I had hoped to get up early and out the door for a run before work but I woke up in the middle of the night to a weird cat meow, muffled, mrrreoooowwwww kinda thing.
It’s the specific sound made by one of my cats when she has a mouse in her mouth, a specific kind of cry she makes only in that context and with the sound of the cry shaped in a particular way by the specific mouse-sized and -shaped object in her mouth. So I got up and went to check and flipped on the light and she and two of the other cats were there looking confusedly around. That was bad news. I went back to bed, herd the cats being angry with each other off and on, fell asleep, woke to the same sound, looked again, and the three cats were sitting in a circle with a mouse unmoving on the floor dead. I grabbed a pair of plastic bags from the kitchen and a paper bag and picked up the mouse with the plastic bags folded up and dropped it into the paper bag and went outside and dropped all of that in the outside trash can. This was in just my boxers, which I’m not proud of or bragging about (loathsome corporeality! wretched embodiment!) so much as indicating the seriousness of the moment. I cleaned the floor and washed my hands and went back to bed, and took a while to fall back to sleep, which mean waking up later and less rested than planned, so no run. It’s a big commitment for tomorrow.I appreciate the cats, uh, taking care of the mice, but I wish the mice would get the message that ours is not a house to take refuge in during the fall and winter, and I do feel bad for them. I also have a big reaction to them, it’s weird. If they were on TV or outside in a field I’d be like ‘oh what a cutie, let’s feed it’ but in the house they bring on a startle reflex and shrieks.
When I got home tonight my family were out so I made a lasagna. I got a squash in the zucchini family, green with white stripes, and it’s the size of my lower leg from ankle to knee (and I’ve got biggish calves!). It looks sort of like a club, I can imagine using it that way, though I don’t know what the context would be for that. Argument at a farmers market I guess? I put a lot of that into the lasagna, and a little leftover sweet potato (can’t taste that, so I dunno). It turned out good, nice to have some leftovers in the fridge. Life is like a lasagna in a way. It’s a lot of work and no one really appreciates it. (Actually my oldest kid asked for some unprompted, that was nice.)
That’s a little over ten minutes but two quick things, one, I want to make a mental note to later write down how we came to have four cats (which is really about two cats too many in my view but better too much than too little, a rule I’d defend when convenient or in a mood for being recreationally argumentative). Two, the other day as she was brushing her teeth for bed the five year old whispered that I should bend down so I did and she whispered “you’re nice.” It genuinely made me really happy, greatly improved my day. I said “oh thank you, that was a nice thing to say to me.” My experience of parenting has generally been that it’s like having all of my nerves on the outside of my body but some of the time that has it’s upsides, this small compliment from her felt so very lovely.
