Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California
June 19, 2020: In the Company of Cats
We have a number of cats that feel free to roam our garden, not often at the same time. For the most part, they show little interest in us. In fact, they tend to leap over the fence when we appear. We’re grateful that the sum of them keep down the mice population, and sad that they’re probably responsible for the increasingly noticeable dearth of birds. You can’t have everything, I suppose.
This little girl was particularly skittish when she first visited the garden. Slowly, she began to approach us gingerly, sometimes even rubbing tentatively against our legs, but leaping away as soon as we reached down to check her bright pink collar. After a few months, she made herself a little nest under the barbecue coverlet on the deck, and waited for us to come outside; then she’d scamper ahead of us down the stairs to the garden, always just out of reach. Since the pandemic, however, the cat seems more aggressively affectionate. She never wants to come inside, nor does she appear to be hungry, but she’ll come as far as the door to check on us, and when we’re out, she follows us around, mewing all the while. Many mornings, the cat is already in the garden chair when I go down, or she comes from under a shaded bush or fern to greet me, her back arched, begging for a rub. in fact, she now seems desperate for affection, and climbs eagerly into my lap. What a change! I’m grateful. I don’t really want a full-time cat, but I find it very soothing to have a borrowed one that seems to need some physical contact just as much as I do these disjointed days. Is the timing a coincidence? Did something change at her owner’s house after the shelter-in-place edict to make her look for affection elsewhere? Are we out in the garden more and therefore more trustworthy? I suppose I’ll never know. But meanwhile, I’ll take the comfort and companionship she seems happy enough to share.
Yesterday, the San Francisco police captured a young mountain lion that had been wandering the near-empty downtown streets for several days - along Russian Hill, through the business district, around the Salesforce Tower (the city’s tallest building), and down the Embarcadero. A mountain lion! In a Twitter alert to city residents on Wednesday, the police said “If approached by the mountain lion make yourself appear big and shout. Remain vigilant and use caution outdoors.” How strange, and not so reassuring. We’ve all read about the foxes and coyotes that have been coming into town for several months, emboldened by the quiet streets - we’ve heard, in fact, a coyote howl in the streets nearby. But the thought of a mountain lion moving into the heart of the city and wandering around for three whole days or more unchallenged - one has to marvel at the disruptions in our own world that made it even possible for the poor thing to survive.