Where Cats Can Fly
Living on the edge of reality
Where Cats Can Fly
If you’ve ever visited Key West’s Sunset Celebrations on Mallory Dock in the last thirty years, you’ve probably seen my friend Dominque and his flying cats. He’s trained his cats to jump through hoops across several feet, even hoops of fire. But he says it’s not magic. That cats can leap great distances, and with patient encouragement and good treats, he has been able to make them perform what looks incredible but is normal for them. It’s same for us, he says, human and feline, using their natural abilities to do things most people think impossible. To go beyond their small expectations of themselves.
They say some people are drawn to Key West, others are called to the island by unseen forces: a vortex created by the energies of east and west, sea and sky and the intoxicating mix of music, muse and something, man made or otherwise, that invites people to go beyond expectations, inhibitions, whatever holds them back from being who they truly are.
This is why I’m here. Because I am a cat that wanted to fly and found out a long time ago that when I was on this spit of rock in the middle of the ocean, that I could do it. It took me a long time to be ready to make that leap into the ring of fire, to leave solid ground and walk on water 100 miles out at sea. Better late than never. Better here than there, I say, although nowadays, even this Atlantis, the southernmost point of the US, seems a little close for comfort.
Dominque and his cats retired three years ago. I have lived here full time seven years, after decades of coming back, coming home, and leaving again. Six months after I moved to Key West, Covid hit. The powers that be created a road block on US 1 at the point where the Keys connected to Miami. Such an odd time, like a dream world, part hell, part heaven, as it was all ours, those of us who call these islands home.
Now, the world has come back with a vengeance. What used to be a hippie paradise is overload of tourism and drunk hoardes. And the sickness that has overtaken our country had reached our shores. Our immigrant brothers and sisters that make up a good part of our workforce live in fear with good reason, as are many of us on this fragile tip of the country, where we already know from the ocean that things are changing - our reefs, our fish, our waters. And now, the upheaval of what we thought was our country, one that does not circle my streets in black SUV’s snatching up people without process and their children, too.
Still, I cannot help but be overcome by the caress of soft salt air in the summer breeze, and the startling beauty of a turquoise green sea dappled with light. A short time after I moved here, I had a dream that I was driving my car down the Overseas Highway and it swerved, hit a guardrail and off the bridge. I was thrown out of my car, flying in the air and over the water. Just before I was about the hit the hard coral under the shallow sea, which sparkled all around me, I heard myself say, how beautiful… so beautiful.