Feline Exercise Routine

I found a sad little Fourth of July pom-pom in a drawer today while I was looking for something else. We originally found it in the grass at the end of a fireworks show when Nick was five or so. We hadn't been generous enough to buy him one of those doodads that spun and thrashed tentacles and made an annoying whining noise. Some kid had lost her Fourth of July pom-pom. Nick picked it up, swatted Mike's leg, and wanted to know if he could keep it. He waved it around experimentally. He loved the Fourth of July pom-pom, he said, a Harry Potter wand, he said. Trying not to think about the transmission of germs or the fact that a dog could have peed on the Fourth of July pom-pom as it lay in the grass, we said okay. Mike took it from Nick, sniffed it, and handed it back. Smelled okay.

On the walk to the car, my legs were lashed with that Fourth of July pom-pom until I threatened to take it away. Nick clutched it in his fist. On the drive home, it repeatedly splashed my face as I sat next to him until the hour and the rhythm of the car caught up with him and he fell asleep.

At home, that toy was left on the living room floor and shoved into the bottom of the toy box, but it got new life one day when it came out of the toy box and Seth, then a kitten, heard the swishy-swishy sound of the strands of tinsel. When Nick held it in the air above Seth's head, he leaped, twisted, grabbed, and rolled about on the floor in paroxysms of ecstasy.  He loved the Fourth of July pom-pom. The problem was that whenever anyone left it on the floor, he would lie on top of it with his paws guarding the fluff like a kid holding a whole bag of Cheetos and he would chew on the pathetic tuft of tinsel that spewed from one end. It became his favorite forbidden toy.

Seth eats tinsel. He eats garland made of tinsel. He eats Easter Grass because it looks like tinsel and he eats Nerf bullets and anything made out of Nerf bullet material. I'm not sure why he eats these things, but a few years ago, there was a moratorium on tinsel and plastic Easter grass plus Nick and his friends were instructed to scour the house for Nerf bullets immediately after any Nerf war they had because of the effect on the litter box. The litter box by itself is bad enough but when there were hunks of tinsel or Nerf bullets wrapped in shit, I gagged a little while I was doing my work of cleaning it.

There was also the time I chased Seth around the house because from his butt, he dragged a strand of poop pearls clinging to a length of tinsel. I eventually caught him, but not before those turds had bounced across carpet, kitchen vinyl, the couch, the pillow on the couch, and even the coffee table.

Eventually, I used a pair of scissors to clip that tinsel instead of pulling it. My vet told me that if I pulled it, Seth's intestines could be gathered up at the back of his butt, get crimped, and kill him. No pulling the tinsel. Got it.

For years, we played with Seth and that ratty little Fourth of July pom-pom. When Nick played with Seth too hard and its plastic handle bent, I inserted a straw inside to straighten it. After playing, getting Seth onto his back, wrestling with the Fourth of July pom-pom, I carefully tucked it out of sight on top of my grandma's china cabinet where Seth couldn't find it and Nick wouldn't forget and leave it lying on the floor to be chewed on and swallowed in strands. Eventually, Nick got tall enough to pull it out to play with Seth for a bit and tuck it back in when he was done. And after a couple more years, we practically forgot about the old Fourth of July pom-pom.

When I first set up the downstairs bathroom for Blitz's arrival, I pulled out the abandoned Fourth of July pom-pom and tucked it into a drawer. It might be good for a middle-of-the-night romp. What kitten wouldn't love a ratty Fourth of July pom-pom with a straw reinforcing it's bent handle and some of the tinsel chewed off?

There it stayed for the better part of a year until just today, when I went looking for something in that downstairs bathroom drawer.

Sure enough, Blitz loved it, leaped, twisted, grabbed, and lay on the floor in paroxysms of ecstasy. Then Seth, after watching the fun for a bit, jumped in and grabbed the ratty, broken, Fourth of July pom-pom with some of the tinsel chewed off. You're never too old to play.

Thank you for listening, jb

Tuna?

