CAT WALKING

More often than not, when I look out of my front window into the suburban glories of Essex I see somebody walking their dog, sometimes two dogs. It’s often a slow process because indulgent dog owners stop so that their canine pals can have a good sniff at whatever it is dogs like to sniff.  And of course it’s made slower still if the owners have to pick up the poop excreted by the hound.  Personally that’s not my idea of a good walk but then I’m more of a cat person.

 

However, according to a story that appeared in the newspapers recently, there’s currently a trend for people to walk their cats on leads.  The Times headline read ‘Going walkies is cool for cats too as more peripatetic pets take the lead.’  They really worked hard on that one.

 

This trend doesn’t come as a complete surprise to me.  I once met the fellow in the picture below, named Steve, whose cat is named Boris the Bold:

 

And of course there’s good old Cary Grant with his:

 

The Times article did involve some discussion about whether or not it was cruel and unusual to walk a cat on a lead.   The RSPCA ‘warned that some cats may become frightened on leads.’ Implying of course that some may not.  

 

However, for me, the most surprising line in the article ran as follows, ‘a London-based cat behaviourist said that if it suited a cat’s temperament then walking them on a lead could be a great way to bond with a pet and allow them to get fresh air and explore safely.’  I had no idea there was any such thing as a cat behaviourist, but then I’m not that much of a cat person.  And I suppose the corollary of this behavourist wisdom is that if walking on a leash doesn’tsuit a cat’s temperament then he or she will let you know very quickly, possibly by clawing your eyes out.

 

 

TREE OF KNOWLEDGE, INNIT

 About half a mile up the hill from where I live there’s a sort of public, not quite 

orchard, by which I mean there are a few apple trees apparently growing wild, and 

when they bear fruit nobody’s going to stop you walking in and taking a few apples.

 

So I was up bright and early and was out before the binmen came, and walked up, and there was not a single apple to be found – neither on the trees nor on the ground.  Gotta say I’m not totally in touch with the cycles of apple production but I thought I found a lot this time last year.

 

Still, an early walk is never to be despised and there was still some nature to be seen, if not of the malus variety.

 

There were spider webs in the apple trees:

 

Mushrooms on the ground:

 

And cats.  Yes, there are always cats.

MY HEART BELONGS TO TRONA

I wasn’t planning to go to Trona at the weekend, but there I was in Ridgecrest, and Trona is just 24 miles down the road, and I couldn’t resist. 

It’s hard to say exactly what Trona is.   Officially it’s designated as an “unincorporated community” but that doesn’t tell you much.  It’s not a desert ghost town (though it kind of looks like one) because it has a thriving industry – mineral processing – which has been there in some form, booming and busting, since the late 19^th century. Today Searles Valley Minerals run the show, extracting soda ash, sodium sulfate, and various kinds of borax and salt from the not quite dry lakebed.

Not a lot of people live there.  Most of the workers at the processing plant commute from Ridgecrest, but there is a small resident population; maybe a couple of thousand.  There’s something oddly suburban about the layout of Trona, a grid of neat streets, individual houses on small plots of land.  Some of the houses are abandoned, some are broken down, a few surprisingly intact. The one below is for sale - priced to move.  

I wouldn’t say that people were necessary proud of their gardens but a certain amount of ingenuity goes into some of them. Like this rock garden:

On a Saturday afternoon in November there were one or two people going in and out of the pizza joint, but otherwise the streets were pretty much deserted: a couple of kids playing football in the middle of the road, and one man walking along unsteadily in the direction of the general store.

      Some citizens had definitely embraced that whole “desert weirdness” thing, sometimes with their hood ornament:

And sometimes with their yard decorations; skeletons still in place even though Halloween was some way behind us:

As you walk around the empty streets you hear dogs barking at you, lots of them.  Sometimes they’re behind wooden fences so you can’t see them, though others are behind chain link and you definitely can.  Sometimes they’re small and yappy, sometimes they're large, angry and drooling.  In some cases their bark may be worse than their bite but I wouldn’t want to put it to the test.

And finally there were cats. I saw a couple of strays walking the streets, timid but free in a way that those dogs weren’t, and as long as the cats stayed out of the canine-infested yards they had the run of the place.  And you remember that thing in Spalding Grey’s Swimming To Cambodia where he can’t bring himself to leave Thailand until he’s had his perfect, transcendent moment? 

Well, in general I’m pretty skeptical about the need to expect, much less force, an epiphany, but I had just such a moment in Trona. 

          I saw just one cat at first, sitting on top of an air conditioner, and then one peering round the side, and then I finally spotted the third, looking out from inside the house, finally the whole trio looking out at me, looking in at them. About as good as it gets.

THE MAN OUT OF THE CROWD

Cat owners walking to, or possibly from, auditions for the Corman/Poe movie Tales of Terror, c. 1962. 

Poe Walking High Bridge,  B. J. Rosenmeyer, c. 1930

WALKING WITH FELIXES

I think you probably know that as well as being a fan of walking, I’m also a fan of “street photography” - a term that admittedly seems to be becoming increasingly dodgy. 

Recently I have also become, very belatedly, and in a mild sort of way, rather fond of cats.  And I think my fondness for cats may have something to do with walking – in that you have to “take” a dog for a walk, whereas cats insist on walking by themselves.  My cat may follow me from one room to another, but the idea of “going for a walk” with her seems inconceivable.  This is her:

One of my favorite photographers, Nobuyoshi Araki, is a great deal more than a street photographer, but he certainly takes photographs in the street, and sometimes he takes photographs of the cats he sees while he’s out walking.  He also took an enormous number of photographs of his own cat Chiro.  Like this one:

Araki, I think we can safely say, has published more books that any photographer ever has – certainly 400 plus - and one of them is titled Living Cats In Tokyo (Tokyo Neko Machi).

In some of the pictures the cat is front and center, sometimes the cat is very small and distant and it becomes a matter of “Where’s Felix?”  But they’re all good.

 I can tell you that it’s all too easy to walk around Tokyo with a camera, snapping away, and thinking you’re a bit of an Araki, and certainly the cats in Tokyo present themselves left and right, in endlessly photogenic configurations.

I can’t speak for the whole of the city, but wherever I was, whenever I stopped to look at a cat – I never got as far as petting one - a Japanese passerby would stop alongside me and say “kawaii” (which is one of the ten words of Japanese I know – meaning cute), as did this woman on her bike.

 This Tokyo experience and Araki’s book made me realize that over the years, without thinking about it very much, I’ve taken quite a few photographs of cats while I’ve been out walking.  I make no great claims for these pictures, all I can say is, “Wanna see some pictures of cats?”  I understand that some people like that kind of thing.