The Secret of The Yellow Eyes ...ALP2018

Ever since those yellow eyes, those yellow cat eyes, followed me while walking down the street with her, I have this haunting feeling inside me which I can’t shake off, can’t put aside, can’t file away. I developed a real obsession about it.



It started with her and me moving to Mornington Street in Camden, London. Well, it was her decision, she fancied the idea of moving to an area previously known to be settled by artists.

Its not a bad area, really, there are a lot of parks nearby I adore visiting for a walk. She loves the architecture. Particularly that house with the cats that haunt me is really dear to her.
It, the old Carreras building, was built nearly one hundred years ago in the 1920s and was influenced by the fashion for Egyptian-style buildings and decorative arts of those times. Egyptian style columns were erected outside the building reminding of a temple to the goddess Bastet. Two big regal black stone cats guard this entrance.



Originally the building was also adorned with a solar disc of the Sun God Ra, I can still sense that but I know she can’t. Also, she just can’t know that the many smells of the house are something else and totally fascinating!


Me in front of that building. Please believe me I do not always look this scrubby

First of all, I just smelled an overpowering ancient fragrance of tobacco. Fine tobacco. Once I had the scent of that tobacco, I started to ponder upon it back home. For hours and hours. She thinks I’m sleeping all the time. But no. Although I love to sleep, it takes a lot of attention to observe her every move with even just a touch of an eye open. You never know when she suddenly steps to the fridge for food, or decides to go for a walk with me. So while I’m alert in my resting pose I just conjure up pictures, let images come to my mind, understanding and experiencing what is imprinted on smells.

This is how I saw the third Earl of Craven shaking hands with Don José Joaquin Carreras, the son of the Carreras Tobacco inventor. The Earl just so much loved to smoke those various fumes by Carreras that Jose even created a special brand for the Earl, called the Craven A. And that Earl was not the only royal frequenting Carreras outlets.
Funny enough that she should be a playing card collector and I know that one set of hers is one that was used as advertising for Craven A. She is so happy about that!



Then I also deciphered, so to speak, the time when the two big cats standing left and right of the entrance of this building were taken away in the sixties and the ones standing there now are but replicas after the building was restored to its near former beauty in the nineties of the last century. I wasn’t yet born then, you understand.



Because I’m a bit more settled, older and wiser, my reading the past and the future embedded in things riding the air is now much better than it used to be. Maybe that is because I’m more patient, I’m in a dreaming mode more often since escaping and chasing birds and cats are not as captivating any more.

But still, don’t misunderstand, the building itself is not my passion. It has more to do with those cats. Those yellow eyes keep a secret from me because they just stare at me until my eyes take precedence over my nose and I get confused. Only back home on my cushion can I submit myself again to my passion. My nose tanked up with a fresh dose of scents especially from around those two big black stone cats standing at the entrance, can take me on incredible journeys.

It is as if I would get to know another dog. One other dog in particular that is very powerful. The dog is brown, I’m sure, and very tall and muscular. He carries one terrifying memory I pick up on that is suppressing him and making him uneasy. It is a very terrible memory passed down in our blood which most of us dogs carry in a stronger or lesser way. That is the memory of the terrible mass destruction of pets in London just as the second big war started.



Ancestors of this dog I’m getting to explore were dumped at the doorsteps of the RSPCA to be given sleep just as the first bombs fell over London. 750,000 pets were destroyed in that one week during that ominous late summer. The cull came as the result of a public information campaign that caused an extraordinary reaction among anxious pet holders. A pamphlet was distributed that said: if you can’t get your pet out of town to be cared for it really is kindest to have them destroyed. That happened not so much for fear of the war but for lack of food for pets and human alike.


People here are taking their dogs to the National Air Raid Precautions Committee in London

I’m lucky my ancestors were sent to the country estates; still I feel that fear of starvation and death. I know she does not understand that. She sometimes wonders whether I love her or whether I love her because she feeds me. She doesn’t feel like us and she has no idea that I know that about her.

Still my huge passion - to figure out the story behind those yellow eyes, the story of the scents around the big black cats made of stone flanking the entrance of the old Carreras Tobacco Factory which is now called the Greater London House - was not satisfied.

Until one quiet rainy afternoon…. She was preoccupied at her working desk and I knew feeding time was not for another long time yet. The window was open and that very fragrance that baffled my brain with such curiosity was carried on the heavy breeze right past my nose. I let myself drifting away further and further indulging myself on my soft pillow next to her feet. I might have even fallen asleep into a dream because there it was, suddenly, I finally saw clearly in front of my vision all I wanted to know. The big brown dog, followed by a bunch of his friends, on a forbidden trip through the neighbourhood, all of them, pissing at the foot of the two big black stone cat statues.


shutterstock 390502387

I could have slept and stayed in that dream for ever. But she did go to the fridge so unexpectedly that I jumped behind her to the kitchen still full of joy and satisfaction. She even noticed and asked, what’s the matter with you, spring chicken?
chicken? honestly! but of course I could forgive her immediately, having just solved the secret of those piercing yellow eyes of those cats on the wall staring at me.

That was last month. You can imagine me having a new passion of course.

And this time I just find it very difficult to forgive her demonstrating her dominance over me by pulling the lead every time we walk past the statues of my passionate longing and saying: what is it, what is it, no, no you can’t go there.

But yes, as you have guessed, I just want to, I just have to piss at the foot of those big cats.

a reply to: lucia2389

See Jaundice:
en.wikipedia.org...

Perhaps some Yellow Turmeric might help!

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

ha ha ha

but the dog spews turmeric out

Woof Bark Grrrr woof...sniff sniff

Great story. I liked it very much.

There is a comic called "I am Paul's Dog" you might find interesting. It was part of a series called Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children. Of course its entirely from the dogs perspective. Very funny and insightful.

a reply to: Vroomfondel

thanks for reading my story

and thanks for the hot tip for "i'm paul's dog". a title like a beautiful story for ugly children definitely raised my interest and now i am on hot pursuit on the trail that will lead me to this comic.