Yesterday morning sometime after 3:57, an avalanche of things crashed to the floor. It seemed to stop then more clattered down.

Fuck, I thought.

I had woken up about a half hour earlier when Blitz started playing with a rock. I was so tired, I tried to figure out how to go back to sleep despite the clacking on the laminate floor. I was too tired to squirt him with the water bottle. Too tired to get up and take his clackety rock away. This is one reason I prefer carpet. It's quieter.

I did go back to sleep.

Then, a cat jumped onto the bed and walked the length of my legs. I don't know which one. Does it matter? By then, it was 3:56 in the morning. My vision is bad, but I have a big-screen alarm clock. Fucking 3:56. I squinted. 3:57 a.m. I know the cats know how to get onto the bed without waking me. I know they know where my body is under the covers. Some mornings, I wake up with my hand on a cat and I have no idea how either the cat or my hand got there without my knowing it. This walking the length of my body has always been a ploy to wake me up.

Like Simon's cat. You've watched Simon's cat, right? 

I'd been tricked into giving the cats flaked tuna at night before bed. Oh, it's fun to leave the room at night and have the whole fur family walk with me to the bedroom. I am so popular, I think. It's just the flaked tuna, Mike told me one night. I still liked being popular.

Then, the other morning, Seth, looking scrawny and sad, convinced me that some flaked tuna in the morning was a good idea. Put some meat on your bones, I thought, and gave him a pinch on a little pile of kitten food. Suddenly, I was popular again and Blitz was nosing Seth out of his own bowl. Tuna flakes for everyone, I thought happily.

Bad idea.

After one morning of tuna flake training, I was elevated to next-level tuna flake training. Wake up earlier for tuna flakes. For a few days, I couldn't figure out why I was so exhausted, why I kept waking up a half hour before my alarm, then forty-five minutes, then an hour. My ass was dragging. Really, don't blame me for not getting it. These guys are masterminds.

Then, the kitten got impatient, sloppy. Next-level tuna flake training requires patience and subtlety. Seth had been trying to train him, but he wanted his tuna flakes now. NOW!

Thus, the rock. He'd pulled it off my desk and dropped it. Not enough. Shoot. He needed to walk the length of  my body. Well, someone needed to. I was not waking up properly with the clackety rock.

So, when the crash came, I knew it was not an earthquake. I did not think Trump had finally lost the nuclear codes to the North Korean dictator. I knew exactly who was behind this catastrophe.

"Fucking cat!" I yelled.

I found the lamp switch and ripped the CPAP off my face while it blowed air into the air.

"Fucking shit cat," I repeated. I slapped at my CPAP machine until the air stopped blowing.

Mike and Nick surely heard the crash. What the hell was a little more noise? At least this way, they'd know what it was and go back to sleep.

I squinted. No clock blinking red. Teddy stood on the edge of his bed, aggrieved. My fake-Tiffany lamp lay on its side in the middle of his bed. No broken glass. A pile of books lay around it. My clock, unplugged, lay on the floor. Other little rocks, a framed photo, and my saline spray. My candle, the dish it sat on, and a half-burnt cedar punk, scattered.

What the hell?

I reached for my glasses and turned on the overhead light. My eyes ached then focused again. Little black chunks of burnt cedar ash were scattered everywhere. Both cats blinked at me. They tried to look innocent.

"That wasn't me," Seth seemed to say.

"Me neither," Blitz's innocence tried to indicate.

"Get out," I yelled.

Blitz peeled out on the laminate floor and crashed into the door trying to get around the corner. 

I closed two sets of doors and before I came back to the crime scene, there was pathetic banging on the outer door. No way in hell. I was going to be alone.

"Shut up." I said more quietly.

The books had come from the top of the bookshelf. That had to be Seth. Blitz couldn't jump that high. The rocks on the floor were Blitz's thing. The clock? Someone tangled in the clock cord. I couldn't quite make out what had happened, but it involved both cats. I was sure of that. Miraculously, nothing was broken, not even the light bulb. Poor Teddy. Everything had probably landed on poor Teddy. He looked exhausted, dark doggie circles hung under his eyes.

