The gangs of suburbia

This morning as I backed out of my driveway to head to work, I noticed that directly across the street from my house there was a Cat Drama unfolding. First, I noticed two neighborhood cats, the black one that taunts my kitties and the striped one that has been in my backyard, even my house before (another story, blahblahblah). They were sitting very close to one another, watching the tree. I thought "weird, i've never seen them together, i guess they're buddies" then I noticed there was another kitty sitting by the tree, mid-step, frozen. This was a little grey kitty i've never seen before. He looked like he had just noticed the two cats staring at him, and stopped, petrified and afraid and unsure of what to do next. Because the two cats were staring, but not menacingly. Just curiously. So I observed all that in like 10 seconds, and as my car crept past them, two houses up were TWO DOGS -- two large black dogs, labbish, with collars, and they were trotting towards the Cat Drama. They were smiling. One of them was like "hey, c'mon, let's go kick some cat ass" the other one was like "hold on, we're gonna get in trouble, we're only supposed to pee and go back inside..." I took all this in as I turned the corner, and I really wish I could've stayed and watched the thing play out. But I was late to work (GASP) and couldn't take the time. But as silly as this is going to sound, even though the scene was being set for some kind of Species showdown, I wasn't too worried because I didn't sense any animosity from any of the animals. Maybe it was just a typical day in the neighborhood and usually i'm just running later and don't notice...

I realize now that my poor kitties were probably glued to the front windows, staring longingly at the exotic outside cats. So sheltered. So sad. So deprived. So unloved. So...intact.