walnut, CA and ben the cat…

ben the cat

ben was a neighbor cat who was neglected and ignored, so lauren took him in. he was amazingly affectionate, slept on  a shaded corrugated metal roof next to the horse stalls in the backyard of lauren’s 1-room apartment when it wasn’t too cold outside, and would have come with us to colorado if he hadn’t been taken by a coyote or great horned owl.

another hot day in walnut

walnut was a great little community. everyone had horses there. there was a park with a corral, and a trail that wound through the small suburb for the residents to ride around. I remember a huge hill as well abutting the neighborhood completely covered in mustard plants. the only downside was how hot it would get during the summer. weeks on end of 100+ days. not good for laurens who don’t sweat, which is why she looks so miserable in the above photo.

lauren and ben, walnut, CA

lauren took to feeding him and caring for him, and he took to lauren, sleeping in the apartment and hanging out all day long, so we asked the neighbor who he technically belonged to if he (the neighbor) wouldn’t mind if we adopted him (the cat), and he said ‘fine I don’t care’ which made us very happy indeed. I think it was just a few days later he disappeared. we walked all over walnut for three days following the trail and through the mustard plants looking for any sign of him, but of course we never found anything.

panting cats freak me out

here’s ben panting and taking a break from play in the shade. anyway, losing him hurt like hell, but somehow losing him to a predator like an owl or coyote made it different, slightly easier to take somehow. this is hard to describe. some weird humanistic impulse to use nature, what jack london (a titanic asshole, btw) called ‘red in tooth and claw’ and the barbaric cruelty of how there has to be a predator-prey relationship at all, as an escape, a defense mechanism of sorts. but it’s definitely fucked up, IMO. I mean, why do we have to eat? if we didn’t have to eat, we wouldn’t have to war over resources. actually that’s stupid, we’d still find other shit to war over probably. but getting to a point where one realizes one take up space in this world is not an easy thing to swallow, so to speak. and some people, once they hit that wall, aren’t able to climb over it and justify their own existence. it’s why we went vegetarian for almost 8 years. (though we continued to eat eggs and fish. thank you scott pilgrim for that brilliant scene with the ‘vegan police’.)

out of focus ben

anyway, ben was wonderful and sweet and we wish he could’ve come with us to colorado. he would’ve loved the long walks we took around the gravel pit with blue, misha, sophie and beau-beau.