pameladean

Our beautiful, goofy, adventuring Saffron cat is gone.

Here she is right after arriving in April of 2013.



Below the cut are more photos; then there's another cut before I describe her last day. Please feel free to skip that part if you don't feel up to it. She was very much herself and everything went pretty well, but it's still awfully sad.

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Below the cut is a description of her last day. Please skip if you don't feel up to it. There are also a few more photos of her exploring the room the University provided us.

CW for pet illness, death

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First, in reference to my previous post, the pies tasted fantastic and the crust was quite good, if lumpy and patched. I have at least learned to use a very very light hand when repairing the deficiencies of my crusts.

And now, the sequel to the Great Pie-Licking Episode.

Yesterday evening, I made tempeh mushroom stroganoff for Cameron and me. I do feed David too, especially when Lydy is away, if I'm making something he'd like. But he wouldn't like this, and he still had leftover turkey yesterday.

I hadn't been able to find commercial vegan sour cream, so fairly early in the process I made some in the miniature food processor. Then I got an 8-oz block of tempeh out of the freezer and thawed it in the microwave. Sometime during 2020 somebody started up a local business that makes tempeh, calling the product Tempeh Tantrum, which alone would have recommended it to me. In fact it is quite good, very plain tempeh: no grains or seasonings, just soybeans, water, and the tempeh culture.

After thawing the tempeh, I cut the block into quarters so that it would fit in the saucepan, and steamed it for 20 minutes. I put the four pieces on a plate to cool. At this point I actually looked at the recipe, which I had not made for some time, and saw that it didn't take long at all, and dinner would be ready much too early if I went on. I washed and cut up a pound of broccoli to roast and put the tofu sour cream in the fridge. The tempeh was still fairly hot, and in any case I have an only partly conscious attitude of "But it's spoiled already" about tempeh. So I left the plate on the stove.

The cats were schooling around reminding me that they were starving, and it was in fact time for wet food, so I gave it to them and sat in the room while they ate it: this is necessary because Cassie will steal Saffron's food from under her nose, and Saffron, for reasons known only to her otherwise very stroppy self, will let Cassie do it. Cassie did not do it this time. We have a routine, wherein she finishes her own food and walks towards Saffron, who is eating at her own leisurely pace on an armchair, to keep Cassie a little more at, well, paw's reach. I always say, "I see you, Cass. I see the Cass." Then she sits down and washes her whiskers, keeping a very close eye on Saffron.

So Saffron got all her food and washed her own whiskers. Cass came over and sat on the couch with me. Saffron ambled into the kitchen. After a few minutes of dead silence, Cassie bolted off the sofa and ran as fast as her short little legs would go into the kitchen, and thence out the other door. Something extremely interesting had just happened with food.

I ran into the kitchen. The pan of broccoli looked untouched. On the tempeh plate, there were three pieces remaining.

Exclaiming loudly, I bolted into my bedroom after Cass, who had just disappeared under the bed. I flung myself on my stomach onto the floor and peered under, after a moment employing the flashlight function of my cellphone. Saffron and Cassie were gnawing bites off the fourth piece of steamed tempeh. Tempeh crumbs were scattered all over the floor between them. I reached my arm under to grab the piece of tempeh, and Saffron snatched it up in her mouth, moved a few feet away, and dropped it again. I leapt up, got the broom, and dragged the gnawed tempeh out from under the bed. Saffron and Cassie erupted after me, but I already had the tempeh in my hand. They followed me into the kitchen, also exclaiming loudly.

I fished the tempeh wrapper out of the trash and ascertained that it was, indeed, very plain tempeh. And it was cooked. They would probably be fine, but I had no idea why the tempeh had elicited behavior that would have been completely understandable if it were cheese or fish. I would never leave either of those desirable foodstuffs alone in the kitchen, but tempeh and tofu have never been bothered before.

I walked into Cameron's office with the gnawed piece of tempeh in my hand. They had eaten less than a quarter of it, less even than that if you counted all the crumbs. "My goodness!" Cameron said. "Is tempeh bad for cats?"

"I have no idea."

Cam was looking it up as I took the tempeh back to the kitchen and put it into the organics recycling. I contemplated the remaining tempeh. I now had the wrong amount for the recipe. Also, Saffron had had plenty of time before jumping down with her chosen piece to do any kind of investigation she liked of the other ones. I sighed and put them in the recycling as well. At least the tempeh had been on sale and we'd only lost about three dollars.

