Kitty Walk

Now  when the world shouts, “Stop!”  we are slowing to notice life at a measured, appreciative pace.  May all of your senses awaken your day with observation and gratitude.

Weekend mornings here at our Quilcene cottage, we begin with the Kitty Walk.  Allan makes us each a steaming latte in tall covered mugs.  From underneath the cottage, he fetches a red plastic bucket he has filled with bird seed, stuffs a couple of dried ears of corn in his breast pocket and returns to the front door where he whistles for me and our two cats to follow.  A dozen years ago, the cats would skitter after him almost tripping him up in their eager escape.  Today, Willow doesn’t budge from her bed by the wood stove.  Homer reluctantly lumbers along to the whistle, with a  heavily furred sigh, “Ok, if we really have to do this again.”

Up the trails softened by aromatic cedar chips, we walk the circumference of our three wooded acres, stopping at each of six benches my brother built for us as scenic rests.  Allan reaches for a vine maple limb with a chain to which he screws on a cob of corn.  Walking on, he scatters seeds on fallen logs that line the trail, tucking more seeds and peanuts in the cavities of trees. Some trees are decaying remains of towering firs, in their slow death, still useful for persistent woodpeckers.  Stellar’s jays drop from limbs above, then hop along behind us snatching peanuts in defiance of Homer who long ago gave up terrorizing the hungry birds, choosing instead to pounce between us on a bench where he nestles against the warm coffee mugs.   Today, we have passed our first trillium sticking up like a green finger from the middle of our trail.  We have touched the pliant  leaves of wild plums.

The first bench is by the stream that tumbles like a toccata into the pond below.  We reminisce about the creation of our arboretum, a restoration of once-forested land devastated by previous owners who clear-cut the site for building, then sold off the property for being too hot, lacking shade.  Sitting on this first bench, we reimagine how we transplanted 20 – 40-foot Douglas Firs from across the road, built a stream and pond, planted vegetation and fruit trees, made room for a sun-lit vegetable garden.

The coffee is cooling as we climb the ladder to a treehouse, our next stop.  Only a three-foot shake covering suggests a “house,”  Although we billed the project as a treehouse for our grandchildren, all along my husband envisioned an elevated station for hanging bird feeders, a panorama for spotting flickers hammering on the birches.  About thirty feet above the treehouse,  a nest of eagles is new, but the tall fir was long a roosting point for them to oversee the bay below — the migrating ducks, the salmon run spring and fall.  We hug Homer closely when we hear the eagle’s piercing cry mid-swoop to fetch whatever the eagle feels like fetching.

Our treehouse pause lasts a good while.  Allan fills the feeders and teases the jays to come closer as he lines peanuts precariously on the railings.  Homer makes that twitching sound cats make when birds are nearby.  The hummingbird thrills around the red disk.  The only other sounds may be high cedar wind wisps or the distant gurgling of the creek.  I take my journal from my jacket and write.  Today I begin this blog.

Those mugs are drained of coffee as we step down the ladder.  Sometimes Homer rides Allan’s shoulder, for the cat’s weight makes a downward climb cumbersome.  Then we are off down the trail to the sandy beach.  This bench affords a western panorama of Olympic foothills. The sun illumines snowpack or new spring green. Along this lower trail, I kneel to clear off fallen leaves that cover two crosses made of stones, one with the name Celeste, the other Toulouse, grave sites of our first two felines whose companionship named our routine the Kitty Walk.

Circling back up the hill, purpled with periwinkle, we return to where the creek has emptied into our pond.  A bench above the pond allows a wide-open view of lily pads in summer, but this March morning a few drops from hovering trees shed last night’s rain.  The drips entertain me with their concentric circles interrupting a blue, reflected sky. Homer takes his sweet time to leap between us, then impatiently hops down toward the vegetable garden.

We cross the driveway through the woods above the cottage, on our last trail through a wooded plot we acquired years ago — a steep, heavily treed site whose massive trunks remind us of our smallness in the woods.  More chipped trail, some narrow stairs built into the bank, then on to shoreline again before pushing open a driftwood gate that returns us to the front of our cottage.    Homer does not follow us through the gate, but pushes himself between a capacious gap between two of the driftwood planks behind a line of rose bushes.  He has caught up.  He meows to let us know it is time for Allan to hang up the red bucket and climb the stairs back to the cottage kitchen for breakfast. Both man and cat have been anticipating the aroma of bacon.