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Everything but the Tail

a classic noir

By Mindy ReedPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Simon Considers His Prey

Simon is a Hurricane Harvey rescue. When I adopted him from Humane Heroes at our neighborhood Petco, I agreed he would be an indoor cat. Simon does stay inside, well at least most of the time, but at least once a day, he slips through the cat door to find himself a snack. If it is before his dinner of a can of Friskies, it is his appetizer. After dinner, it is his dessert.

While the critter de jour is chased, tossed in the air, and tormented in play, ultimately the bird, mouse, or lizard, is devoured in just a few bites. Almost always, Simon presents the catch to me as a gift. And while he may ultimately leave me a heart, liver, tail, or whisker, the offering is ultimately consumed—by him.

Among Simon’s many talents, is his ability to catch the prey, carry it in his mouth, bring it through the cat door, and throw his voice like a ventriloquist, announcing his conquest.

On this particular day, Simon selected a gecko for his snack. The picture is fascinating because instead of scampering away, the lizard, decided to try and stare down the cat. Geckos lack eyelids, so staring is of second nature to them. I know from experience, that Simon is rather adept at staring into the eyes of another. A stare off is more than a game to him. It is more than maintain eye contact for longer than his opponent. And since, as mentioned above, the gecko has no eye lids, he may have thought he had an advantage.

It is only because Simon and the Gecko were so focused on each other that I was able to capture this picture. It required becoming stealth, if I made any sudden moves, both would try to bolt. Luckily for me, I am in the habit of carrying my iPhone under my arm so I can respond immediately to a call or text, so when I saw the Cat-Lizard Standoff, I had my camera at the ready. I caught the shot a millisecond before Simon’s paw, claws ejected, swiped up the lizard in a single swoop. I heard a faint cry as the gecko went down his gullet and the next shot was the tail, hanging from his mouth.

Like most lizards, geckos can drop their tails at will, a defensive move so they can escape from impending danger. Because it was already down my cat’s throat, the innate ability served no purpose in this scenario. The tail was left as a gift for me.

When I first looked at the picture on my cell phone, I felt the color and lighting did not represent the scene I had just witnessed. I decided to take advantage of the edit feature in Apple photos. After cropping the photo, I experimented with the different filter features, moving the photo frame through vivid, vivid warm, vivid cool, dramatic, and dramatic cook. Part of me wanted to keep the vibrant green of the gecko, but as I went back and forth between the options, the noir selection captured the true drama of the event I had witnessed.

Noir is the perfect description. Film noir, those black and white crime dramas of the 1940s and 1950s. While a cat stalking and then capturing and consuming its prey is as National Geographic wild as it gets, the grays and lighting and shadows of the cat and the lizard in the photo I took is classic noir—an evocative, vivid, dangerous image of a crime in the making. I suppose in our scenario, Simon is the perp, the gecko is the victim, and I am the witness, although I wouldn’t mind being the hardboiled detective.

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About the Creator

Mindy Reed

Mindy is an, editor, narrator, writer, librarian, and educator. The founder of The Authors Assistant published Women of a Certain Age: Stories of the Twentieth Century in 2018 and This is the Dawning: a Woodstock Love Story in June 2019.

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