(Vincenzo Camuccini’s Death of Caesar, 1798)
 
I made it back home safely after the long looping road trip to North Carolina. Most of it was under steel-gray skies and periodic downpours of chill rain. It was remarkable that the sun graced the funeral. Otherwise, the last four days have been the color of gun-metal and just as grim.
 
So is the news. Some Gringos were shot dead in their cars in Ciudad Benito Juaraez by some narco-thugs, maybe Los Aztecas or the paramilitary Zitas. The Gringos- and a Gringa- were associated with the US Consulate, though they have no apparent link to the DEA or other law enforcement. Small children were wounded in the cars, and in one a baby in a car seat wailed in bewilderment in the seat behind its dead parents.
 
I wonder at the portents of this. The wave of kidnapping and carnage in Mexico has generally bi-passed the Gringos who vacation or work there, but perhaps that has changed. If  Los Aztecas have chosen to send a message, President Obama made a stern verbal response.
 
He is apparently sending FBI agents to the city, which will be interesting. The gangs are grim fellows with a macabre sense of honor and history. I would not want to be one of those sent in to investigate them without the First Marine Division at my back.
 
Maybe that is where this is going, bringing the war back to our doorstep.
 
I don’t often get up thinking about Plutarch; the last time I cared about him was in High School. Will Shakespeare used to channel the great essayist of classical times, and it is the Bard’s take on this day that we remember when we sternly counsel one another to beware this day.
 
The story comes from the old Roman. According to him, Gaius Julius Caesar was warned by a sooth-sayer to be on high alert for the Ides of March.. On his way to his assassination at the hands of the Roman Senate, the Emperor-General saw the fortune-teller and joked “Well, the Ides of March have come,” to which the seer replied “Ay, they have come, but they are not gone.”
 
I have no idea why a singular day should be counted in the plural, but maybe I should have paid more attention to Plutarch.
 
The chill rain brought something beside sandy puddles where the snow mounds stood only a few weeks ago. I saw the most remarkable thing when I was at Refuge Farm yesterday.
 
Heckle the Feral Cat has taken to me in a big way- probably because of the can of tuna I put out for her when I am down there.
 
She normally only bites me once during the visit- not out of malice, but a perverse fondness. That, and the claws and the probable nasty germs she carries from the voles that provide her normal diet make me unwilling to bring her inside.
 
Non-the-less, when I am in residence, Heckle will take up a position on the deck to watch me inside, or huddle near the door.
 
It was raining yesterday as you know, a soaking chill gray penetrating soak that lasted from morning til late in the afternoon, and resumed in the morning hours to greet the commuters already disoriented from the annual leap forward into Daylight Savings. I am glad I am not going to be on I-95 or 66 this morning, where I am sure there will be bumper-car madness.
 
But that is now. What was so strange was that Heckle stayed out in the wet, waiting for me, all night and most of the morning. I had left one side of the garage open so that the old pillow in the back was available as a dry nest, and of course the sliding wooden doors at either end of the barn are open all the time so she can get out of the elements.
 
Once I was grudgingly out of best and had the radio on, I heard her calling me. I put out food, of course. I am a chump for that. She enjoyed the second half of the can of tuna and some dry food that was gobbled up before it got too wet.
 
While I was presenting round two, the cat looked up at me with that enigmatic and distant gaze and then- get this- shook like a dog to cast off the wet. I have never seen a cat that would willingly sand in the rain, and then dismiss the drops with studied nonchalance.
 
Amazing.
 
There is some really nasty stuff going on, soup to nuts. Economy, War, Narco-threats and all the rest. Maybe the sun will come back tomorrow.
 
Even if it does, we need to take a hard look at the portents. This is nothing we can shake off like Heckle does the rain.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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