So if writing, as Anne Lamott says in Bird by Bird, is putting into words what is going on, what should I be writing about?
Right now it’s 5:58 am. Judith just finished eating and will hopefully sleep for a couple of hours. I should be back in bed, also sleeping, but my driven nature and the cat are keeping me up. As I put Judith back to bed, I noticed the cat looking a little weird on the porch, like maybe one of her night visitors was out there. I came back out to the dining room and looked through the slider. No, it wasn’t one of the marauding Toms. It was a fresh kill—but not a bird this time. It looked larger, and furry rather than feathered. With revulsion I realized it was one of the little wild cottontail rabbits that we sometimes see in our yard. And it wasn’t an adult. What to do?
“Ray…Ray…” He’s sleeping in the recliner, trying to get some relief from allergies which seem to plague him most in our room. “I need you to take care of something on the porch. If the children wake up before us, they’ll see this and…” He pulls himself together and disposes of the evidence, grumbling when he can’t find the paper towels.
The cat continues to prowl the porch, looking for the body that left the scent which is driving her crazy. She rolls on the Eric Carle-style mural that the kids have been working on all week . I’m glad Ray got the bunny out of there before she added its body fluids to the sea scape.
As usual, when this happens, he proclaims, “She has to go.” Will this drive him over the edge? I hope not. I just bought two bags of cat food. And I wonder. Am I sheltering the children too much? Am I that worried about this scarring them, or do I just not want to deal with the inevitable drama should they have found it first?
