NASHVILLE. My opossum’s paws look intensely like hands: little, pink, spread-fingered; hind same as fore–four little hands, at the end of very stubby legs. This one’s large and healthy–well, it should be, after eating two cups of Friskies Ocean Fantasy (or whatever) kibble every evening. I’m charmed by its white face, black eyes, tender small black ears, even its growl right before it scuttles over the gravel and under the hedge, running as fast as its little hands can carry it…

Toms: Black one with blue-green eyes has disappeared. Tabby lurking about. Buff/ginger ex-tom Mr. B high-fives me when I approach (stretches out a paw as if toward the ground to engage in a long cat-stretch, but lifts it up higher than that, little pink paw-pads showing; he really does want to touch you, to greet you).

Meanwhile the Tom, the feralest of all and the most beautifully wild, lost all the toes on one hind foot after hanging himself on my privacy fence on a hot day in August. They saved the central pad. It will be a long, long time before Tom learns to do without those toes. Meanwhile he clumps around, off-balance, shell-shocked, a peg-legged pirate with beautiful, slightly crossed eyes, already having been swallowed

Tom

by the whale: he’s  wondering if he’s been reborn in some Tempest-island or archipelago (for which he’s traded his freedom). I love him as much as I have ever loved any cat (with, of course, the exception of Zacharias).