I refuse to shut the window

[pameladean]

The one office window that I can reach to open without lying on my stomach on a pile of obsolete stereo equipment and a larger pile of paper faces west, and is sheltered by a large if somewhat ragged arbor vita tree, which is generally occupied by either house sparrows, house finches, or squirrels. The window is a favorite of my cat. I left it open last night. I won't be able to do that tonight; the cold front is coming in. But I won't shut it just yet. I might put on a sweater, I suppose.

I just made grilled soy cheese sandwichs for Raphael and me. They had more tomato and pickle and, in my case, onion, than cheese, but I put very thin slices of cheese all around the three-dimensional slippery ingredients, and the sandwiches did not fall apart. They were tasty, too.

David and I had lunch with mrissa and timprov today. I enjoyed it very much. It takes me a long time to get used to people, but the process is moving along nicely. It is immeasurably cozy to hang out with people whose household arrangements are like a slightly warped mirror of ours. I'm not sure why, but it is. There were college reminiscences all around, and wit from the witty members of the party (the other three, that is).

My mother is coming over on Sunday to help me put down paving stones before the ground freezes. In the meantime, I will record that I have a single anemone blooming, a handful of dark-red chrysanthemums, some daisy fleabane, and a couple of black-eyed Susans. My mother and I went walking in the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum on Tuesday, and I saw a meadowhawk, a ladybug, and a yellowjacket. They, too, are not going to close their windows just yet.

I had thought of titling this entry, "Why is my basement like hell when it is neither dark nor deep?" Suffice it to say that the cats need to go to mouse school. I found myself lecturing Naomi, "Kill or not kill. There is no try." She did not believe me. I don't want mice in my house and I wish they did not evoke so much fellow feeling in me. But hey, I love my rosebush. Mice are evolutionarily much closer to me than my rosebush.

The book is inching along. I still don't really get along with Open Office. It's intuitively opaque to me. I don't like the way it thinks about text. It doesn't care what I like. It cares about a lot of things I don't care about. It's not actually smarter than me, but it's more stubborn. However, it can't stop me from writing.

I'm still utterly flattened by the results of the election. I won't rant just at the moment, but I did have one thought. I have heard a number of plaints from Bush supporters about how Kerry supporters think they are stupid. Well, I don't think that, but I do think that they made a stupid decision at a critical juncture. I'd love to be wrong about that, but I don't think it's the way to bet.

I'll leave the window open a crack, though.

Pamela

Comments

[wickdzoot.livejournal.com]

Three years ago, when my kidlets were still at home, and we still had all four cats (before the son absconded with the two boycats), I came out from my bedroom where I had been reading to find all four cats in the diningroom, head to head in a sort of rays of the sun configuration as if they were having a serious convo.

Taken aback--for one thing, the two girls did not, in those days, even play together--I stopped dead and asked, "What are you kids up to?"

They all looked up at me as if I'd interrupted them.

I leaned down to talk to them, and lo, something small was squirming beneath Lily's paw, which apparently had been the subject of catly discussion. I may have yelped in surprise, and I snatched up a plastic bag to 'glove' my fingers because, despite the fact that I have nothing against mice outdoors, I was a little too freaked out to touch it with my bare fingers. I snatched after poor Mouse, missed, but got it out from under Lily's paw. Lily looked at me as if I were either irredeemably stupid or completely insane and slapped her paw down on the mouse again. We repeated this three times before I finally captured Mouse in my bagged hand, carried it to the front door and did a gentle low-ball toss into the outdoors to set it free in hopes that it wasn't beyond recovery from the adventure.

Lily was, needless to say, unamused. She promptly led Sophie around the house on mouse patrol while the two boys watched in confusion.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It is cozy. Also, households containing an extreme introvert (or more than one) are a great relief to me, since I then have to do a lot less explaining. Also, I think it works much better because I am comfortable with and enjoy each of you individually and also all of you together.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I am mightily amused at the mental image of you playing Yoda to the cat.

[careswen.livejournal.com]

Also, households containing an extreme introvert (or more than one) are a great relief to me, since I then have to do a lot less explaining.

Yes! Yesyes!

[pameladean]

You certainly don't want to touch an agitated mouse with your bare fingers.

