MATERNAL BODIES

Our neighbors, Peter and Gaye, have two little girls aged nine and three. The other day, Gaye and the girls were in their backyard, and as the four of us talked, the girls climbed and slid across their mother's body as she lounged on the grass. Into my mind sprang the memory of this feline mother and her offspring, who, like Gaye, lay patiently in grasses on another continent while her cubs claimed the maternal body as their own.