Cat & Mouse

A place I stayed in last summer overlooked the sea and old fisherman’s house. It had begun to fall in on itself, as is the way of all things that get the opportunity to age. Its front garden was a concrete semicircle that may never have been flat, but now looked like the cooled peel of a lava flow frozen in the throws of chaotic brownian motion. It was upon this landscape of paused bubble and cracks, ravine and crevice that I watched a cat dance about effortlessly as it chased the quicksilver movement of a mouse. With the ease of a heavy water drop winding down a pane of glass the mouse slid trying to make good its escape. That cat dove upon and bounced the mouse, hitting it with the pads of its paws. Scooping throwing it in the air. Sometimes the mouse stayed still, its tiny chest clutching at slippery air. If it was stunned, exhausted, or just resigned I couldn't say. Every turn the mouse made the cat anticipated, blocking its routes to freedom.

The cat rested on it, pressing heavily on the mouse like a heavy, dark mist. I stopped watching when the cat began pinning it to the tombstone-grey concrete, its claws ripping at the flesh, not by the cat itself, but as the mouse struggled to free itself.

I forget sometimes that I am living like this mouse stalked by a predator, that I’m living in the good times, presumably bookended by the bad. With a wrong decision here or not enough sleep for a few weeks there, I could be pressed against the rock by depression. After a long day, or a hard day I can feel it stalking me, watching me, ready to consume me. Intense sadness one day is a claw in the flesh, it’s attempt to pin you down, the more you struggle, the more it hurts, tears at you but you must free yourself. Because you have to stay in the good time

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