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Show 179 Once home, Hunt, rummaged his furnace room to find an old hand-constructed cat-carrier which he filled with rags and scraps of felt from a box of materials in Leah's sewing supplies. Leah was at work. "I have a home for you," Hunt said to the marten, carefully drawing open a back door to his car. "This is a place . . . this is a home," and Hunt slid the cat-carrier door open, up and onto the back seat cover. The marten watched him. The marten studied and judged Hunt. Hunt knew what was happening. Hunt suspected the marten was thinking: giving up . . . hmtrm? paring back? so what is this home, what is this nest for a sad animal doing? Hunt felt scrutinized and guilty. He felt that, yet another time, he'd betrayed himself. Still, his hand was in the air, gently, regardless. And he was reaching out. And his hand was moving, softly, carefully toward what he would find to be the marten. "This is nice . . . this will be nice," Hunt was saying, despite any of his intuitions of betrayal. And he was gliding the sweather and the curled, distrustful creature across the seat and into the carrier. Hunt put the cat carrier in his studio. He lifted his phone to call a nearby veterinary. What would he say: I have a sick mink? . . . or otter? . . wild animal? He set the phone down and went instead to Safeway and bought five pounds of calf's liver. He broke a stick of oakbrush outside his studio and used it to extend pieces of the calf's liver through the wiremesh and into the cat carrier for the marten. The marten looked at Hunt. She almost seemed interrogating. Then she took the liver. Okay., she seemed to be saying; okay; if this is what you want. i Hunt felt thrown in his taking in and his attempt to nourish the creature. He paced his studio, scanned the two canvasses he was working on: one the |