Tag: compound

….has stopped working. That is not a good thing in Houston.

Several years ago, when my writing partners and another couple of friends and I still frequented our chat room, I was always telling long, pointless stories about my daily life. I never realized how many of these had to do with animals until Tim one time said, “Your life is like a Disney movie.”

It is weird that I could live in the middle–not the urban sprawl–of the country’s fourth-largest city and still have so much wildlife around. The Compound is only a mile from Houston’s beautiful skyscrapers. Yet we have more than the usual pigeons and squirrels (although we have those in abundance). I see and often interact with tons of birds, opossums, racoons, an occasional escaped ferret, and of course, that boldest of urban dwellers, big fat rats. So far, not one of them has sewn me a dress, broken into cheerful song about following my dreams, or rescued me from a wicked stepmother…maybe because I forgot to have a stepmother.

The view from our dining room is a privacy fence. I hung flowers there to make it more interesting. They all died. I don’t know if it was because of our relentless sun or because the cross piece of that fence is what I call the “habi-trail.” It’s a major rat route. Nothing like sitting at the table with dinner guests and remarking, “Oh, look! A rat!” I finally filled the pots with cacti and aloe, all thriving in spite of being on the rodent highway.

Traffic on that highway has been slow lately. I think it’s because of the neighborhood bully, Yellow Cat from next door. Not only has he waged war on the rats, but he keeps beating up everyone’s house cats when he catches them outdoors. Day and night, I spot him all over the ‘hood, looking for trouble. Everybody’s talking about him–Notorious C.A.T.

I suspect his story’s ending is going to be more De Palma than Disney.