Tag Archive

The 18 -year -old cat is yeowling at the end of my bed again. I look at the clock: the dreadful hour of 3 am. I can’t get back to sleep, so I give in and hand him a little something to eat. Now everyone’s awake, and worse, Lulu wants to go outside. I can’t just let the dog out into the garden, we don’t have a fence. (Yes, you read that right. We live in South Africa and there isn’t a fence around our property.)

So now we’re on the street. It’s a little colder than it should be – the summer takes forever to get to the deep South. A faint yeowling from the rafters: Ravan the takeover cat is on the roof.

I shine the torch down 6th street. Thirty metres away there’s another pair of cat eyes, they disappear as Lulu trots towards them. That’s Katerina’s cat, guarding his turf. It’s peak cat hour, obviously. A giant moon hangs low at the other end of the road. I never noticed it there before. It does that, the moon, it moves around unpredictably. We amble up towards 5th street. The mountain – our mountain, is immense and very black. The sky above the mountain is blueish grey, with a watercolour wash of Indigo in the deep heavens. Big slow marshmallow clouds overhead. I’ve always envied that poetic title Max Ernst gave to one of his paintings – “the phases of the night.” The night calls artists, of course, and I think of Whistler, Van Gogh and Ed Hopper.

I once heard a French person expounding on the French words “La Nuit,” how the phrase captures the resonant mystery of night. Indeed, but how about the Xhosa word “ubusuku”? Now that’s got a bit of soul in it.

The takeover cat has come down and joined us on our amble through the deserted suburban streets. Our little party – the geriatric cat, aging Lulu, and your aging artist have seen and sniffed enough for now. We shuffle back indoors for a little more sleep. In a couple of hour’s time I’ll hear the plaintive cry of the Diederik’s cuckoo and I’ll know its summer at last.