very least, make them stop glaring at me.
And don’t even get me started on the spiders that string their webs across my patio…
*I’m quoting a good friend of mine here. Thanks, Lucy!