The Cat's Caw.

Prior to the peak frequency of silence that swirls up to pull me down to sleep, when I'm just starting to let reality slip into something more permeable, there's always a gruesome event that seems to mumble up out of nowhere.  It isn't a cute or benign noise.  It grates out of the depth of silence and doesn't emerge in my ear drum from an external source so much as vibrates up from within.  It is the cat's caw.  These are not cuddly cats; They couldn't possibly be.  These are cats that piss acid.   These are feral cats in the borough/county of queens, and they know how to howl.  I'm sure the noise isn't very loud.  It isn't the volume so much.  It is more about tone and breadth of the howl, its ability to penetrate the walls and closed windows.  It echoes in on itself, folds and undulates into a kind of stasis that eventually swims around me again to replace the silence I knew previously.  I cannot feed these cats no matter how I try or how much food I leave for them.