A Messy Job
"sweep hallway," said my chore list. "okay," i said. "i'll move the hallway rug out to the balcony while i sweep," i thought.
sweep sweep sweep. (actually, swiffer, swiffer, etc.)
"what a clean hallway! now i'll put the rug back," i congratulated myself.
"poof!" said the cloud of dust that rose from the rug when i picked it up off the balcony railing.
"achoo!" i said. then, "take that, rug!" i hit it a bunch of times with the grill brush.
POOF!!! went the dust. "eeeeeee!" i said.
"you should change your vacuum bag," suggested a woman from her backyard, helpfully.
"thank you," i lied.
bam! bam! bam! still more dust. neverending dust.
"ow," said my arm.
"hey roommates, want to take turns hitting the rug," i asked?
"we're not allowed to shake rugs off the balcony," my roommate informed me.
"... oops?" i said.
Duck Baby Update
Probably no one else was seriously afraid that all the baby ducks in the Boston Public Garden hadn’t survived the rainstorms this month, as I postulated yesterday, but just in case, I would like to report that today I saw twelve ducklings paddling around the pond.
They were all attended by just one woman duck though, so either that means just one of the duck couples had babies this year, or the rest of the duck families were hiding their babies, or the ducks have some sort of babysitting timeshare system set up. And if the latter is true, I think we need to be much more watchful of the ducks, because their social structure is way more advanced than anyone probably thought.
Walking to Work
My office is literally steps away from the Arlington stop on the Green Line, so for the first couple weeks of work I just automatically took the Red Line to Park Street, changed to the Green Line, and rode the two stops to Arlington.
Mary Kate, my office-mate and fellow new Development Editor, told me that she usually walks from Park Street to the office, an option that is both more healthy and less smelly than the Green Line, so I decided to try it. I was more than a little dissuaded by the two weeks of torrential rain, but on a couple of relatively dry days I did enjoy the walk through the Boston Common and along the edge of the Public Garden.
Today I did something different, and got off the Red Line at Charles MGH. My new walking route took me through Beacon Hill, among adorable eateries (The Upper Crust), antique shops (A Room With A Vieux), and high-end pet stores (Fidough’s). All the displays of fancy, unnecessary blown glass and hand-painted skirts reminded me very strongly of the galleries and festival stands in Laguna Beach; it’s comforting to know that no matter where I go, there will be beautiful, largely useless things I cannot afford.
Charles Street ends at the Public Garden, and my office is at the opposite corner, reachable by a path that winds past the Make Way For Ducklings statues, around the pond, under the bridge, dangerously close to the swan boats, and through the ornamental gates on Beacon Street.
Because of the direction I’m walking, I pass Quack first, then Pack, Ouack, Nack, Mack, Lack, Kack, Jack, and finally Mrs. Mallard. These are not the actual ducklings—I’m sure the original Mallard family is by now long dead—but bronze statues that are so much larger than life as to be, unsettlingly, about the size of swans. At 8:45am there are generally no small children attempting to ride on the backs of the duck statues, which is my preferred state of things.
The path at one point squeezes between the shore and a giant tree that is not a willow but still has that drooping-branch structure that makes it the shape of a hollow dome, or a bowl haircut. The twelve-year-old in me immediately starts thinking of ways that this tree can be used as a fort or hideout, but my other eleven years of life experience keep me from actually formulating a plan to come back tomorrow with clothespins and towels and picnic blankets. Fine, maybe I do think about where I would need to hang towels (where the branches are sparse, near the path) and how many blankets I’d need to cover the floor area (a lot – this is a seriously big tree), but I won’t actually do it. Probably.
Down at the pond, the pond turtles have soaked up just enough sunlight to be semi-active; in another hour or two they will probably make it from the top of their 6-foot wooden ramp into the water. Ducks are hilariously fighting their natural buoyancy in order to eat mud from the bottom of the pond, which seems like a lot of exertion for a little bit of wet dirt.
There is one duckling in the entire pond, which makes me think that either all the other ducklings are super-lazy and therefore still asleep, or (much sadder but still probably possible) none of the rest of the duck-babies survived the aforementioned torrential rains. The single duckling isn’t even trying to get underwater, and after several minutes of watching it frantically paddling its tiny, ineffectual feet just to keep from being blown to shore by the gentle morning breeze, I decide that this is probably a wise move.
I am actually early to work for once, so I have time to loiter by the pond and wonder whether, if I were able to lure the duckling to me and then catch it without incurring the wrath of its parents, it could become friends with my cat. It’s an enticing prospect, but the drawbacks (the cat’s favorite toy right now is a bundle of yellow feathers on the end a string, which, when dangled in front of him, he attacks adorably though viciously; also, and more troubling: what if the duck-parents call in backup, e.g., the swans?) eventually convince me to leave the duckling alone. Anyway, I probably couldn’t have successfully hid it in my office all day.
A Surplus of Names
Before any shelter visits, before buying cat supplies, in fact very early on in the cat-adopting process, I warned Adrienne and my other roommates that if we did get a cat, I would definitely not end up calling it by its real name. Probably, I said, I would assign it a long and possibly literary person-name, like Christopher Marlowe or Elizabeth Bennett, but then mostly call it Kitty.
