Cats and Keys

OK. Time to fess up!

I’m a bit of a collector

Plants, prints, chemist’s bottles,

Blue glass, green glass, red glass

Weights(???), rocks, books, images, modern pottery, old textiles, shoe lasts.

I have done them all and more

One of my more sharply tongued friends says, usually when shifting a pile of something to sit down, that my house is really more like a museum.

My other great, ‘old man’ indulgence is the cats.

Always rescues, they are much loved, but ‘replaced’ with indecent haste the moment they pop their clogs.

One of the many things which we simply do not get right in our society is our treatment of animals.

There are so many animals needing homes!

Effectively they rule the house, but their key domain is the bathroom upstairs at the back of the house.

Here, facing south, the sun streams in through the windows all day.

They bask on the floorboards. Or sit on the window ledges and keep an eye on the world outside. Ready to exit and dart down across the roofs on some adventure. Or to indulge in the mutual stand offs and internecine conflicts which are a key facet of the cat world.

Going in there the other day, I saw the late sun slanting low from the west catching yet another gathering of mine:

the old keys hanging on the wall.

Mainly liberated from junk shops, they hang in a kind of random pattern, rather like musiucal notes. Their fascination lies in the doors that they may have opened, I know not where.

Though some I do know. In fact some open doors which no longer exist. Its another form of rescue!!!!

I thought that the sun on the wall and the keys was an interesting image:

I grabbed my camera and snapped

But also caught the ghostly profiled shadow of one the cats sitting on the window ledge.

She seems to be intently considering the key.

But cats do everything intently!

The light on the wall is thus shaped like a number 7 – theres luck!

R

Category: General