Sitting at the table this morning, attempting a quiet moment before the day starts, and the Now-What? inevitably happens.
A cat joins me. Malachi. He wants to cuddle while I try to journal and eat my eggs. He also wants my eggs.
Out the window, across a yard that’s been mowed too long ago, I spy an unmoving brown lump. Bifocals take a moment to register it as a bunny munching on the clover, which is halfway up the creature’s body.
I stand to take a dish to the sink. The lump didn’t move.
I spy the lump from the bathroom window. Stone still.
Bifocals take a moment to register—that’s not a rabbit. That’s yard debris that my mind made into a rabbit.
Back at the table with the cat who believes I got up to replenish the eggs. Malachi realizes he’s out of luck and crawls into my lap for cuddles, and he spies the brown lump in the yard. He stares at it, certain in his kitty brain that it’s something… unless it’s not. He decides it’s not worth his valuable time.
He gives up staring.
I give up staring and hold the massive cat over my left shoulder while I attempt to journal and drink my tea.
Then I feel the toes in my shoulder. Razors, that is.
Malachi, out of the corner of his kitty vision, spots the not-a-rabbit moving. He got excited and… let me know about it. Mal returns to the table after extracting his claws from my shirt. I commence staring at the brown lump that did indeed move to a different patch of clover a foot away.
The brown mess was a rabbit. Until it wasn’t.
Then it was a rabbit again. Malachi and I agree on this.
I clean up my mess and doctor my shoulder punctures. Head to the office.
Bifocals take a minute to adjust—or my brain isn’t totally awake yet. Probably both.
There’s a mess in the corner that I’ve been avoiding for a few weeks.
I pick up a manuscript from the pile and spy my name in the header. I don’t remember writing this. Perhaps I’m seeing things.
I flip to the middle and read a few sentences. I don’t know these characters. They may as well be brown clumps in the backyard so far as I can tell.
The title doesn’t ring a bell, and I have no idea how it ends. If it ends? Did I write this out all the way, or was this one of my stopped-midway projects because of a Now-What?
As I adjust my glasses for a more proper read, Malachi joins me, his little emotional cup still not full. He nudges away the pages and steps on them. Sits on them. Then crawls back into my lap. I must hold the pages this way and that around his girth and biscuit-making.
I pick up the last page. Malachi and I both peer at the words.
And whatcha know?
He and I agree.
This here’s a rabbit…
