I have no idea what would make a large yellow and black butterfly want to land on Willoughby's nose, but apparently it thought it had sufficient reason.

The silver tabby lay basking in the dappled sunlight, flat on his back, legs stretched luxuriantly in all directions, eyes shut, and a look of idiotic bliss on all his features. Even his whiskers were relaxed, lying flat against the upturned corners of his mouth.

Nearby, Sasha acted out the hierarchy of traditional feline pursuits, creeping through the grass on her belly like her primitive co-ancestresses, the lionesses of the African veldt, like them hunting the food for the pack while the lordly male (Willoughby) reclined at his ease and awaited his due. Or his just desserts, as the case may be.

Patty and I had discovered a minuscule Eden in our back yard, or nearly thereabouts. The entire back yard of our apartment house, a garage four-plex, is smaller than our living room, half concrete and half gravel. But I found that by moving some fence boards out of the way we could enter the back yard of the abandoned property behind us.

What used to be a formal garden is now grown up with weeds and gone to seed. But a trace of its former beauty is still evident in the sinuous path between the tall willows and the riot of colors of the remaining flowering bushes. There are a few small creatures scurrying about among the carpet of several seasons of unraked leaves and unkempt flower beds; voles, crickets, caterpillars, and hundreds of brightly colored butterflies, all undisturbed "where the hand of Man has not set foot" for some time.

Patty and I were sitting on an old, concrete, garden bench, green with age (the bench, not us) and watched the drama unfold. Mac was busy with his own affairs in another part of the garden.

Sasha crept closer. Willoughby napped. The butterfly hovered.

The butterfly brushed Willoughby's nose, Willoughby, startled out of a sound sleep, leaped straight up to the attack, and Sasha pounced, missing the butterfly but tangling with Willoughby in midair and delivering the swat intended for the butterfly to his nose. Willoughby followed through with the attack intended for the butterfly. "So they fought and they fit, and they scratched and they bit, till except for their nails and the tips of their tails, instead of two cats, there weren't any." Or almost that bad. Each managed to give the other a thorough trouncing.

Not content to let wretched enough alone, Mac came bounding through the grass to see what the commotion was all about. He leaped a small bush in his path, just high enough he couldn't see the disaster waiting on the other side, and landed plop on Sasha. She had just finished tangling with Willoughby and still had her adrenaline going. Mac got a rousing welcome, one he will not soon forget. If he does, Sasha will remind him.

I was laughing so hard I slid helplessly off the bench and down onto the ground. It was then I saw the large, green marble lying in the grass. With a flourish I whipped out my handkerchief, gave the old horn a vigorous honk, and surreptitiously pushed the marble up into my nose, where I could feel it tightly bulging the skin on that nostril. When I straightened up and looked at Patty, she broke and ran for the fence. The little hairy varmint critters and I followed.

Copyright © David Yehudah
October 11, 1999