Life In The OB

Ocean Beach is, in my experience anyway, unlike any other southern California beach city. You see things here—things readily accepted as being a part of normal life—that would cause alarm or, at the very least, arouse interest elsewhere.

Take, for example, my experience a few mornings ago.

The beloved and myself were out for a morning stroll—an early morning stroll...too early for my taste—when we spied something that, even by the bohemian, counter-culture, über tolerant standards of Ocean Beach, caused me to do not a double, but a full triple-take.

Now that I think about it, it could be the first one I’ve ever executed in my lifetime.

For there on the sidewalk in front of us, not twenty feet away, was a man with a pet on a leash.

The pet was a cat.

A cat!

You might as well know that I’m not overly fond of the species, although as a child I once owned an exceptional feline of whom I was quite fond. He lived to be seventeen. The rental house where we are summering—is that even a word?—is host to an ancient twenty year-old kitty. I like that cat as well.

Anyway...

It was upon spying the unusual sight that the aforementioned triple-take was executed. I mean, come on now, walking a cat on a leash? Cats? The same creatures notorious for ignoring even the simplest commands requests of their masters, owners, staff?

You know, as I write this, it occurs to me that perhaps I’ve got the scenario all wrong: Perhaps it was the cat who was walking the man.

That’s it.

It has to be.

There’s simply no other explanation.

Of course I did once observe two women here in Ocean Beach pulling a duck...wait for it...in a stroller.