Cleo likes to watch the sun set. I know this is true because I watched her do it. Often, at evening time when the weather is clear, the sun goes down over the mountains at the western side of Bachelor Valley with a flair for drama. Quite often the sunset is beautiful with lots of streaky cloud levels and all sorts of colors.
I first noticed Cleo’s odd interest in the weather yesterday. It was about five o’clock in the afternoon. She had been outside playing and roving about my farm a good part of the day … excepts for the three or four times when she put her nose to the sliding door of my office-bedroom and let me know she wanted a snack of kitty kibbles. I always let her in. My desk and word processor are where I can always see anyone who comes to visit me through that glass door.
Yesterday, just before her bedtime, I went out to call her in from play. That’s when I saw her sitting on the roof of my white Jeep. It stands in the driveway where I always park it next to the porch and just outside my bedroom window where I spend all my time writing on my word processor.
As some of my readers already know or if you’ve read my column before about my cat, Cleo like to play outdoors. A lot. She tells me, very plainly, when she wants to go out and when she wants to come in. On good days she stays outside rambling around my farm on her secret trips until she is good and ready to come in. Sometimes I call her because I need her to supervise something I’m writing … or just to have someone around I can talk to. She always comes … unless she doesn’t feel like it.
She is a teenager now. It’s been a year and a half since I picked her up from the shelter, a gray fur ball of a kitten nobody wanted. She is feeling her oats. Cleo is becoming a well-mannered grown up cat.
Last night at evening is when I realized at last what she found so wonderful from the top of my Jeep every sunset time. It was the sunset. She kept her steady yellow-eyed kitty stare on that sunset without blinking as the sun dropped over the western hills of Bachelor Valley until it disappeared. She had discovered one of earth’s great mysteries.
It was only after the sun had disappeared and night was drawing on that she deigned to look my way. Then and only then did she leave the roof and trot on down from her perch to come in for bed. She always chooses my old sweater-padded cargo file box on that sits full of my bills and stuff on the other dresser for her bed … unless she chooses a front room sofa, or the padded rocking chair in the front room or some other secret nesting place she has and has not chosen to reveal to me.
Now, when she sits on the Jeep’s roof at evening time and watches the world go to sleep, I know Cleo is only expressing her esthetic appreciation of a beautiful Lake County sunset. Lately she has started watching television when I have it on and want to take a break from writing. I think she is interested in the news of the day.
Gene Paleno is an author and illustrator living in Witter Springs.
