Two events added a little levity to our tissue-packed day on Tuesday (H.o.p.’s working with me on a third roll).
(1) When Marty got home in the evening a cat that belongs to a woman upstairs decided it’d had enough of being locked out of the building in the rain and zipped past Marty into the building and then into our apartment. We spent a little while looking for her before I found her behind the futon. Way back behind the futon and what serves as an end table, tucked down in a bookshelf scrunched behind the futon. She was scared and shaking and so I talked to her a while and eventually she stopped shaking and laid down back in the shadows. We couldn’t entice her with lunch meat as ours had gone bad (we’re not big sandwich fans) and she was having nothing to do with a bowl of milk. Many fine compliments paid her weren’t drawing her out either. Finally we simply opened the door and she bolted for the outside hall
and turned and quickly ran back in our apartment
and we got her back out
and she ran back in
and we got her back out and she stood at the door staring up at me with curious eyes like she was wondering what role we should play in her life, if any, and I informed her she needed to go make eyes at her mistress instead and that was that.
Long ago when we were living in a garage apartment we acquired a great cat in just such a manner. She ran in and refused to leave. We learned her owner had been hospitalized then not returned to her apartment, so we took the cat in. We named her Paloma and after a while gave her to a friend who really, really, really wanted her (and we were too much on the road) and Paloma caused her to crash her car on the interstate (got under the pedals) and the friend was uninjured but Paloma took off across a farm and that was the last seen of Paloma who was a great cat with loads of friendly personality. She was also a very small cat–very small for her size when she entered our lives and she never grew any larger. Then later one Halloween night a little cat zipped in past some kids, which again we thought was a kitten, but she also never grew any larger. She turned out to be very ill and I’ll stop writing about that as it’s making me sad. Nothing could be done and she died within the year that we took her in. Was one of the sweetest cats in the world.
We’ve not had a cat now for about three years, after our last couple died of regular old age. I was kind of reminded what it is like to have a cat and briefly enjoyed it. But I thought also of the huge vet bills we’d spent over the years on animals, and that made me grateful that this cat has an owner upstairs, otherwise we’d have likely ended up with a new cat after putting up “Lost Cat” posters to which no one ever responds. Seriously, an animal is something we can’t take on at this point in our lives.
The number two bit of levity. (2) A delivery slip dated the 10th arrived in our mailbox. Why we didn’t get it until now, I don’t know but that’s the way things are around here. I couldn’t remember expecting anything, so what could it be. Marty got the box at the PO and was carrying it in when the cat slipped past him. So first we all attended to the cat (H.o.p. loved trying to help coax her out and went on about how beautiful she was) then turned our attention to the box. It was from BrainPOP. A few weeks ago they had come across some nice things I’d written about them in a blogpost where I also offered a couple suggestions, and they wrote thanking me and offered to send H.o.p. a t-shirt and replace his Brainpop Almanac which I mentioned was worn out with religious use. And here were t-shirts (one signed) and a brand new signed almanac and a couple of pens and a mouse pad to boot.
Needless to say, H.o.p. was thrilled. He forgot his tissues for the moment and looked several times at the autographs and pulled on a t-shirt and grinned big. He thought it all better than terrific. It was major grandioso terrificalist.
When he was done ogling he settled down and started popping the bubble wrap.
And yes he had been at BrainPOP earlier in the evening watching the flash animations on the Blues and Filmmaking. And after he was done with the bubble wrap popping he went to his computer and replaced his mouse pad with the BrainPOP mouse pad and went to BrainPOP again and watched a flash on Monotremes and then told me all about spiny anteaters. With tissue wads stuck up his nose. While I sat and blew mine. But we were feeling a little better by Tuesday evening so we were making fun of each other’s sniffling and nose blowing.
Really, that was super nice of BrainPOP. H.o.p. is a super fan and is happy as can be.
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