![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Daisy-smooth.gif\")
<\/p>\nI’m home in the mountains, and I took a walk. It was 32 degrees at 5 o’clock.<\/p>\n
I came up a hill and saw a black animal dashing across the road far ahead. I thought it was a dog. When I got to the corner, I saw that it was a cat. A fat black cat.<\/p>\n
The cat walked away from me and down the driveway, meowing. It turned around and looked at me and then meowed, twice, three times.<\/p>\n
It sat down and looked back at me over its shoulder. So I called to it. Kitty kitty.<\/i><\/p>\n
The cat walked up to me, slowly. It came all the way up to me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I took off my glove, slowly, and reached my hand out, slowly. Its fur was smooth and glossy. Its belly hung low. Its eyes were bright and its ears were clean.<\/p>\n
I scratched along its spine and around the ears. The cat moved its body to meet my hand, and closed its eyes.<\/p>\n
I scratched and petted the cat for a minute. It felt good to scratch a cat. Cats have soft fur and their spines and tails make one long curving line. Their spines undulate when you pet them.<\/p>\n
When I started walking again, the cat walked next to me.<\/p>\n
What are you doing?<\/i> I said.<\/p>\n
I like cats because they’re independent, they don’t act like dogs. This cat was acting like a dog.<\/p>\n
I liked it anyway.<\/p>\n
I kept walking. The cat kept following.<\/p>\n
I stopped. Kitty, go back to your house.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
It rubbed up against a tree and looked at me. I took off my glove and scratched its back again. The cat seemed to prefer my hand to the tree. Cats are very manipulative.<\/p>\n
Eventually I told myself that I’d had enough cat tricks and I was getting cold and I needed to keep walking. So I went on.<\/p>\n
At the end of the street, I met a woman with three small white dogs. I said hello to her, said hello to her dogs and patted them, and introduced myself, because it’s that kind of neighborhood. She said her name was Tracy.<\/p>\n
I asked if she knew who owned the black cat. She said the black cat was hers. She said it follows them sometimes. She seemed embarassed.<\/p>\n
She said the cat’s name is Daisy.<\/p>\n
When I came back up the street, the cat came back out and let me pet it again.<\/p>\n
Daisy<\/i>, I said. I heard your name is\u00a0Daisy. Sorry about that.<\/i> The cat ignored my words and undulated under my hand.<\/p>\n
Soft fur warm body moving spine. Part of the forest\u00a0and part of the house and part of my hand.<\/p>\n
Because I petted the cat, my walk was different. The cat was in my walk.<\/p>\n
The temperature wasn’t so cold. The sunset was blindingly bright in a crisp sky.<\/p>\n
A hawk glided silently over the trees and dove for its prey. A red sign glowed at the shops across two valleys, miles away.<\/p>\n
The highest branches were lit by the sunset and they moved at the tips.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/treetops-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
I walked for an hour. I could see in the dark. I was warm in my coat. I hung low near the earth and felt the gravity.<\/p>\n
The cat was there, the cat is here, the cat was behind the trees, the cat is across the road.<\/p>\n
The cat breathes and looks\u00a0at me and moves its spine, and I breathe and look\u00a0at it and move my spine.<\/p>\n
I took a walk with a cat named Daisy.<\/p>\n
Today’s penny is a 1998, the last year that I was owned by a cat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m home in the mountains, and I took a walk. It was 32 degrees at 5 o’clock. I came up a hill and saw a black animal dashing across the road far ahead. I thought it was a dog. When I got to the corner, I saw that it was a cat. A fat black … read more A cat named Daisy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[316,321],"tags":[621,943,189,1363,566],"class_list":["post-10050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvisation","category-tress","tag-621","tag-cat","tag-cold","tag-mindfulness","tag-walk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10050"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10206,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10050\/revisions\/10206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}