SMALL STEPS & SMALL THINGS

SMALL STEPS (for Foxy)

The cat sits peering with studied caution outside the motel room door. It is quiet,cold and foggy out in the gravel lot.
It is 02:40 am. A lone streetlight burns orange in the distance casting dim light on a dark and lonely Highway 16.
The "Highway of Tears". It is the edge of town...the edge of night.

The cat is edgy too. She takes small, tentative steps into the new liberty of ground floor living; Cursory, shy steps at first.
She is new to such freedoms being many years a third floor "patio" cat from the "big city". The huge,dark silence of the North
is a puzzlement to her city sensitive ears. Years of sirens, buses and traffic roaring past her cluttered patio perch in New Westminster
was always safely out of touch. Now, a solitary long-haul truck moans past thru distant gloom and makes her jump with its bulk
and rumble. She skitters back inside to hide near trailing bedside skirts.

Soon...she sneaks out again...ever curious. Again, the cautious, daring steps out the half-open door. A risky excursion takes her
well out into the gravel courtyard. A gentle rain drips like a Scotch mist from the motel's eaves. I sip cold green tea..light a dulsatory
smoke and watch her learn.

She does not venture out during the day. The alien comings and goings of new people and traffic keeps her clinging to the bedskirt and
peering out from under darkened dressers. But true to her feline and nocturnal nature she prefers the night..finds solace and safety in
the quiet dark.

Soon..she is bolder. She moves further afield inspecting a distant lumber pile on a grassy patch some 100 feet away. A few late-night cars
hiss by on the highway and does not fluster her...though she takes many backward glances to find my figure at the door. I lean and smile
smelling the first woodsmoke of fall; I hear the drone and buzz of late-night TV drifting out from a suite some 3 doors distant. Chuckles..
then applause...a commercial follows. Meanwhile, Smithers sleeps in cool September fog as my cat explores it's soft, quiet underbelly.

After a while the cat comes back...seeking assurance I suppose. It bounds doorward out of the dark and meows brief feline reports of
her findings to me. She leaves agian for a second foray to the distant lumber and beyond. I decide to make a fresh pot of hot tea. She is gone
a long time now...no backward furtive glances to her master. As she grows bolder I grow more worried.
Now I become cautious..concerned. This is her first lone trip into ground floor liberty! Is she O.K.? Will
she get lost? Hurt? For a short while I become the worried parent and fear the worst. I peer out the door and
call out with hisses and clucks to lure her back. Soon she bounds bravely out of the dark in answer to my
call and we are both relieved.

I am proud of her! In celebration I break out some canned salmon for a treat. She lays down proudly licking
newly sullied paws and chortles to me. A story, no doubt.

I sip my second cup of tea and ponder where these new liberties will lead? As if on cue a train whistle
blows at some distant midnight crossing as if to say "whooo knowwws". From small things, baby, one day big things come. Que sera I scribble...que sera..

( a great lesser known Bruce Springsteen song in the in the vid section!)