Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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Miss Squeak and the Mysteries of Interspecies Communication

She is my sweet tuxedo cat :B : aww

 

Interspecies communication has always fascinated me. Miss Squeak was a past master of the art.

She learned early on how to get exactly what she wanted from human beings. When she was young and lived in the country, she led an indoor-outdoor life.

If it so happened that she arrived back home late at night after the doors were already closed, no matter. She'd climb the big old blue spruce next to the house and hop off onto the roof. Then she'd sit outside the bedroom window and cry until they opened the window to let her in.

What Miss Squeak wanted, Miss Squeak got.

Later in life, she came to live with me in the city.

One day I took a workman down into the basement to do some updates on the water meter. Unbeknownst to us, Miss Squeak followed us down.

I heard the story later. While working on the meter, he was puzzled by an incessant series of sharp, demanding cries from elsewhere in the basement.

Following the cries to their source, he found a little black-and-white kitty sitting on the laundry room floor in front of the closed door that led to the stairs. Miss Squeak never did like closed doors.

Mind you, if she'd just wanted to get back upstairs, she could have gone up by the same way that we came down; that door to the stairs still stood wide open.

But, of course, mere access was never the point. There must be a lot of satisfaction in getting the big, dumb animals around you to do precisely what you want.

“You should have seen the look on her face when I opened the door,” he told me afterward. “She goes trotting up the stairs with the smuggest expression you ever saw on anyone.”

We both laugh.

“Well, I guess we know who runs things around here,” he says.

I shake my head, smiling.

“I guess we do,” I say.

 

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Tagged in: cat cats
Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

Comments

  • Jamie
    Jamie Monday, 07 June 2021

    Mr. Posch,

    Thanks for sharing! We have an older female cat reminiscent of Miss Squeak.

    My wife informed me that our male cat recently seemed to carry on a 30-minute conversation with a brown thrasher bird who lives on our property. The same bird follows me around while I'm doing yard work, chatting all the while.

    "Go back inside your giant inside nest, human! This yard belongs to me!"

    Maybe that's it.

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