Smokey comes outside on Saturday mornings.

He belongs to someone in the apartment building next door. He likes to cool- out on weekends with my cat, Bert.

The two stripped felines spend their day in an apple tree waiting for clumsy birds to fly into their trap. The fur balls haven’t a clue as to how lucky they are.

Not many cats in New York have a back yard, not to mention lots of perennials to hide and play in. It is so sweet that Bert and Smokey are friends and don’t fight over girl cats, spray for territory or claw one another to death over some pussy.

They are both ‘fixed’ and have flea collars on and simply like the company of one another.

I lifted the window after Bert demanded I do so. There was Smokey sitting next to my tomato plant waiting for his friend to come outside. “Morning Smokey,” I say. He runs to the back of the yard. Bert runs after him and the two disappear into an urban jungle of apple trees, grape vines, poison ivy.

They’ll sit there until someone gets hungry and crawls back inside the window they came out of.

There where two large blue birds outside today. The birds were nearly as big as Bert and Smokey. They jumped back and forth, taunting the cats as if they were protecting a nest, but it’s fall, baby birds are born in the Spring. “Caw, caw, caw!” The birds crowed very loudly as I started to write this.

The cats were ready to make the attack. Who were these birds to be so bold as to want to pick a gang fight first thing in the morning? Bert and Smokey have waited all summer for this opportunity.

I could not figure out why the birds were calling so loudly at the cats.

Eventually they went away and Bert came back in and walked across the keyboard of my;;;;;;;;ldslafhas;dlkjf;k ;