Cat Tales, 7

The next day, while the pernickety old woman and I sat friendly in the red chair–me on a towel on her lap–I could feel little things crawling around on me. I scratched. Aah! So satisfying. I scratched more. Then I saw them! Little black specks jumping from me to my human.

“Eeeh!” the pernickety old woman said. “Fleas! I should’ve known, shouldn’t I?”

Unexpectedly, she flapped the ends of the towel over me, and started to struggle up out of the chair with me tight in her arms. I was so surprised that she didn’t just push me off, I didn’t struggle.

“Have to take some stern measures,” she said. “Hope you’ll forgive me.”

I couldn’t act out yes or no, because I didn’t know what she meant.

She took me into the bathroom, a hard, shining, tiled place, and shut the door behind us. She opened the taps that make the rain and waited, still holding me, until the water falling from the overhead thing steamed a little.

She stuck her hand under and said, “Well. Here goes. Clothes and all.” She stepped into the warm rain.

Fleas jumped off both of us and were swept down the drain.

When I got water up my nose, I sneezed and started to struggle. I miaowed. Got more water up my nose. “I want to get down!”

The pernickety old woman set me at her feet where I sneezed some more. I walked from the rain stall and shook my wet fur. Brrr. Cold down there at floor level. That warm rain was lovely, I realized. Walked back in.

The pernickety old woman had taken off all her coverings in the meantime and spread flower-scented suds all over herself. Then she let the rain wash it off her. There’s no logic to humans.

She turned off the taps. The rain stopped. She dried herself off with a pink towel, and then me with a washed-out green towel. She slung on her dressing gown and led me into the sun-room at the back of the house. Where she set the little kindergarten chair for me to sit there and continue to dry myself.

She tackled the remains of the flea plague by spraying the red chair and the rug and the couch with an insect-killing fog. She opened the windows and turned on the overhead fan to lift the sickly lemon-scent, and finally she set out a treat for me.

If all that’s what happens as a result of walking in and out and in and out of the warm rain she organizes, count me in next time. Though I will tell you, it will need to be a sunny day, just like it was today.

Lego, Puzzle One

It’s harder to set up than it looks, even for me, and I invented it.

There’s one piece missing … it’ll be in the post as soon as I have my computer back and can get to my favourite Bricklink store … but I want to get begun on my next project.

I started it as an experimental thing seeing how these slopes could work together. One thing led to another.

Life Admin xyz …

This is one of those days that I need to “make my daily march (back) with the heavy baggage wagon” These words from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching as interpreted by Ursula K LeGuin.

Meaning to me that I need to attend primarily to my physical and on-ground community needs.

I must be out of the house by 9 AM, spruced up and ready for anything. First an after-care eye specialist appointment that’s walkable. Then bus into the city for early voting on the Yes/No referendum, and a bank ‘appointment’.

I call it an appointment despite that they don’t know I’m coming.

If you’re interested, I’ve begun summarising entries into the Lodestar Timeline on its dedicated page, accessible through the menu.

Cat Tales 2

When I first came to live with the pernickety old woman I was about a year old, having spent my kittenhood secretly entertaining a pair of young lay-abouts in rented accommodation that had a strict no-pets rule blanketing it.

The young lay-abouts … I call them that for their lack of tables chairs or even a couch. They owned a mattress on the floor to lounge about on, satin cushions, a velvet couch cover, and a refrigerator. I had my toy bucket with a ball that spat kibbles.

Not so here. There’s furniture galore, many places where my toys go to hide when they’re too tired for more play. But anyway, I prefer getting the pernickety old woman to waft the red-feather-on-a-springy-stick. When she tires I’ll slip away as if for a cat-nap.

Then, when she’s busy at whatever humans get up to when they’re not attending their feline companions, I stalk through the house looking for an open window, an open door, a propped up sky-light.

Aargh! Even a chimney will do! How can I get into the backyard for my Hand-of-God work?

The pernickety old woman has a lot of bad-fangled ideas about what a self-respecting cat should do all day.

Cat Tales, 1

Hi, I’m the Hand-of-God. So called because I was born with a hand-outline, two hairs wide, on my back. But which was only my second name. At the cattery they called me Zorro.

The hand is hard to see now because I grew, and grew, and expanded and the hand expanded too, and became a blob.

Which is how the ignorant old woman now looking after me, calls it.

Hand-of-God? she says. You wish! Go on! I dare you go do something that God told you needs doing.

She obviously doesn’t know God is another name for Life, or Nature, if you’re pernickety like she is.

That night I hunted and ate all the cockroaches in the house. If that isn’t nature, what is?

What else can a Hand-of-God do locked up in an old house?

“I Don’t Speak Binary.”

Despite a ten minute trawl over my virtual fishing grounds, my mobile phone has not seen fit to supply me with an image I could use to help explain Lodestar’s timeline.

And that is, it’s not doing any imagery at all this morning, not even photos. I don’t know why. I probably only use about 50% of the phone’s capabilities often, I suspect, because “I don’t speak binary”.

Don’t you love that line? Pure frustration spoken by the Mandalorian in the last instalment of Season Three at his R5 droid’s explanations that it couldn’t instantly open gate 5 that second.

I felt instant rapport with the Mandalorian at that moment. How many times today already have you been required to speak binary, and didn’t, because you don’t?

The upshot of all that? I will craft an image myself. Sketch, paint maybe, scan-shot if I use digital paint, cam-shot if I use pigments, import into media library. A simple 4-step operation.

“Add new post!”

Seriously? I’m completely boondoggled … is that even a word, I imagine you’re asking … I’ll need to check that myself. It’s been a while since I saw it written.

That suspicion was right. Not the right meaning. The Navy has my favorite explanation … a boondoggle is a fun, but unproductive meeting.

So. Try again. I’m completely at a loss … not as descriptive is it?

But me going to the thesaurus from here and then trying to get back with a good word under my arm… will take me another half hour.

I’m at a loss. My writing is on my laptop and the external hard drive. My research ditto. Everyplace where I might check somthing, also inaccessable.

It’s Friday, and here in Queensland, Monday is a public holiday. I won’t be able to take my ailing laptop to a repair place until Tuesday!

Couldn’t take it today, yesterday or day before due to too much other stuff those days. I have ME/CFS and am constrained by a frequent lack of energy.

I’ve been training myself to take 2200 steps per day. If I go over my daily limit, I’m setting myself up for a three day crash.

The computer repair place visit has to be done on the same day I need to go into that direction for another thing. Three blocks distance is all it is, and three blocks back. It’s all I’ll be able to that day.