It seems to me that this is common practice; Jeremy’s cat is, I believe, named Zane Grey, but they generally call it Bob, and as far as I know, Jesse’s cat is just called Kitty. I considered the idea of calling a cat Duckling or Bunny or Gator, but I’m not as excited about that as I once was.
Adrienne had been interested in having a cat named Smudgy, which is admittedly an adorable name, but after we decided on Franklin, who is stripey but not smudgy really at all, it seemed that we might just let him keep his name, and just elaborate on it until someone forces us to stop.
We had two starting points: my tendency to fill out the “Franklin” with various historical Franklins (like Delano Roosevelt, Pierce, or Benjamin), and Adrienne’s throwaway reference to him as Dr. Burke, meant originally to differentiate him from Dr. Kitty McDreamy, aka Christopher (Robin). While deciding between FDR, Benjamin Franklin, and Franklin Pierce, I naturally came upon Benjamin Franklin Pierce, and from that Hawkeye followed logically. The fact that both Hawkeye and Dr. Preston Burke are both TV surgeons (and both, as far as I can remember, cardio-thoracic specialists, and good ones) was too great of a coincidence to pass up, and so our poor cat, who probably doesn’t even realize that he is about to come live with us, has accumulated the name of Dr. Preston (Benjamin) Franklin “Hawkeye” (Pierce) Burke, aka “Scampers.”
I will probably just call him Kitty.(Happy birthday, Mom!)
Adrienne! He Did A Thing!
If you liked my blogs about Frieda, our German cat friend, then you are probably going to love the next month or so of my blog. If you tend to hate cute-animal stories, especially those told by the owner of the animal, and especially those that aren’t at all interesting for anyone not present at the Incident of Adorableness, then: I’m sorry, because we have adopted a kitty.
(Incidentally, I am shocked that “adorableness” is an actual word. I’m never sure whether to be pleased or disappointed when I make up something—either a word or a scenario or a “creative” solution to a problem—that I think is exceedingly clever or thoroughly ridiculous, only to find out that it’s just reality.)
The kitty in question comes from a shelter called Saint Meows, which is a pretty fabulous name in itself. Adrienne very quietly completed mountains of paperwork that I never would have thought would be necessary to take a cat off a shelter’s hands, but since I have never owned anything higher-concept than a bunny, I don’t really know about these things.
I also don’t know much about how one picks the cat one wants to take home. I mean, I didn’t know. Now I do: the process involves successive waves of sureness and doubt, now influenced by emotion, now by logic, now by guilt; swayed first toward the adorable, then the beautiful, then the needy.
It came down to two cats, which seems like a more impressive narrowing-down if you don’t know that the shelter had only brought three cats to the Petco that was hosting the adoption night. Christopher (Robin) was a very long orange cat with cute white paws, relatively comfortable in the midst of potential cat-adopters, store employees, cages of insane ferrets, and children testing out jingly and squeaky dog toys. Franklin, a smaller and younger stripey-grey cat, wasn’t as down with all the noise, but was very okay with us scratching his chin. Both cats, the shelter woman told us, were equally lovable, equally playful, and equally equipped to be happy as the only cat in a household.
Our decision process defied all logic. Franklin was really, really pretty, but a little less interactive. Christopher looked, however improbably, fairly reminiscent of Patrick Dempsey (it’s a chin thing, we think), but a couple of us had some prejudices toward orange cats. We held both cats, stood around attempting to list pros and cons of each cat, and thoroughly failed to come to any conclusions.
I was not very helpful in this process, if only because whenever one cat would do something—literally anything—I would become entranced by the cuteness of it and stop the current conversation by yelling, “Aaah! Adrienne! Look, he did a … a thing!” At the time, this seemed both very important and helpful, and urgent that I express this without stopping to first give a name to what the cat was doing. Usually, it was rolling over, or pawing at something.
Then I had to leave in order not to be even later than I already was to a play that was about to start two T-stops away, so Adrienne and Hannah had to make the final decision themselves. This was fine, because there was no way I was going to suddenly become helpful.
On my way to the T and later as I was running to Brattle Street, I called Adrienne and left her two very unhelpful messages with information like:
“Jeremy thinks we should get Franklin, because he wants us to have a cat that it would be fitting to call ‘Scampers,’ and Franklin is definitely a more scamperey cat than Christopher. But then again, we could call Christopher ‘Kitty McDreamy,’ which would totally annoy Jeremy… so… it’s a toss-up.”
And,
“Okay, my sister also thinks Franklin, but Jesse says get Christopher, because we will come to love him more even if he’s not as beautiful, and also because it will totally annoy Jeremy.”
When I got out of the play and turned my phone back on, I had the following text message:
“We have selected Dr. Burke. Although a really cute kid just asked if we just adopted Christopher…”
So now we have a cat, or rather, we will when the shelter woman drops him off on Saturday. We’ve spent, and will spend, the intervening time accruing cat toys and getting far too creative with cat names. The name issue is complicated and awesome enough to warrant its own blog entry, which will be forthcoming.
