“I love cats. I love their grace and their elegance. I love their independence and their arrogance, and the way they lie and look at you, summing you up, surely to your detriment, with that unnerving, unwinking, appraising stare.”
— Joyce Stranger
[Grendel]
Nary a moment will pass during these next few weeks when I can enjoy a bit of peace. Or rest, rather, if you must.
Grendel, Kazon, Loki, and Vazra must all pay homage to the gods of veterinary health by suffering through their annual examinations and vaccinations. Some are already due while others are rapidly approaching the same state. Beginning this Saturday and continuing through September 15, I will be ferrying felines betwixt home and vet on four of those weekend days.
Why not take them all in at once? Are you kidding?!?!? I’d never survive such an endeavor, at least not with all my limbs intact, so I shall forgo even attempting it and will instead continue on with my normal one-cat-per-visit approach. While I’d like to enjoy some financial leniency and the knowledge that all of them are done, subjecting them and myself to such terror will never happen. For their sake and mine.
And all the while, I have growing tasks at work that will consume more and more of my personal time. For example, unless plans change, I will work this weekend on a server migration project, and the first two weeks of September will be filled with late nights as I begin our implementation of a new monitoring and management system.
But the fun doesn’t end there, I’m afraid.
I find the year growing late too quickly to offer respite from my quest to relocate. Shelter and employment both must be secured in the near future. There is a financial incentive to make that happen prior to the end of September, yet I’m not foolish enough to believe it even possible.
Then there’s the planning and plotting for a successful adoption of Larenti. I will not leave her here when I move; therefore, it’s quite necessary to begin work on capturing her and getting her to the vet for a full examination. Unless her health poses a risk to The Kids (e.g., disease), she will then join the existing family for the remainder of her life. On the other hand, if she does in fact have some ailment that prohibits bringing her inside, she will be adopted as the sole outside cat—but only in a way post-move that keeps her safe from an alien environment and the many wilds and dangers that will surround us.
I must needs take another trip to the family farm soon. How soon I don’t know at present, but I do know it needs to happen before the end of September.
And the list goes on. . . Life offers days overflowing with responsibilities and nights too short for restful sleep. I must still make my way through this vexing obstacle course if I am to survive.
[Grendel; I know I’ve posted similar photos in the past, yet I find myself lost in such images; one can feel his intense focus tempered by the soft lighting; one can almost reach out and touch the patient predator as he gazes at what lies beyond; these things and more captivate me with this series of photographs showing Grendel staring out the bedroom door at a cloudy, rainy, shadowy world resting a mere breath beyond the glass]
I heard that in a movie once. Or was it “Don’t go into the light!”? I can’t remember which. . .
That’s Grendel takin’ a little siesta in the bit of sunlight we saw a few days ago. Such occasions have been rare, of course, but are increasing, so all of The Kids take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself.
Oh, and here’s a wider shot demonstrating he was indeed being a lounge lizard, a couch potato, a carpet kitty if you will. Or, in the parlance of those in the know, he was being a typical feline by locating and hogging the available warmth from sunshine.
“I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive, finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house. . .The worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it.”
— Mark Twain
[Grendel]