The Pygmy Giant

by Vivien Jones

Early in the morning she slides flat through the window gap airing the kitchen, flushes the sparrows from the bay tree and rolls wholeheartedly in the coal dust outside the coal shed. She is a mostly white cat, currently a smudged grey cat. From down the lane comes the hysterical yacking of two Jack Russells, loosed for their morning pee, They are all noise and circles but she keeps a yellow eye on their proximity. She is a cat that has been bitten.

She leaps onto the brick wall, nuzzles the honeysuckle’s wood stalks with shut eyes, head thrown back. Indoors next door, a huge black mongrel places its front paws on the windowsill and whines wetly through the glass. The cat assesses the situation. Purring, she lopes across the space and places herself on the window-ledge in front of the dog with just the glass between them. She arches her back, tail erect, stretches. The dog spasms, leaping and twisting, saliva spraying through a series of frantic high barks. The cat turns her head slowly towards the dog and stares into its mad eyes, trusting the glass. The dog whines, a high hopeless keening for a world without windows.

Vivien Jones lives on the north Solway coast and writes long and short fiction, drama and poetry, much of which she performs.