Cameron came into the kitchen and said, "Just tell me, was there any garlic or onion in the tempeh?"

"Nope, just plain tempeh. And already steamed."

We agreed that the cats would probably be fine but we would keep an eye on them.

I got the next block of tempeh out of the freezer and put it in the microwave to thaw. Dinner was about twenty minutes late. I remarked at intervals to Cameron, "Well, nobody has barfed yet."

Nobody ever did, nor exhibited any other signs of digestive distress.

Eventually I swept the tempeh crumbs out from under the bed. Apparently they were not actually very tasty once the excitement of the chase was over.

The stroganoff was very tasty, and Saffron bore me no ill will for stealing her prey. I can only be grateful that I put the vegan sour cream in the refrigerator. It's clear that nothing is safe from Saffron any more.

Pamela

I'm not sure that's exactly the word that I want, but it will do to go on with.

I mean to make more posts and more substantial ones, but I'm presently wildly amused by my efforts to get things done and thought I would chronicle the twisty path towards any accomplishments.

I got up, greeted the sun with great enthusiasm, pulled up blinds so the cats could enjoy it. I was up earlier than usual. I went ahead and took my famotidine, which works better if it's left to do its thing for about an hour before I try to ingest anything else (it's an H2 blocker for acid reflux). It was a bit early to go downstairs and give Ninja his "treat," which is a quarter can of Fancy Feast with a quarter teaspoon of potassium gluconate in it. He has some strange health issue that nobody has really figured out, but his potassium was low when they checked it, so he gets a supplement twice a day. I am doing this -- well, Raphael is doing the second dose of the day for me, bless her -- because Lydy went to a lot of trouble and expense to go to Cleveland to work, but ended up breaking her arm in a bicycle accident. David drove out there shortly afterwards to help her with daily life, leaving me in charge of cat care. Lydy is doing pretty well but won't be home for a little while yet.

Saffron also gets a medication twice a day, methimazole for hyperthyroidism. It was a very bumpy ride at first with a lot of anosmia and barfing, but things seem to have settled down. I put her half pill in a pill pocket, added some incidental food to cushion the effect and prevent more barfing, and gave it to  her. I took a shower and washed my hair and got dressed. I had a cup of yogurt and the rest of my meds (four for blood pressue, one for blood sugar). This is a more medicalized household than I'd prefer, but at least we're all still here.

Ninja made an appearance on the other side of the upstairs kitchen door, yelling about how his treat was late. It was, but we are about to run out of his supplement. The vet said it was just fine for him to miss a dose and we could pick up a new supply on Monday. I was aware of the supplement's getting low in time to have arranged to collect it before the holiday weekend, but I didn't actually call the vet in a timely fashion, the existence of a holiday weekend having not made it into the scheduling part of my brain. So I thought I might give him his last dose later than usual so the wait for the next one would be shorter. It probably doesn't matter; the vet was very blase about it.

If Cassie is about when I give Saf her pill, she gets a couple of treats as distraction. She came out of Raphael's room as I was getting dressed, sniffing about and eying me narrowly. She knew she had missed out on something. So she started lobbying for actual treats, time for which happens around four in the afternoon.

I made and consumed a very large mug of tea, and figured that I had time to run down and treat Ninja and top off food and water bowls,plus petting anybody having a petting emergency (this is usually Nuit, but anybody might have one in the absence of both their human companions) before upstairs treat time. I used the bathroom and realized that I hadn't brushed my teeth, so I did that, which revealed that the hair catcher in the bathroom sink needed cleaning. I cleaned it, remembering in the process that I'd gotten the floor of the bathtub somewhat slippery with conditioner and had meant to scrub the tub out. I scrubbed the tub out.

By this time (a) I was hungry and (b) if I went downstairs Cassie would wake Raphael up demanding treats.

She is making mournful noises as I type, but since I'm awake she is making them at me.

Oh, wait, it's after four.

All right. I will treat the cats up here and have a belated -- ha, who am I fooling, this is about when I always have lunch these days -- have my lunch and then go give poor Ninja his own treat.

The sun was going down as I ate my leftover enchilada and on-sale perfectly-ripe avocado half. The snow didn't turn pink; probably there were no clouds in the right place.

I will try to post again sooner, and hope you are all holding on.

