Ø It’s a long way up – The Tenth Step – a Cat tale
Our cat has a favorite step on the large staircase in our home. It is the Tenth step. He resides there quite often and if you are on your way up, or down, and he has position on the Tenth step, he has just that, position. He fully expects, near demands by his very presence there, that you step over, or just beside him on the remainder of the tread. You dare not disturb him, for if you do, you will get a glare, a scowl, a piercing hex of a narrowed-eye sure to have some lurking future malice linked to it for a time unbeknownst to you. But when your time comes in a slip, a stub, or trip, or stumble over nothing but air, he’ll be there too watching with a little smirk, like the Cheshire Cat with his grin “ha, gotcha” written on his face.
He’s not really a big cat by weight, but he has lot of hair. A Persian. A “long-haired” cat, it is not fur. So he takes up space and it’s hard to tell where body is, and what is just hair. Persians have that wide face and head, “smushed” in, like a cartoon cat after running headlong and smashing into a wall (smushed, being the past tense of smashed – not “smush” in the Jersey Shore context). We noticed after only a couple days in this house that he preferred that Tenth step.
There are eighteen total steps from the living room entry floor all the way to the second floor hallway. As a matter of fact if you start in our basement and just count the stair steps (not walking steps in between) from there to the floor in our full attic, there are forty-five stairs, and I know because I have taken things stored either in the attic or in the basement from one remote location to the other several times. Now why we have stuff, and why I’m taking stuff, and why we store stuff in those places . . . well, another time maybe. There are 14 steps from basement den to the kitchen, 18 steps from the living room to second floor hallway, 13 steps (oooohh spookey) from the second floor up into the attic (and those top three are angled steps so kinda tricky, and it’s narrow too). For that matter the stairway to the basement is actually more narrow than those to the attic. And the top “step” at the doorway from the kitchen is not really so much a step per se, but a 1” rise from the top staircase step onto the hardwood kitchen flooring. You have to count it as a step though, because you do have to take that step up or down. If you step between the two onto that 1” variance of surface you will fall on your ass going down (bad cause you’ll keep sliding and banging on the walls like you’re in a trash shoot) or you’ll fall on your face into the kitchen going up. I know, I’ve done both. I actually fall “up” stairs way more than down, what the hell? Falling up stairs makes you just look like a dumbass, an uncoordinated stooge. Falling down is, um, more natural or something. People might laugh at you either way, but more often they’ll laugh when you fall up, than down. People help you “up” when you fall down. People don’t help you “down” when you fall up, but if they’re not laughing at you too hard they might help you “up” when you fall down going up! (Made myself laugh at that – LOL).
The Cat. The Tenth Step. Now I believe cats do have a certain psychic sense and connective ability with a dimension we humanoids can’t quite grasp. We can at times kinda sense it, or for a very brief moment connect, but it’s so fast we blow it off as our imagination or some other hokey bullshit. And you have every right to call me crazy and think I’m full of shit, that’s cool by me, think and believe what you want, but it is part of this story, so read on believer or non-believer the story is about to get better.
When we first were moving into this cool old house, being smart family cat owners, we knew to bring the cat over when it was quiet, when there wasn’t anything in it yet, just the house so if the cat got a bit freaked out for any reason you weren’t looking for days under and around furniture or boxes or whatever. So we get to the house and let the cat out of his cozy carrier and he slowly, curiously, but with more confidence than caution, begins his discovery. We watch him awhile as he pokes around sniffing, peaking around corners, crossing in and out of rooms, jumping up onto shelves and counters. He seems pretty cool with it, unusually cool with it. Like he’s at “home” cool with it. Now if you know cats that is kinda weird, unexpected really from our human perspective. He went about like he owned the place and lived here all his life (or for one, or many of his nine lives). So him seeming content and happy and in cool discovery mode we all go on about what we were doing; measuring, figuring places to put furniture, taking pictures, girls debating and negotiating over the bedrooms, inside, outside, upstairs and down. All the while the cat is doing his thing one minute in a room then not, in the hallway, then on top of a windowsill, all about. After an couple hours we’re getting ready to go.
“Where’s the kitty?” and the calling for him and looking for him begins. And it continues. There is no furniture or boxes to hide in or under. We look in closets. We look in cabinets. We look in every room. We look all around outside. We look everywhere on every floor, in every room, in drawers of built in cabinets. We look in the clothes dryer, we look in the washer, even in the fridge! We begin walking around the neighborhood calling for him. Some neighbors even begin the search, he’s an indoor cat, so the thought of him outside is not good and now its dark. The girls were still in the house still looking. When we get back, none of us have seen or can find him and its now been over an hour. We look all over the house for like the fifth time, everywhere and nothing. We’re sure he slipped outside. Two of us get into a car and start a slow drive beyond a few block search radius, one sits in the back yard and calmly calls for him, one walks around the outside of the house and around the block calling. Thirty minutes later, we all gather, and no luck. Devastated, we go inside to gather purses, jackets, tape measure and to turn off lights, and there calm as can be on the tenth step is our cat, Bijan.
To this day we have no idea where he could have been in that empty house, or whether there is some other Outer Limits tenth dimension on that tenth step, some wormhole, or Narnia doorway, or whether he was simply hiding somewhere really well and he just likes hanging out on that step. But I can tell you this, it may just be that it's a good place to rest since it’s a little more than halfway up the eighteen total steps and I have found myself slowing, even stopping there at number Ten to take a brief break before the rest of the climb, especially if I started in the basement!
No comments:
Post a Comment