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Quote of the Day: The possessor of a territory has a profound psychological advantage over an intruder. He has on his side, it would seem, a sense of rectitude and a reservoir of emotional strength. - Charlton Ogburn, The Adventure of Birds |
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April 14, 1999 |
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driveway sealant |
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National Poetry Month Poet of the Day: Featured Site of the Day:
April 14, 1999
Copyright © 1999, Janet I. Egan |
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My first goal for the day was to be out of the house before the guys came to seal coat the parking lot. There was a note shoved under my door last night making it clear that everybody had to have their cars out of the lot before 9:00 AM. Nowhere did the note say that the parking lot would be off limits until after 4:00 PM. So anyway... Joey is harassing other cats big time this morning. I would think this would be a risky strategy for Joey 'cause he's declawed - which means he has to get close enough to bite. Cosmo, who usually doesn't get drawn into these things, got all riled up. Bonnie made the mistake of stepping between them and Cosmo sank his claws into her leg through her jeans. Cosmo normally won't come close to people - he's the one I've been drawing closer and closer by shortening the string on the cat toy - so we told Bonnie to look at the bright side: this is the closest Cosmo has come to a human being since he's been here. She wasn't buying it. Pookie, who is one of the prettiest cats we've had in a long time, snuggled up on the counter to watch me wash dishes. Pookie and Rex are 10 and 11 years old and have have always been together. They got surrendered because one of the children in the household developed cat allergies. Is it my imagination or are more people allergic to cats nowadays? So many people I know are allergic to cats that after my Max died I wasn't ever going to get another cat just so I could have a social life that involved inviting people to my house. Of course by then, my brother Billy was divorced from his cat allergic drug-addicted wife and most of my cat allergic friends routinely turned down my invitations anyway. So when Wilbur claimed me as his own and I faced the "indoor cat" vs. "entertaining friends in the home" choice, indoor cat was the clear choice. But I digress. Back to the prevalence of cat allergy. I read recently that the incidence of childhood asthma has increased considerably in recent years, but the article didn't have any data on the specific allergens that were triggering it. Anyway, Pookie is pale orange with the most amazing eyes -dark eye rings that look like mascara or something - just gorgeous - and totally friendly and fun to wash dishes with. Sadie went to her new home on Monday. Somebody drew a smiley face next to her name on the adoptions board. Makes me feel good about working here. A one-eyed, not very cuddly cat like Sadie wouldn't have had a chance to blossom into a wonderful companion animal without us and our no-kill philosophy. I was finished with dishes and litterboxes at a reasonable hour today because Roy came in to dry and put away the things I washed. He hasn't been in for the last couple of weeks, so I've had to interrupt washing to dry and make room for more dishes in the drainer. With Roy on drying everything goes much faster. Sort of like an assembly line. After my shift, and after a macaroni and cheese lunch at Angie's, I was drawn inexorably toward birds. The shorebird migrations are going on as well as the northern flicker migration. The most striking thing about today though was that every body of water from river to salt marsh to puddle seemed to have green-winged teal on it. I counted the first few groups I saw and then gave up. This must be National Green-Winged Teal Day or something. While I was counting green-winged teal at the salt pannes, I noticed a large plover shaped bird. It looked like a black-bellied plover except that its breast was mostly white with irregular black spots in several places. It just looked weird. I stared at it a long time through the binoculars, looked up other plovers in the book, and stared some more. A guy got out of an SUV parked near me and walked over to my car to ask me what I thought it was. "Some kind of plover" says I "I was hoping you could tell me which one." We both laughed and discussed how weird-looking it was and concluded maybe it was a black-bellied after all but in transition from winter to summer plumage. We both watched it some more then I started to leave. The SUV pulled up next to me and the driver (not the same guy I had spoken with) leaned out the window. "We took a vote" he says "It's a black-bellied in transition." All the people in the SUV nodded in agreement. I told him they were probably right and I had already written it in my notebook as a black-bellied. Last night I'd been leafing through my notes looking for when the double-crested cormorants returned in previous years because I hadn't seen any yet and that seemed strange. I guess I'm just rushing spring because my notes show them returning around April 15. And sure enough today a flock of 22 of them flew right over my head. Well, flock is sort of a odd word for it - two lines is more like it - not an organized flock like geese. The lines got more ragged as the cormorants got higher up. The wind was fierce and I wasn't really dressed for the cold, so I cut the expedition a little short and drove home only to find that the parking lot was still off limits. It was closed off with yellow caution tape. Long shiny swirls of black dotted the gray sandy pavement like an abstract painting. If Jackson Pollock had worked in driveway sealant he couldn't have matched the wild patterns in this parking lot. Umm, I can't get to my back door. This wouldn't be a problem except that I don't have the key to the front door on me. Oops. I never use the front door. So much for working on the computer this afternoon. I spent my exile time sitting in Starbucks drinking caffe latte and reading The Adventure of Birds. The section on territoriality made me think of the Kosovo war. The quote about the possessor of a territory having a profound psychological advantage made me think of how the NATO bombing has solidified the Serbs behind Milosevic. I'm sitting there musing on this when Ned walks in. I haven't seen Ned in months. He's wound up about the war. He's very much against, thinks Clinton's off his rocker, etc. I'm troubled by the war too. The bombing doesn't seem to be helping the Kosovar Albanians. They're still being driven out of their homes. My deep commitment to nonviolence starts to weaken when there's no nonviolet way to stop this. As I lay awake last night, Martin Luther King's principles of nonviolence were running through my head, the final one of which is "The universe is on the side of justice." That's the thing I'm beginning to doubt. |
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