Looking for tiny universes right beneath your feet

There are little worlds underfoot that no one stops to visit. Look beneath your feet. You will… There are little worlds underfoot that no one stops to visit. Look beneath your feet. You will see a tiny country of ant kingdoms, spider webs and tiny roads through the grass. When you expand your vision, dense shrubs become bustling metropolitan areas crossed by groundhog, rabbit and fox trails, while dozens of birds go about their busy routine above.

I was part of the little world once. When I was a boy — a younger boy, that is — my cat, Mr. Stripe, ruled a vast empire. His domain stretched from our house all the way into the county fairgrounds. Many cats — which is to say, many entire nations, for every cat is a law unto him or herself — owed fealty to Stripe, and paid him tribute from their herds of mice and rabbits.

At the height of his power Mr. — nay, let us give his proper title, Lord Stripe — could send as many as four cats into battle. I owed Stripe my allegiance. I was his human attache and ambassador to the garden insects, in whose company I spent a great deal of time. United under the Pax Feline, the woodlands of North Julian Street lived in peace for many soft, magenta years.

That all changed one sunny afternoon in May.

For years we had heard rumors of the Elder Wood, a place beyond the fairgrounds, the only visible sign of which was a looming cyclopean water tower. An evil cloud seemed to hang about the place, and we never approached our border there on our daily patrols. It was said that a great orange cat lived there and ruled over the place with an iron paw, that all the mice had been eaten, and no groundhogs could go there.

On this day in May, I journeyed into the woods with my friends, the black cat Sylvester and his kindly fat friend, Rudy. We were ambushed. From out of nowhere the fabled orange cat — twice the size of Stripe, who was the largest cat I had ever seen — came flying, all teeth and claws and hissing. We scattered and fled.

That was the beginning of the Orange Cat’s invasion. Ruling of the Elder Wood was not enough for her. In her mania, she demanded authority over the tiny town of Ebensburg, Pa. One by one, she overthrew Stripe’s vassals, claiming their herds for her own.

The West Yards fell. The Fairgrounds were claimed. In a series of assaults through the cavernous Drainage Pipe, the ravine at the edge of our yard was taken. This place had long been governed directly by Mr. Groundhog and his small family, for the small tribute of a single cub every year. Now their authority was destroyed, and the Orange Cat began a campaign of extermination against the local rodents.

Our last stronghold was Fort Forsythia, an enormous bush that stood at the border between the ravine and the yard. Fallen Tree Road is the single way in from the ravine. It was here, we knew, that the final assault would come.

It began on the first day of September, after three long weeks of siege. Stripe had mustered his full army to Forsythia.

A black cloud blew in, summoned by the Orange Cat’s sorceries from the bitter days of Late Autumn, and pelted the earth with unseasonably stinging rains and hail. From deep in the ravine, the Enemy began his march up Fallen Tree Road. The assault began. All morning the fighting raged; across the fallen tree and into the Forsythia and through all three dimensions of its tangled stems and branches.

By noon, the Orange Cat was defeated. The Lawn had been saved.

Victory was ours, but never again did good Mr. Stripe command so vast a territory. He is fat and old now, as is his mother, while Sylvester was poisoned by antifreeze two years later.

Things have changed now. The old house and its yard is sold, and I live in an apartment here in Pittsburgh.

Maybe it was all a magenta dream in the lazy days of boyhood summer.

Or maybe not. Making my way through miserable Oakland on a spring day, I pass trails through bushes, chipmunks and sparrows playing in the grass and ants warring on the sidewalk.

In yards, woods, little places, creek-beds, gardens and between the cracks in the sidewalk, ignored and unnoticed, the World Underfoot remains. It is a resilient place, persisting in spite of industrial poisons and concrete, everywhere a little bit of ground goes unravaged.

You can visit any time you want. To go there one must do only two things: Look to the ground and dream.

E-mail Steve Thomas at tokath55@yahoo.com.