Scent.

The cat completely gets it. She can smell spring from here. Every time I walk through the mudroom she follows, lingering by the door with the most pathetic mew she can muster. I understand. The cellar is no longer the happy hunting ground slash killing floor it used to be. She's done her job down there. There's no more game for her, no more partially eviscerated presents for us. But she's waiting. A few times recently she's made a break for it as I come in or go out, taking advantage of the ice-damaged screen door's slow closing. She rushes out to the deck, senses piqued, huntress blood stirred and waking--only to get about five good kitty-bounds out before she realizes, Sweet mother o'feline, I'm freezing my paws off! At which point she double-times it back into the house.

But oh, the urge is there. She can't wait for that door to open onto a cooling evening, the air ripe with scents, the big lilac bush hiding fresh birds, the unmowed grass promising bunnies. She's ready to race across the deck once the Ice Age glacier that's consumed it has disappeared, vault over the back fence and into the tangle of brambles beyond, gone for days doing who-knows-what, reveling in the release and return to the girl she wants to be--not shut behind doors and napping in a dank basement, but roaming and stalking, sleeping the day away on a sun-warmed deck, being in the world, under the sky, and content.

The cat completely gets it.