Death Bed

Slanted, sly the cat comes up from the barn's stone side in a clearly evoked mode of attack. I watch from behind the screen closure, reclined, reading the paper. The mouse or bird or rabbit cannot be seen, indeed, cannot see the cat's cramped, slinking movement stretched for the leap one must, like a Nature special, watch or miss. There, on the death bed, pieces of torn cloth tied to rose stems and sticks mark the obits of many a losing streak. I flap the paper and read of the lives of the dead. The cat drags his food to where no one can see it to where he leaves the bag with a head in it for the open casket viewing I'll have to later retrieve. Then he wail's. And, like a warden in a rotating prison system, I'll let him in.