It's raining. And
they say it's going to continue raining all weekend, and perhaps into next week. Despite having inhabited California for my entire adult life; most of that in rainless SoCal, I like the rain. Jinx is less thrilled. She keeps pawing at the back patio door to go out, and when I open the door she walks out for about 30 seconds, before returning, bemisted and bemused. Well, not so much bemused as annoyed. But "annoyed" wasn't alliterative.
She gets used to it; come February or March, when it's been raining regularly for a few months, she'll just hunker down and ignore the dampness. Most of my back patio is covered by the roof anyway, so she can stay out of any actual water; she just doesn't care for the ambiance. Plus it's been like, 2 or 3 cat years since it last rained, so she's probably forgotten about this phenomena.
It hadn't rained here in months. I don't know when the last measurable precipitation fell over the North Bay, but I can't remember anything but a few light sprinkles since spring. It was just in time too, since my car was frickin' filthy. I ran some errands Thursday afternoon, and emerged from CostCo to find a wet parking lot and streaks of dirt across the my vehicle's exterior. I parked out by the street instead of under the carport in hopes that the rain would continue, and then it rained quite hard later in the evening, so when I came out of the gym my car was entirely clean.
Well, at least visibly clean. Ish. I wouldn't exactly perform an appendectomy on it, or anything.
Speaking of wet cats (sort of), the IG got a cat this week. She moved into her own/first/new studio last month, and after living alone for that long, she decided she wanted some company. Male company, that could sit in her lap w/o wanting to fuck her. And with a soft, furry pelt. So I went with her to the Berkeley humane society, and we petted many kitties, and she gravitated towards the feral recovery room, since she wanted a cat that was older and on the euthanasia list. One big, black and white male immediately caught her eye, and when she sat down on the floor beside his cage, and he sort of poured himself out and into her lap, purring like a motorboat, the sale was made.
The funny part was that the cat was in the feral room since the male employees didn't like him. Because he didn't like them. The rep for the cat was that he didn't like men, and would hide from them, or become aggressive. The volunteer who was guiding our tour was amazed when kitty was perfectly calm around me, and let me pet him and kept purring and such. She exclaimed, "You're the third man he hasn't attacked!"
Apparently he's a bit of a nervous kitty, and the guys tend to come at him too fast and too hard (a common complaint of women) and he does not like. I sat down across the little room and let him get used to the IG before I moved over, and he was perfectly calm when I did. She went back a few days later and made him her kitty, and I went along then too, to have a chance to hang out with her and to see the new kitty.
He was a little scared on the ride home, but the IG said he settled down pretty well and was actually purring in his cardboard box. What I'd give to transplant that talent into my own "30 miles of meow" Jinxie. I met her at her apt, with some cat food (Jinx didn't like) and toys I'd brought over, and we made dinner and chatted and checked on kitty for a couple of hours.
Initially he hid in the closet, burrowing down into the IG's dirty clothes basket. He was kind of doing like Jinxie does; removing himself from the main room where the people were, but not so much out of fear as out of preference. Jinx doesn't cower or hiss or hide, she just doesn't like/trust other people since Malaya and I raised her like a veal, and had very few visitors during her formative years.
The IG's cat (who is yet nameless, since she didn't like his existing name and hadn't thought up a new title yet) was like that. He hid in the clothes basket, but he wasn't really hiding, since when the IG or me entered the closet and knelt down, he was quite happy to be petted. He'd sprawl in the hamper and purr and rub his head; he just didn't want to come out.
That shyness in the new place lasted for about an hour, and by the time we finished dinner kitty was out and exploring, and quite eager to be stroked. For a while the IG and I were sitting about five feet apart, and kitty was walking back and forth between us, rubbing and purring and sprawling and pulling himself along the carpet in excitement and happiness. Very cute. He's a big cat too; probably 15 pounds, and strong. Short haired and not fat, just solid. When he rubs you, you know you've been rubbed.