Pamela

Yesterday and today I made myself go out for a walk. Yesterday, though sunnier, was much brisker than today, with a searching breeze that made me glad I'd put a fleece jacket over my hoodie, though I was too warm by the time I got within a few blocks of home.

People are being very good, very locally, about distancing. I've seen a slight increase in the number of people wearing masks. I don't have one yet and simply stay well away from everybody.

The scilla is in full bloom, both in our yard and in the neighborhood generally. I used to covet those sheets of pure blue in other people's yards, and now I have one. It began with about three volunteers from the yard next door and a bag of 25 bulbs that I planted mostly in the shadiest part of the back yard, leaving a handful to carefully put in a chicken-wire cage with a handful of winter aconite and plant in the front instead. Both front and back yards are now dotted with individual plants pushing their territory outwards. All the purple crocuses are up and blooming. The yellow and white ones haven't put in an appearance yet.

Unlike most of my neighbors, I have not raked any leaves out of the lawn or flowerbeds. The Xerces Society, champion of pollinators, asks that one wait until the soil temperature is reliably fifty degrees at all times before raking up the shelter of many overwintering beneficial pollinators. But Minnesotans are out there way too early, raking away, as if bare ground were lovelier than a patchwork of leaves, as if a brown lawn were nicer than that patchwork as well. It looks tidy, I guess, but lovely it is not.

I do admit to having lifted by hand about six maple leaves that were preventing the opening of crocus buds, but that is all.

Quite aside from the question of pollinators, I am now vindicated because there will be a winter storm tomorrow, followed by several quite cold days and nights below freezing.

Yesterday had bright sun and cloud shadows dappling the new daffodils along my route and picking out the red shoots of peony and hosta. Today there was a kind of ghost sun, showing me a faint outline of my shadow, sometimes a human figure, sometimes a walking tree or pillar, sometimes vanished.

I'm having trouble reading fiction, even books I've read before. Basic hygiene, cooking dinner, and walking have been my accomplishments, along with a call to the Member Services Line of my health insurance company to inquire why my medication list had disappeared from their new website. (It hadn't, they'd just put it under a weird tab. Next time I'll just go through all tabs no matter how apparently irrelevant.)

We are all well here so far. I will get to wave to my local brother from a safe distance on Monday when he comes to collect groceries from our porch -- there were no delivery dates available in the suburb he and my mom live in, but Minneapolis still had a few. It has none now, though pickup dates are still copious.
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Saffron is having some issues with her food. She is prone to gum inflammation. For some time this has been kept in check by a prescription food called TD, which comes in large unwieldy chunks and must be crunched up rather than just bolted by the feline consumer. But she stalled out on eating a portion a few days ago and then refused to even try the next one. There's nothing wrong with her appetite; she agitated ceaselessly for actual food until I opened a can of wet food, which she ate with abandon. We tried her on the TD again after, we hoped, giving any minor soreness of jaw a chance to heal, and she did eat most of a serving but left several pieces, and left more the next time. So we are trying the soft food again, and hoping we aren't actually training her or allowing her to train us to just give her the damn wet food already.

After the first few indignities at the veterinarian's office, she has refused to let the vet look insider her mouth at all; and he said that if we ever did need to see what was going on in there, she'd have to be sedated. I hope it doesn't come to that.

How are you all?

Pamela

PAMELA: *despite having had the same desk setup since approximately 2004, knocks full glass of water onto the floor, where it drenches her jeans and sweater and the carpet, and spatters the power strip into which are plugged All the Things.

POWER STRIP: *flickers its light in the usual way and goes on powering All the Things*

PAMELA: *curses uninventively, turns off power strip, unplugs it from the wall, unplugs All the Things from it, dries plugs, cords, the front of the filing cabinet that holds up her desk on that side, blots the carpet, removes phone from wet side of jeans and puts it in a different pocket*

PAMELA TO RAPHAEL: Do you have a spare power strip?

RAPHAEL: No... what happened?

PAMELA: I upset a water glass into mine. Never mind, I'll go ask David.

PAMELA: *goes to door to stairway, opens it*

NINJA: *darts into the upstairs at the speed of light, hides under the armchair*

PAMELA: NINJA! This is not the time! I can't supervise you right now!

NINJA: Roooorrrorrawwwrrrrooo.

