HomeDecember 3, 1997
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Scrubbing litterboxes to the tune of REM's End of the World as We Know It (I Feel Fine) on the clock radio that never has the right time no matter how many times I reset it, with a fluorescent light flickering overhead and only a donut in my stomach for breakfast. The light in the stairwell is burned out. Roberta asks if I heard that Christopher (law enforcement at the refuge) found a human jawbone on the beach. Nope. Haven't heard that. State police are out looking for more bones. Is Roberta sure all the bones in her collection aren't human? I'm pretty sure the fish vertebrae I gave her are fish bones - no human has ribs that small. This whole place seems disjointed as well as dark. Will I go insane from the flickering light before I finish washing the litterboxes? What a way to get out of bleaching the rabies quarantine stuff! I've been here 15 minutes before I notice any cats other than Bob who is rubbing against my legs. We have lots of new cats. Morris was left on the back steps in a cardboard box taped shut with duct tape. How bizarre. He's about 4 years old, orange and white, very friendly. Kit hisses and growls when anyone gets near the cage. Reminds me of Shanti when she first came. No Beanie Baby though. The vicious kittens have moved to a nice floor cage on the other side of the room. They are so cute - too bad they're a little rough on humans. They'll learn. I finally look at the adoption board - which I can barely read in the flicker. Elliot!!!!! Yay! Katrina asks why I am so happy about Elliot. 'Cause he's been returned several times- person died, person got evicted... nothing he did. He deserves a good home. Calley, another long timer, has finally been adopted too. By Martha. How many cats does Martha have now? I'm scrubbing away when Stacy comes in. I ask her if Kit is the Kit I know about surrendered by a friend of Charla's. Yup. Since Shanti has been adopted, we have room for another "truly terrifying cat" as Stacy puts it. We both agree that Kit is already further along than Shanti was in the first month. It's after noon and I'm still washing litterboxes. Two guys come in with a cat in a kennel. Another surrender? At least they are not so cowardly as to leave a cat in a cardboard carton on the doorstep. I drip soapy water into the office to ask Stacy to help them. Back to one more really dirty litter box. Ick. I clean up the sink, scoop the community litterboxes, put in one more load of laundry and it's after 1:00 PM. No wonder I'm tired and hungry. I forget to mention the stairwell light bulb when Stacy is putting together the shopping list. I also forgot to ask Roberta, before she left, if Mackey rode off with the first aid kit installer last week or was safe and sound after all. [ed. note: I haven't finished last Wednesday's entry so you don't know that Mackey - cat of the vet downstairs - crawled into the truck of the guy who came to install our new first aid kit and Roberta was convinced the guy drove off with Mackey in the truck]. I stop at the car wash on the way home as the Auntmobile looks like an off-road vehicle. I vacuum the interior until I run out of quarters then realize I am blocked in. I drive forward toward the car wash entrance line in the hopes that there's a little more room to turn around. There would be but there's a car parked there too. And the car wash guy is freaking out that I'm doing something strange. "Can I help you with something?" "I'm trying to turn around so I can get out. I thought there was room up here." "This is a bad place to turn around. There's cars here." Am I the idiot here? Don't answer that. I finally turn around with "help" from the car wash guy. I'm sure he'll tell this story to all his friends tonight - "You won't believe what this dizzy dame did today..." It's after 2:00 already. Where did the day go? It'll be dark in less than 2 hours. When am I ever going to prune the expletive bushes? I need to go to the post office to mail the pictures to Minako and a package to my friend Bonnie. I need a shower more. By the time I'm out of the shower it's nearly 4:00. Joan-west calls. We make plans for next week. What's that burning smell? My scanner is on. It's wicked hot. I unplug it. The burning smell goes away. The odd thing is, I wasn't using the scanner and I didn't turn it on. Ghosts in the machine? Finally to the post office at like 4:30. What a line! Is it possible to sleep while standing in line at the post office? Nope. Not while people keep walking into me. Why don't they just walk through me? At last I reach the postal counter and mail said objects without incident in about 3 minutes. Back home to bhaji and tamarind sauce for supper and attempts to send e-mail. Either MacTCP is broken again or my ISP is so slow it would be easier for me to walk to California to tell Charla that Kit's arrived at the shelter. What is it with the stupid swinging pendulum icon? Is this a piece of software or an Edgar Allen Poe story? And I can't get that song out of my head! It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. |
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