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April 28, 1999 |
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jaguar's bad hair day |
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April 28, 1999 3 northern harriers
Copyright © 1999, Janet I. Egan |
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If I didn't know that all the cats spend the night in their cages each and every night, I'd swear that Whiskers has been in the exact same spot in the laundry room for a week. When I walked in this morning, there she was on top of some boxes next to the laundry room window just the way I left her last Wednesday. I looked directly at her and spoke to her in nice soft tones and she looked directly back at me and hissed. Jaguar tried to position himself a safe distance from Whiskers but still close to the window and Whiskers was having none of it. I guess she needs the whole laundry room as her private space. Jaguar patrolled the whole place endlessly this morning. He walked a complete loop of the adoption center sniffing everything and everyone he came upon. He was not in the mood for petting. Every time I tried he either backed away or raised his paw as if to swipe at me. Roy said he looked like he was having a bad hair day. He did look kind of rumpled. Cubby was harassing every cat in the place today, almost systematically. She'd sneak up on some, go right at others, even go into other cats' cages. Actually there were a lot of cage invasions going on. Almost every cat felt a need to go hang out in the Riley Ave gang's cage - while they were all in it. The rightful inhabitants would be lolling in the back and one after another Kappy, Cosmo, Jaguar, Joey, Cubby, Jazzpurr and whoever else would trot in and sit at the front of the cage stealing food. It's not like they have a particularly desirable food. They're on w/d, a prescription food. Usually the cats only raid cages of cats who are on things like kitten food or really smelly fishy foods. They never steal the normal food or the special diets for less active cats. Well, almost never. For some reason today they found w/d attractive. Somebody donated some big buckets for us to store food in (we had been having a problem with bugs getting into the dry food stored in bags). Apparently the buckets used to contain potato salad. Lots of potato salad. And once emptied of their potato salad they'd been stored outdoors so they were pretty cruddy. I waited to wash them until I was finished with all the dishes and litterboxes because I could only fit one bucket in the sink at a time and each one required a lot of work. By the time I was done they were quite fit for food storage so I felt like I'd accomplished something. The weather was so nice outside that I went right from the cat shelter to the refuge to look for birds without even eating lunch or getting that crucial second cup of coffee. I was driven. I told Kurt at the gatehouse that I was going to do some quick drive-by birding. I emerged two and a half hours later. I just had to be outdoors. And there were lots of birds around. I couldn't necessarily identify them but they were around. There were probably more than 2 purple martins, but all the little swooping swallow forms were moving too quickly for me to be sure unless they were really obvious. The refuge was teaming with people as well as bird life. There was a huge bus parked at Hellcat when I was driving south so I didn't stop there until my way back. The bus arrived at Sandy Point just as I was turning around to go back. It disgorged dozens of students and a few teachers. The oddest site though was a white stretch limo being driven by chauffeur. What a way to do drive-by birding! Must be one VIB (Very Important Birder). I also saw a gray stretch limo later on, but after the first one it didn't strike me as odd. Like, oh there's another limo, we get a lot of limos here... On the return trip the Hellcat parking lot was empty except for one car and a dark-eyed junco pecking around in the cracks. I watched the junco for awhile before I walked out on the dike. A family of four was having a picnic on one of the benches looking out over the marsh. They were balancing sandwiches, beverages and cans of Pringles all on one not very long bench and staring out over the marsh without ever taking notice of anything going on behind or to the sides. Two great egrets flew over my head very close to the picnic people and they didn't look at them. A beaver dove into the water with a splash behind them and they didn't look. I was starting to wonder if they were real people but then one of them moved to make more room for the Pringles can between them. I scanned the marsh in the direction they were staring but didn't see anything but water and spartina grass. I guess I'll never know what was so compelling for them. The need for lunch and coffee finally got me back into downtown Newburyport, where there was yet another stretch limo parked on State Street. Has the NATO summit moved to Newburyport or something? Whoever was in the limo wasn't in Fowle's though, so I got my coffee and a quick bite to eat before I headed home. One of my new neighbors, whom I don't know well at all stopped me in the parking lot and talked my ear off about her next door neighbor's dog, the poor job the landscapers did, how awful the brook in the woods next to our complex looks (I don't think it's even on our property and I'm sure we don't pay the landscapers to take care of the woods) and how we have too many renters in the complex and on and on and on and on... I kept edging toward my door but it took forever to break away. She thought I was a renter - - heavens to Betsy! - - so I'm glad I explained that I own my unit. Maybe it improved her opinion of me. I always get the impression this woman is watching me anyway. She seems to note my comings and goings and trash takings out... Boy was I glad to get back into my unit finally. |
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