I moved everything back into place and patted Teddy's bed.

He wasn't having it. That bed was a hazardous site. He stood by the door, begging to go up to his other bed, the new couch.

Since I knew he was innocent, I opened the doors for him to go out.

Blitz sprinted into the room, then stopped and looked up at me. He rubbed against my legs.

Oh, he did not know how close to a football he had become.

"Get out," I said.

But he only moved a foot or two away before coming back. Seth came around the corner into the hall. He was silent, cautious. Was that an apology? From Seth?

I knew if I closed the door on them, Blitz would rattle that second door until I got up and let him in. So with both doors open, I got back into bed. I put my CPAP mask back on and snuggled down under my covers.

Blitz jumped onto the bed.

Tuna?

"Get Off," I said and pushed him off.

I'm sure I hurt his feelings. I didn't care. Both cats stood at the crime scene pacing silently back and forth.

"Get off," I repeated.

When my alarm went off an hour and a half later, both cats sat innocently on the edge of the bed. I hadn't heard them come up. They hadn't made a sound when they settled in.

I sat up and looked at the clock. 5:50 a.m. Seth sat. Demure. Giving me space. Blitz got up and came over for me to pet him. I resisted the urge to push him off the bed again. I petted him briefly and stood up. Nick's lunch, my smoothie. It was Monday. Busy day. Blitz looked at me with bright eyes.

Tuna?

Thank you for listening, jb

Elk Sausage

Quite a few months ago, a friend gave us a roll of elk sausage that he had made. It sounded weird, even to me. But I promised I'd eat it and get back to him about the taste. I had tasted elk at a restaurant once. It was dry and needed salt, a lot more salt. But I didn't say that to my friend. The look on his face was that of a puppy sitting on command for the first time, eager, energetic, and sweet.

When I got home with the squishy roll that was oozing a bit of blood from the butt ends, I promptly put the thing into a Ziploc bag and onto the bottom shelf of the freezer. In the back. I didn't have to cook it right then, did I?

Oh, I eat all kinds of food. I even ate an ant once on a dare from my brother when I was about nine. He ate his live and I smashed mine, left most of its protein between my thumb and forefinger, then chased it with a Snickers bar. Nasty. I still shudder whenever I think of that, especially since my brother told me that his ant tried to climb back up his throat. I don't know if it was true but it still gags me when I think of it. True brotherly love lasts a lifetime.

So, the oozing roll of elk went out of my mind for long enough that my friend stopped asking me if I liked the taste. There are some limits to friendship, you know, and eating a roll of bloody elk sausage might be one of them.

But, there came a time, when the clear plastic Costco bag of chicken tenders indicated to Mike that it was time to eat it down. Eat it down is what Mike tells me to do whenever the stuff in the deep freeze starts to look like fossils.

I should never let him cook. First, he was not happy about having to make yet another meal. This wasn't what he signed up for when we first agreed that I would stay home with the baby. The baby was seventeen. He didn't need babysitting any more. There were dinners to make and I'm sure Mike thought about the fact that he'd just worked ten hours while I was noodling around on the computer all day, earning a total of nothing.

When he went downstairs to the freezer, did I imagine that his steps were just a little too firm? I heard plastic rustling and chunks of frost-heave falling off the roof of the freezer while he rummaged around. He walked up the steps with a bag of desiccated chicken tenders and looked me in the eye as I lounged in front of the computer.

"We need to start to eat it down again," he said. We.

"Oh, do we?" I said, innocently. He knew that I knew exactly what all that meat cost and what it currently looked like, dead, mummified, about to turn to dust.

