Here’s something I wrote earlier. For full context, Fred is our eldest cat; he’s an old man now, and is probably not long for this world. If you want to hear my voice when you read, it might help to know that I follow the Stephen Fry Jeeves and Wooster precedent and pronounce “valet” as rhyming with “mallet” rather than “ballet.” A small detail, but then small details matter.
When I came out just now to perform my kitty valet duties, I wasn’t sure if Fred actually wanted to come in, so I just stared at him for a while, waiting to see if he’d paw at the door. And, being Fred, he just stared back at me for a bit, then looked away and stared off into the distance for a bit, and, while I was waiting for him to make up his mind, I noticed a large bug flying around above and behind him a bit, and I wondered if he would turn around and try to grab it, and then I looked closer and realized it wasn’t a bug at all: it was a hummingbird. A hummingbird, hovering maybe two or three feet off the ground, surely no more than three feet away from our oblivious cat, flitting side to side in that way that hummingbirds and dragonflies do: zipping a few inches then stopping dead still again, but of course they’re not still at all, because their wings are beating at lightning speed to keep them up in the air, but they’re also beating so fast that you can’t really see them. And I wished I had my phone so I could take a picture, but I didn’t, and I didn’t bother to try to get it because I knew the moment couldn’t last, so I just watched, just for a few seconds, and then Fred pawed at the door and the hummingbird flew away and I went to let the cat in.
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