Family and a Feral Cat on a Summer Evening

photo Credit: Shannon Frost Greenstein

photo Credit: Shannon Frost Greenstein

Shannon Frost Greenstein

The walk had already stretched over twenty minutes when we saw it, determined as my child was to stop every ten feet and demand to be picked up. He had finally resigned himself to walking unsteadily, pushing a cheaply-made toy car in front of him, when the cat approached us from an alleyway. It looked tough, and haggard, and well-worn; it looked like a seasoned predator.

I expected it to dart by, its preternatural sense for danger triggered by the sight of my toddler. I expected to continue our walk. I expected I would never again think about the orange feral cat who once crossed our path.

And then, as the sun shone down, as the white noise of children playing echoed in the background like a Greek chorus, as the far-off tinny jingle of the ice cream truck wafted over our heads, as the traffic roared by, as the birds sang and the breeze wafted and the flowers grew, the cat stopped in front of me, delicately sniffed my foot, and then proceeded to rub its face enthusiastically against my bare ankle. It was a full fifteen seconds of fuzzy affection, of unconditional love, my son pointing, my husband grinning, my sundress blowing in the wind, my heart bursting with love of the moment, of the cat, of my family, of the sun. Of being.

The cat resumed its trek to the adjacent alley and we indeed continued our walk, practice for the miniature version of ourselves to learn bipedal mobility. But now, forever imprinted on my brain is the memory of my family and a feral cat, on an evening when it seemed like summer could never end.

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Shannon Frost Greenstein is the author of “More.”, a forthcoming poetry collection from Wild Pressed Books. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Contributing Editor for Barren Magazine, and a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy. Follow her at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter at @mrsgreenstein.

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