That night, we ate peanut chicken slathered in peanut sauce so we could barely taste the dried-out and slightly off flavor of the chicken. You know what flavor I mean, freezer flavor. It's not bad, exactly. It won't send anyone to the toilet. But it had the distinct flavor I could always smell whenever I opened any freezer, mine, my mom's, my sister's, or my Grandma's . You just don't go about opening people's freezers unless they're family. You just don't. That frosty air wafts up and lays bare any notion that you are going to relish any meal that is produced from it, even Grandma's. I could always taste freezer in meat that had hung around too long. I'm sure Mike could taste it too, but there was the cost of what had gone into the freezer and, dammit, we were going to get it back out again if we had to eat that way for a month.

For the next week, I pored over the contents of the freezer each night and hoped to see something different. One block of ground beef, a quart of ice cream that Nick had somehow missed, a block of frozen squash, and chicken, lots of chicken. A whole chicken, chicken breasts, boneless skinless tasteless chicken thighs, chicken tenders, and even ground chicken. I dutifully cooked these into roasted freezer-burned chicken one night, cornflake crumby chicken another, more freezer-flavored peanut chicken, and finally chicken meatballs slow-cooked in Louisiana hot sauce. I never tasted the freezer in the chicken meatballs. I could never taste a thing while eating that Louisiana hot sauce. That night, when I made the meatballs, Mike said dinner was good.

After almost two weeks of eat it down, the freezer was finally emptied of everything but chicken thighs, miraculously the ice cream, and that rock hard roll of elk sausage on the bottom shelf of the freezer. In the back. There weren't enough thighs to make a whole meal.. I picked up the ice cream and held it in my hands. Coffee.

I loved coffee ice cream. I put it back on the shelf before my hot hands could melt it inside the container.

"You could have ice cream before dinner," a voice whispered. Steam rolled out of the freezer. Suddenly, it smelled sweet, lost the odor of raw meat. "Ice cream for dinner," it sighed. "No one would have to know. You don't have to eat that old meat shit. There are spoons down here. You could sit on the cooler and eat the whole thing until it was gone. No one would ever know."

Then, I knew. The devil lived in my freezer. Or at least in my head while I was standing in front of the open door of the freezer, in front of that glowing quart of ice cream.

If I ate that quart of ice cream, capillaries in my eyeballs would burst and I'd go blind. I'd get an immediate case of gangrene in my toes and they'd have to be cut off. I'd go into a diabetic coma and Mike would eventually find me lying on the floor with the ice cream container still in one hand, an old spoon in the other, the freezer door ajar and dropping chunks of frost onto the fake wood laminate flooring. Yes, the devil lived in my mind.

I grabbed the chicken thighs and the roll of elk sausage, slammed the door on that quart of coffee ice cream, and ran up the stairs.
 
I cut the little metal crimps off of either end of the elk roll and put it on a plate in the microwave to defrost. Twenty-five minutes. In the meantime, I tried a new recipe for the chicken tenders, haloumi chicken, and got to work on steaming some vegetables. The elk roll bled all over the inside of my microwave, despite the fact that I'd put a plate under it. Blood fucking everywhere. Cleaning up was so unappetizing, especially blood from raw meat.

An hour and a half later, I served beautiful plates of haloumi chicken with roasted tomatoes in virgin olive oil, virgin. There was steamed asparagus and cauliflower with butter and lemon pepper on the side plus little rounds of elk sausage with hickory smoked salt and onion.

"I didn''t like it," Mike said when he returned his plate, empty except for two elk rounds with a tiny bit missing from one edge. "Maybe it needed more salt."

"It tasted weird, Mom," Nick said, handing me his plate. His elk sausage hadn't changed shape. Did he even take one bite?

So, as I cleaned up the kitchen, Teddy and Blitz threatened to trip me. They would eat some elk. It wouldn't be a total loss. They had become accustomed to getting a tiny bit of what I had cooked for dinner. Well, Blitz got something and Teddy just stood around looking hopeful.

Poor Teddy had allergies. I'd learned my lesson on a tiny piece of steak once. The next day, he horked that steak into the crevice between the back seat and the door handle and I'd had to wipe it up. It was yellow and green and slimy.