PAMELA: *gets new water and a book, turns on lamp in cat sitting room, sits down, starts waving a packing strap alluringly*

CASSIE: *pounces on packing strap*

NINJA: *rushes out from under armchair, pounces on packing strap, and slithers under  the sofa*

NINJA: Roooraaaaaarrrhow

NINJA: *sneaks out from under sofa, rubs face on container of cat food*

RAPHAEL: Does Ninja have a spare power strip?

PAMELA: Ninja IS a spare power strip.

RAPHAEL: Plug all the things into him!

PAMELA: I don't think I have the right adapter.

Eventually I shut the doors to all the bedrooms and the bathroom, and then when Ninja wandered into the kitchen, I shut the door between the front and back parts of the house, and I was able to pick him up once he had seen that there was nowhere to hide. I put him on the landing with plenty of pettings, got a bag of dirty laundry to fend him off with, and went downstairs. David wasn't in his room.

While I was putting the laundry into the washer, Naomi came in and began making strident and insistent demands. I went upstairs and fixed her some food, and then tracked David down in the media room. He showed me his FaceBook gallery of photos of our friend Rob, who just died. They are lovely photos, but I hate the occasion. He didn't have a power strip but he had a power squid, so I went down to his room as instructed and got that. Naomi had finished her food but demanded seconds. This  is not usual -- she has chronic kidney failure and is fussy about eating. Seconds involved thawing some of the chicken broth Lydy makes for her, which made her impatient. She ate about half of this helping, so I put the rest in the fridge.

Then I escaped upstairs and plugged the printer and my laptop back in. I had dried all the cords thoroughly and they got aired while Ninja was in residence; but I think I'll just let the rest of them air a bit more. The other Things include the charger for my toothbrush, the weather radio, and some kind of box that enables me to listen to stuff on our music server.

I think this event exemplifies why I never seem to get anything done.

Pamela

P.S. Saffron is attempting to steal the last of the Ninja Easter Vermin, a plastic pale lavender crab that lives on my desk but went over the edge with the falling water glass. Ninja Easter Vermin have nothing to do with our Ninja, but are in a vague way Geri Sullivan's fault.

I didn't get a big enough supply of cast socks (still no actual group of characters in the sock *disappointed face*), but I think they can be hand washed. My foot approves of my having figured out that I was putting the front panel of the boot on upside down. No permanent damage seems to have been done; and actually, it may be my right knee, which was already a bit martyred in its attitude towards doing a different kind of work than usual, that is really grateful. All parts of me are pretty bored with this entire situation and I would really like to shovel some snow, but there isn't much to complain of in the larger scheme of things.

Saffron, after her profound sleeping-off-the-dissipation nap, has been entirely herself. So has Cassie; it's just that I am becoming more fully persuaded that Cass did not actually get any onion dip.

In other news, while I was waiting for the plumber to finish his miracle yesterday, I went through my mail, and found with some relief the first invoice for my Part B Medicare plan. I opened it and was instantly horrified. They wanted $536. Most people pay $134 a month for Part B, though you can get that waived or get help with it if it's a hardship, and apparently some people pay more. But this was MORE OH MY GOD MORE WHAT. Then I noticed the mathematical relationship between the expected and the actual charge, and read the fine print. They want to be paid quarterly. This isn't exactly convenient, but at least the amount is not utterly terrifying.

I've been rereading Anthony Price -- it's a thing that I do when I miss Mike Ford -- and trying to write a post about the experience. There are some bad fairies accompanying me on this adventure. At least, I think there are. Point of view in the Price books is really complex and layered and convoluted, like everything else about them, and tracking down who really thinks what and what Price thinks about it or wants you to think about it is surprisingly difficult. So there are some interior thoughts and some lines of dialogue that I recoil from utterly; but if they come from a character that Price is building up and undercutting at the same time, or if a different character takes issue with the opinion but not as vigorously as I'd like, but that character is probably being undercut too, it's a little difficult to see whether that is a bad fairy or just a weird set of shadows.

Pamela

"Random Jottings" has a particular literary source, but it's been so long that I cannot recall what that source is.

I think I've finally sorted out the cross-posting to LJ, but I guess we'll see. I assume that it will work perfectly now that LJ has finally gone off the rails for good and I should probably consider not posting there any more. I'll do a separate post asking people to tell me if they plan to stay on LJ and post there, because I don't like losing track of people even though I make it easy to lose track of myself.

