<table> </table> The orange cat, Mickey, and I enjoy these bright, cool mornings outdoors together. There&#8217;s a powerful sense of the season&#8217;s corner turned.</p><p>Light comes later behind the maple at the yard&#8217;s east edge. And the sky, when the sun has fully risen, is deep and clear as a glacial pool.</p><p>Mickey&#8217;s not, by temperament, an outdoor creature. He&#8217;ll not pass up the chance to slip through a door left carelessly ajar. But it&#8217;s only the challenge and thrill of brief escape that tempts him. Anything beyond that would be distressing.</p><p>He is fully domesticated, as I&#8217;ve increasingly become. Beddings on hard ground do not appeal. For both of us, the natural world is something to be savored in measured doses &#8212; not a place actually to be lived in.</p><p>So we pass a companionable half-hour or so in the fenced backyard &#8212; me at the little wrought-iron table with my newspaper and first cup of coffee; him rolling on the flagstones, nipping a bite or two of grass, hiding behind a bush or in one of the old, unused doghouses, in hopes of causing me to cry out his name and a panicked <em>&#8220;Where have you gotten to?&#8221;</em></p><p>At the very back of the yard there&#8217;s a large old walnut tree, its branches heavy with the year&#8217;s abundant fruiting. That&#8217;s where, in this month, the squirrels have been keeping busy.</p><p>One of the nimble critters will survey the many offerings until he finds the exact nut that suits him, then descend to the top of the wooden fence.</p><p>These activities will be monitored by the cat, flattened in the grass, only his eyes moving. Then as the impudent rodent scampers along the fence top, nut in mouth, toward the neighbors&#8217; yard, Mickey &#8212; a fierce tiger in miniature &#8212; will race along below.</p><p>I see him looking up, thinking: <em>Could I possibly make it up there? Is it worth a try?</em> It&#8217;s a 6-foot fence. And he&#8217;s good, that cat. But at age 9 or 10, not quite <em>that</em> good.</p><p>By such adventures are these mornings seasoned.</p><p>The other day, though, he had a genuine success. I&#8217;d finished my paper and coffee, and called out to him that it was time for us to go inside. It&#8217;s told as absolute fact that cats are independent. But Mickey&#8217;s a wonder &#8212; a cat who comes when called.</p><p>I noticed he was carrying something dark in his mouth, and reached down to take it from him. It was a cicada, of all things. I&#8217;d heard them buzzing in the trees in past weeks. And somehow he&#8217;d actually gotten one &#8212; a late emerger.</p><p>It was a fine triumph &#8212; a legitimate kill. I could see he was very proud.</p><p>But it wasn&#8217;t actually a kill. Only a catch. Because as I took it from him, the cicada slipped from my hand and went buzzing off toward freedom.</p><p>Just then, in a lightning rush from out of nowhere &#8212; actually, from beside the step where he&#8217;d been enjoying the morning with us &#8212; came the Brittany, Cyrus, who in a twisting leap caught the insect in mid-flight.</p><p>And with a disgusting crunch, <em>ate it.</em></p><p>It was, in other words, a mixed morning. After the pleasure of my interlude outside with Mickey, I had to come to terms with owning a fine, pedigreed bird dog who, for a little breakfast treat, eats bugs.</p><p>By coincidence, though, I notice that on the wall above me as I write this there is a photograph I took years ago, when I was a young man, in the mud hut of a Berber villager in the Sahara who had invited me to share his lunch.</p><p>The lunch was tea and goat entrails. And in order not to offend, I pronounced it delicious.</p><p>So who am I to talk?