Happy New Year!
Over the holidays, we came across the skull of a six-point buck in my parents’ field in the Adirondacks. The deer had been slain by coyotes, its skull left to bleach in the crisp fall wind. Canid tooth marks were visible on the antlers where the hunters gnawed at their prey.
It is an endless task to satisfy the curiosity of two young cats. We brought the skull back to Brooklyn. Before placing it on a shelf in the living room, we let Henry and Basil examine the novel smells of the northern woods, and of the chase. Perhaps they visualized themselves taking down a great deer as they sniffed the bone. Carnage.
Creatures of exploration need more than smells to keep them busy. When we adopted Henry and Basil, they came with a tube glammed up as a shark. They loved it!
The shark got old. It passed away when Henry vomited on its internals, damaging it irreparably. And so began the search for a newer, larger tube that can accommodate the play style of two athletic, fifteen-pound predators.
This one has windows!
More stories to come this year!
— Tys & Lily