Ah, the joys of autumn

[pameladean]

This autumn has been beautiful and mellow. In my immediate neighborhood there has not yet been a hard frost: the last black-eyed Susans are blooming away, the asters and the goldenrod, long since gone to seed, are putting up new side shoots and contemplating blooming again; Raphael and I saw white irises reblooming in a terrace garden; Lydy's morning glories, although rather curled at the edges of the leaves and well-decorated with their pendant seed pods, are also still grimly blooming away, though interestingly the blossoms are smaller and smaller. The grass is as green as emerald. The cats have sprung out of their summer torpor and are racing up and down the house, eating more, and demanding affection. Oaks are red and brown and yellow; sugar maples are blazing away; the gutters are full of ash leaves, and all the leaf-bare crabapples carry their fruit like jewels. The Norway maple in front of our house, ever tardy, is just beginning to turn yellow.

As I was virtuously and innocently taking clean dishes out of the upstairs dishwasher, I glanced into the darkened sitting room and thought, Aw, the cats have resurrected an old catnip mouse. Oh, no, wait, they don't have any that big. "Oh my God," I said to Raphael, "there's a dead mouse in the doorway." "Are you sure it's not just a cat toy?" "Yep." I turned on the light in the sitting room. A plump, cute, unmarked, pink-nosed gray mouse, as dead as a door-nail.. Beryl was sitting on the carpet looking smug. Jordan had been making quite odd noises in the kitchen not long before. I had just let Ari in from downstairs, wondering why he was only scratching and not yelling as usual. Any of them could have done the deed. None of them would take the corpse outside, of course. I got to do that. I hope it was Ari who came in unnoticed with a mouse mustache. I don't know how a mouse would get to the second floor, and I don't want to. I also do hope we will not have a repetition of last year's twitching not-dead mouse.

The book, after a number of unworthy tantrums, has settled into a temporary period of beautiful cooperation. I finished Chapter 4 and started Chapter 5.

And David got the job he interviewed for.

P.

Comments

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Huzzah for David's job! Hurrah for the mighty mouse killers, and boo for them not taking it outside themselves.

[pameladean]

To be perfectly fair, only one of them is allowed to go outside, and that only on a leash. They probably wouldn't anyway. I used to tell cats that, as money flows TOWARDS the writer, dead prey should flow AWAY from the writer. But they don't listen.

P.

[redbird]

A job, a cooperative book, and a fine autumn day, huzzah!

[pameladean]

Yes, we are very fortunate, mouse and all.

P.

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

congratulations on david's job and on the book going well!

i love pretty autumn days. what a beautiful description.

(i want to take pictures of the foliage here, and of course my digital camera chose now to not-work!)

[pameladean]

How vexatious of your camera. Foliage changes so fast.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

At least yours is dead.

[pameladean]

Believe me, I am profoundly cognizant of my good fortune in this matter.

And you have my sympathies.

P.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Sounds like three goods (weather, writing, job) and one ick (mouse).

[pameladean]

A small ick, but mine own.

P.

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

I also do hope we will not have a repetition of last year's twitching not-dead mouse.

At least your cats didn't present you with half a mouse, like mine did over the summer. They were kind enough to leave me the tail half, so I had a convenient way to pick it up *shudder*.

[pameladean]

I am so fraked out by the possibility of hantavirus and the feel of dead mammal that I put on rubber gloves and then pick the poor corpse up with a gigantic pile of paper towels, which I then put corpse and all into several plastic bags. So I don't need a tail.

I'm glad the mouse was whole, however. We seem to have somewhat abnormal cats.

P.

[gwyneira.livejournal.com]

Oh, the horror of toy mouse vs. real mouse confusion. A while ago I walked into our bedroom at night, saw a small furry thing on the floor, and thought, "Oh, look, the cats left a mousie toy in here - guess I'd better throw it down the stairs for them." You can guess the rest.

At least it was dead and whole and thus easily disposed of. (Though the cats were a little annoyed with me.)

[pameladean]

Eeeeee.

Luckily, none of our toys are very realistic on close examination.

P.

[laurel]

It has been really lovely so far this fall.

Was nifty the other day when we hung out at Chapterhouse coffee to get good job news from one friend (pbmath) followed by good job news from DDB and Kevin's news was in the works then (so I took it all as a good sign).

As I write this, Kevin is out in front of the house digging up some of our gerbera daisies to put in pots. I figure I'll give that a try, rather than just let them get too cold outside. I figure for a whil yet, I'll be able to put them outside during the day-- most are still blooming (though a bit smaller than usual).

Our lawn looked the best it has all year just a week or two ago after Kevin mowed it. Lush, green, no patches that were bare or full of weeds. Now we've got leaves in the grass, but it's still lush.

[pameladean]

Yes, it's nice to feel things are looking up a little, even for very local values only.

I'll be interested to see if you can winter over your gerbera daisies. I've never tried that.

P.

