Another Stray

Last night, I thought a stray kitten had found its way into our back yard and to the cat plate of food. I wasn’t sure. When I went out to see where it was hiding, I couldn’t find anything, and I considered that it might have been Coco in the dark, though I could’ve sworn that it was too small to be one of our cats.

Later in the evening, just before going to bed, I see it again at the plate. It is definitely small. When I step outside I see it hiding amidst some patio junk. It’s not a kitten. It’s Ratso. Or at least one of its kin. Though, it isn’t grey, but largely black, with some white coloring about its face - kind of calico-ish indeed. And it is small. It’s kind of cute, but there is that alien face, along with the sense of being more a dangerous animal than anything pet-like.

I don’t want it to make a home here. I don’t want it to breed here. I was going to have to starve the cats harder. No food. Hey, it did make it easier to get the cats inside this morning.

Funny, though, it seems that we always have a stray critter coming to the cat plate. Now that Whitey has not been seen for some time (probably dead), we get Ratso, Jr. There always seems to be some stray, one at a time, kind of courteous-like. We cannot hide our little cat oasis.

American Psycho

This is from one of the chapters titled “Girls”. It begins one of the more horrific sequences, in which Bateman gets his threesomes and then gets into his gruesome.

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The limousine cruises up alongside the girl. Through its tinted windows, closer up, she’s paler, the blonde hair now seems bleached and her facial features indicate someone even younger than I first imagined, and because she’s the only white girl I’ve seen tonight in this section of town, she seems - whether she is or not - especially clean; you could easily mistake her for one of the NYU girls walking home from Mars, a girl who has been drinking Seabreezes all night while moving across a dance floor to the new Madonna songs, a girl who perhaps afterwards had a fight with her boyfriend, someone named Angus or Nick or … Pokey, a girl on her way to Florent to gossip with friends, to order another Seabreeze perhaps or maybe a cappuccino or a glass of Evian water - and unlike most of the whores around here, she barely registers the limousine as it pulls up next to her and stops, idling. Instead she lingers casually, pretending to be unaware of what the limousine actually signifies.

-- “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis

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Thursday Afternoon

Having all the cats inside and needing a shower, I intend to mow the front this evening. Though, we are into that depth of summer where we are pretty dry and the grass does not especially need to be mowed save for a little bushiness close to the house. If I wanted to luxuriate in my laziness, I could hold off, but instead I’m going to clear it away and make next week easier for me, another grocery week.

Coco

For a moment there, I thought Coco just wanted some more loving attention from me, but then I see that the plate is empty. A deal is a deal: when they are in the house, the food supply is supposed to be constant.

Tenant's Hamlet

I gave in and bought David Tenant's "Hamlet" on Amazon. A little less than 30 minutes in, I am rather regretting it. You know you are in trouble when Polonius is giving the best performance. At least I scratched that long-persisting itch. I wonder if I will bother to finish the movie. Even the Ethan Hawke "Hamlet" is better.