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the_elyanLast night I went out for a short walk about half nine, after it got dark. This is something I do a lot less than I used to, which is quite strange. Six years ago, when I lived in Kilburn/Cricklewood, which is a mediocre area of London at best, I used to walk at night a lot - admittedly, generally in the direction of Hampstead rather than Harlesden - yet now, when I live in a place which should be a thousand times safer, I hardly ever do. This is partly because I am a great deal more uptight and generally wound up than I was six years ago (which shouldn't be the case), and partly because the general run of evening behaviuour is getting worse (I don't care how reactionary or paranoid it sounds - five years ago, you didn't have people out screaming obscenities on the stree every bloody night of the week).
But tonight I did go out, and after enduring the usual distant sounds of a Tourette's Syndrome sufferer with his foot in a mantrap, I met a cat. An old cat, and a slow-moving one, but a cat nonetheless.
During the day, cats are fairly content to let us get on with things (provided we don't get ideas above our station), but once night falls, they reclaim the streets and fields in a way Swampy and his ilk could barely dream of. Cats are bigger, and brighter at night, their eyes shine more, and they walk with more purpose. Cats fundametally _exist_ more in the dark, and to meet one in such an hour and such a place is always a privelige. The concentric stupidities of the human night-time experince are left behind, and in the cats eye, you see a glint of the dream of dominion. When the Cornish artist Ponckle pointed out that the error in my saying "the cats will inherit the earth" was that they in fact already had, I think she may have been right.
I grew up with cats in the house, and I miss having them around. I don't get dewy-eyed about kittens, and I don't feel the need to strap on a pair of cat ears and go prowling about the place (the Cambridgeshire Constabulary, I imagine, would take a fairly dim view), but there is still something fundamentally good about meeting, and sharing time with, a cat.
But tonight I did go out, and after enduring the usual distant sounds of a Tourette's Syndrome sufferer with his foot in a mantrap, I met a cat. An old cat, and a slow-moving one, but a cat nonetheless.
During the day, cats are fairly content to let us get on with things (provided we don't get ideas above our station), but once night falls, they reclaim the streets and fields in a way Swampy and his ilk could barely dream of. Cats are bigger, and brighter at night, their eyes shine more, and they walk with more purpose. Cats fundametally _exist_ more in the dark, and to meet one in such an hour and such a place is always a privelige. The concentric stupidities of the human night-time experince are left behind, and in the cats eye, you see a glint of the dream of dominion. When the Cornish artist Ponckle pointed out that the error in my saying "the cats will inherit the earth" was that they in fact already had, I think she may have been right.
I grew up with cats in the house, and I miss having them around. I don't get dewy-eyed about kittens, and I don't feel the need to strap on a pair of cat ears and go prowling about the place (the Cambridgeshire Constabulary, I imagine, would take a fairly dim view), but there is still something fundamentally good about meeting, and sharing time with, a cat.
