Life's been difficult lately. Sophie and I are cat-sitting in Woodstock for the week, and between the tuna and the drum circles and the lounging by the pool, I'm plumb tuckered out.
Yes, my legs have that hip "ombre" color shading everyone's so big on these days.
Our charge, Hibou, is pretty good, as cats go. Which is to say that he hasn't yet sucked our marrow as we slept. He keeps pretty busy; half the day is spent splayed out in sunbeams, a quarter is taken up with moth/spider torture, and the rest is divided about evenly between glaring at his dry kibble and glaring at us.
Hibou wonders why you are not tending to his needs.
Other than keeping the cat alive, we have relatively few responsibilities, but the ones we do have we take very seriously. Take, for example, the task of emptying the skimmer basket by the pool and saying Kaddish over whatever poor creatures have met their watery end. Usually it's beetles or grasshoppers, some of whom I try to resuscitate with chest compressions, which seems to have a relatively low success rate.
O, intrepid savior!
But on Tuesday, a critter most precious must have flopped into the pool and gotten sucked into the filter, because when Sophie opened the lid, she yelled to me to bring the tiny defibrillation paddles. I was basically paralyzed with fear, so my clear-headed pal pulled a pail off the fence and bravely scooped the wee beast on to the grass.
"HHHHHH POOR DEAD THING!!" I wailed. "NOW NESTLED IN THE ARMS OF YOUR MAKER!!"
...and then it moved its leg. And then, if you looked closely, you could see it breathing...or maybe gasping? "Oh, rapture!" I yelled. And ran to get my camera before the now hale and hearty organism hopped away. And when I came back, there it was, right where it had been deposited...
Just resting!
The force from the filter sometimes creates a little eddy in the skimmer basket, and I'd like to think Francis Frog was merely very dizzy from spinning around in the whirlpool, and just about to skip home to his family--not simply destined to be hawk food. But I guess if I were a real Woodstockian I'd mumble something about 'circle of life,' and grok some tempeh.
Maybe one day I'll get the hang of it. But now if you'll excuse me, I must oversee the fermentation of my kombucha before Sophie drives a broken down bus to past life therapy.