Natural History

The August rains are autumn rains for me. The midday sun may boil the air a bit, but once a torrent falls from the sky,  air is astringent and cool and gives me just a little taste of the coming short days of October, when the sun will cast at the steepest angles through the crimson leaves on the trees.

Though the land is still in verdant summer, I feel this coming coolness and revel in it a bit. Just a few days ago, I was standing out in a bit of post-downpour reveling when I spied a black cat moving softly along the far end of the lawn.

Before we moved here, the cats lived in a paradise, feeding and fighting as ferals do,  and having their kittens on the old outbuildings that abut this property. The constant wanderings of dogs in and out of the house have put an bit of a damper on the cats constantly wandering here.

But every once in a while, I see one moving along the edge of the property, perhaps searching old haunts and checking to see if a giant coyote with a black muzzle still lived at this address.

On this day, though, the rain fell good and hard, and then the stooping August sun peared out to cast a yellow glow upon the land. And the sun rays cast upon the cat’s black coat, and its nearly pantherine form seemed to glow ethereally.

The cat glanced back at me, and I recognized its slender head and gracile form as belonging to a queen and not a tom.  Perhaps, it was the same queen I’d seen nearly month ago, moseying  through the summer grass with four kittens in tow.  Two black ones like their mother and two wildcat tabby ones cavorted all around their mother, who moved with the solemn determination of something wild and untouchable.

Their lives, like all things trying to be wild, are fleeting and harsh Hazards abound. Just few days later, I saw the flattened form of a black kitten on the highway just down from the house. I cannot know whether it was one of the four I’d seen cross the lawn, but I suspect that it was.

I am not a cat person. You will never confuse me with one, but I cannot help marvel at what they are. Many species of small wild cat exist in the world, but only a single form of wildcat managed set up shop in agrarian society.

This wildcat, now known by the name Felis lybica,  found that staking out granaries and wheatfields for mice and hamsters  was a pretty good way to survive. The grain ensured hordes of rodents for the stalking, and man’s hatred for all things large and predatory kept away all the wildcat adversaries or at least kept them at bay.

And over time the cat came to be man’s little wheatfield leopard, stalking and killing and living and traveling over the whole world as the ultimate mesopredator.

This is the Tribe of Lybica, the clan of little predators that don’t cause us much concern, and whole lineages of cats have passed before them. The mighty Smilodon and the American lion have fallen from the land. and even the squalling cougar has passed on from its haunts, though a few claim to see them slipping about in the undergrowth.

The Tribe of Lybica lives at the edge of human civilization, but it also lives in a much vaunted status as a companion animal. The internet worships them in almost the same garish way as the Ancient Egyptians did.  They filled their walls with many images of cats, while we fill our “walls” with memes of “kitters” and “cattos.”

The Anthropocene is the age where the little monsters thrive and the big ones live mostly in forgotten and inaccessible redoubts.  You’ve never seen an Amur tiger stroll down an alley in Pittsburgh, but you’ve surely caught the glance of one of the local ferals flitting away behind a parked car.

So the black cats will thrive well in my neighborhood. The speeding car is their only main concern.  They will stand starkly against the winter cold and driving rain, and we will consider them very little.

But they will thrive, and in the spring, the queens will have their kittens, and a whole new generation of the Lybica will inherit the grounds.

And this cycle will repeat long after I’ve moved on.

As much as I will rail that cats need to be kept indoors and kept neutered, they will thrive so long as human kind thrives.

And when our species goes the way of the dinosaur, their lineage will be spread across the globe. It might be cut down in size once the bigger predators return, or they could evolve into the new tigers and cougars that prowl the world post-humanity.

So the Tribe of Lybica’s fate is linked to ours, but perhaps not as much as we might assume.

Their connection to us will always be tenuous and fleeting but also linked and tied. A remarkable paradox, to be sure.