We live in a leafy neighborhood in a fairly enlightened city in the metro Atlanta area. By "enlightened" I mean that the city, with the support of most of its citizens, has instituted practices that indicate a care for the environment and a desire for a quality of life that promotes community: a recycling program that includes composting leaves, clippings and tree limbs for free distribution to anyone who wants to fill up her truck-bed with compost; and community activities such as art festivals, downtown music, Community Supported Agriculture, a community garden, etc.
And the city has a leash law that includes not only dogs, but cats, too. Any pet must be collared and restricted to one's own property or on a leash if off the property. This law caused us the most problems when we moved to our leafy neighborhood, for while our dog stayed behind in Texas, we brought with us three cats, cats that were used to going in and out of our house and over fences in more lawless Belton, Texas.
The two female cats seemed fairly content to stay in our fenced-in back yard here in metro Atlanta. But Pluto, the male cat, was not so sanguine about his diminished domain. First, he lost the collar we put on him when he had his shots updated. Then he started going right over the privacy fence.
Some of our neighbors are more militant than others about encountering wandering cats. One neighbor keeps a trap in her yard, a humane trap, but a trap that has caught other neighborhood cats that ended up in the pound until their owners showed up to pay the hefty fine. We know this because neighbors whose cats disappeared told us as soon as we moved in to beware the cat trap across the street. I know this because the first community forum I attended, the cat trap was the topic of discussion. A local policeman was brought in to remind us of the law: Pets must be restricted to one's property or leashed.
Now, I'm a woman of peace, so I did what I could to keep the cats contained. I failed. Spring came. Birds were singing and nesting. A couple of neighbors began worrying about the black cat eyeing their bird baths or casing the bushes in their yards in the early morning hours. E-mails were sent on the neighborhood listserv describing the nurturing antics of the parent birds and the criminal cats that threatened the lives of baby birds.
How was I to keep the peace and keep Pluto out of neighbors' yards? Tom and I finally came up with a workable plan for our own little cat Alcatraz. It was a simple plan, really: chicken wire. We stapled chicken wire all along the top of the privacy fence in our back yard, about two feet of chicken wire that flops over and prevents the cats climbing to the top of the fence. At a distance, the chicken wire is barely visible. Up close, well. . . . it works. Or rather, it worked after Tom plugged up all the other holes Pluto found to escape the back yard.
Now the neighborhood birds are safe from our cats (except for, of course, the birds that seem determined to nest in the trees in our back yard--but they seem a scrappy lot).
But this morning, as Tom, Mary-Margaret, and I sat in our back yard, I wondered if our neighbors realize that--with hardly a cat on the streets--their bushes and bird baths are still not predator-free. Ten to fifteen squirrels played chase in the sweet gums and water oaks above us. A rattled robin came fiercely down a limb of a sweet gum toward the squirrels. All around us this morning we could hear birds defending their nests. Oh, yes, squirrels eat birds. We've seen a video that proves it. An ornithologist Tom knows focused a camera on the nest of an endangered bird in Texas (a golden-cheeked warbler or black-capped vireo--we can't remember which one) and caught quite a murderous sequence on tape. The video of a squirrel eating the baby birds in their nest is really compelling; local school children who were shown the video in a nature workshop were very impressed.
Or what about the red-shouldered hawk that haunts these trees? Or the crows that also will eat baby birds of other species, given the chance? Do our neighbors think mockingbirds chase crows because the mockingbirds are ill-tempered?
Cats, I know, are hell on songbirds, but, really, feral cats in the countryside do the most damage. Removing one predator in an urban setting will not much impact the songbird population. Or so says Dr. Kevin J. McGowan, in defense of crows.
And now, our daughter's story:
One afternoon in late winter, our daughter was walking home from school. When she was less than a block from the house, she noticed a little striped ground squirrel being chased by a cat. The ground squirrel had obviously been trying to evade the cat for a while and was losing energy. It would be captured any moment. So our daughter scared off the cat with a loud "shushing" sound and some swift hand movements. The cat ran off. The little ground squirrel took a thankful breath. And then, from a limb in a large tree in one of our neighbors' front yards where this life-saving mission was taking place, a hawk swooped down and picked up the ground squirrel. Open-mouthed and speechless, daughter watched the hawk fly away with its prey in its claws.
And Anita's poem:
The Darkness that Haunts their Dreams
Flat on its back, beak bitter
and still, feathers lank and close,
a sparrow lies under the ironing board
like a drunk in a stupor--
But even a drunk has breath,
heavy, malodorous, humid
exchange of air for air.
Not this bird
placed with such poignant domesticity,
a gift from Pluto,
cat of the underbrush,
pre-dawn shadow among shadows,
connoisseur of bird baths and dodgy bird dives,
cartographer of neighborhoods.
Scofflaw, he stalks where city laws
forbid the unleashed.
Neighbors mourn the feathers they find,
curse the cat and plot revenge.
What do they know?
The darkness that haunts their dreams
has other forms.
It sits with watchful eyes,
it glides with silent wings.
It preens in the sycamore at the edge of their lawns,
perfectly at home,
perfectly at ease,
perfectly prepared for darkness or dawn.
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