I went walking again this evening . . . it was warm out and I had nothing better to do with my life, so I figured walking was the best way to keep myself out of trouble. And anyway, summer is almost over . . . the equinox (which is inferior to the solstice) is only a week away. And so saying, I have to SOAK IT IN while I still can.

Tonight I met two cats. The first was a kitten with a little black mustache who was running around in the front yard of a house I passed. I stopped and took this picture. When I turned around, I saw several more kittens watching me from beneath a car. A woman in front of the house was watering plants. I asked her if the kitten was hers and she said it was the neighbor’s . . . she said there were five in all, and the neighbor had taken them in. She asked if I was interested in adopting one and I said I just wanted to make sure they were safe. I said good-bye and kept walking.

Later, back at the Starsailor East Coast satellite office, a little grey cat wearing a lightning bolt collar with a bell on it started following me around. I had seen her earlier in the day on the balcony when I went outside to hang my jeans up to dry. She was a little hesitant, but when I crouched down and talked to her, she came over and rubbed her head on my hand. I had seen this cat once before on the day I left for New York at the end of August. In fact, I had managed to take a picture:

My befriending her earlier today was evidently enough to make her want to follow me around tonight. She was coy about it at first . . . any time I looked back at her trailing me, she’d stop and clean herself or else wander around a little. But as soon as I turned around and kept walking, I heard the little bell on her collar start jingling. Eventually I climbed the short flight of concrete stairs leading to the front door of the office and she followed. I sat down on a stair and she hopped past me and lay down on the uppermost slab.

I sat there with her for at least an hour, deciding I would not move until she did first. It was nice out and I could sense that we were both lonely in some way. She rolled around and cleaned herself and looked up at the sky and watched the moths encircling the outdoor light. Any time we made eye contact, we would slow-blink at one another. Whenever I attempted to speak her language, she would respond. She felt so comfortable there that at one point she straight up fell asleep:

If she had stayed there all night, I would have stayed there with her. But eventually a passing car woke her up. She yawned and stretched and galloped down the stairs to continue her patrol of the neighborhood. I stood up and went back inside to make coffee and take a bath.