Late, overcast morning after a late night. Get the day started then go for a run later, or go for a run now?

Go for a run now. Eat later. First, swap out the tunes on the old MP3 player.

Driving along up Old 63 on the way to Hinkson, slightly zoning out and singing along to Tales From Topographic Oceans by Yes. Suddenly time seems to grind to a halt as I see a small, dark gray shape struggling across the road ahead of me, in the other lane.

In a flash I realize what's happening: a cat (presumably a mother cat) is hauling a tiny black kitten across this busy road by the scruff of its little neck. She's got it over to the side of the narrow road and is trying to lift it up and over the curb, but she can't manage it. Meanwhile, cars are coming from both directions. I'm the lead car coming up from Broadway, while there's another stream of them coming downhill from the south. As the cars rapidly approach, the mother cat panics and bolts away, leaving the little black kitten sprawled helplessly in the road, directly where the oncoming cars are headed.

This whole thing is happening in seconds. Literally--in about 2 seconds I realize what's going on, and then everything that follows happens in only a few seconds more.

In the middle of Old 63, traffic behind me and oncoming in the other lane, I stop the car, throw on the parking brake, hit the hazard lights, jump out the door, and run across into the other lane, scooping up the kitten and carrying it a safe distance past the road, setting it down in some brush near where the mother has bolted. She's staring at me from a few yards away, alarmed and hissing; I crouch down and try to coax her over but she's too tense.

All kinds of thoughts run through my head at that moment--what to do about them? I glance around; there's no immediate sign of where they might have come from or are going to. Do I try to corral the mother and take them somewhere? She's fast and the surrounding brush is thick, and she's still pretty panicky--I worry that if I try, it'll just chase her off and leave the kitten alone again. So quickly I decide to leave them for the moment, where they're at least together and safely off the road.

Then I stand up and it dawns on me that my car is still sitting in the road. I turn around and see that a long line of cars has formed behind it, and as it's a narrow road with no-passing stripes, there's nowhere for people to go. So with an unspoken, "ah, crap" I dash back out into the road, hop in the car, and then pull over into a parking lot near where I left the cats.

They've moved on, down the hill into the dense brush and tree cover. I can spy them several yards in, and I puzzle over what to do. But it seems that my chance at spiriting them away has passed. The mother cat is still on alert, watching me as I try and step lightly through the dense foliage, but there's no good inlet. Before I would take a few steps, she could be long gone, and I don't want to have the kitten deserted or left behind in a panic again.

So, feeling beaten and insufficient, I leave them and head back to the car. To what fate, I wonder--run over somewhere else, later, or scavenging for survival? Or maybe headed toward their home? Picked up by someone if they approach a home for food or shelter? I don't know. But I'm stymied.

Within a half-minute of driving on, I get a call on my cell, pick it up, and hear a girl say, "happy birthday!" Flustered as I am, I actually have to take a second to check my brain for any facts I might be missing here. (My birthday's in October. Check.) I gently assure her that she has the wrong number, and drive on.

This is starting out to be a weird day.

On the trail, aside from some expected stiffness, running starts well. First song is the utterly fantastic "Chemistry" by Semisonic (surely one of the best pop songs of the decade). As its Hall & Oates-like staccato piano driving-eighths give me an emotional boost that surprises even me, the clouds open up and suddenly it's sunny. And for a moment I'm brushed by a sensation hinting at many fine days of running over the last few years, pleasant imagery and feelings of other sunny days, other trails. The same thing happens again later in the run, when the returned clouds part again during the fast/driving second half of "Ballavanich" by Celtic/rock band Wolfstone.

After the run I continue what's become a post-run ritual: picking up whatever trash I can see offhand around the trail head. It amazes me every time that people will carelessly dump so much random junk when there's a trash can just a few yards away. Pathetic. Today's haul includes a pile of corroding AA batteries (did the idiot who dumped them think they'd just evaporate harmlessly?), lots of random pieces of plastic & cigarette packaging, cups & straws, and a few aluminum cans which I take with me to recycle. Sickening. I think to myself that I need to return here late some night (when I imagine this stuff is getting dumped) and scandalize whoever's doing it. As I'm driving back home (no sign of the cats), I'm reminded how I fill my 100% biodegradable kitchen trash bag with non-biodegrading empty cereal bags, soy-food wrappers, etc., and I have to wonder what good I'm doing, really.

Though as I'm rinsing out the cans back at home and reading their labels, I do get the chance to learn something that I'd suspected but probably wouldn't know otherwise--that Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper contains neither cherry nor vanilla. Just sugar and chemicals.

And I'm reminded of Steve Kilbey's old song, "Weird Old World" :

We talk about this city and all of its lies
That's a joke, we're a cog in its wheel
And we're rolling on down to the end of the hill
And never stopping to feel.

Labels: Life, Running