At Her Feet

As a college student I spent a year in Rome, Italy. Every morning when I walked to school I walked past a huge marble foot, by a tiny street named for it. It is thought to be from a statue of the goddess Isis, but I remember being told it was a close relative of Caesar Augustus. Either way it's about 2,000 years old. But in Rome few people comment on it or come even slightly out of their way to see it. There are too many stunning, world-famous things to take up one's time, within a few minutes' walk.

I also walked past the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, through the Flaminian Gate, and along the Tiber for a few blocks before getting to school. It was quite a dose of ancient beauty for someone who at age 28 had never spent a night outside the US and had not seen very much of that.

But instead of getting off the subject, every time I went through the entrance to my pensione on Via della Gatta, I walked under the gaze of a marble cat who stared down from a window across the street. There was a local legend (perhaps just the immediate neighborhood): if you look in the same direction as the cat looks, you should find a treasure. Other tales tell of a live cat there who once warned residents of fire or that a baby was about to fall from a window. I was amused to discover just now that Silvio Berlusconi lives in the same building now. Heck --maybe he did when I was there!

My cat Laura Earle enjoyed these memories so much that she agreed to pose for both, but she made me promise to make a colossus of her some time. Here are her feet, with her tail keeping them cozy.