They really wanted what I'd been cooking, these two. Blitz has learned that if he got to talking, I talked back to him until, eventually, I relented and gave him some of what I was eating. He'd eat anything. Chicken, salmon, tuna, beef. He even ate a leaf of spinach one time. That cat definitely came from a trailer park. If I'd offered him pickled pig's feet, I thought he would have eaten it.

So, I put a tiny piece of the rejected elk in front of him.

He looked at the meat, sniffed it, then looked back up at me.

"Go ahead," I said. "Try it. It's elk. What kitten do you know who gets to eat elk?"

He meowed and stepped over the tiny morsel lying on the floor. He rubbed against my ankles. He wanted chicken.

Against my better judgement, I leaned over, picked up the hunk of elk and threw it at Teddy. It hit him on the nose and fell between his feet. He sniffed it. Nope. Wasn't going to eat that shit. No way, Jose.

Blitz meowed again. He wanted something to eat, real food. They both, Teddy and Blitz, walked back and forth over that little bit of elk until I finally relented and gave them each bits of the chicken.


Over the next few days, I ate that entire roll of elk sausage myself. It was dry, tasted freezer burned, and needed salt.

Thank you for listening, jb

The Most Natural Thing in the World

Today was a banner day!

See, my nephew Ryan came to visit because the birthday present we gave him was totally lame and we needed to give him a decent gift.

And take him out for pizza.

No, giving Ryan a stupid present does not make this a banner day. It does not. It was embarrassing. See, we got him a Lego kit of Berlin when we were in Germany, but it turns out that it cost a bunch of euros and was about an inch by two inches by five inches, or at least that was how it looked when he sent me the picture. Plus, when we got back, we realized that Lego is the same ALL OVER THE WORLD, so nothing was stopping us from saving the space in our luggage and buying it at the mall when we got home.

I want to know what happened at Lego that the kits are so tiny and so expensive. Is there a plastic tax I didn't hear of yet? Was it affecting marine mammals? Did Lego just get so incredibly cool that they could afford to charge 30 euros for a kit that builds to 1x2x5 inches?

Inches!

Right. Lego being too cool for school wasn't what made it was a banner day either.

As I was saying, Ryan showed up and we did normal stuff with him. We picked up pizza. We walked the dog. We gave him a gift card.

No, I'm telling you that getting pizza and walking the dog are not the reasons it was a banner day. Just hold on until I get to it, okay? 

Ryan likes walking the dog. We went to the river and threw rocks. Did you know I can't skip a rock any more? It's also a little bit of a sad day when I realize that I can't skip a rock any more. After that, we picked up food for dinner and I cooked macaroni and cheese.

Yes, having a macaroni and cheese day does make it a banner day. It does, especially Mike's mom's recipe for mac and cheese.

I had to sit here and think about that for a minute and say a blessing for Mike's mom's soul and the gift of her macaroni and cheese recipe. You know, I imagine a heaven that includes Mike's mom and unlimited macaroni and cheese. With hot dogs.

But the coolest thing that happened with Ryan was that Blitz, after listening to us sit and chat, after we spent ordinary time sitting on the couch, after we ate macaroni and cheese, and after 'Serenity' came on and we talked about the possibility of a remake of the Firefly series written by Joss Whedon, -  remember Blitz? Blitz actually walked into the middle of the living room and spent some time eyeing Ryan to see if he would turn into a predator. When he didn't. Blitz jumped onto my lap and let me pet him for a minute.

Then, I pulled out kitten cookies and threw them all over the floor until all the animals were running around like toddlers at an Easter egg hunt.

But then we laughed.

Blitz flattened then ran helter-skelter down the stairs as if he were being chased. When nobody chased him, he came back up the stairs after twenty minutes or so to see if anyone had left him any more cookies. After that, he wandered back and forth like having Ryan over was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it was.

And that was why it was a banner day in our house today.

Thank you for listening, jb

Rewriting My Morning Meditation

I told you, didn't I, about how Blitz comes to sit on my notebook in the morning? He does.

