Blitzen
He was a cat … just a cat. There are amazing stories of cats showing up months after vanishing, acting all cool, like nothing’s new. My gut says he’s gone like the echo in the barn behind calling: Blitz! Blitzy Boy! Blitzen! My head says a Great Horned Owl took him – silently, quickly, and inexorably, because that’s they way they kill.
.JPG)
Walking up the creek, a chill settling into a stony valley and a sun fallen, my heart still has me calling his name into dark tangled places where a cat could hide, searching an endless stillness for his faint voice, whistling our fluting cat call around bends and down new stretches of steely creek. No answer … nothing.
There’s not much left when a cat disappears: a waiting bowl of food, tracks in sand, and sad smiles. Smile … a tottering kitten trots over to be picked up. Smile … a lanky, bone hard, and rigorously muscly creature careens around your lap purring with great verve, with an ecstasy that passes whimsically as he walks off, on to the next interest or urge. (He was a cat… just a cat). Smile … you about had to smile to pick him up. Grimace wishing you’d picked him up one more time when he asked. Half smile at the rangy fella pressing back hard against your stroking hand, at a sensation that will be with you all your days and that someday will make you smile more than it hollows you out, tightens the throat, and hotly blurs the vision.
He was a cat, all cat, and a special little guy … in the end.
Rest easy Blitzy Boy.
