Pawprints

The fog rolls in on little cat feet.
It sits looking over harbor and city
On silent haunches
And then moves on.
....Carl Sandburg, Fog


I become reclusive even on the nicest of days, and will fritter away a day with small events that stack themselves into twenty-four hours. Today I made myself go outside for a walk, intending only to stick to one area and buzz back with a quart of milk. It had been some time since going to see the new terminus for the Erie Canal, so I walked my way down to the other end of the shoreline to take another look.

I didn't know this city had the money or the ability to plan what has been completed. Originally under an asphalt parking lot, the end of the canal is as nice as anything I have seen in Boston, Massachusetts. There is ample space for concerts, lots of benches to view the river, and red Medina sandstone pathways. It looks like some cash went into this, thanks to the state, a pair of responsible geologists, and a local politician who pushed for funding. It makes the upswing that the city is slowly going through apparent, not just hopeful.

Several foundations had been excavated, stone and brick bases for buildings from the 1800's. Each piece had been numbered and removed to a nearby yard so the rest of the plot could be landscaped. Now you can see walls, drain holes, and doorways. This is what caused me to stop.

At the bottom of one of the doorways of stone, the sill plate was jumbled with brick and stone so that a patch of concrete was laid over to smooth the passage. In this recently laid mortar were several small cat's paw prints pressed, delicate as seashells. As if the cats were holding sway as they did one hundred and fifty years ago, as if telling the city, I am here, I am still here, do not forget how I kept the rats and mice away from the immense grain elevators that once lined this slip. This place wouldn't have met with as much success without the cats who curbed the rodent population.

It was poignant, how this little cat's foot imprinted into the concrete, to be here until that stone crumbles. Many eyes will see it, and think, "Cat," a real cat who echoes the ghosts of those who once lived during the city's heyday as the opening to the Great Lakes and the west. A blessing. A twining about your leg. We may go ahead.

Be blessed wherever you are, may your evening be peaceful.