I try telling my new friend, this stray girl with fragile toes, silk ears and white eyelash; try telling her about Pandemic protocol but she doesn’t care. She loves Momos from the Tibetian lady at Top in Town Mini Mall, but that is closed since Lockdown.

Black Beauty our Block Watch girl/dog & I took years to make friends but as time went by, I could not help but notice we shared a kindred passion. For the Law of mutter…

I have a reasonable temper but Blackie can be a wailing storm at 2 am. Sometimes she’s a lopsided ‘meh‘, or just does abstract poetry with her dark eyes in patch of white ash fur.

Aye, this in our strange day and time – I, human am pleased to say that she & I have things in common:

we are gulpers of Oxygen, we die without Water, or Food. We unashamedly exhibit dislike for the current confines of Distance,

that said, I envy Blackie.

I envy her maskless addressless state, unsure where she arrived off; why some of her paw is askew, why her neck bends 75% south; last December she suddenly healed of arthritis, the limp is less pronounced. Today Black walks up the stairs, visits at our door and mumbles for chow.

I’m thinking how Blackie and I were both made by God, not monkeys. I’m more like a monkey than she is though. I’m more Rhesus. More scratch-head, pout mouthed. Blackie is snout mouthed, “friend” person. If God had a four legged pet, He’d get a dog. They are faithful, they have crazy hearing and wouldn’t miss a word He spoke. They would follow like faithful disciples: we humans are more short sighted versions of cat.

B. has forgiven me for being different from her. Here she waits some noons when the sun slants in our patch picked from farms and gardens and seeds we ate and preserved.

Ahm. Some use for old furniture. (I should neaten this, right). Its like the wilds among Peace Lily, baby Gulmohar, water babies, strawberry (actually), and some names we’ve no clue of but call ‘Meer cats’, ‘Squirrel tail ‘(river grass). There’s Zeezee, Zuzu? <African fuss leaf,

All of us, flora fauna / homosapien : creatures of an unequal earth, co- species. Fathom that?

I truly wow that God made Blackie & Co.,for such a time as this:

to remind me that Life is way more complex than mere survival …