Obsidian

 

Obsidian Norman Harvey comes in through the bathroom window, projected by a silver zoom. A wooden ladder rests against the outside wall, there to assist his scaling and abseiling from said yonder window. His firm smooth figure tiptoes on sill, leaps to floor tile, gravitates to door awhile, black as his name. Really it’s a case of checking for food and marking boundaries, round the clock, however on days of extreme it means sniffing out the warmest or coolest locale in the rooms available, all depending on the season. Our excitement at seeing this noirish feline, our finer feelings about the long-tailed history of his species, are minor matters to him as he pads towards warm or, depending, it’s all in the feel, cool. If he requires attention he will let us know, with a body caress across the ankles, circling presence then cross-weave, or sudden buffet of the knuckles with his forehead. This last gesture means he wants us to tickle his skull, smooth his coat, and speak sweet nothings until he is a purring ball of sop snuggled nearby. Miaous are not his thing, leading to the impression that our cat is the tall dark and handsome quiet type. His metabolism and feistiness make up for this absence, traces of Oriental maybe Burmese we think, as he pushes his weight against us mere humans or pounces with a right claw that we like to pretend is all playfulness. Eventually he curls into one of his best pitch-black mandalas that remind us of why he is the centre of the universe, at least for a few hours each day. What does he dream about? Is he, like us, sorting out the seven sins of his life in a Dada theatre? Or is he a clean slate, black as night, indifferent to chalking up the pluses and minuses of psyche? The centre of the universe isn’t saying, calm as, unobserved by any known telescope. Technically Obsidian is not our cat, he is Bridie’s cat. This is not only true according to the unwritten law of the household, but also in terms of the overwhelming main source of attention, affection, and alimentary additives. Thanks to this triple-A rating he awakes alive again to exit via the silver lever and sliding scale of bliss into the garden, clawed. There he stalks through broad beans, inspects the insects, ducks a mynah, scrambles over a fence in search of unknowns that commensurably are generally the same unknowns he explores every other day of the month. That quiver by the compost bin rivets his frame, but was it a mouse or a falling leaf? Soon he will excavate something exquisite from the outside storage room, to be dragged like a length of sky along the path and into the house, there to be presented officially and lengthily at our feet, with a tiny Oriental phoneme of pride and mission accomplished: a silken bathrobe of sapphire and almost obsidian (you could say) design, otherwise destined for the op shop.

 

 

In celebration of International Cat Day (August the 8^th), here are some words about Obsidian. The photograph is one of our favourites of Obsie, sitting in a garden container, the king of all he surveys.