Make a little birdhouse in your cathouse

 It's not clear what cockatiels are saying, It is clear that they mean it emphatically.

There's this house in my neighborhood that has cats. It was the first thing I noticed about the place, because I noticed the cats slinking around the neighborhood over a block away. I couldn't tell you how many cats live there. at least a dozen.

They all seem like pretty good cats, all things considered. A good chunk of them are related, I believe, and many of them clearly are not, so I suppose they have the makings of a good cat society: the family aspect, clanishness, to encourage sticking together, but with enough genetic diversity to keep fresh generations from getting harelips and things. They mostly seem to live on the front porch during the Summer, which is to say that the cat density is highest there, though individual members of the household probably wander as far as flat Top when the urge strikes them. They certainly set the tone for the surrounding block, which is to say that it is full of furtive, wide-eyed shadows crouching under cars and trees, and noticeably empty of mice.*

I'd say the cats have the run of the house, except that they don't appear to. I've never actually seen any people who live there, but each window on the South side of the house leads to an outdoor aviary which is full of cockatiels. Consequently, the East, South and West sides of the house are full of cockatiel noises, which are stunning, and then stunning again when you realize that they aren't being played on a nature sounds cd or something, but are actually piping fresh from the vocal cords of a flock of actual birds, that, as I have described, live in the house. The outside of the aviary frequently has cats crawling on it, trying to figure out some way to get those paint-feathered assholes to shut up for a minute.
With that visual and auditory barrage going on, the placid waddle and low murmur of the ducks in their pond on the house’s Southeast corner might go completely unnoticed.

Given all this, it should not surprise you particularly to learn that the house next door is for sale, and has been for some time, despite its quite reasonable asking price.

I’m always conflicted by things like these. The people who I must infer live there obviously put a great deal of energy into keeping these animals, and keeping them from killing one another. This would seem to suggest that they like their life the way it is. I feel a kind of jealousy. I imagine these Francis of Assisi types sitting I their sunny home, which contains a fountain in the living room, speaking to their birds and cats, their lives somehow serene. I also feel a squirmy kind of pity. I imagine them sitting, frazzled on their ruined furniture with their flock of birds and their herd of cats and whatever else they’ve got in there, feeling somehow a slave to the degenerate flow from two birds and three cats to four birds and six cats, to what the hell’s the difference, sure, we’ll take ‘em, we’re already deaf anyway and the toxoplasmosis isn’t so bad once you get used to it.

There but for fortune go me, anyway.  Except that I don't think I like birds much.


*I am actually referring to mouselike creatures of all kinds, as well as largish beetles, spiders, flies, unwary songbirds and anything else which has the unfortunate qualities of being smaller and slower than a cat, and therefore becomes a thing for a cat to play with until the thing dies, or if it thinks of it in time, feigns death. Those possessed of the mentality or instinct for playing possum, if they do it convincingly enough, find the experience of having to do so unpleasant, and usually find some other neighborhood to be small and slow in.