See, I practice twenty minutes of writing meditation in the morning. It's amazing what floats to the surface. It's amazing how boring it is most of the time, a record of lost sleep, a grocery list, a preparation for my daily grind. But it feels right. I have a better day when I write. I do.

Since he came to our house, Blitz has interrupted that writing process. He sits on my notebook. He plays with my pen. He swishes my tail so that my notebook is full of shed fur. And instead, I spend twenty minutes petting, kissing, giving loose hugs, and listening to him purr.

Most days, it is an irritation. Most days, before I've written a half page, I get up and walk away. Some days, I breathe a sigh of relief as Blitz gets distracted by the other kitty or the long back of the dog walking past my knees to squeeze out of the narrow space. Blitz likes to whack Teddy's butt as he goes. Teddy is very patient. Blitz doesn't use his claws, but Teddy sighs because he's not quite awake at that hour. And sometimes, the game with Teddy is just too good and he'll leap onto his shoulder, patter out of the room, and I'll hear them both romp up the steps. At those time, I think, I'll get back to my writing meditation. I'll do it right. Three pages. Thank you, Julia Cameron.

But this morning. I had written about five words when Blitz leaped onto my leg and then settled himself on the right side of my notebook. I sighed and put down my pen. I petted him. He tucked his face into my palm. I leaned in and kissed him between the ears.

I hoped he hadn't rolled in cat litter in a while. I breathed in. No cat litter smell. And out.

I petted him. I leaned in and put my arms loosely around him, lightly resting my cheek on his shoulder. I could feel him purring. He lifted one paw out of my embrace. I knew he would use that paw to leap if he got uncomfortable in my clutches. I loosed the hug. I rubbed my other cheek on his neck. I could feel him purr.

I took a deep breath in this embrace. I breathed in and out, in and out.

Then, I sat back and wondered at my notebook. 

I tried to pick up my pen. I figured that I'd outline his butt on the notebook again so some future reader would know that my thoughts had been interrupted. I outlined his tail, his tail, his swishing tail. It looked like a fan on the page. I outlined his butt. Then, I outlined his back foot peeking out from his belly and his butt.

Whack.

He swatted me. No claws, but a surprise.

I put down the pen and went back to petting him. Be nice, I told myself. I could feel through my hands how he purred. Had he stopped while I used my pen or did I just not notice in those moments? I leaned in to hug him again, to have that vibration against my ear. He lifted the one paw, the escape claws

I took another deep breath. I breathed in and out, in and out, in and out, listening only to my breath and his soft purring at my ear.

When I sat back up, that meditative feeling was there, satisfaction, focus, calm. There was calm. No matter what else happened during the day, I had begun it with calm

I've decided not to wish Blitz would leave when I write in the morning. He is all part of the plan. He leaps onto my notebook, breathe in, stroke his silky fur, and out. Breathe in and out. Listen for the breath, his purring. Feel his damp nose in my palm, pressing back. Breathe in and out. Focus on the moment, reach in for a hug, breathe in, loosen the hug, breathe out, feel the paw, breathe in, breathe out, in and out, in and out, until at last, I feel the calm.

Thank you for listening, jb

Coming to the Party

Today is Blitz's first birthday. He's not a kitten any more, but don't tell anyone that he still eats a can of kitten food now and then. I blame Seth. Seth began to lose weight so the kitten food is the way for him to keep weight on. Blitz gets in there and steals some of it, half of it, maybe a little more than half.

Blitz doesn't really need kitten food any more. He's a little fluffy. You should see his beautiful belly when he rolls onto his back. He has a low little muffin top when he sits. He's a happy chubby baby. I try not to give him too many treats and junk food, but he loves occasional bits of chicken, pork, beef, and one time I gave him a bit of elk that someone had cooked for us. He didn't like the elk at all. He looked at me as if I were trying to pull something over on him. That's not food.