I've been trying to be more active on DreamWidth/LiveJournal, but what this has resulted in has been my commenting lavishly and then having a very hard time responding to the responses even though I'm delighted to get them. I doubt anybody is feeling neglected or snubbed, but if you are I apologize; and even if you aren't I will try to do better.

The rest of this post is an International Bad Cat Day post involving tulips, followed by a section about the Guthrie Theater's recent production of King Lear.


Last week I got on a bus and took a large thick envelope of receipts and statements and forms to the accountants' office. I'm not sure when we last got the current year's taxes done by April 15, though we have managed to file an extension and get things done by August 15 a time or two in the last never-mind how-many years. I'm suddenly feeling much more chipper; I hadn't realized what a horrible burden having the undone taxes looming over me was, and yet doing them is such a nightmare. Tax law has no understanding at all of how self-employment works, and doesn't care either. Tax law secretly feels that if you get your money in large lumps rather than in increments week by week or month by month, you are somehow duplicitous, lazy, or both; or else just generally trying to get away with something. It hates me and mine and I hate it back passionately.

When I left, Raphael asked if I knew when I'd be home. I had no idea and was a bit short with R because I was about to miss my bus. (I did, in fact, miss it, but the next one was early, and it wasn't very cold out.) I sent a text once I knew when I was likely to be back, wondering a little, since I wasn't making dinner and we didn't have any firm plans for anything. R texted back that zie had gone for a short walk and might or might not beat me home. I got home first. When Raphael got home I eventually wandered through the kitchen to find her putting white and purple tulips in a Portmeirion vase. "It's a Saffron vase," said Raphael, and indeed the image on the vase was of meadow saffron (a kind of autumn crocus). We have the dinner plate but I hadn't realized that there was a vase as well. The vase was an early anniversary present and the tulips were for getting the taxes done. The overflow went into a Portmeirion mug (with sweet peas on the side) with a broken handle, and the vase spent the afternoon in my office on a high bookshelf, faintly scenting the room with tulip.

But at some point Saffron herself evidenced a strong desire to get up on the bookcase with the tulips. You could see her cat-brain doing the math. Can I jump up from this vantage point? No, not enough room to land. What about from the lower bookcase under the air conditioner? No, can't see properly. What about from the top of the air conditioner? That's better but some monkey has put a paper bag up there on my occasional landing spot. Pause. BUT TULIPS! What about this part of the pile of boxes of author copies and very old files apparently put here just for the convenience of cats? No, not actually convenient to cats. Scaling the lower shelves? No, too many useless bits of decoration and books stuck in sideways for lack of room. She had been allowed to sniff and examine the flowers before they were put in the vase, but she still seemed very determined, so I removed the tulips to my bedroom for the moment.

I was reading peacefully in my bedroom much later when she started the same set of calculations in there, ultimately making it through quite a number of random objects without knocking any of them down, until she was a foot or so from the vase. I removed it and put it on the front stairs. This was useful insofar as it's cold on those stairs, which preserved the tulips nicely. I let Saffron sniff them again before I took them away, but whatever she wanted with them, it wasn't that. When I brought the tulips back up at the end of a busy weekend, and on every day that I had them in my office, she did her mathematics at some point, but by then I was persuaded that she probably couldn't actually get up on that bookcase and was too smart to try and fail.

In late March, Eric and I went to see the Guthrie's performance of King Lear. I meant to write it up immediately so that local people would still have a chance to see it. The Guthrie had not done Lear in twenty years. Raphael and I went to that 1996 production, which was excellent; my main memory of it at this remove is Isabel Monk's tremendous, hilarious, moving performance as the Fool. I mentioned it to Raphael when I was talking about the recent production, and Raphael reminded me that Isabel Monk was so much more robust than Lear in that production that it transformed the entire nature of their relationship.

In this production, the Fool was played by Armin Shimerman. I gazed and gazed at that name and at the photo of the actor, which was not familiar. I was only clued in by the conversation of the people next to us. All of you are no doubt jumping up and down to tell me that Mr. Shimerman played Quark on "Deep Space Nine" and later, Principal Schneider on "Buffy." Lear was played by Stephen Yoakum, who long ago was Henry Bolingbroke in Garland Wright's production of the History Plays, which I saw at least four times, most of them on day-tickets. It was in that line that I overheard a bunch of late-adolescent girls fangirling Henry V. Not Kenneth Branagh, whose movie had come out recently; and not the actor who played Henry -- Henry himself. It was awesome, as was that whole run of plays. They did Richard II; a very long and deeply distressing adaptation of both parts of Henry IV; and Henry V.

