Category: animals

states of uncertainty

cat in a box
cat-in-the-box

The box is open and the beast in the photo is certainly alive, but other questions remain unanswered:

  • Why do cats like boxes so much?
  • Which of my three near-identical cats is it?
  • Why didn’t I think to call them Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Planck?
  • Why do we bother to name cats that can’t be told apart and won’t respond anyway?

    • perspective

    So much depends

    cement mixer & white chicken
    on whether it was
    a red wheelbarrow
    or an orange cementmixer

    on whether it was
    glazed with rain water
    or shaded
    from the setting sun

    on whether there were
    several white chickens
    or just the one, escaped
    from the neighbour’s yard

    on whether it was
    early twentieth century
    industrial America
    or rural Spain in 2012

    on whether it was
    William Carlos Williams
    who saw the scene
    or me.

    For the chicken in question,
    much more depends
    on whether my cats find her
    before the neighbour does.

    black & white

    You know how some people don’t seem to have any doubts about things? They seem to see the world in black and white.

    Or do they?

    black and white grapes on a dish

    Although those grapes are destined to be eaten unfermented, I have an idea that seeing the world in shades of wine might improve it.
    Continue reading “black & white”

    tiger, tiger

    white tiger in cage

    I thought circuses with exotic animals had been banned.

    It seems I must be mistaken, though, as this poor beast was sitting in the heat of the afternoon in a tiny cage just outside the village bull ring today.

    There were several other white tigers, two ‘normal’ tan tigers and a lion, in other cages. Most of them were fast asleep, which is hardly surprising given the fact the sun was shining directly onto the metal trailers.

    I suppose it will be a bit cooler this evening, when they perform, but I won’t be going to watch.
    Continue reading “tiger, tiger”

    fragments

    The photo shows what was going on on my verandah once the sun warmed up this morning and brought the wasps out to feed on a small corpse which I assume was left there by the cats.

    wasps scavenging at a cricket corpse
    The villagers here in Spain would call it a langosta, I think. Even with my limited knowledge of the animal world, I do know it’s not a lobster, but I’m not sure if it was actually a locust, a cricket, a grasshopper or a katydid. Whatever it was, though:
    Continue reading “fragments”