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Journal of a Sabbatical |
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June 28, 2000 |
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another day, another litter box, and a ruff at last |
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Adopt these cats at Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society Today's Bird Sightings: Today's Reading: Summer: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake, The Herring Gull's World by Niko Tinbergen, The Sea and the Ice by Louis J. Halle Today's Starting Pitcher: 2000
Book List
Copyright © 2000, Janet I. Egan |
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Little Sister hangs by her front paws from Elly's cage, trying to hang on with just one paw and steal the wet food with the other. She almost makes it but lets go at the last second when she suddenly sees Sandy watching her from underneath Elly's cage. When Sandy comes over to the sink again, she makes another attempt at Elly's wet food but can't quite get the same grip she had before.
The community litter boxes are dirtier than they've been
in quite awhile. Usually there's one that hasn't been used
at all, but today they've all been heavily used. I work up
quite a sweat washing them. Actually I think the reason I
get so sweaty at the sink is that there is a light bulb
directly over my head, heating me up. The sink is in kind of
a dark corner and some people were having trouble seeing
whether the dishes and litter boxes were actually clean, so
Kendra rigged up what is essentially a trouble light over
the sink. So the sweat starts dripping into my
After changing out of my wet, sweaty, dirty shirt and eating lunch at Angelina's while watching some weird movie about a ski/snowboard resort being sabotaged by somebody or other, I commenced the search for the ruff that was reported yesterday on the refuge. Why exactly am I bothering? All ruffs and reeves disappear if I try to look at them. At Hellcat two common terns were mobbing a crow. Poor crow. I wonder if it's the same one that was under attack by willets the other day. Tons of terns sit on the mud there too far away to sort out with binoculars - maybe 20 or so. I meet a guy who says I shouldn't even bother with them without a scope. A couple of them fly closer to me after he leaves, but they turn out to be common terns. I guess I was hoping a gull-billed tern or a roseate tern would show itself to me. At two spots along the road brown thrashers are very active. I see one carrying nest material - do they nest this late? I think four is the most brown thrashers I've ever seen in one day. They're not usually this obvious. I finally see a mockingbird imitating common tern and willet. I'd been hearing it off and on for a couple of weeks now, thinking it odd that the common tern and the willet were always in the same spot calling three times each one after the other. The "three times" should have been my clue that it's a mockingbird. I had pretty much concluded that anyway but thought maybe it could be a catbird, who is also a gifted mimic and does a stunning yellow warbler impression. I half expected to see a willet perched in a tree this guy was so realistic. But it really is a mockingbird. I watch it in fascination for about 10 minutes so I can hear it cycle through its whole repertoire. And, yes, there is a ruff at Stage Island. Its ruff - the ruff's ruff, say that three times fast, it's harder than ringworm room - is dark black with a fair amount of rufous highlighting in it. He's feeding actively and looks a little disheveled. He is unmistakably, unambiguously, most definitely a ruff. So my theory that this species is a practical joke perpetrated by experienced birders on us lesser beings is blown. Unless you believe Nancy's theory that it's just a sandpiper dyed black wearing a stylish feather boa :- ) :-) :-) Off to Framingham to install the improbability drive. Umm, I mean the CD-RW with the parallel connection. It does exist. Boy, a ruff and a parallel connection both in the same day. What are the odds? I try to juggle corn on the cob - pig fodder - while installing the software for the CD-RW and the digital camera. Don't try this at home kids. At least the pistachio ice cream is doable with one hand. Within two hours of my arrival all the right things are installed. I write a test CD with some random pictures I took to test the camera (a Nikon CoolPix 900 - I'm so jealous): a frightening portrait of Zsolt and an artistic still life of coffee cup and books. CD gets written. I read it on the desktop computer too just to make sure it's real. OK, so we didn't buy any rewritable CDs to test the rewritableness but that's secondary to the fact that I got both the camera and the CD thing to commune with the laptop without upgrading the laptop. Let us all praise MicroSolutions for the invention of the Backpack CD-RW. Absolutely the only strange moment is when Zsolt insists that the camera came with a serial cable and I keep trying to fathom how either of the non-USB cables is serial. One is a power cord. That I figure out pretty quickly. I would have to be unconscious not to notice that. The other cable mystifies me. I must be even tireder than I thought because I keep trying to find some way that this thing connects to the laptop. Finally it dawns on me: It's a video cable! I look in the manual (yeah, yeah, I know RTFM), which clearly states that the included cables are a USB cable for the computer and a video cable for your TV or VCR. The serial cable must be ordered separately. I must need more sleep. I laugh at myself alone in the car on the way home listening to the Red Sox on the radio. Sox lose again in extra innings. What is happening to them? |
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Sandy
is being wicked nice to me today. He head butts me, rubs up
against me, hangs around the sink watching me do dishes. He
even got mad when I stopped petting him for a second and
tried to nip at my hand. As soon as I resumed petting he was
a little love bug again. Everyone is marveling at this. He
must know I have a thing for orange boys. Sandy is the
classic orange personality, a real spitfire: intense,
active, engaging, and he bites (but usually not very
hard).
Sandy
takes up guard duty on top of the big yellow bucket
protecting the litter from the volunteers who want to fill
litter boxes with it. As my therapist puts it, "he's a
character." Later in the morning, when I'm nearly done with
the dishes, Sandy jumps up on the counter and starts batting
at stuff that's blocking his way to the community water
dish, which unaccountably leans upright against the wall. He
bats and pushes things until I get the idea that he wants a
drink of water. I put the community water dish back where it
belongs and fill it from one of the two jugs that are
blocking his path to it. Before I even finish pouring, he's
slurping down water. Smart guy communicated to me exactly
what he wanted.
Buddy
is coming back this afternoon. Sigh. I guess my whining,
wheedling 
eyes but I don't want to wipe the eyes with bleachy hands so
I kind of slide a dry corner of my T-shirt up under my
glasses. Maybe I should dig out one of those terry cloth
headbands I used to wear to keep the sweat out of my eyes
when I was playing racquetball. Ah, racquetball. I used to
like it a lot. I used to play it a lot. I used to be in much
better shape. Remind me the next time I plan to trip over
Lindsey while coming down off a step ladder and bang up my
knee, that it reduces motivation to exercise when your knee
hurts... Where was I? Oh, yeah, the cats. Widget is like so
cute how could anybody not think she's the perfect cat.
One
thing that happens sometimes, though we try to discourage
it, is a person picking out a cat for someone else. Because
we're on the second floor, up a fairly steep flight of
stairs, a lot of Purrfect Companions type adopters (old or
physically challenged) can't get up the stairs to meet the
cats. We usually try to show them pictures or bring over a
couple of cats or something. But with Widget, a woman picked
her out for her mother, brought her home and the mother took
an immediate dislike. Like I said, Widget is the perfect
cat, but you never know who's going to click with a person.
After all, I ended up with Wilbur worming his way into my
heart on his own terms. Matching of cats and people is a
complex phenomenon. And matching cats with nursing homes is
evidently an even higher art form with which I need more
practice.