Your story cracked me up. The only cat I have seen catch a mouse is Ari, and he did it while I was walking him on a leash. We negotiated its release. I can only surmise from the evidence (one dead mouse, one unbloodied but unhappy mouse, the latter of which I picked up with suitable precautions, put in a box, and took as far from the house as practicable) what is going on inside the basement.

Pamela

[pameladean]

Yes, that's definitely part of what works for me too.

Pamela

[pameladean]

I think Luke Skywalker was a better pupil than Naomi. She has no motivation.

Pamela

[wickdzoot.livejournal.com]

Well, I can't say I've ever seen Lily actually catch one, and I've never, fortunately, found any deceased rodents either. I was completely thunderstruck by Lily's skill and speed, even if she was completely unimpressed by my ineptitude in rescuing the mouse.

I still find it hilarious that the boys watched, completely confuzzled, as Lily led the then despised interloper Sophie around the house checking for further mouse incursions.

I miss the boys, bless them, even though they are happy with their human Boy, and even though they were only good predators when leaping on each other off the coffee table....

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

LOL. She sounds like an actor!

[lcohen]

i loved this entire entry but especially "Kill or not kill. There is no try." . i can just hear you saying this.

*hug*

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Angel caught a mouse just last week.

I wandered into the kitchen to make coffee, and she was crouched by the stove. I knew that crouch.

She'd been yowling during the night, so I think the mouse had gotten away--once.

This time, I turned on the water, and the mouse ran--Angel got it: snap.

She ran off into the back of the house with a tail dangling out of her mouth...

I heard her deep euphoric growling from back in the closet.

What could I do? Try to "take the mouse away"?

It's been grievously injured already. It's dying.

Shall I (somehow) find Angel in the depths of the junk in the closet and pluck the mouse out by the tail?

Vincent, the other cat, dumb as a stump, left his catfood dish and went off to investigate.

Then they both started growling and thumping around in the closet.

Torture.

I shut the door to the bedroom.

Hurry up, get it over with.

[pameladean]

She is an actor, really. She's very expressive, but it's hard to tell what in the world she is expressing. Perhaps we are not her intended audience.

Pamela

[pameladean]

Oh, I hate that.

If the cat was allowed outside, I've been known to pick up cat, mouse, and all, and dump them out the back door so they could do their Nature Red in Tooth and Claw bit away from my house. I can't dump an indoor cat out like that, though.

Pamela

[pameladean]

Aw. *hug*

Pamela

A cat, a mouse & the maintenance man

[romsfuulynn.livejournal.com]

Once, a long time ago, when the world was young, I had a cat named Mohammed. (He looked like he was boxing when he'd attempt to chase down flies. (and, of course, he was a "alley cat" - what can I say, I was 20). I got him my senior year in college when was four months old. His people (also college students were moving out back to homes with dogs), and he spontaneously climbed up the sliding door screen of a townhouse we were living in and demanded to be let in early one morning, undeterred by having a beer poured on him.

So a year and some later (circa 1978) we were in a fourth floor apartment in a 15 story building with less than ideal conditions. It had a balcony and a good view though. We had been fighting with the management because a leak in the toilet of the apartment above (really only a drip, but still) had led to a hole in our bathroom ceiling and required the prudent to carry an umbrella when using the facilities. There were also roaches.

I was asleep, when suddenly there was swooping and pouncing and scurrying. I groped for my glasses, and Mohammed had captured a mouse and was playing with it, letting it go, and then catching it. It did not yet appear to be injured, and I put a wastebasket over it, and covered it with cardboard, not merely to deprive the cat of the mouse, but because it was a final straw in the issue of the ceiling hole that was of some three weeks duration at that point, and I called maintenance.

An older man arrived. English was clearly not his native language. I had dressed, and was in the living room by the balcony door, with the imprisoned mouse. I remonstrated with the man at some length and demanded that he do something about the ceiling hole, the roaches, the mice and my general distress.

He started to depart, leaving behind the mouse in the wastebasket. I told him I wanted him to get rid of *that* mouse. He looked at me, looked the cat, who had spent the whole time crouched nearby watching the wastebasket with a combination of deep reproach and hope, and shrugged. He was clearly confused by my request, but obligingly picked up the mouse by the tail, pushed open the screen (the glass was already open) stepped out on the balcony and flung the mouse out into the air, four stories up (really more like five since I was on the back of the builing and built into a hill.)

Pleased, he turned back to me and promised quick action on the hole and an exterminator, and took his leave.