THE HOMECOMING

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Despite the dismay over the state of our old home, many small surprises shone forth from the rubble. I found a few surviving pansies in the garden. Natalia lit on a folder of drawings I had saved from her earliest years. And for two consecutive nights we stepped out into the yard and saw the pulsing of northern lights. It was more like a prelude than a full dancing display, but it helped me recall some of the magic of this valley.

On the back shelf I found a final jar of "Fritz's leg" that I had canned, from the gift of a hind quarter of moose meat given to us by a friend of the same name. I scrounged enough garlic dregs from a shriveled tangle to accompany it. As the four of us sat around the scruffier pine table with a candle glowing in the middle, eating plump plates of potatoes, carrots, and moose, it all seemed like a dream.

The surprises continued that night when Natalia and I were standing on the front porch. It must have been at least eleven because darkness didn't descend until after ten. Waving the flashlight in an arc across the clearing, Nat said, "Let's see if we can find any eyes." At first it revealed only darkened garden meadow. Then eerily, in the far west corner, past the untended rows of strawberries, the light ignited two fluorescent globes. "Maybe it's Pippin," Nat breathed. She had missed her pet, and a photo of the feral cat had been tacked on our wall at Shuswap Lake ever since we moved there in 1992. In unison we began to call her. The glowing eyes traveled closer, hesitated, then continued towards us. We still couldn't make out a body, but the eyes coursed up the hill through the old barn site, past our outhouse, and up the ramp. Natalia held her breath as at last we caught sight of Pippin's fuzzy form. After almost three years it was like an apparition to see Nat's pet dance toward us. As she advanced to the top of the ramp the light caught the essence of bush cat, and in the eyes, the touch of wildness which had sustained her. Just when Nat bent down to pet her, Pippin turned and dashed down the hillside. "Cats don't remember people anyway," she moaned.

Happily, the next morning Natalia discovered that sitting still and letting Pippin make the advances was the best strategy. At last she gratefully scooped her up and hugged her. Apart from the white bib, Pippin had the eyes and coloring of an owl. A robust bush cat, she was also as soft as a lynx. Random squirrel tails on the path and the screams of an unfortunate red-breasted sapsucker attested to the fact that she could look after herself. Without a doubt, she would travel south to Shuswap with us.

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