the snow came & came
then stopped & came some more,
crystalline powder from the frigid air.
the four little barn cats were too new
along the edges of buildings
to chase rodents that were
so they holed up in the tool room
off the old greenhouse
where i started to feed them
after their small calico mama
then stopped coming back to them.
they had been five kittens in july,
only four by the cusp of autumn.
on that last day of summer
at the edge of the forest
i saw flashes of grizzled fur—
legs then ears then bushy tail
clamped down on
(what i convinced myself was)
a gray tabby rabbit.
the four left were beautiful
as far as barn cats go—
a dark tortoiseshell, a gray stripey,
& two inseparable orange tabbies,
one tawnier than the other.
they learned to run circles
around me when i showed up
with provisions, calling to them,
calling them by the names of friends.
the game i taught myself was to
follow their tiny footprints in the snow
to learn where they traveled,
to find where they hid.
the snow here in winter
is like an etch-a-sketch,
erasing the evidence
of connected paths,
leaving a fresh new blanket
each day or two. like they all do
& they don’t care if the snow is fresh.
they run circles only if they feel like it
& hardly notice you
without their food in your hands.
their footprints range deeper
into the forest nowadays & they rarely
feed together at their bowl.
barn cats aren’t capable of
loving you
the way you love them.
they’re just wild little bundles
you can train to tolerate
the lucky soft passes of
your hand
across their backs
while they wolf down the kibble
you gave them.
you can’t brace yourself enough
for when they start to disappear.
it’s just their nature.
barn cats need to be a little wild,
to hunt along the edges of fallen trees
in the spruce woods,
to plan their escapes up the trees,
to chase each other in the snow
until their playful inner kittens
by the unlucky near passes they have
with things that are even wilder than they are.
~~~
