The Other Season

[hrj]

It is now that Other Season -- you know, the one that isn't the Dry Season. Even without the deluge of rain yesterday (which I found extremely refreshing, despite the amount of running around outside I was doing) I would have known this because the Cat has informed me that it's time to pull out the electric heated bed. She informed me of this by taking a nap on top of the down comforter on my bed. This activity has been strictly forbidden ever since she's become rather lacksidaisical about tracking dirty cat litter out of the box. I will put up with a number of things from an elderly cat, but having urine-soaked cat litter tracked across my bed isn't one of them. *sigh* On the other hand, in general she's doing quite well for an elderly cat. Thinking on how my last burglary happened three years ago reminds me that when that one happened she was in the middle of an uneven recovery from a self-inflicted abscess on her neck and I was coming to grips with the possibility of losing her. Since then she's gone through a variety of psychological issues (esp. "The Floor Is EEEEEVVVILLLL!", "whaddaya mean I've been grooming this same spot for two hours straight?", and "cat box? what cat box? oh, I suppose it's somewhere around here"), gotten slower and creakier, and been subject to several restrictions on her allowed activities for the sake of my exasperation level. In return, I have instituted the Electric Cat Bed during the colder months and bought one of those armchair-side-desk-thingies so that she doesn't have to competed with the laptop for my lap in the evenings. We get by.