Growl

You're asking for more photos, but do you know how hard it is to photograph a cat that refuses to come out from under the rosemary bush? I still haven't seen the kitten properly yet, only heard it. I THINK it is dark grey, although that could have been something else entirely. It is still very, very small, judging by the squeaks and lack of activity.


It was morning when I took this picture, and she hadn't wiped the sleep out of her eyes yet. Also, she was still too sleepy to bother spitting at me.


This evening, however, when I took her some fish, she growled and spat as I placed the dish under the edge of the rosemary bush. She was trying to say Thank you, but it came out all wrong.

I'm pretty sure she appreciated the fish, though. When I came back to check, the dish had been licked clean. I rinsed it out and left it full of clean water, in case she gets thirsty in the night.

I'm hoping to bribe her into letting me see her baby, eventually. At least I think I want to see it. I started thinking about the whole rosemary baby thing tonight, and, well ... I don't know. Maybe this whole thing is a big mistake. Maybe I don't really want to know what she's got hiding under that bush.

But speaking of growling animals, today The Man and I went to the supermarket, and as we were parking our bicycles we were having a little argument about something. It wasn't anything important or serious, but there was a bit of good-natured shouting. An elderly man walked past holding a small hairy dog just as The Man shouted something insulting back at me, so the insult went straight into the dog's face. The dog responded, as he passed me, by growling.

But it was a quiet, tentative sort of growl. It was a growl that said:

You're bigger than me so I don't want you to actually HEAR me growl, but I'm growling anyway, to show anybody who happens to be listening (and I hope nobody is) that I disapprove DEEPLY of that insult, and just don't do it again, all right? If you do, I will growl again, but not very loudly, probably, and I hope you won't hear me. I don't like this shouting business though, indeed I don't. Grrr! Oops. He didn't hear that, did he?

I didn't realize until I heard it that a growl could say quite so much. It made me grin all the way round the supermarket.