When I can work up the motivation to actually leave my house, I enjoy a nice jog around my midtown neighborhood, down and around the Capitol, and back home. The sidewalks are well-paved. The traffic’s not too heavy, nor the lights too long. About the only downside is crossing the train tracks that bisect town - not just because I possess all the grace necessary to get my foot stuck in one and go flying, but because of the rather interesting assortment of folks who can congregate around the tracks.

It’s not the people so much as their dogs. I don’t like any large dogs except my own. It’s not that I’m afraid, exactly, just wary enough - the product of a husky’s attack when I was wee, many moons ago.

So a few days ago, home at an unusually early hour, with just enough sunlight left to safely run, I casually jogged up past a particularly suspect house bordering the tracks, carefully watching the people by the tracks to watch for unleashed mutts. When out of the corner of my eye, I caught an advancing blur.

It streaked towards me from the right, from the yard of the suspect house, ivory and quick. My heart rate jumped, as did my feat, as I readied myself to take fast action. In the split second it took to readjust my gage for the impending attack, I looked down to see . . . .

A cat.

A house cat.

Running at me, crouched low to the ground, like your pet Frisky when he’s after a dangling bit of string, or an invading spider.

That cat was after me. I did a little hop, blurted out some manner of expletive, and then looked at the women sitting on some broken piece of lawn furniture, obliviously puffing away on a cigarette, and then kept running.