I’ll never understand AI, nuclear fusion, quadratic equations, Republicans, how TV images pass through space, how my watch knows that I’m going to 24 Hour Fitness at 5:30 am and how long it will take, and countless other phenomena that surround me everyday. But more mysterious than all that is Stella, our cat.
Stella could spend twenty-four hours a day in our shower, leaving only to eat or use the litter box. We have to shoo her out, then pick up the cat hairs, before we can shower.
She left the shower and spent two days in the plant stand…
11/22/23 Now a rotating cabinet in J’s room.
The shower is simply her home for a certain number of days, perhaps three or four, possibly longer. It’s only her current home. She’s had several more. Among them is the space between the toilet and the wall.
She used this as a bed for a couple of weeks, sleeping on the tile floor in a space just big enough to accommodate her. And who doesn’t like a drink of water in the night?
For a week or so she slept on my photographic printer. I laid a towel on it when I wasn’t using it so cat hairs wouldn’t find their way into the print head. Had I thought that this would have been blog material I would have photographed her there, on our bed, in various windowsills, closets, towels, chairs, on the backs of two sofas, as well as some other places if I’d ever been able to find her.
A no-brainer, sort of. There’s a drop off of about an inch between the inside sill and the outside, but it was a hot night, so…
This is actually a concert she played one afternoon. I’ve spared you by turning it into just a screenshot.
Stella climbs. Cats are agile and silent, as Carl Sandburg noted in his poem about fog. The “little cat feet” take her onto our roof, along the fence and into the oak tree that towers above the roof. This part I understand.
If we’re cold we turn on the heat, wear something warmer. If we’re hungry we eat. If tired, we sleep. If lonely we seek company. These are all predictable and understandable behaviors, common, I think, to both humans and animals. Having such options available, Stella turns down pillows for tile, light for dark, company for solitude, and any place where she might be stimulated by the sounds of birds, the passing of pedestrians, the changing of light, the sounds outside the bathroom, for the dark and silent stupid shower floor. Je ne comprends pas la chatte. Je ne comprends la Stella.