late night

it's quiet (except for the whirling fan and buzzing refrigerator). the cats are sleeping, like i should be, and my mind is wandering around like a lost child. it's going here, there, everywhere, feeling a bit nostalgic about stuff. now, that's mighty descriptive. hmmmm . . . maybe i should be a writer when i grow up.

my niece moved to austin, texas, several months back. she always wanted to live in austin, so she moved there and she says she loves it. the house she is sharing with one or two other people is only a couple of blocks from the colorado river which runs through town. i have a river too. okay, it's not really a river; it's a stream and it runs through the wild area beyond my civilized wood privacy fence into a lake somewhere northeast of my home. but it's all I've got. i can get a glimpse of it through the mass of ferns, brush, and broken branches from trees strangled by creeping vines. just in case i forget that i'm still living with humans, there's a soggy mattress, a small rusted refrigerator or something like that, and a couple of mangled bicycles peeking out from among the wild things. 

i've been looking into ashland, oregon. it appears to be my kind of place, but looks can be deceiving so one day i'll have to visit the city to see if it really is what i think it is.

still no sign of my cat denali. there are probably some people who condemn me for letting him outside, for allowing him to scale the fence and go exploring. law or no law, i don't believe in indoor animals. the very nature of an animal is to be outdoors, to lay in the sun, to roll in the dirt, to climb trees, jump on things, chase lizards, taunt squirrels, dig, chew on grass, let the rain fall on their fur. i'm not taking that away from any of my animals. the fact that cats can climb fences and dogs can't (although they can dig under fences) doesn't deter me. that sometimes a cat doesn't come back from exploring is heartwrenching, but there's no guarantee that when i walk out the door in the morning to go to work that i'm coming back alive and unharmed. so, should i stay home, indoors all the time, and never go outside because it's too dangerous, because i might contract a disease or be killed or injured by another human? no. 

and i feel the same about my cats.

they are animals, and they deserve to go outside and be an animal. not all my cats climb up and over the fence, but there is always at least one wild cat, one free spirit, who cannot be totally domesticated. there are cubicle people and cubicle animals, and there are those who cannot, will not, be happy living in a box. my cat denali is one of the truly beautiful wild beings; i will always love that about him because he is someone, even if he's a cat, that i can never be.