January 7, at 40 degrees on a gray day, I bundled up and hopped on my bike for a ride along the canal. Down a ways, with a construction site on the opposite shore, I spotted a calico looking quite content, “meatloafing” on a pallet of concrete blocks. The guy smoking on the balcony beyond must have thought it odd for a cyclist to stop and shoot such an image. As I was remounting my bike, a tortoise-shell that I hadn’t noticed jumped up from another pile of building materials.
