Peaches

I knew a cat once named Peaches. He was an all-black cat, but not one of those that could be described like a “shadow”, never be named Bagheera, never moved like a “black bolt” or even be described as “mysterious”. You’d never mistake him for a bad omen. He wouldn’t make a very good Halloween mascot either, the boy ran with wide-eye from vacuum cleaners and drooled in his sleep for God’s sake. Peaches had one eye. I never asked him how he lost it, or if he traded it for some extra lives or something. Frankly, I don’t even know if he remembered having two. He, with astounding two-eyed confidence, would size up the antique, conversation stained dining room table and leap up there, skewed depth perception and all, to fall six inches short of his goal. Never seemed to bother him though, two seconds later (eight seconds in cat years) he’d wiggle his butt and give it another go. Never letting one eye or wood tables or any of life’s other traditional inconveniences stop him. He could have written really great self-help books. Now that I’m thinking about it, Peaches taught me a lot about life. Most importantly, that the two o’clock sun was the best place to close your eye and doze off for an hour (four hours in cat years), drool a bit, and dream of a world without vacuums.