Four-legged
Late summer has arrived, also known as the time of the year that I loathe the most. The breezy weather has blown away the sweltering heat and my hour-long naps are no longer interrupted. Moreover, the migrating finches and their fledglings have packed up and gone afar, leaving only hummingbirds in sight. I can now freely stroll across the senile oak trees without their sulky landlords bothering me. Life is not perfect, however, September is also when those always casually-dressed college kids resume their hectic routine. I am far from a misanthrope, but I can’t bear how some of them still take notice of me, halt their steps, squat, and study me with great interest. I don’t dislike it, but neither do I bother reciprocating a friendly gesture.
Why couldn’t these numbskulls mind their own business? I used to think that people in this neighborhood have no class, now even the thought of it has turned tiresome. Late summer is the time when false hope burgeons and sneakily bridges us to the dreadful, frigid November. About four winters ago, my siblings and I were still tiny writhing creatures sheltered in our mother’s embrace, seeking to suckle the tiny bit of warmth. Despite that, I never fully grasped the meaning of home, it’s far-fetched and frankly still is. I have no siblings today, and I have no mother today. Who really needs company when you are sufficient by yourself?
The sun is rising. Though feeling reluctant, I know the daily walk is a must and that entails leaving my cozy spot here on the pavement. Scouting my territory is part of the routine; I stretch and yawn — not like it wakes me up or anything — in fact, I rarely wake up with fatigue unlike those who are well-sheltered in human households. As someone who’s been living out here on the street since day one, I consider myself well-versed in everything practical, which is something that lacks in these domesticated counterparts of mine. I do not come across them often, but I am nonetheless aware of their presence. A good handful of them used to be acquaintances, who were eventually enticed and brought in by the humans: that truly marked their downfall.
The housed creatures are bizarre, to say the least. I don’t speak a lick of the human tongue, apparent enough, for I do not have the necessary apparatus, yet I’ve naturally picked up something when my mind and body were in their primes. Luckily, humans are oblivious of my passive ability to comprehend their blabber. Here’s the thing, some of us are too dumb to even know a wisp of the human talk, hence whatever the humans do frightens them. Some others, as I said, are willingly subservient to humans after they become well-coddled, lose their sharp feline senses, and turn into morbid obesity. I need not even make an effort to keep myself away from these humanized turncoats: once they enter those vast doors of human residence, they will never be seen again.
Humans talk a whole lot, to each other and to themselves, which is reasonable considering their confounding scent and a nonexistent tail. I found this discovery interesting, or as humans say, hilarious. We grow out of making these fatal noises (in case you are unaware, uttering any unnecessary sounds in my old hometown is a shortcut to becoming coyotes’ prey) as we mature while the humans prate more as they grow. But much like us, Humans seem to come in different shades. They are hairless and lack a natural coat as we do, instead, they are artificially clad, shrouding themselves in substances as they call garments, though I opine that all humans still appear one and the same to my nocturnal eyes despite all these efforts: to this day, I still have trouble telling men and women apart.
But not all of them are confined to houses and there are a handful of wanderers like me. The wanderers never encounter the ones cooped up indoors, much like how my now-domesticated acquaintances and I. I surmise the ones who get to loiter and socialize are, as the humans call it, bourgeois, while the housed ones are the wretched and impoverished: living like that seems far worse than being torn apart by a pack of rabid dogs.
We don’t have a hierarchy like theirs and every one of us is either king or empress of our own dominion. Anything we do is at will: we wage war on each other as we like, we procreate as we like, we patrol and travel as we like. We succumb to nothing but Nature. Humans’ empty ritual means nothing to us. They live for a helluva long time, bear with these irksome drudgeries, and perish after a helluva long time.
I am glad that I was born as I was.