Today, most limitations went out the door since it was his birthday. No, I didn't make a kitten cake from a can of cat food and treats, but BabyCat got a teeny bite of brisket and almost a half can of yummy but stinky salmon and tuna delight.

This morning, Blitzie squirmed while Nick walked around the house carrying him and letting everyone wish him a happy birthday. Don't tell any of Nick's friends about how he loves this little kitten. It wouldn't be cool.

But it is so cool.

And there was the moment this evening when we all happened to gather while I handed out kitten treats to everyone who wanted them. Seth and Teddy were ready to celebrate. Mike and Nick were happy to watch me make a fool of myself.

Blitzen never came.

I suppose there was too much excitement, too much noise, too much potential to be captured and tortured with kitten treats and belly rubs and love.

The whole time I worked in the kitchen after dinner, wiping counters and putting dishes into the dishwasher, a little song rang through my head.

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to ...

Blitz came up after it got quiet again, but the party was over. He ate a couple of treats and I could feel his fur in my toes under the table when I sat down to the computer. I am turning into one of those women, aren't I? Too old for babies and too young for grandchildren. Technically, I'm plenty old for grandchildren, but it didn't work out that way. And now I'm celebrating cat birthdays. Mortifying. 

Thank you for listening, jb

Smoke and Strangers

Blitz had a hard afternoon yesterday.

It wasn't just because the house smelled like a campfire. The other two furry kids paced and watched me for cues that the house was about to burn down. The house was fine, but they didn't know that. I spent an inordinate amount of time inside yesterday, keeping the doors and windows closed, petting pets and distracting myself, staring out the window.

Blitz didn't have a hard day because the sun was a red disk in the sky either. The sky took on a yellow glow. I stood at the window. Where I grew up, if the sky turned green, it meant there might be a tornado. You needed to watch a green sky, make preparations to move to the West wall in the basement. You needed to prepare yourself for sitting in the dark for hours if the power went out, for straining to hear through the concrete walls and floor above you for the telltale sound of a train rushing by where there were no tracks. You needed to consider a green sky. But this wasn't green. It was a flat yellow sky.  I had lived through smoke before, but this yellow sky with a red sun gave me the creeps. I'd notice an orange shadow and it kept taking me some time to figure out it was just sunshine.

The weather report says the next fifteen days will be sunny. No rain. There will be no relief from this awful yellow sky and red sun throwing orange light. But that wasn't why Blitz had a hard afternoon yesterday.

No, Blitz wasn't worried about any of that.

My friend Anna came to the house.

Anna is a quiet person. She loves cats. I really thought that she would be the breakthrough Blitz needed to begin to get over his shyness.

It didn't work to bring lots of friends over to meet him when he was tiny. My poor baby just got more worried every event I scheduled. He buried himself deeper in far rooms in closets in boxes. It didn't help to go find him. It didn't help to crate him first and let him out when people came to see him. They would hold him loosely for a minute and let him dash when he leaped out of their arms. It was sad to bring my most kitten-loving friends over to my house only to have him bolt in abject fear the minute I handed him over. The whole process only made him more fearful not less.

Anna says I should relax and let him be himself.

See what I mean? If anyone could get my little munchkin to relax it's Anna. She understands the introverted and the need for the solace of a quiet house. I just know Blitz would love Anna if he just tried.

There I go, an extrovert trying yet again to get an introvert to change. Blitz is not going to change. My friends are never going to see Blitz's charm as he talks to me in the morning. They are never going to see how funny he is when I pick him up and he uses his front paws to walk up the side of the washing machine. They are never going to decipher his Morse code dashes and dots as he rolls onto his back to get his belly rubbed. They are never going to see how he leaps up and tags Teddy on the shoulder when he wants to start a game. My friends are never going to know my little Blitzen.

The worst part is that if there really is a fire, if the house is burning down and a fireman comes in to rescue the kitten, you know, the hero of the story who gets to be on the cover of Time in his uniform with a kitten in his arms... If the hero comes into my house to save the day?

Blitz is totally going to die.

Thank you for listening, jb