smudge spends a good percentage of his naptime in our bed, up against my pillows. (it's not uncommon to walk into the bedroom and find... not a cat, but a depression in the bed the size of a giant salad bowl, evidencing his recent departure.)
jeff subscribes to a community bulletin board service -- he gets a lot of freelance jobs that way. and he sent me a post from a woman who says she thinks she found someone's small grey and black cat with a collar who has been hanging out by her house.
smudge sleeps with us every night, but it's mainly at the far corner of the bed. oh, sure, occasionally he climb's up onto jeff's chest for attention. but for the most part, he stays down by the feet. i could never get him to snuggle up next to or between us like every other cat i have ever had.
...think really hard: "SQUEAK! get your butt home, pronto!"
"I'm very glad you asked me that, Mrs Rawlinson. The term `holistic' refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. . . . I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose, Mrs Rawlinson." (Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency)
i don't know that everything in the universe is interconnected. i am sure my husband doesn't. and here is why i am sure:
jeff always keeps a container of sugar free licorice next to the couch. in addition to being a big fan of licorice, he also likes the fact that the sugar free variety is an effective...um, digestive aid. so he feels like he has a medicinal justification for eating a few pieces every night. [this is not TMI, jeff. it's a fact of life for all of us. go ask jamie lee curtis.]
10:30pm: jeff gives smudge a large piece of sugar free black licorice. smudge inhales it. laughing, jeff marvels at the fact that smudge enjoys sugar free black licorice. he says "here's another smudgie, but that's it." smudge makes that one disappear just as quickly. then he jumps onto jeff's table and lays down next to the container of licorice. jeff laughs some more. (so do i, but i also wonder if sugar free black licorice can really be a good food for a cat.)
11:00pm: jeff goes to the front closet and says "oh no! i think i just stepped in cat shit! i think this is cat shit! this is cat shit!!!!"
and it doesn't immediately occur to him that there is a definite cause and effect in play here.
squeak has always been a very sweet-natured, even-tempered cat. He may occasionally swat at one of the others, but it usually seems just because someone is messing with him, or his clumsy attempt to initiate play. He will normally just avoid situations he doesn't want to be in, like when he takes a circuitous route to the door to keep far away from a tom who's been hanging out on the deck.
i had a bad cat-related dream last night. well, it started out fine, oddly enough, with us hanging out at my mother's house, with the whole family plus ben affleck and matt damon (i have no idea), possibly watching tv after thanksgiving dinner. after that, it took a bad turn. bad. bad. really bad. i won't get graphic, but it involved horrible injury to all three of my mother's feral littermates: dora, minnie and shakes.
just because every time i write that a particular cat has been AWOL, he comes strolling home, i'm putting this message out there:
