The senryu is new but the text is from my CactusCatz.com blog under Monday Meows. I am sharing this here also for those who are interested in how the cats are doing. So today we have a cat haibun. Well, it’s rather long so doesn’t really qualify as a haibun. We’ll call it a cat essay topped with a senryu.
Pinkie peers through glass
feeling safe above Midnight
when will they be friends?
Monday Meows on Cactus Catz 1/28/2019
So here we are staying in a trailer. At home, Pinkie stays in the back bedrooms all the time except when she goes outside. She sleeps with me too. Midnight hangs out in the livingroom and crawls in my lap to be petted whenever I go on the laptop.
Here everything is flipped. Pinkie stays with me in the front room while I blog. She makes me get up to pet her. Midnight likes napping on the bed in the back and sleeps with me at night. Pinkie gets lonely at night but is afraid of Midnight so she jumps up on the bed and then into the cabinet above the bed. She likes being higher than Midnight.
What is interesting to me is if she is on the floor and he is too close, she hisses at him. But when she is in the cabinet staring down at him, even if it is the same distance or less, she doesn’t hiss. She just looks down curiously at him. I think she feels safer in high places.
When I first arrived here, I stayed at my friend’s two-story cabin for the first couple nights as the trailer wasn’t ready. Pinkie ran upstairs as soon as I let her out of the carrier. She would stare down at me, Midnight and my friend’s two cats from between the banisters. She was a very happy camper. My house back home only has one story so this was the first time she experienced a two-story place. She snuggled down with my friend in her bed and refused to acknowledge me for a couple of days. I thought she had plans to move in. But then she decided she missed me after all and came downstairs up to me and rolling over her back. She didn’t want me to rub her tummy, just pet her head with my foot. Pinkie likes being petted on her forehead with my foot. Only when she is in a particularly good mood does she allow me to pet her with my hand. Anyone else who tries to pet her with their hand sends her running.
I was very happy when she let me pet her with my hand. Of course, she got pissed off all over again when I caught her, put her in the carrier and took her over to the trailer with Midnight and I.
Midnight is ecstatic he can sleep with me at night so he refuses to leave the bedroom except to eat or use the restroom. I think he’s afraid if he stays away too long, Pinkie will be the one who gets to sleep with me. Every once in a while if he sees Pinkie making for the bedroom, he’ll chase her back to the front room. She does her fair share of hissing too if he comes into the front room.
They are getting better at traveling but we have a ways to go to get them to accept each other. Now that Pinkie is liking me again, I will try doing Cagedunn’s suggestion of petting her, then Midnight and vice versa with the whole hand licking thing again. Maybe this time it will take. I feel hopeful that they can change because they were much better travelers this time. I am also thinking that if I get something high for Pinkie for home like a tall cat tower so she can sit high in the livingroom, they can get used to being in the same room. Now that they have semiadapted to traveling, I have hopes they will adapt to each other.
Photos, senryu, and text by M. LaFreniere, all rights reserved
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