The Peace Has Been Broken

For the past few months, the cats and the skink have peacefully co-existed.  I liked to believe there was a sort of detente between them.  The cats lived their lives on the air-conditioned, cozy and secure indoor side of the back door and the skink existed in the wild world beyond that door.  Occasionally, they would align on opposite sides of the border and regard one another but the peace held firm.

But like so many delicately balanced arrangements, that peace collapsed today when the skink, in the same vain as a drunk soldier stumbling across the East German border in the old days, wandered into a world in which he was not welcome.

All restraint was broken and the cats, their lines-of-sight having fallen on the skink, let loose with all the force they had restrained for so many months.

As the U.N. peacekeeper of the house, I was called into action to separate cat from lizard and try my best to return the latter to his homeland. 

The cats are still running around like little maniacs, searching for the missing intruder.  The skink is back outside, breathing heavily and hopefully capable of finding a place to hole up while his wounds heal.  The wild world is referred to as such for a reason and I have a feeling that our briefly encountered alien visitor might just become something’s dinner tonight.

So now we’ll settle back into routine and forget the fact that, occasionally, the line is going to be crossed.