Susie is snuggled against me this morning, all safe and warm inside the house while yesterday’s snowstorm melts in the morning sun. We had a whopper of what they call a Nor’easter yesterday, the second one within a month, and it walloped New York City with snow, rain and ice, leaving behind an inch or two of good ‘ole city slush. What a mess!
Last night, my street was a silent frozen landscape absent pedestrians or cats. This morning, life resumed and there is an iridescence to the ice left behind. A sparkle to the bare limbed trees. A warmth to the still cold winter air. Spring must be near. You can feel it even as you shovel heavy snow from the sidewalk below.
The empty plates outside the fence to the lot in the middle of my block tells me that I wasn’t the only one who left food for the alley cats. There is a symbiotic tie between those cats and the rest of the block’s residents. Before they moved in and flourished, before they balanced paw over paw across neighbor’s fence, we had little defense. Rats, not cats, ran out of control. Then one cat, then another and another moved in. Now, we would beg them to stay. And we make sure they are well fed.
I’m sure Susie and Delia rode out the storm more comfortably than their feline neighbors outside. They were left to scatter to parts unknown.
Some might suggest that my cats be the “haves” and those alley cats, the “have nots”, but I’m reluctant to see the difference. I can’t imagine life without any of them. For me, that makes them all precious.
Whoever is not with me is against me,
and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”
