Neptune occupies the place of
honor/dominance on the big yellow bucket today. Reebok
and Stallone are both in 10-day quarantine for biting.
Poor Stallone, he wants affection so badly that he bites
if you stop petting him before he's had enough.
That's the opposite of usual cat behavior, in which they
bite you because they've had enough petting. In Reebok's
case, I think he bites because he wants to show you who
is the boss. Reebok would dearly like to be boss of the
world or at least the cats and maybe the staff and
volunteers. Anyway, Neptune is stretched out on the top
of the big yellow bucket looking adorable and being very
affectionate when he's not standing on the edge of the
sink trying to head-butt me while I'm washing dishes or
trying to get the cans I just put in the recycle bin. I
must not have washed all food traces out of those cans.
:-)
Eddy is still here. The people who
wanted him changed their minds. He's in the sick room
with some kind of goopy eye thing and when Chris held up
to the window he tried to get to me through the glass.
What is it he likes about me?
There's a new pale orange tabby
male with a lot of white on him. He talks up a storm. He
begs for attention. Another new and talkative cat is
Winston, a Siamese. Both of these guys are spoken for
already, not surprisingly. Winston is the handsomest
Siamese we've had since the extremely well-loved Eliot
years ago. We must have more new cats than this, because
there seem to be a lot more dishes to wash.
I have yet to attain enlightenment
through washing dishes and litter boxes, but I'm still
trying.
I finished up early, had the usual
veggie sub at Angelina's, gave up on the idea of finding
a parking space anywhere near Middle Street Foods so
didn't bring a cup of coffee to the refuge with me.
One short eared owl put on a good
show of that floppy, flappy flight that the books
describe as "bounding, moth-like". It didn't catch
anything while I was watching. When I told Nancy about it
tonight, she pointed out that we've only seen one catch a
vole once this winter, so maybe they supplement their
diets by sneaking to McDonalds under the cover of night
so no one will see this proud predator shamefully eating
Big Macs from the dumpster. I cracked up. I could picture
the owl hunched over in embarrassment looking over its
shoulder to make sure no one was watching and then
furtively snatching a Big Mac. I couldn't stop
laughing.
There weren't a whole lot of other
birds around, though I did see one rough legged hawk and
two northern harriers also not catching anything, and the
usual complement of tree sparrows. It was cold. I was
cold. I went home to read.
But what to read? I just
simultaneously finished The Measure of All Things,
the book about the metric system and the French
revolution that my mother gave me for Christmas, and
Winter World, which deals with how animals survive
the northern New England winter. I was enjoying both of
those books so much I didn't want either of them to end.
I had this system going of reading about the metric
system in the morning and winter at night because I
couldn't stand reading about people getting their heads
chopped off right before bedtime. Bad dreams. I don't
remember learning in science class that Lavoisier got his
head chopped off in the French Revolution. I must have
repressed that.
In between the above, I read the
latest Cat Who mystery in one day, The Cat Who
Brought Down the House. The plot is not up to her
usual standards, but the last one wasn't really either.
This is the 25th in the series. Anyway, despite my having
figured out whodunit before "it" was even done, I enjoyed
the atmosphere of Moose County and the behavior of the
cats. I particularly liked the scene at the fundraiser
for the kitten fostering/spay-neuter charity. She really
knows her cats if nothing else.
So now here I am with a stack of
unread books and I can't choose. Whaling memoirs? I've
got three in the stack - well, Logbook for Grace
is sort of a birding memoir with whales, but it's
classified as whaling memoir. Lafcadio Hearn? I have that
two volume set of letters I picked up when I took Andrea
to Much
Ado during Christmas school
vacation week. Then there's Spring in Washington,
which I've been saving for spring, which it ain't yet.
There's a few unread or partially read books in the
Himalayan pile too.
However, workaholic that I am, I
finally settle on Cat Culture: The Social World of a
Cat Shelter. It's slow going because it's in academic
language, sociological/ethnographic prose. The first 50
pages set up the framework of the study, then we get to
the heart of the matter. I really want to see if their
study sheds any light on the social interactions I
observe at MRFRS.
I'd also like to glean any insight they may have on how
to socialize feral cats, train volunteers, communicate
among board members, reduce competition among big male
cats... all those things.
Then, as if I don't have enough
unread books to choose from, I set out early on my weekly
journey to Cambridge so I could go to Boston and pick up
a book I ordered at Trident Booksellers a couple of weeks
ago: Lightning at the Gate by Jeanne Achterberg,
which M&M highly recommended to me. Being a new
age-resistor and a skeptic about visionary healing stuff,
it may take me awhile to actually read this but for some
reason Maria's recommendation was strong enough that I
ordered it.
Mission accomplished, I drove back
across the bridge to Central Square. Were it not bitterly
cold and I underdressed for the Arctic, I could have
walked there and back faster than driving and finding
parking spaces on either side. Yet I drove, insanely. It
amazes me that aliens do not understand why people who
live in Boston do not like to drive cars. It's faster to
walk! Anyway, I finally got back to Central Square, found
a parking space on like the 8th try, and grabbed some
dinner before the meeting. The whole adventure was
tiring.
