Call of the Wild

Helen when she first entered round 8 started up a cooing with one of her cats that took some time to positively ID as human. Was it a duet in the course of mad heat, even protracted like that? an unusual preamble to a fight perhaps? The second, longer call was certainly in response to the other, the clearly feline; a kind of strange antiphonal that prevented another snooze after early brekkie. Almost certainly the first, leading call had been the grey that lorded it in the main house, green-eyed like the other, though less fat. Helen had suggested size as the best means of distinguishing between the two. When the pair was found out by the front gate, especially belly-down on the concrete, the quandary remained irresolvable. Precisely the same colouration and striping, the same shade of green. Helen had kept a number of greys over the years, a favoured breed it seemed as one did not see that colouration around the estates. A couple of weeks ago Helen had sent a photograph of the handsome boy that had gone missing, she said. Oh! The house grey it appeared. Just when we had been getting on so well…. In fact turned out the cat in the picture had disappeared a year ago; still mourned by Helen. You remember? she asked…. This morning too about the same time as the duet the crows in the trees opposite the house had started up their cawing. Up until quite recently Helen had fed choice beef to these birds that had slowly won her over. Finally she had needed to desist after she had been “scolded” by a passerby who reminded her of the prohibition that extended to all birds, not just pigeons. FARK, FARK, FARK. Miaow, Yeeeoooow; Miaow, Yeeeoooow. Miaow, Yeeeooooow…. How in the heck was a man supposed to get some shut-eye! Soon enough this all brought back the stable down in front of the handsome old house at Zelalici that Granddad Pavle had bought more than a century ago, with the water stretching out past the greenery below. At the introduction to all that slowly lapsing past in the early 80s the stable had housed a pair of cows, a half dozen venturesome goats and the old donkey that Uncle Peter could still ride side-saddle like in the Greek postcards. In the generation immediately before up in the village the peasants had of course lived immediately beside their sheltering livestock, breathing the same air, hearing them stir through the night; the animals kept the house warm too. From the sala upstairs at Zelalici the bells of the beasts could be heard through the night and certainly the whinnying of Petar’s Mercedes, the donkey. In mother’s time at Savici winter nights the children had vied for snuggling up with the cat. At Savici they were a mark above the rest of the village with mules rather than donkeys, though their sly, unruly beast once gave mother a fierce kick that she would never forget. Helen had recently adopted another cat that came to her corner opposite the house, a pretty black and white which on closer acquaintance was discovered to have large lumps beneath its chin and front paws. AhYoy! More Vet bills just when Helen had been beginning to raise her head above water. Confusion over the sex of the cats surprised Helen. Wasn’t it perfectly obvious to the eye? Even the big-balled one Helen mentioned remained a mystery to a novice.