Love is grabbing hold of the great lion's mane.
-- Hafiz.

I’ve been on my own for a week. The kids are with their dad. Dennis is in D.C. on business.

It’s me and the tenacious heeler sisters.

Lila Jane and Red Dawg are grinning at me in the driveway, planted square on their freckled legs, bob tails wriggling. It’s hard to understand the ferocity of heeler dog love unless you’ve had one. But right now, with their bright eyes turned in my direction, ears pricked, awaiting whatever I decide we’re doing next, I am the center of their attention.

Possibly of their universe.

Because these two, who hardly ever miss a thing that goes on around here, are completely oblivious to what is skulking around the corner of my eye.

It is the biggest barn cat imaginable.

It’s a giant calico cat.

No, it is a humungous tiger cat.

It’s Catzilla.

Whatever he is, I hope we get some of that gene pool into our frighteningly inbred army of barn cats—each one the identical aloof, shaggy, gray, emerald-eyed.

The shadow is slinking 30 feet behind the clueless heeler dogs, underneath the wheels of my Tahoe, quick out into the open, underneath the wheels of the truck, quick out into the open, and then

Gone.

When Dennis returns from D.C. I tell him about how I’ve just seen the biggest barn cat I’ve ever seen in my life, and I wonder where he came from, because I haven’t seen him around here before, and how I held my breath hoping to get a clear look at him without letting on to you-know-who, although I just never did, not quite, and that I was praying the heelers wouldn’t get the poor thing, and disappointed and heaving a sigh of relief when he just vanished into thin air.

My husband, you know, the one you’d probably want to be hanging out with if the whole world goes to hell in a hand basket because he knows the wilderness like the back of his hand, is shaking his head and chuckling because he tells me what I saw was that old bobcat.