Embrace the Mouse

As long as I can remember, Cat-Dad has provided us with toys. Ping-pong balls that bounce along hardwood floors, crinkly toys that make crinkly sounds, and track-ball games where a ball whizzes around a track when we bat at it. But my personal favorite has always been small soft mice with their leather tails. I have stalked these mice, pounced upon them from hiding places, and tossed them high into the air. Why do I do this? I cannot say. From some primeval memory, I just know it is my place to hunt, and the mouse's place to be hunted. I know these mice are not real, yet that does not diminish my purpose. It is the idea more than reality of what it is I must do.

Sometimes I ponder this late at night when Cat-Dad is soundly sleeping but many of us are still wide awake. How came we out of the wild to bond in love and friendship with our human companions? It began some five thousand years ago, but through all those years we have never forgotten our heritage. Each night it is reborn in every fiber of our being. The spirit of the hunt. That double life that each of us leads, loving companion to our humans by day, and predator of our realm by night. Even the most domesticated of us feels its call.

Predator of the night, yet just as fierce in our love and friendship. Which is real? Which is not? How can both exist together? Little time is lost in wonder as true reality is created in our minds. The hunt; the kill. Only a stuffed piece of cloth in the likeness of a mouse. But in our minds, the scenario plays itself out with all the realism of life.

With the first rays of dawn, the transition is upon us once again, and happily I climb into Cat-Dad's bed. I seek the comfort of his embrace as he reaches out to me in his sleep. I too close my eyes and am content to be his loving friend.

And all the while, the mouse in silence waits, knowing that the night will come again.

With purrs to all,

Sasha
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Everything you can imagine is real.
- Pablo Picasso