I didn't recognize Mr. Yoakum, but I recognized his voice at once in the first scene.

It almost always takes a few minutes to settle into Shakespeare's language, and while that was happening I looked over all the characters who were on stage at the beginning and suddenly recalled the scene from the third season of "Slings and Arrows" in which Charles Kingman, meeting the rest of the cast in a production for which he had been invited to play Lear, asks the woman playing Cordelia how much she weighs and reacts very rudely to her answer of 107 pounds. This Lear would not have needed to do that even if he had been twice as rude a person: Yoakum's Lear is physically robust even as his mind breaks and breaks again into smaller bits.

Cordelia and Goneril both also had very robust physical presences. Goneril was tall and Cordelia was just very much present. Regan was more withdrawn and quiet, which made the later scene with Gloucester particularly horrible and creepy. I had forgotten how funny Goneril is; horribly funny, but funny. Another thing that struck me was that, when she has her first tantrum, she behaved and sounded really exactly like Lear just had when he flew into a rage at Cordelia and exiled her.

Edgar's first appearance was made with his hair falling into his eyes and a wineglass in his hand; he was clearly pie-eyed and may not have been completely sober until sometime after his transformation into a Bedlam boy. This made his complete cozening by Edmund more plausible than is sometimes the case. And of course it lighted up what's already present, his gaining clarity while feigning madness. Edmund was very well done; I had remembered that he is funny, but actors vary in how well they manage this, and this one did a very good job.

Armin Schimerman was an excellent Fool, much smaller than Lear but much more mentally present. The production also did something I don't remember seeing before. The Fool simply vanishes from the proceedings during the thunderstorm. At the end of the play Lear says, "And my poor fool is hanged," and there is, or was, much speculation about whether he means the actual Fool or is using a fond term for his daughter Cordelia. The parts were probably doubled originally, which explains the Fool's disappearance so that Cordelia can reappear from her exile, but it's still very weird how the Fool just falls silent. When Isabel Monk played the part, she deliberately withdrew and turned her back on the entire situation, wracked with many feelings. In this production, as Lear's mind breaks down, he stabs and kills the Fool without knowing it, to the horror of Kent and Edgar.

I was sad that they cut so much of Edgar's speech when he's persuading his father that they are standing at the edge of the cliffs of Dover when really he's been leading Gloucester in circles, but the scene was very affecting anyway. And they did leave in the bit during the torture of Gloucester where the one servant objects to what is being done and is killed for his pity. C.S. Lewis has said somewhere that while that is a very small part, it's the part he would want to play in actual life.

Pamela

First, thank you with all my heart to everybody who's commented on my previous post about starting a Patreon. I'm working on setting it up now.

Second, as I keep a wary eye on the weather reports, waiting for an Active Advisory or a Special Weather Statement to suddenly pop up, I thought I'd tell a couple of cat stories from last Tuesday, when thunderstorms battered and flooded parts of Minnesota, including the Twin Cities.

The weather report mentioned hail, torrential downpours, and wind gusts of up to 80 mph. Raphael and I decided that as the storms approached, we would box up the upstairs cats and put them in the upstairs hallway, with doors shut to make it safe from any broken windows that the storm might cause. If there were any sign of tornadoes, we'd have to rethink this, but we thought it would do to go on with. We painstakingly lowered all the warped cranky ancient storm windows, a ritual usually reserved for some cold autumn day. A little before five, I gave the cats their daily dental treats, which they recognize as Entirely Splendid Food rather than a treatment for tartar. Then Raphael and I stood conferring earnestly in the cat-sitting room for a little while, and then I got out the carriers. Saffron immediately went into one of them, so we shut the door on her. Raphael bent to scoop up Cassie, who is soft and round and winsome-looking, but she is no slouch -- she ran at incredible speed under my bed and refused to come out. We thought the nightstand would protect her from broken glass if necessary; and later she scooted down the hall like a furry fat snake and went under Raphael's bed, which is much sturdier. We put Saffron's carrier in the hall. She emitted one protestation and then went to sleep.

