Picture on Picture By Mari Fitzpatrick

It was a nice spring day. Blue skies and a few fluffy clouds bordered the landscape, I'd been editing work all morning and I was in the kitchen on a coffee break. As I put the kettle on, a movement caught my eye and outside in the yard I saw a mouse standing on one side of the rain barrel with a cat facing off on the other side, like in the picture above. Can you imagine the scene in real time. Maybe I arrived late to the show, maybe the cat had chased the mouse there. Who knows! But within a hairsbreadth the fun started.

Zipping around a rain barrel a whirlwind of fur and whiskers. When the mouse ran the cat moved in tandem as if automated. Then the mouse sped around the barrel and the cat chased it. My heart jumped when they both stopped, turned and changed direction again at exactly the same moment. They were invisible to each other? And as the chase continued they ran: around, round and round they went, turning, changing direction, the cat in pursuit, the mouse running for its life. After a few minutes they both stopped, and this time after a momentary pause the mouse ran towards a flower bed. Did it sense something in the air? Was it a scent or a sound that broke the dizzy chase, did it sense a path home.

Tom and Jerry had set down in our backyard. That image of the impressive power couple was enough to block any creative output that I might have brought to the table. Each time I put pen to paper, I was in Disneyland. And I have had one or two unusual animal encounters over the years, not least the one with the goat who used to ramble in our garden each night: I titled that one: Shapeshifter

Shapeshifter

Moonlight fell down through the trees.
It spotted the house set under the stars.
That stood on its own in a buzz of a breeze,
And sung out the night time bars.

The grass was aglitter and the orchard was quiet.
The shed in the corner was locked up tight.
The flowers were asleep after their day time riot,
And the kids were tucked up for the night.

Then a clack clock clack clock rose up from the ground.
It sliced through the quiet airy chill.
And woke up the birds with its loud eerie sound,
And they warbled and screamed fit to kill.

And the sound went around and around and around.
It followed a shadow that walked up the drive,
to the path that surrounded the house.
It walked in a circle just walked all around;

Clacking and clocking a thumping loud sound.
Clack clock clack clock aclackclock fit to chill
Those asleep in the rooms in the house on the hill.
Each night for a week the shapeshifter called,
To ramble and walk in the grounds.

But the dreamers, bar mum, slept through it all,
And they missed out on the sight that was running around:
Of a goat with a can tied onto a rope that fell,
As he walked with a hopping galumph off the ground