Very active too, as the IG reported after a restless night of being trampled on by sleepless, stomach-walking kitty. I've not been back over since Monday's acquisition, but she says kitty is doglike, following her around the apartment and trying to climb on her the minute she sits down. He especially likes to help with homework by pawing at the monitor, leaping onto the keyboard... all that good cat stuff.
I hope to drop by sometime next week to see how the little dude is settling in and to give him some lumpin's. He's a solid, pushy cat; good for thumping and pushing over since he enjoys popping right back up and rubbing your hand hard enough to knock it backwards.
Oddly, my own interest in getting a second cat, which was piqued when first visiting the humane society with the IG, largely subsided after seeing kitty brought home safely. He was fun to play with, and watching a pet who lacked predictable mannerisms (I always know what Jinx is going to do next.) was nice for a change, but afterwards I didn't feel a strong need to add to my own menagerie. I've long said that I'll get a second cat when, and not before, I move into a larger place. That's one of about 2000 things I want to do when I have space/time/can afford it, and the list grows perpetually longer as my remaining life grows ever shorter.
I'd like to find that someone special and get married and have kids, for instance. Nothing on the horizon for that, but at least someone I know is going down that path.
Malaya's getting married. No, really.
It's been almost 2 years since we split up, (time flies, eh?) and she's been dating someone since early this year, and it would seem that things are going pretty well. The wedding's next month. I'm invited. I'm going. I'm looking forward to it.
We've remained friends since we stopped dating, and we've encouraged each other to date and move on with our lives, so this isn't a surprise or a heartbreak for me. I wasn't carrying a torch, and neither was she. And life, as they say, goes on. That said, knowing someone's dating is a lot different than knowing that she's set a wedding date. That's a big deal. That's life, rather than parole. And it's impossible not to think of how often Malaya and me talked about marriage, and to wonder at how we veered from that path, for better or worse.
I'm happy for her (and him) and Malaya's a good friend of mine, so of course I want her to be happy. I'm selfish and solipsistic, but not so much so that I want my exes to remain alone and barren for perpetuity. Well, not Malaya at least. Some of the earlier ones, perhaps. At any rate, she's getting married and I'm not, and that's that. I'm sure I'll have some feelings of "that could/should have been me up there" when I view the ceremony, but at this point, I'm not upset that we broke up. Once we were apart a lot of issues that I'd ignored, overlooked, and smoothed over emerged like stones from the mud in a hard rain. Nothing was severe enough to motivate me to end the relationship, but in retrospect, I think they would have come up over the years if we'd gotten married, as we often discussed. Especially when/if we'd had kids, since we had some very different ideas about how best to raise/discipline/tolerate children. And no, I won't go into more specifics.
Currently, I'm not sure how I feel. Malaya is the only woman I've ever been in love with/had a serious relationship with, so obviously she's the first "real" ex to get married. My first reaction was to think how much I wanted to get laid. Right that moment. To a supermodel. On top of the wedding invitation. After I removed the RSVP part.
That impulse faded quickly, and for the last few days I've not really thought about it much. No drinking binges, no late nights clutching tearfully at the wedding announcement, no incoherent rage, no sentimental journeys through old Malaya/Flux photo galleries. My most common thought has been about the weather, actually, since they're getting married in about a month, and the ceremony is outdoors. It rains quite often in late November in the Bay Area, and the usual high temperature is about 60. Not a big deal to me, since male formal wear involves slacks, long shirts, jackets, etc. More of an issue for the bride, though they've usually got enough layers of white satin to stay fairly snug. Female wedding guests, on the other hand, are notorious for flimsy little prom dress type things, and that can't be much fun on a windy, cloudy, damp afternoon in November. At least not for them. I've seen a few wedding parties taking photos on cold, rainy days, and found it pretty amusing. Nothing like a flock of shivering bridesmaids in cerise, with nothing but strappy stilettos on their feet, huddling under umbrellas held by disinterested, tuxedo-clad boyfriends, to create lasting memories. I don't think Malaya's wedding will create that sort of vision, since she's keeping things small and private, but one can always hope?
Labels: cats, malaya, pets, weather