We got a few gusts of wind and some very hard rain and some minor hail, but the power didn't even go out. (I am not complaining.) In time the storm passed. I took Saffron's carrier back to the cat-sitting room and opened the door. She came right out, saw Cassie's carrier standing open, and promptly went into that carrier. After a moment she apparently thought, "Nah. The other one's better," and returned to her own box.

Cassie stayed under the bed. She is extremely fond of her food, but she would not come out for wet food or for additional treats. She did come out for dry food at the end of the day. But the next afternoon right around treat time, Raphael and I happened to be standing in the cat-sitting room talking about something in earnest tones, and Cass went down on her belly and galloped into my office and refused to come out for treats. She made a very careful appearance for wet food later on. We have agreed that we should avoid having earnest conversations in the cat-sitting room around five p.m.

Pamela

So last year I blogged at length about a multi-day struggle with the MNSure website, hours spent on hold, and the kindness of the customer and tech support people when one finally got to them.

This year was much easier, but not without minor drama. I got through the application for financial assistance in one go and was promptly informed that we were eligible for a monthly subsidy. Then I went and looked at the plans. I knew that premiums had gone up, but hadn't really assimilated that plans had started to go floppy and were weird and difficult. I ignored co-insurance last year and just got a plan with co-pays and a reasonable deductible. This was through UCare, but unfortunately, I couldn't just renew that plan, because my clinic and pharmacy are no longer among their providers. Next year I might rethink this, but this year I simply refuse to change my clinic because a bunch of revolting corporations are trying to squeeze every penny out of what should be considered a public good rather than a business opportunity.

I spent about eight hours on the computer Friday; the application took less than half an hour, so the rest was expended comparing plans til my eyes started going around in my head, with pauses to rant at whoever happened to come by, whether in person or in email. It's just insane that a plan rated Gold that costs, before subsidies. more than a thousand dollars a month, should have 40% coinsurance. The deductibles are crazy too. I am also very, very tired of being required to predict the future, which is impossible for self-employed people with a patchwork of income, and then sternly warned that there are penalties for not telling the truth. There is no truth! It hasn't happened yet!

I finally, reluctantly, settled on a sucky plan for a price that made my heart sink but that didn't seem completely insane. It's twice what we were paying last year, after the subsidy. I told the website that I wanted to enroll in the plan. I got a rather plaintive page that said that something had gone wrong. I signed out and logged in again, and ended up in the same place I had landed last year: my application was listed as pending and there was no way out of the page where that information was; and yet, since I already had a completed application, there was also no other path to enrollment.

I decided to give them the weekend and see if things settled. In the meantime, for the second time this year, our main landline number died on us. In August this precipitated a nightmare in which CenturyLink was understaffed and couldn't send a technician for a week. When he got there, he didn't fix anything, and they'd given him a wrong version of my cell phone number, so he didn't call either. He also didn't ring the doorbell; he just left, and the website then informed us that our problem had been resolved. That eventually got dealt with by Raphael's explaining the situation in chat with tech support in a way that I don't have the personality to support. The tech people, abashed by Raphael, got hold of the local office manager, and she called and said that somebody would be out about two days later. This person had the right number and was reasonably competent. He said the line from the cross street was bad, and he fixed it. He got a bit muddled over the legacy wiring in the outside box, but David fixed that quite quickly.

This time, I got on the website to request a repair ticket, but they were having technical difficulties. I had to make an appointment in chat; to my relief, it was for two days hence rather than the next week. It was already dark when Raphael informed me that the landline was out, so in the morning I dutifully went out with a telephone and checked for dial tones. We have two lines but only give out one number, and the one everybody knew to call, naturally, was the one that had died on us. There were two dial tones, though one was scratchy. I went in and informed David of this situation, and he told me to cancel the repair appointment, since one will be charged $95 if CenturyLink comes out and discovers that the problem is not with their side of the divide. Over the weekend, while grading finals for the course he taught this semester and going to several parties, David took apart the inside wiring and traced the deadness of the line back to the wall. On Sunday morning he went outside and checked for dial tones. There was now just one. I got on the CenturyLink website, which was working now, and made a repair appointment for this morning, with a 10:15 am to 2:15 pm window. This is a little early for me, but I could manage it.

