International Bad Cat Day -- Musical Version

[pameladean]

I don't always sleep very well. Last night was pretty good to start with. I went to bed around 1:30, petted the purring, kneading, face-patting, wrist-licking, belly-showing Saffron, and was asleep before I looked at the clock to see how long it was taking me to go to sleep. I woke up at six and used the bathroom and actually got back to sleep rather than lying awake worrying about things I can't do much about. Into this unusual sleep, after two and a half hours, came a strong sound of music. I sat up groggily. Saffron was sitting on a stack of storage tubs, swiveling her head around and looking inquisitive. Cassie was sitting in the middle of the bed with her ears back. It was a rather pleasant piece for violin and flute, and I thought that under other circumstances I might recognize it. I got up and went into Raphael's office, since that was, I believed, the closest possible source of music. All was dark and quiet there, however. Both cats followed me, campaigning for breakfast.

I went back into my room and there was the music. I finally remembered that the clock on top of the dresser, which Raphael and I got long ago either in Arizona or in Bemidji, I can't recall, because we needed better weather reports than the Weather Channel could provide when we were planning on being outside all day hiking, actually has a regular radio in it as well. The button that turns on the weather radio is on top, and Saffron has stepped on it before. But I did not awaken to the automated voice describing the weather. I hit the button, and there was the weather radio. When I hit it again there was supposed to be silence, but the music came back. I finally had to turn the volume down all the way because I could not figure out what Saffron had done. The time-setting controls and the weather radio button are on the top of the clock, but everything else is on the sides. She might have been sharpening her face on the sides, I suppose.

I didn't feed the cats, partly because it was only 8:30, but mostly because I didn't want to encourage whatever it was she had done. I wouldn't put it past her to remember what it was.

In other news, we got the final digital files for Points of Departure from the publisher, and I'm going over my stories looking for errors. There is an error spreadsheet one is supposed to use to locate and describe what should be corrected. I had to ask the nice person in Production how to use it, but it's simple enough.

By this time I am extremely tired of "The Green Cat." It being the oldest of the stories, the digital version had not survived translation from format to format and repeated backups, so I ended up typing it all in again not really that long ago. I was a little impatient with "Two Houses in Saltigos" too, but am both pleased and abashed to admit that "Paint the Meadows With Delight" still makes me laugh, even though I wrote it. Then again, Silvertop is not my character, but Emma's; so perhaps that explains it.

Pamela

Comments

[carbonel]

Emily, my first cat, learned that she could open the medicine chest in the bathroom, and either bat it open and closed to make noise or bat items from it into the sink, making a different sort of noise. All this was in aid of getting me out of bed so I would feed her, because she got fed in the morning.

Ever since then, every cat in my house has been fed in the afternoon, after work. I'd much rather have a cat reminding me that it's the end of the work day than that it's time to get up. Especially when the cat's idea of when it's time to get up doesn't accord with mine.

[pameladean]

We didn't mean to feed cats in the morning. However, when we got Cassie, we still had Aristophanes, who was getting fed about ten times a day so he'd eat enough. We couldn't not feed Cass at all while he was getting food, so she got fed three times a day and got a treat the other times Ari was fed. By the time we got Saffron, Cass was used to being fed in the morning, and she is very tenacious of an idea.

P.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

One step closer to readers getting their mitts on it! . .

[pameladean]

Yes, I continue very much impressed with Diversion Books and their expeditiousness, thoroughness, and general niceness.

P.

[seekerval.livejournal.com]

As Saffron is a cat, you may want to consider wrapping all sides of the clock radio in bubble wrap. The parts you want to manipulate/read could have thinner, strategically placed wrap that your finger could work through, but might cause Saffron at least a few attempts before she can make it work.

Of course, this COULD mean small popping sounds disturbing your sleep now and then...

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Cats are surprisingly strong for their size, and can get stuck in the bubble wrap, panic, and hurl the dense (in my case it was a hard drive) object wrapped in bubble wrap a surprising distance.

I'm not sure I'd want that to happen with a radio kept at altitude, as it were, in a room where I sleep.

[seekerval.livejournal.com]

Rats! Another fine plan foiled by the ever-inscrutable and resourceful feline nature.

[pameladean]

I am sure dogs are very devious in their way, but it's not the same way.

P.

[seekerval.livejournal.com]

So very true. Dogs aren't "inscrutable" at all.

[pameladean]

Oof.

We say of Saffron that she is a LOT of cat. But I think Aiofe is even more cat than Saffron. The vast majority (I typoed that as "bast majority") of it completely benign, just orthogonal to some human preferences, in both cases.

The clock is plugged into the wall, so it probably wouldn't fly as far as your hard drive. But I think I won't risk it.

P.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Well, to be fair, the packing stayed on the hard drive so it just went about six feet and then sort of flumped to a stop on a wood floor because bubble wrap doesn't slide well.

"Orthogonal to human preferences", oh entirely so. Eef has strong opinions about what should happen when, and is the only cat I've ever interacted with who will go right on growling at me -- for the sin of picking her up when she Was Not Done inspecting the hallway outside this apartment -- while bonking the top of her head into the underside of my chin because I was gone all day. It's peculiar, dealing with a cat who can maintain two thoughts in their head at one time.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

I am very much looking forward to Points of Departure.

