My Life As An Indoor Cat

Lining the cats up for a photograph - Remi, Millie and Leonard

When the cats leave me alone in the night, when Millie doesn't jump up and mush her solid body against mine, when Remi isn't lying at me feet or Leonard walking over my head, I know they have found a mouse.
The growling at the bottom of the stairs leading to the attached garage this morning as I snapped on the kettle told me my assumption was correct.
Millie had the mouse in her mouth so I assumed it was dead and let the cats chase themselves back into the basement. But as I was coming back into the house after feeding the wild birds, I bumped into a cat and wondered why Leonard and Remi were looking under the hall seat.
I moved some shoes and there was the mouse! Or at least, a mouse. It was dazed but alive. All I had to do was crack open the door and guide it towards freedom, and viola! I saved another mouse today.

I'd make a terrible cat. Who has written a book about a cat that saves mice and birds, instead of stalking and killing them? 

I'm doing the indoor cat thing these days, sitting at my keyboard for hours, basking in the sun from the end of the couch, and watching the squirrels through the windows. Work has me missing out on these gorgeous, absolutely perfect autumn days. I have almost four hours of interviews to transcribe, plus other work to keep up with, so it's butt-in-chair this week as I push hard to get the transcriptions completed.
I can glance out my windows and see the blue sky and sunshine but last week's wind and rain stripped the maple and birch trees of their yellow and orange leaves so the light is bright; being away, I missed the last of the lovely leaf-dappled light that fills my writing space in the fall.

I love this time of year. The smell of wood in the basement. The visiting mice. The sparkling sun on the river. The bare trees and the dried-brush colour of the field. As the natural world is dying off, curling up for the cold, burrowing in as winter looms, I come alive. My creative energy, my optimism, my persistence swirls around like those last leaves skittering across the lawn in a cool breeze off the strait. Hard to catch but I know to follow.