I noticed a dark presence on top of a cardboard box on top of the settee. I couldn’t make out detail, just the general shape of a catamount, maybe a panther. It faced me, showed unholy interest in me, was silent, not moving.

“Perhaps I can photograph this presence.” I reasoned the flash would bring out the detail I couldn’t discern with my naked eyes.

Stealthily – or I hoped – I took my camera out of the box, opened the sliding bar to turn it on. I pointed it in the general direction of the dark presence, pushed the shutter release.

If you’ve used a digital point-and-shoot camera, you probably are familiar with the low light sensation of tripping the shutter and waiting an eternity for the camera to see what – if anything – it can do with the available light plus flash. Sometimes you get something usable. Sometimes you don’t.

Finally, the flash fired! I captured an image, I knew, and it would be spectacular, a nighttime marauder! Scary, I know, but, well, who doesn’t want to know what lurks in the dark?

Hey! That’s the beast from Jean Cocteau‘s “Beauty and the Beast”! He kind of looks like a Persian tabby!

Well, something was very wrong about this copyrighted image popping up in my viewfinder! I hesitate to remind myself about the hassle Google and Sony gave me when I innocently posted videos of Andy being cute to Louis Armstrong Dixieland Jazz from his late 1920s period, you know, the famous Hot Fives and Hot Sevens sessions! Who knows what hell awaits me for finding the bête from Cocteau’s classic 1946 film, “La Belle et la Bête” staring back at me!?

Whew! That was a nightmare! So I looked again:

They call this “foreshadowing”!

Seriously, folks, that foreshadowing image made me release some body fluids, “down there”! [shudder]

I had to look again. Maybe I was projecting my anxieties onto this dark presence, the image I captured on top the printer box on the settee that the boys refuse to let me set out in the trash. Maybe it was a happy image. Maybe it was…

Ow! Ow! Sometimes Persians just have to be shaved to the nub, and the result is horrific! (Persian Cat Rescue of Johannesburg, SA published this image in a recent blog. Mr. Pickles, above, had to be shaved this way to deal with neglect in the form of mega-mats in his hair.)

Poor Mr. Pickles! He’ll be muy lindo when that hair grows out, and, until then, his sweet personality will win his new family over. I hope you find your forever home soon, sweet kitty!

Aw! The tension is high. The panther hasn’t moved a fraction of an inch from what I can tell, and the shadows conceal his intent. He has teeth and claws. I’m certain of that!

I forced myself to take another peek. “It can’t be that horrific,” I thought, “not after what I’ve seen so far!”

Here’s what I saw:

EEEK! It’s Andy, cat from Hell! Looking at me. Looking and thinking. Thinking and looking. And thinking. And looking. Something is on his mind!

It was Andy in the dark. And his “horns” were up!