5. In the Beginning . . .
It was a dreamily perfect spring afternoon. The sky outside the window of my writing nook was as pure and crystalline a blue as God had ever intended. The tiny pink roses on the climbing bush, wending its way up the wooden fence enclosing our small backyard, were in full, festive bloom. After a particularly cold and difficult winter, the entire backyard had exploded into a riot of glorious green leaf and multihued flower. I’ll admit that there are still days when I think to myself that nothing will ever be better than living in Manhattan. But, on days like that one, I can’t imagine any place on Earth I’d rather be than in my lovely little brownstone, here in Jersey City, with Fanny napping on the sunlit windowsill of my writing nook and Clayton dozing peacefully on the desk beside me.
A sudden commotion of sparrows split the silence outside, and I swiveled in my desk chair to see what had them so agitated. A wispy, fast-moving cloud of some kind was rising from the other side of the fence that adjoined our neighbor’s yard. I couldn’t tell what it was at first, but I soon detected the fluttering of small, almost imperceptible wings. It looked as if an egg sac of infant moths had burst open into the stillness of the springtime air—and the sparrows, grateful for the bounty, had stationed themselves in a cluster around the newly hatched insects, gobbling up as many as they could in their small beaks as the moths tried to beat their way skyward.
The sound of sparrows tittering in the backyard had wakened Fanny and Clayton from their slumber, and they took up side-by-side positions on the windowsill for a better look. My wall-unit air conditioner faces out onto the backyard, and soon I noticed three or four of the minuscule moths—small enough to pass through the filter—fluttering their way through the air conditioner, into the house, and around the cats’ heads.
It was the birds my cats wanted, not the bugs. But the cats were already up, their appetite for hunting whetted, and the baby moths were better than nothing. Rising up on her hind legs, Fanny tried to grab at them with her front paws, while Clayton made a few half-hearted hops, attempting to catch one or two in his mouth before they got away.
But the moths were so small—so very, very tiny—that it was nearly impossible to keep track of them among the dust motes also dancing in the sunlight that fell through the window. Almost before Clayton and Fanny had even started to try to catch the insects, before I could think of finding something to swat at them with myself, the wee creatures had flitted out of sight. And even though they hadn’t tried very hard to nab the moths, Fanny and Clayton still looked disappointed.
“Aw, don’t worry about them, you guys,” I said, giving each cat a sympathetic scritch on the head. Fanny and Clayton looked up at me drowsily from heavy-lidded golden eyes, purring lightly at the touch of my hand. “Those silly moths weren’t worth trying to eat, anyway. There’ll be plenty of bigger and better things for you two to catch someday. You’ll see . . .”