[clindau.livejournal.com]

Hooray for David's new job!!!

Cindy

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Coolness all around. And I hope you have been noticing Mars as it starts to rise earlier -- it's already extremely bright. I believe closest approach is in about a week.

[pameladean]

Yes indeed, it very conveniently looks right in through the back door early on, and stands right over the house if we come home lateish from socializing. It's had some nice hobnobs with the Moon.

P.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

It is the best of all possible worlds!!!

Mme. Pangloss

[pameladean]

*snrch*

P.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

oh, that is SO GREAT about the job. i love how you saved it for the very last throwaway line.

[pameladean]

Well, um, to be perfectly honest, I tend to forget that not everybody who reads my LJ reads David's, and just tossed it in at the last minute.

P.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Great news about the job and the book.

Ferko has been more active and more vocal this past week. I assumed it was related to the loss of QC, either because she's acting differently or because there's space for her to do so. But maybe it's the cooler weather.

We get lots of dead mousies this time of year. Or, rather, we get mouse parts. Whoever brings them in likes to bite off and eat their heads and front paws. They leave mouse hindquarters in the oddest places.

[pameladean]

At least your cats do what they're SUPPOSED to do. "Bite they little heads off, nibble on they tiny feet."

We always have an autumn flurry with cats dashing about and expostulating, but of course Ferko has more cause.

P.

[vass]

I can just imagine that morning glories would bloom grimly.

I'm glad David got the job he interviewed, and that your cats had the decency to kill the mouse they caught.

[pameladean]

The phlox is also grim. "All right, one more blossom, but JUST ONE."

I'm glad they do such clean kills, too. Even the unfortunate twitching one from last year wasn't all bloody.

P.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I just read through your comments about being squicked. Mouse part detail is not not my favorite, either, but I just pick them up by their tails, using a bit of toilet paper as a cordon sanitaire, and flush them. Then I wash my hands thoroughly.

Isn't the real hantavirus risk from breathing mouse-feces-dust-laden air?

I think Ferko is more vocal and more in-your-face right now because she's not being put in her place any an alpha cat (however demented). The Scamp doesn't care about cat rank -- he thinks he's a dog.

[pameladean]

Yes, you are absolutely right about the hantavirus risk. Absent a colony of mice and a collection of droppings, infection is very unlikely. This doesn't stop me from disinfecting the area where the mouse was lying, either.

I don't like picking them up by their poor tails anyway, so I kill two irrational fears with one process. I once grabbed the stem of an oak leaf floating in a swimming pool and discovered that it was the tail of a very lively vole, so I'm a little peculiar. (I got a net and rescued the vole.)

Young male cats are outside some schemes of feline dominance anyway. But I'm sure you're right. Does he think he outranks Mr. Darcy?

P.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Does he think he outranks Mr. Darcy?

Yes.

[clindau.livejournal.com]

The Scamp doesn't care about cat rank -- he thinks he's a dog.

And I have a picture to prove it. ;-)

cindy

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Congratulations to David!!

And to you for good progress!

Our cats are hyperactive and fluffed up since it got cold.

I love it--they chase each other through the house. They're crazy this week.

[jinii-chan.livejournal.com]

Your description of autumn reminds me of another moving description I've read recently (just this afternoon, in fact)....

Every little bare maple along the stream had a circle of red leaves on the ground beneath it, as if it had gotten undressed and left its clothes on the floor.

^.~ And, of course:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun:
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run...
...
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too...

^____^

[barbarakitten-t.livejournal.com]

bravo for david and his job ... and for the cooperative book...and may the kitties not torment you with mousie treats...

[thinkum]

Cheers on everything (except the mouse, that is)! Hear, hear, on the chapter progression, and congrats to David!

- K & J

[lcohen]

i threw an ill but living mouse out the back door the other day but i am mean that way.

please congratulate david on the job, and hurray for your book progress!

Completely off-topic question

[aedifica]

There has been a discussion in tamnonlinear's journal about the Schools function in LJ. If you haven't explored it, one can list a school and then say one went to it. Various people have listed that they went to Hogwarts, Unseen University, etc.

Some of us would like to list Blackstock, but we can't find the name of the town (one needs the town name in order to list the school). I suspect that there wasn't one listed in the book, and that you left it that way on purpose - but I thought I'd ask anyway. Is there a town name in your mind that we could use for this purpose? :>

seconding this motion

[tyratae.livejournal.com]

i actually popped up to say something much more along the lines of "the words 'the book' & the promise of its cooperation just make me purr," but now that i've found this (& how in the world did i miss it in tamnonlinear's journal?!?) i have to second the motion, because it's such a perfectly wonderful idea, & not just because i spent (not alone, i'd imagine) my entire undergraduate career trying to make my locales seem as much like blackstock as possible, but because i love the idea of a bunch of lit-nerds blurring lj's attempt to do a "real world" find-each-other function & doing the same thing (& probably a more effective version!) via fictional colleges.