At 8:51 this morning, my cell phone rang. It was the technician; he was on his way. I lay down for a moment and suddenly the doorbell was ringing and the technician was here. He didn't, as it turned out, need me for anything, but I got dressed blearily, without showering, and went out just in case. Then I went back to bed in my clothes. Then I got up and fed the cats, since they were puzzled and excited by my having dressed and gone downstairs but not fed them. After they ate Saffron came and purred and snuggled with me, but several times the technician's equipment made warbling noises that she interpreted as possible prey outside the window; he also made some banging noises that required her to rush to the window, treading heavily on my stomach as she went. I did sleep for a bit eventually, waking at more or less my usual time at 11:30.

I picked up the phone in my office and checked to see if things were back to normal. One dial tone. After a brief period of despair, I went and asked David if he'd had time to put everything back together yet, and he hadn't. When he did, it all worked fine.

Buoyed up by this news and by a very large cup of tea, I checked the status of my application in its little cul-de-sac -- still Pending, still immured -- and called MNSure customer service. I got through to them handily, but after poking around, the nice lady decided that I needed tech support. This involved being on hold for about an hour and a half. They have the same music as last year, but have varied it with little skits where people fall and hurt themselves but won't let anybody call an ambulance because they don't have health insurance; or they go to the ER but leave because they can't afford treatment and maybe it will heal on its own. I sympathize with these, but the repetition is a bit wearing.

Eventually I got another pleasant, if somewhat brisker, woman who fixed my application in less than fifteen minutes. My application was no longer in a dead end. There was now a link to enroll in health care plans. Before I did, I double-checked that UCare, HealthPartners, and Blue-All-the-Things don't list my clinic and pharmacy. Then I double-checked all the Medica plans (they are plentiful as blackberries). I found another network that included my clinic as other than a chiropractic specialty, but the plans weren't really any better and my eyes were starting to go around again, so I just chose what I hoped was the best plan for our circumstances insofar as we even know what those are, and closed the deal.

This is still better than no health insurance. It's just stupidly worse than giving everybody decent health care and having done with all this nonsense.

Pamela

No, nobody has been ordering junky cat food or $500 cat furniture on the internet.

Yesterday the basement floor drain backed up. Not very much, but experience has taught us that this kind of thing does not get better on its own. I accordingly went to Roto-Rooter's website and scheduled an appointment for this afternoon. This meant that I had to set an alarm and get up an hour or so earlier than I usually do. I have always hated waking up to an alarm; the initial sensation and its slow draining away are just nasty. I hated it when I was in high school, I hated it when I had day jobs, and I still hate it. I did get up, however, and gave the cats a somewhat early breakfast, and took my first medication and a shower. While I was wandering around my bedroom getting dressed, Saffron began her usual antics at that time of the morning -- clawing at the tape covering the air conditioner's accordion, clawing at the tape sealing a crack in the other window, and knocking things off my dresser. I'd always thought these behaviors were intended to elicit breakfast, but apparently they are just a morning vent for high spirits. I had picked up my cellphone to see if Roto-Rooter had called early, as technicians are wont to do, just as Saf knocked a pillbox, the tube of toothpaste the dentist always gives me, a small flashlight, and a map of Wild River State Park off the dresser and, fortunately, into the open underwear drawer.

I put down the cellphone, removed Saffron from the dresser, and put the objects back.

Saffron, who is very good-natured about having her pursuits interrupted, unless they involve moths or squirrels, settled down on a stack of storage tubs that I had put a folded quilt down on a few days earlier. I had put the quilt there because, having washed it, I realized there was nowhere to store it. But in Saffron's opinion I had made her a nice bed just at squirrel-watching level.

After I was dressed, I put keys and wallet into my pocket and looked for the phone. No phone. I checked to see if I'd wandered into my office and put it on the charger. No. I finally picked up the landline phone in my bedroom, and called my cell. I didn't want to wake Raphael, so I only let it ring once. It was definitely in my bedroom. But I still couldn't find it. At last I called it again and just let it ring. It was in the bedroom. It was vibrating as well as ringing, but the sound was muffled. I followed it to the apparent source near the dresser. No phone.

Saffron was folded sedately onto the quilt with all her feet tucked up. She looked at me with mild interest as I bent closer and closer to her in pursuit of my phone. Had it fallen into the wastebasket? Slid under the radiator?

No. It was under the cat. I pulled it out from beneath her belly, Saffron regarding me with the utmost benignity the entire time, and put it firmly into my pocket.

Pamela