The Skunk

The Skunk showed up in a back yard around the corner a few weeks ago. He was lonely and hungry and he wasn't even The Skunk yet. He didn't even have a name. Nobody wanted him, but he wanted to make friends with everyone he met. When the world gave him indifference he answered with enthusiasm and friendliness and a manic desire to play fetch.

The Skunk isn't a real skunk. He's a black and white tuxedo cat, somewhere around a year old. From parts unknown he arrived at the back door of a kind woman who gave him food and became his first friend. He would have loved to stay there, but her cats wanted no part of a nameless street kid with big eyes and a bigger appetite. She fed him every day in her yard, and she took his picture and made found cat posters and put them up around the neighborhood, but no one responded. Wherever he'd been before, they weren't looking for him.

That's when Jane came into his life. She saw the posters and called the woman who was feeding him to offer her help in finding a home. Of course she fell in love with him on sight, that's the way Jane is. We've been rescuing animals together for more years than either of us cares to contemplate. Jane is the one who found a dirty, half dead sheperd mix in the street outside the subway station and took the time to rescue him while everyone else walked past on their way to the train. He became my dog Casey and was with me for twelve years, til he passed away earlier this year. The Skunk didn't know it, but his luck had just changed for the better. Jane was on his side.

When she called to tell me about him I had all kinds of reservations. After several months, I'd gotten used to the silence and stillness in here, used to coming home to an empty house. But when Jane has an idea she's difficult to resist. It's a large part of the reason I love her so much. Then we heard the weather report for the coming weekend, a brush with a hurricane bringing damaging winds and flooding rains. We couldn't leave him out in that. So on thursday afternoon we packed him in a carrier and took him to Dr. Neuman. I agreed to foster him for at least a week after he came home from the doctor while we looked for a home for him.

When Jane brought him to my place on friday afternoon his whole world had been turned upside down for the last twenty four hours. From a placid backyard existence he'd been boarded overnight in a hospital cage, had surgery in the morning, been poked and prodded by strangers, but still, when he stepped out of the carrier onto my bed the first thing he did was rub his face against my hand to say hello.

I knew by the third day that he wasn't going anywhere. He'd found his home, and it's a better place for his being here. Every day he lets me know how grateful he is, especially for all the food. He's developed a great liking for veggie cheeseburgers,
cold sesame noodles and mango ice cream, as well as an obsession with football games on tv. And today I bought him his own cat bed. Meeting Jane was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Autumn

All the horses march in slow circles around the meadow, kicking up the ground fog, under the autumn stars. Steam rising from the black earth, steam rising from their flanks, from their snorting breath when they paw at the moon. Keeping time with their hoof beats to the slow plaintive call of the frogs in the lake, keeping time to the beat of a young girl's just - broken heart.

They dance in slow circles across the wet grass, and their hoof prints are runes in a soft green prayer book. They dance for the equinox. They dance to remember. They dance to ease a young girl's pain. Tonight she'll dream all her hurt and sadness are trampled in the earth. Tonight she'll dream of wild horses, dancing across the sky.