A Sudden Coming Together

My wife, Trish, saved a life two days ago. She hadn't planned on doing it. It happened quickly, in a sudden coming together of events. The players were a mixed bunch of actors, each with their own needs. The setting was our side and back yard. It was late afternoon, a gorgeous June day with a cool breeze that demanded open windows and easy conversation.

But, that conversation was suddenly pierced by the sharp cries of two catbirds that had landed on the fence just outside our side bay window. They were cries of anger and alarm. Something was very wrong. The catbirds have a nest on the other side of our house, in our other neighbor's high bush. The catbird couple are extremely protective and will sound the alarm at anything with beak or teeth. And their alarm was on full volume, so loud that I couldn't hear my wife speak.

I went to the bay window and looked out. Just below the catbirds was Mama Cat, with something in her mouth.

Mama Cat (above) is a very large feral cat (maybe 20 pounds) that lives in the window well of our neighbor's house. They built a flap entrance for her so that she can enter into a small wire enclosure in their basement to escape the winter's cold and the summer's heat. They provide water and food for her. They captured her once many years back after she dropped a litter of kittens in their back yard and had her spayed. It was the only time humans have ever touched her. She is as wild as the wind. Her tracks are found in the deepest snow in the coldest months, and she sleeps under the tall ornamental grass in my backyard from April to August. I respect her independence and freedom. I especially respect her claws.

At first, I thought Mama Cat was holding a mouse by the neck. But then she turned slightly to look up at the screaming catbirds.

"Trish," I said. "Mama Cat has the baby bunny."

For weeks, we had been watching a tiny bunny in our back yard at daybreak and dusk. It was so tiny, at first, that it looked like a chewing dot of fur. Slowly, over time, the dot was growing. It could move like a blur when we approached, although it usually ducked beneath the smallest plants, thinking we couldn't see it.

"Trish," I said, turning, thinking she couldn't hear me with the din of the catbirds.  "Mama Cat has ...."

But Trish was gone, and I heard the back door slam.

"Oh shit," I said and ran.

When I reached the side of the house, my wife and Mama Cat were facing off.

"Drop it!" Trish said.

Mama Cat's instincts were on full throttle. She had made a kill. It had been a clean kill, probably with many hours of stalking and waiting to make that one fatal lunge. This was not your garden variety kitty. This was a wild animal that had survived God knows how many threats from enemies of all kinds. She was not about to be intimidated by a mere 5' 1.5" human.

"Trish," I said, coming up behind her. "It's too late. The bunny's dead."

"No it's not," she said. "I saw it move."

The rabbit hung from Mama Cat's mouth by its neck. Like its distant relatives on the African plains, Mama Cat had seized its prey by the throat and suffocated it.

"DROP IT," Trish screamed, rushing Mama Cat.

The catbirds flew with alarm into the air, and Mama Cat, trapped by a closed gate, leaped onto and over the fence to escape the charging woman. The bunny lay on the ground where she dropped it. Mama Cat had survived these many years by knowing when to fight and when to flee. And it was time to flee before the fury of this protective woman. The bunny was not Trish's child. It was not human and it was as wild as Mama Cat. But it was also helpless and young, and somewhere its mother was looking for it.

I looked at the lifeless body of the rabbit.

"It's dead," I said again. "It's too late to do anything."

Trish reached down and lifted up the body.

"I can feel its heart beating," she said quietly. "It's beating very fast."

The bunny didn't move in her hands. It didn't blink or struggle to get away from her.

Trish slowly laid the body in our garden. There was still no movement.

"Maybe it's neck is broken," I said.

"I'm going to stay with it," she said. "I don't want Mama Cat coming back and taking it."

I left Trish and the bunny in the back yard. Ever practical, I wondered what I would do with the dead body.

Twice I saw Mama Cat on the other side of the fence, staring into our back yard. I had the sense that she was calmly waiting for the human to go away so she could retrieve her prize.

Trish finally came inside.

"That was really nice of you," I said, "trying to save the bunny."

"It's gone," she said, washing her hands.

"Gone?" I said, confused. Had she already placed the body in a trash bag?

"It sat up after a while. I think it was in shock. Then, it got its feet under it and ran off into the neighbor's yard behind us where we always see it go."

I was stunned. I had written the bunny off. Twice.

"You saved a life today," I said. "That's incredible."

"I saw it move," Trish said and smiled. "I had to help it."

Over the last two days, I have thought repeatedly of Watership Down, one of my favorite books. Courage and persistance are the hallmarks of the rabbit characters in the novel. Against terrible odds, Hazel and Fiver and Bigwig and a host of others struggle to survive against many enemies.

At the conclusion of the book, Lord Frith says to El-ahrairah, a folk hero of the story: "All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you; digger, listener, runner, Prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed."

Add now add my wife, Trish, and her caring for the helpless and young to Lord Frith's blessings.



