that latest stranger cat

There were four cats this morning on the patio. I thought the one lounging on the table was Sammy, but when the cat scurried away when I came to the door, I realized that it is that latest stranger cat, another greyish one. Knowing my luck, I just know that this is a female. She is obviously only growing more comfortable here. I wouldn't mind it at all, except one dreads becoming a kitten mill.

Bushtail

Coming out of breakfast to check on the cats, I am surprised and touched to see both Ash and Sammy on the kitchen-window ledge, kinda kissy, but as I get closer, one runs away, and I realize that it wasn't Sammy.

I guess we should give that fourth cat a name of its own, as I imagine this story will be going on with us for a while. As I watched it run away, I thought that its tail was distinctly bushy. So, I think we will call her: Bushtail.

Sylvia

Sylvia has a date with Bill. But she just cannot get it to click in college.

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I think I am mad at times. Tonight Bill and I were bored stiff with each other. First it was a long, dull rainy afternoon of sitting in his room listening to the radio & looking at pictures. Then it was supper at crowded Valentine’s. Then that disgustingly puerile burlesque show which turns my stomach when I think of it. Then hamburg & coffee in a lonely diner, the lights too bright, the music too brassy, the silence too long. To top it off, we drove back at 11. I wanted to go in, and yet was afraid to face the girls who would wonder if another evening had gone stale or thought me queer. Ah, what the hell do I care what they think - (damn much.)

Anyhow, he stopped the car and we hashed the mess out pretty futiley. I didn’t want to say I didn’t give a damn about him, but just wanted to be kissed good and hard, and that he wasn’t capable of satisfying me even in that way. So I told him various lies about liking him, and he told me about his girl. From now on when a boy starts telling me about his lost loves I am going to run in the opposite direction screaming loudly. It is a bad sign.

-- Sylvia Plath, The Journals 1950-1953

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From about the 1970s on, I do not think they would just be listening to the radio and looking at pictures, and she would not be this frustrated.

March 18, 1991

Jack and I played tennis today. While we seem to be improving and are fairly matched, our level of play remains strictly beginner.

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April 9, 2012

A couple of others were playing together as well, and then another couple arrived, and the ones who were playing asked the new arrivals if they would like to play doubles. I write of being mildly traumatized. I also remark about the searing sense of inferiority, as when the big white man would be largely indifferent to our wayward balls while I was fairly diligent in returning his. I close with this paragraph:

I don’t regard the objective facts of this event as important. They may be rationally understood to pose no slight to us. It is the real sense of inferiority that concerns me. It favors social withdrawal.

Was I still thinking that a social life was possible? Why not, I was only twenty-five, which is a little young to fully give up on life.

My main regret is that I did not manage to keep some of the discussion that Jack and I doubtlessly shared. We still spoke to each other as true brothers at this time, and there just is not a lot of it to savor, and apparently there is even much less to cull from my sterile pages.