Cat Dock

Each houseboat dock in our harbor has a different personality. Issaquah is known as the garden dock with verdant planters of flowers and shrubs and trees that create a beautiful jungle corridor. People walk their bikes and dogs are kept on leash and cats sun themselves and step out from behind blue ceramic pots to purr and perhaps allow you to pet them. Liberty Dock is like this as well. Main Dock is a wider, shorter pier with evidence of kids - bikes and toys and playhouses catch your eye next to planter boxes of flowers and ceramic sculpture and rusty art. Here on South Forty we don't have planters on the dock so much, but it does allow for a wider feel. Some people walk their bikes, others ride. Some, but not all, dogs are off leash and there is but one cat, a sleek stealthy all black feline named Karue who cruises about in the open and has learned to navigate with the resident canines. We keep our two cats inside our houseboat where they appear content to sun themselves on the deck, or go up to the sky dock and roll on the surface, sniff the chairs, and watch the birds soar overhead. Pierre likes to sit in the window and watch people on the dock, mostly tourists, who stop and gaze in astonishment, often, at their, our, surroundings, and take photos. Sometimes they even sketch or paint. And me, no longer a tourist, often find myself doing the same. Funny, I should need a reminder of how beautiful and wondrous this place is, how fortunate I am to call it home. But seeing the smiles on the faces of visitors, petting a purring cat while walking the planks, stroking a friendly dog stretched out across the dock, brings me back to the moment, to right here, right now, like the lovely cat above who stops to smell the flowers, and perhaps inadvertently, shows the one with the camera . . .  the way ~