Cars and Cats

February 8, 2012

Circe and Maud are reacting strangely to their brother’s sickness, or perhaps to the traces of his visit to the vet. They will not go near him. They were not huddling at the bedroom door this morning, scratching to get in. They insure that they are not in the same room as Titus. They shied from me a little this morning. They did not go to the food bowl first thing, nor have they gone yet, as far as I can see. Circe is at my hand as I type, but Maud is still in hiding. What do they sense? How do they interpret it?

Titus hides in a corner in the closet. He has never once hidden before, not even for a second, allowing his great calm self to strut before the world.

Proposition 8 is struck down in California. The idea of defending “the sanctity of marriage” is so hilarious one stops dead in the middle of hilarity, questioning the sanity of anyone who is not laughing. Many marriages are truly sacred. Their partners make them so. Marriage is not. Santorum sweeps three states. He may be the biggest idiot remaining in the Republican race, but it is nice to see their various idiocies troubled in any way.

In the morning light I saw that the car bumper had merely been knocked from its groove. I was able to work it back in by hand. The hour I spent researching body shops online was a joyful futility.

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A very long day has passed, almost, and new evaluations can be made. Maud and Circe are not only angry with Titus, they are angry with each other, and stand at distance uttering horrifying deep-throat growls, followed by vicious spitting. These cats have loved each other and been constant companions since they came to me. Titus is the only variable, but how his being ill affects them, in that way, I do not understand. I don’t like it. It’s like a monster movie in which, one by one, the pets are possessed by demons. Late in the afternoon the vet calls with what she presents as good news. What’s troubling Titus is a polyp. It can be operated on, but no one around her can do it. I have Greenville and Tennessee to choose between for the surgery. I take the information but, frankly, think she’s lying. Too much of the firm’s energy goes into boosting profits for me to think of this as purely medical advice. Titus sleeps on my lap and I think of the unfairness of things.

I did fix the bumper, but when I drove over the Lakeshore speed bumps I dragged them, and I never had before. I crouched down and looked, and something is damaged and hanging down under the car, the covering of something ripped to shreds. My little red Prius is spending the night at Jim Barkley, and who knows what THAT diagnosis will be.

Something happened on the massage table, and now coldish waves of pain travel up my left leg. The day is not yet over; perhaps there’s something else to look forward to.