Slower.

At night and especially late at night, I don’t walk all the way to the double pine for breaks. Instead I walk across the road toward the pond and the nature walk, into the deeper darkness of the trees there. For one it’s closer. For another I can piss there in peace, since they lock up the bathrooms whenever they lock up the rest of the buildings.

The view of the stars is nearly pristine, and it’s a good place to take breath. Sometimes there are odd noises from the pond, crickets, frogs, ducks?

So just as I began to step back onto the roadway I saw them loping three in a line right down the sidewalk, and incredibly they didn’t see me. I stopped and watched them come closer. They did look like cats more than anything else familiar, except they were raccoon-sized, and their tails were much more than feline.

When they were at their closest I called out: ‘Hey kitty kitty’. They almost paused, and stared at me like, dude, what the hell are you doing there this time of night? But they resumed their baseline pace almost instantly, not hurrying, just keeping the line one after the other. I had a long and good and multi-angled view. Triple coati.

Then I went home to an abbreviated sleep, flew down to the big city for a couple key errands, and made it all the way back to work just in time.

The day began with multiple conversations, wanted, unwanted, productive, inane.

A standard daylight break at the pines, and I saw a lovely hummer there, feeding on tiny pink bell-shaped flowers.

So listen. A year of pigs. Suddenly all at once a night of coati and then a capstone visitation from the tiny little bird.

Things are changing.