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I know people who when their cat escapes into the yard they shriek and run and think the cat is doomed, while the cat maybe hunches down a bit and looks around at the much contemplated but little experienced environs. Where I work is in the intertwined industrial wasteland/downsview ravine system, and among many things at once a place where the callous and tormented do sadly sometimes abandon their unwanted pets. Some few of those survive awhile and some become quite good at it. And they breed. There was one I started noting a few years back, a wizzened very cool cat. She’d look back at ya in a way made me think she’d known humans, but had her feelings hurt. Her life already looked hard when one day I saw her trailing skippering frantic kittens – she’d march direct, they’d dart and pause and then race like little rockets to catch up – always in a hurry. Since then the number of times I’ve seen them and tried and failed to get a picture is many. They’re incredibly fast, and I have no idea why, but they’ll stand there looking at me but when I raise arm for the picture, or wind the camera, they tear off out of sight in less than a second. One or two of these are black and white, one is mostly black, and one, that Ive long called the gem cat, is a warm and fiery brown with stunning caramel highlights. A new batch of kittens included a bustling little orangish one, so at least one of these is female. None are regular size, all small lean quick with eyes smoothe in their faces like gems, like squirrel eyes in a way, not all bulb and lashes like most house cats, and their head movements are much quicker, instant, tic tic tic decision. And they recognize me from far away as most everyone else ignores them. And I tend to turn up when they find food, making me one of their listed enemies in fact, even though I’m usually returning to see if they found the food I put out. Getting this last roll of film back, on which there are 4 photos all of gem, will show you in a sense, how tough they are photograph, these among the best opportunities, yet just barely successful, and of course, faced with the november darkness.
Here’s some of the previous photos of gem:
