Homer's Odyssey
Gwen Cooper
“The first time Homer caught a fly was a few months after we'd moved in. I was shelving some new books in the living room when I heard a loud, angry buzzing from somewhere in the vicinity of just over my head. Looking around, I saw all three cats lined up – as if in formation – trailing slowly behind a fly zigzagging madly about five feet in the air.
Homer's head was raised and it pulsed rapidly back and forth in perfect time with the fly's irregular movements, his ears pricked up as high as they would go. Scarlett and Vashti's pupils were hugely dilated, so that their eyes seemed to be all pupil. They didn't unfix their gazes for even a second. It looked like they were making up their minds to pounce – but while they were still thinking about it, Homer, without any warning, was airborne.”
The Homer is question is a small (only three pounds), blind, black cat who entered author Gwen Cooper's life when he was an abandoned kitten only a few weeks old. Subtitled A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned About Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat, Homer's Odyssey is an extraordinary story of a cat and his human companions, and the lessons they learn from one another. The passage quoted above continues:
“He sprang straight up, rising and rising until the top of his head was higher than mine. The lower half of his body curved beneath him in a graceful arc. He hung in midair for a moment, an Olympic gymnast at the crest of a dismount, and I heard his jaws snap shut. He landed nimbly on his hind legs and rested on his haunches.
The buzzing stopped. The fly was gone.”
From snagging flies out of thin air, to falling into and climbing out of bathtubs full of water, to learning his way around new homes and the hearts of virtually everyone who meets him, Homer's Odyssey is the heart-warming story of a little cat that wouldn't give up, and the human who adopted and fell in love with him. Be sure to read all about it.
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