LETTERS FROM HOME: CHASING CATS AND SQUIRRELS IN THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

Aug. 30, 2001

Dear Patty,

In these last dog days of summer, sweaty and yet dimming with portents of autumn, the Dog Star and the sun rise and set together. Whether it's the weather or some interstellar magnetic pull acting on them, the neighborhood cats seem to be prowling more than usual.

Walking Hank and Lucy after dark is an adventure. You don't know where a cat might be lurking. They never come down on the sidewalk but sit on top of walls, looking at the street from the edge. Sometimes they hide in hedges. One second Hank and Lucy are snuffling along the sidewalk, the next they're barking fiercely at a pair of eyes three feet away behind an iron fence. The dogs yelp and leap into the air like breaching whales, restrained only by leashes and tugs. The eyes beyond the fence do not move.

The cats hold their own. The Wymans' black cat is particularly unperturbed by our dogs. The Neumeyers' cat once chased Hank and Lucy into Lorimier Street. But Nathan, the Hoffmeisters' new tabby, is younger and inexperienced. He ventured into our back yard a few days ago and had to scramble for his life when Hank and Lucy were let out the back door. The call was close.

All in all, the neighborhood is feeling more neighborly these days. The city banned parking next to Indian Park, so the stereos that used to provide the soundtracks for the basketball games are silent. It's so quiet that DC fell asleep in the hammock in our back yard one afternoon last week. That used to be an impossibility.

The city is planning to widen the street alongside the park, and to do so requires cutting down a row of beautiful old trees. Trees or concrete and more cars? Sometimes cities don't see the forest.

We expect more squirrels to migrate into the yard when the trees begin falling. Hank and Lucy love chasing squirrels. When the dogs are let out, we ring bells to give the squirrels a head start.

New affordable housing is going up where the old St. Francis Hospital was torn down. A patient of DC's who doesn't seem to have a home said he'd live there but there are no trees. Life without trees does seem unbearable.

He's one of the phantom patients DC likens to the Lost Boys in "Peter Pan." Nobody knows where they live or whether they have any relatives. They never make appointments. They just appear. Like cats.

DC and I are fixing up a rental house we bought. Out parents have joined in the onslaught of painting and wallpapering and scrubbing that landlordship requires. I'm no handyman. I screw in lightbulbs and unscrew anything that needs it, try to look helpful.

Lately, DC starts each night after work saying "It's looking better" and ends it in tears.

How did we end up repairing a house for strangers when our own house, after six years, needs paint, wallpaper and scrubbing, too?

The Dog Star, Sirius, is the brightest in the night, brighter than a cat's eyes, 30 times brighter than our sun. Sirius is moving on, leaving the sun behind. These dog days and nights soon will be done.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.