My cat woke me up at midnight tonight. I didn’t know why, but she was sure polite about it. She pawed me very lightly with no clawing, and just kind of let me know she was there for just enough time to let me wake up and acknowledge her existence.
Normally, I get a terrific combination of howls and jumping around on the bed around 4 o’clock. She thinks this is mealtime, but she is wrong, and is so deferred until around the time the sun comes up. Maybe she just wants to be sure I’m up and around. It doesn’t much matter, but that’s how it is.
But tonight, very gentile. I wasn’t here last night. I can’t imagine she enjoys my company, but maybe she does. I’ve been kind of down on Nala lately for her bulimic tendencies. Everywhere I look there is cat sick. I’ve been making an effort to find and eliminate the catsick, and it’s been invading every imaginable corner of the house. So it requires a full-house cleaning.
I’m a terrible pet owner. I’m kind of bad with animals of all shapes and sizes, particularly humans. I don’t know why it is, but the interactions just aren’t working right lately. Being a terrible pet and animal custodian is a poor way to frame out an existence.
The fleas, for example, are a good point of reference for this forum. It’s very unlikely that I can pin any sort of the blame for the flea situation on anyone but the pet owner. I’ve been informed by multiple parties that the catsick is likely an issue of my creation, as well. But so far, I’m just going to have to hunt down and destroy all the catsick, whether it is new catsick or not. I find myself in no position to be making value judgments about catsick. I’ve found them on unused bedspreads and such, and it’s kind of demoralizing to try and keep up with it in the summer heat. Maybe I go to the Laundromat…
So damned hot…got home tonight and it was 97 degrees inside. 107 outside. As I write this, we’re down to 88 degrees in the main of the house, and the laundry project has been resumed here to take advantage of this tremendous opportunity to run heat-generating appliances with the lowest marginal punishment. I’ve quit referencing the NOAA website and I’ll look back on it when this weather has cooled off a bit. Just can’t do it right now, but I suspect that 107 degree reading wasn’t even a record at the recording station in Topeka. Statistically, the days should have just started cooling, but the temperature outliers right now are damned extreme. We’ll have to see how the rest of this summer plays out, but the early returns have been uncomfortable.
People ask me all the time why I don’t turn on this air conditioner. It’s a window unit located about four feet in front of me, in a recessed window that ventilates into the sunroom. I’ve been sleeping out there, and on most nights when the sun goes down, it can be quite comfortable with a southerly breeze. We’ve had nothing but southerlies for a few weeks, so the air conditioner stays off. I don’t want to sacrifice that space for seasonal confinement. On a side note, it is also 88 degrees in the sunroom right now, but it actually feels nice. There’s a nice breeze, and the air is well circulated. Not so in the rest of the place. Water damage everywhere—the place is in terrific need of a new roof. I’m dealing with the worst third of that in the coming weeks…
So this morning, in my demonstrated scrambled senses, I’m making coffee at one in the morning. I’d slept enough, and I guess this was the start of the day. Very little has been done except to try and keep cool. And try and evacuate birds from the home.
On the second pot of coffee about an hour ago, I was dive-bombed by a starling. She was in the kitchen and mudroom, and was in constant flight. I got the kitchen door open wide, and after a minute or two, the bird was gone. It was entirely uneventful.
Then I remembered a couple of months ago when Nala had captured and destroyed a nestling in that same kitchen. I considered at the time that it was an isolated event caused by the door being open too long. I can now see the folly of that line of thinking, and I realize again that I have a very good cat, and a very poor roof.. She didn’t quite get this one, but she certainly let me know we had company this morning…
In any event, and as evidenced by the drivel above, the heat has melted my brain.
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