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Osama bin Laden of the feline world
Thursday, October 4 2001
Airplanes are overhead; we're back to normal now. People read on subways; we're back to normal now. But I only take the Red Line when I'm in a hurry now. The front of each fire station south of Midtown is like some endless melancholy Mardi Gras. The makeshift stuff is mostly gone now, replaced by framed pictures of the lost. I've seen some disturbing imagery woven in there too, including a big poster of an eagle with a tear in its eye. (Birds don't cry.) I don't know what it's like to a lose a friend in a collapsing skyscraper. I only know what it's like to live in a city with 100,000 suddenly jobless, in a city where 5,000 individuals vanished without a trace. Given the gap between what we know and what we observed, all 5,000 are trapped between logical states, all of them trees fallen in a forest with no one around to hear the sound. I'm sure at least one of the quantum states of Schroedinger's cat had things to contribute to the world.
A strange grey tiger cat came up on the porch while Noah, Edna and Sally were lounging around enjoying the continuing warm weather. Edna, who normally makes a show out of how adult she can be, immediately shrunk to twiggishness and fled for her life. Sally freaked out and withdrew in terror. Regal Noah, the man of the house up until the day I arrived, was the only one who showed any courage. He stood there in the doorway swearing in words I had never heard him utter, long drawn-out words filled with ligatures tremolos. Not knowing how bad things were going to get, I closed the iron burglar-gate to prevent a confrontation.
Truth be known, I've met this strange grey tiger cat before. Though Sally, Edna and Noah would have you believe he's some Osama bin Laden of the feline world, in reality he's just a curious, friendly pussy cat. He rubs against my leg when I come across him down in front of John Turturro's brownstone. He meows friendly hellos in front of Prospect Park. Chances are he's made his peace with the raccoons one occasionally hears laughing like Osama bin Laden in the night.
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