Now I float away like honey in the sun

This afternoon, I witnessed the evolution of Hestia Hermia Linsky-Noyes into a successful predator.

I was in the kitchen, getting ready to leave for my voice lesson, when I noticed a large bluebottle banging itself against one of the screens. We don't own a flyswatter and there were no magazines immediately handy, so I picked up a plastic soup container and prepared to contain it and move it out of doors. You should understand at this point that since their second week in this house, both cats have hunted anything that moves, from toy mice to the liquid in a bottle of seltzer to the fluttering of tissues in an open window's breeze—trailing edges of blankets, sheet music, socks, peacock feathers, the New York Review of Books, the feet, hands, hair, and jewelry of humans awake or asleep—but for obvious reasons they have never before encountered live prey. Occasionally they have seen moths. Moths are intensely interesting until they float out of the cats' field of view, at which point they lose track of them entirely. I moved in on the window with the soup container. The fly took off. It streamed straight out of the kitchen. Unerringly, without a feint or a false start, Hestia followed. Moving with the low collected intentness she usually reserves for pouncing on her brother, she pursued it through the dining room and into the living room, where it veered in a few circles before starting to skim back and forth across the big window over the futon. Hestia leapt up on the futon; she watched it intently. The bluebottle banged the glass out of both our reach. It descended to the corner of the window and banged there, buzzing loudly.

She caught it with her paws.

It buzzed frantically, trying to escape. Hestia held it down with one paw and batted it a few times with the other. I waited for the fly to dart out from underneath her claws and resume its attempted escape through the wavery double glazing.

She picked it up with her paws.

With her paws not quite cupped, but tightly pressed together—I've seen her brother do something similar with pieces of string and plastic milk caps, but never with anything as live or as small as an insect; that said, he's the one with the double paws, so he can actually pick up bottle caps and turn them over and balance on his hind feet while his front paws are occupied—she conveyed the struggling bluebottle to her mouth. I'm not sure it's possible to deliver a killing bite to something the size of a pencil eraser. Who cares? Sharply and decisively, Hestia bit down. The buzzing abruptly ceased. She swallowed once or twice, in a considering sort of way, did not cough the fly back out onto the windowsill, and jumped down off the futon and trotted away with an air of great self-satisfaction. I had to run out the door for my voice lesson, but I petted her enthusiastically and told her she was a good cat and a great hunter. derspatchel reports that she was in a sunny humor all day and even consented to be picked up and cradled in the way her brother loves and she kind of tolerates.

Houston, we have a bug hunter.

And the wild mountain thyme all the moorlands is perfuming

It is the longest day. We spent the shortest night sleepless, but derspatchel and I are headed north for the memorial celebration for Luis Yglesias. There will be singing and remembrance and summer.

Happy solstice, all.