[pameladean]

I do hope it stands up to expectations. We did do our best.

P.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Your best is awfully damn good.

I don't think you need be concerned, really, but, well. It doesn't do much good to say so.

[pameladean]

Actually, it does, because this worry is not the usual deep-down stuff writers can get messed up by, but more the product of its having been so long since I had anything published.

P.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

I think in this case you may be confident that the considerable gap of time serves to increase your readership's anticipation, and very little else.

(And it's not like you were planning to not have anything published, rather than being put through the wringer of Sisyphus by a publishing process whose wits would not do for weasels.)

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

When I wake up in the night and worry about things I cannot control (sounds like I do this more occasionally than you do), I have a series of scripted kinds of thought patterns that will usually work--like going over character relationships in a favorite work of fiction, or retelling a recently re-read or re-watched thing, or sometimes playing alphabet games (such as taking two people in a couple and try and think of the name of a famous person or a person I know with the first initial of one and the last initial of the other).

This works about 90% of the time, while "counting sheep" or its ilk is useless because too simple.

[pameladean]

I have an unfortunate history with many such devices, which is that whatever I'm doing, be it breathing exercises or mental exercises or whatever, simply gets subsumed into whatever the anxiety is, so that after a while, when I try breathing exercises, I start freaking out about things I haven't worried about in years. My brain, let me show you it. I don't even.

It is sometimes helpful to simply meet the anxiety where it lives, in a highly histrionic and over-simplified environment like a soap opera, and suggest solutions in that framework. They won't stand the light of day, but they don't have to.

P.

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

Magical musical cat. I enjoy reading about the exploits of the four-legged denizens of your house, but I am sure they are more fun to read about than experience - especially in the wee hours.

Looking forward to the book!

[pameladean]

They always amuse me in retrospect, which is why I write about them.

I do hope you like the book when it exists.

P.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

It being the oldest of the stories, the digital version had not survived translation from format to format and repeated backups, so I ended up typing it all in again not really that long ago.

When I was helping NESFA Press to get Fredric Brown's short stories back in print, I did OCR on a couple of the old books. It worked pretty well, much better than I'd expected. The results had to be carefully copy-edited, of course, but it was still a lot faster than retyping the stories.

[pameladean]

I thought of that, but it was only two and a half stories; and I didn't have a paperback that I felt like sacrificing. The original Liavek collections are very hard to come by.

P.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

I didn't have to damage the paperbacks -- well, one was already fragile, and opening it page-by-page beyond about 90° was hard on it. The scanner I used was well-designed; its scanning plate didn't have much of a border on one side. But for the books for which I really had to be careful, I photocopied the pages with a well-designed photocopier, then scanned the copies.

[pameladean]

At this point, though, what with the need to go out and about and find the right equipment, it was really easier just to type the stories again, in between doing other things. Typing them again was much less disruptive to the general tenor of my days.

P.

[cat-sanctuary.livejournal.com]

I'm glad my cats never heard of International Bad Cat Day.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Aoife has never heard of International Bad Cat Day.

Aoife has a Major Thing for International Implacable Cat Day, though, and I'm doubtful there's any obvious means to distinguish between these.

[pameladean]

This may actually be Saffron's situation as well. I'm less sure about Cassie. She may occasionally delight in being bad. Saf is simply capable of great focus, and her general response to being interrupted or chastised is a tolerant, "What? Oh, never mind."

P.

[thinkum]

At least it was a lovely musical sound to wake up to, rather than a clattering, smashing, or blaring one. ;-)

Cats continue to fascinate me. What must they think of us...

[pameladean]

In Saffron's case, probably not much. I mean, we are nice and all, we can use toys enticingly; and we are snuggly and warm and companionable and that's lovely; but we don't understand the Feline Mission and are always trying to distract her from it.

P.

[17catherines.livejournal.com]

Looking forward to the book, and loving your musical cat.

Mayhem has the ability to walk across my keyboard and switch on music - different music every time, but always baroque. She likes baroque. (Actually, she really does seem to prefer baroque music, at least where my singing is concerned). I especially liked the occasion when she wandered through on the second Sunday of Advent and switched on Handel's Messiah, which I didn't even know I had on my computer...

[pameladean]

Go Mayhem! Well named, I guess she is?

Poor Saffron does walk on my keyboard, but alas for her, she knows what, "Please don't walk on the computer" means and gets off it when I tell her to. Cassie either doesn't know what it means or doesn't care. She has resized my windows, removed my task bars, reoriented my task bars, turned on Sticky Keys, turned on Filter Keys in a way that meant I had to actually use the Help files to undo what she did, and crashed Windows 8 by selecting "Debug Script" from an Unresponsive Script Warning popup. But no music. Since you are more musical than I am, possibly it's easier to get music from your computer than from mine, if one has four feet.

P.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

How dreamlike and magical the situation with the music was--honestly, even when you identified the source as the weather-station-playing radio, the fact that it was playing half-familiar, pleasant music, and that it was your cats (you THINK!) who turned it on is ... quite unusual and appealing, and very wonderful not to have all been a part of the dream you were having.

the purring, kneading, face-patting, wrist-licking, belly-showing Saffron

--what an excellent cat