Copyright (2012) by James Hugh Comey

Bless You, Ray Bradbury

My friend, Ray Bradbury, died yesterday. He was 91. Advanced age, a stroke 13 years ago, the refusal to have a driver's license or own a computer or fly in airplanes, never slowed Ray down. He wrote 1,000 words a day, every day, in the end dictating his words through the phone to one of his three daughters. Ray absolutely loved to write. I know, because he told me.

In 1986, I read an article in the February issue of Writer's Digest that featured Ray. I had been teaching various Bradbury stories to high school and community college students for 17 years. I showed the 16mm film, The Story of a Writer, so that students could sense and feel the development of Ray's writing process, to let them know that stories found in anthologies were real, the spawned creations of vulnerable humans. I invited my students to dare stroke the downy side of his imagination, to see if they could dance within the faerie rings that he created.

The Writer' Digest article stopped me dead in my tracks, for within it, Ray Bradbury revealed the single time and place and person responsible for setting his imagination on fire. It was Labor Day, 1932, and the Dill Brothers Combined Shows had arrived at Waukegan, IL. In front of one of the tents was Mr. Electrico, a man whose hair was standing straight up and whose body was glowing with "ten billion volts of pure blue sizzling power." Mr. Electrico spotted a 12 year old boy in the crowd and stretched out a charged sword, dubbing the boy on both his shoulders, and then touching the tip of his nose.

"Live forever!" Mr. Electrico cried out to Ray.

Ray's life would never be the same.

The next day, he snuck back to the tents and met Mr. Electrico, now minus the voltage. The man was a defrocked minister from Cairo, IL. He showed Ray all of the acts: the jugglers, the acrobats, the strong man. Then he said a most remarkable thing to the wide-eyed boy.

"We've met before. You were my best friend in France and you died in my arms in the Battle of the Ardennes Forest. And here you are, born again, in a new body, with a new name. Welcome back!"

It took me a full day to get over reading that story. I sensed that I needed to do something. I had two manuscripts that had been languishing with agents, and I was feeling drained. I was teaching during the day and writing at night, and it felt like I was getting nowhere.

So, I sat down and wrote a letter to the man who wrote such classic works as The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 and the screenplay for Moby Dick, that earned him an Academy Award nomination. At the conclusion of that letter, I wrote:

"I have recently completed reading "Ray Bradbury's Nostalagia for the Future" in the February issue of Writer's Digest. I was immediately struck by the tale of Mr. Electrico and the subtle metaphor it seemed to present to me. In 1932, a man who didn't know you from Adam touched your imagination with his vitality and showmanship and offered you a moment of friendship. Like you, I don't fly (I have since flown), but I did work in a gas station for 8 years to pay for my high school and college tuition. In the gas station, I learned that the quickest way to revive a battery run low is with a surge from a dependable energy source, perhaps one with "ten billion volts of pure blue sizzling power." I don't know if jumper cables would stretch from Los Angeles to Philadelphia or if you will even read this...."

Two weeks later, I received the following letter:

"Dear James Comey:

How kind of you to write.

Consider that this is the jumper cable across the country to electrify your batteries and jump-leap-bound-cavort-lark your wildest dreams to pour out of your fingertips.

Remember: throw up every morning, clean up every noon.

DO and then think.

DO first. Get it down and done, with joy.

Then think about it.

Bless you.

Much love for all of your life,
And thanks,
Ray Bradbury"

Included with the letter was a copy of an article that he had written for The Writer magazine in July 1961 called "How to Keep and Feed a Muse." He had gone through the article and underlined various sections that he thought might help me.

Our correspondence continued. He always had the most remarkable letterheads, and, one October, there were Halloween stickers on the outside of the envelope.

Then one evening, my phone rang around 9 at night.

"Hello?" I asked. I wasn't expecting anybody to call.

"Jim!" a voice shouted. "This is Ray. I was going to write but I wanted to talk to you."

"Hi Ray," I mumbled, my lips numb.

"Listen, Jim. Don't let those editors and agents get you down. What the hell do they know? It doesn't matter what they think. All that matters is what you think. Love what you're doing and don't listen to the bastards. Will you do that?"

"I will, Ray," I heard myself say

"It's what's kept me going, all these years, Jim. Love what you're doing, and it'll show. I just wanted to tell you that, Jim. Bless you."

And he hung up.

A stroke hit him a short time after that.

And now, he's gone.

I have never forgotten the joy and awe and thankfulness that I felt that night. In the conclusion of "How to Keep and Feed a Muse," Ray underlined: "Be certain of this: When honest love speaks, when true admiration begins, when excitement rises, when hate curls like smoke, you never need doubt that creativity will stay with you for a lifetime."

 Bless you, Ray Bradbury.

Copyright (2012) by James Hugh Comey