After editing Scrim’s Chapter 66 Scrim Meeting Sard went looking for where I’d left Sard in his story. I had a feeling that I was repeating myself. Turns out that Chapter 22 (of Avatar Remaindered) was the last one I’d posted, and that I wrote the unfolding situation from Sard’s point of view in Avatar Remaindered Chapter 23, and from Scrim’s point of view in Lodestar66.
While I did play with dropping Scrim’s point-of-view chapter and crossing into Sard’s point-of-view just for this chapter in Lodestar, realized that since all the rest of Sard’s story is told in Avatar Remaindered, Chapter 23 belongs there. And so decided to post just Lodestar 66, Scrim Meets Sard here and now.
Guess what? I’ve lived here for four months and 25 days and I discovered this morning that the table on the balcony is quite an interesting place to be …
Quite a high place compared to where I usually sit and a good new angle to watch the passing parade of people down on the podium, going wherever they are going.
Foods that I like, so far …
Kibbles, kibbles, kibbles
Salmon in spring water
Salmon in olive oil, and sometimes smoked
Smoked salmon skin
Barbecued chicken, yum, bring it on
But I do not not not like smoked sardines, raw egg yolk, and I hate raw chicken.
Sachets of cat food are not my favourites either. And I will definitely turn my nose up at catnip flavoured treats.
In drawing all the threads together, I’ll be hopping from one to the other of the main characters, while also attempting to set the different groups on their subsequent life paths and leaving no threads dangling.
Here’s about half a chapter’s worth … Ahni’s and Kes’s ongoing journey, which I’m taking into a fog of indecision, it feels like. I’m forging into new territory and I have an inkling that I should’ve perhaps forwarded a few other characters onto the scene before further progress by these two.
This is one problem with publishing while writing. Times like these I wonder whether Charles Dickens ever ran into similar troubles. He also published serially, chapters in a monthly magazine.
Although we are more or less back to normal, there is a slight flavour of a new normal. For one thing, the old woman still has not tried to pick me up. A good thing that.
For another, she made my puzzle board about six times harder to find kibbles on. Not so good.
Everything is a different height and there is a little person sitting on it staring at me.
Another good thing is that she made more room at the edge of the balcony for me to sit and peer under it at the people passing by. I’m OK with that now.
I’ve been here four and a half months and I think I’ve done pretty well getting accustomed to some of the strangest things a cat has got to put up with. I mean, who has ever heard of puzzle boards for the likes of us?
And do you know, the only time I get a swag of kibbles in a bowl is at bedtime?
Things are not so good between Moggy and me. I’ve been put on antibiotics, the deepest scratch is not closed yet. But my whole hand is not swollen any more.
This all happened on Saturday evening, it’s now Wednesday. Monday Tuesday Wednesday I was out of the house for hours at the time and it’s hard to ‘read’ a cat the best of times, let alone a cat who seems determined to stay a stranger.
In all that time, three and a half days, I have not tried to touch her. I’ve got admit I’m more hesitant now. She does lay in wait round the corner sometimes and lash at my ankles. Most recently, I gave her big voice and she looked shocked.
Various people in my immediate and not so immediate circles are saying I should trade her in, and that animals from Rescue Centres do not always transplant well into a home situation. Moggy was a stray rescued from the streets and was in the cattery for 100 days.
This afternoon she seemed ill at ease and down in the dumps. Is it possible cats can get depressed? I don’t know. But I thought to try to cheer her up. Got some kibbles, and spread the towel over my knees.
She jumped onto the couch without needing encouragement. Took kibbles from off my knees and from my hand, though she did flinch away a couple of times when I moved too fast and unexpectedly.
And I flinched when she moved fast. Looks like we’ve got to rebuild trust. And I have to put a few expectations out of my mind. I have a wilder animal than I had expected to get.
Of course I regret that I can’t expect cat cuddles. Or that she’ll probably never want to have anything to do with the kids. Even just stroking her is a no no at the moment. How we will get her to the vet will be traumatic. See? She does need training.
I thought at about three years old, as the cattery said she is, I thought be able to train her to accept a harness and take her outside to sit in the sun. Since we don’t have any coming into the apartment. I might get a sun lamp instead.
I thought I could train her to climb a cat tree to the new shelf I had installed, to sleep there. She barely jumps up. I’ve offered her the patio table, and I often put kibbles on a high stool on the way to the tabletop. No go. She leaves them.
Right now because of that little training session getting her to eat out of my hand, she made the tiniest purr of approval and jumped onto the back of the couch there to doze. Probably 30 cm/12 inches distance. I have to take that as a plus on the way to better things. She’s been with me for four full months.
Rita de Heer 