September 24th, 2010


Waning Days

Portia spent the balmy afternoon lazing about, while I spent much of it cleaning cat hair from upholstery, carpets, and tablecloths. I suppose I can be grateful she isn't one of those cats who likes to sleep in the bathroom sink, leaving behind gobs of fur to clog the drain. Still, getting cat hair off of upholstery. Ech.

Living outside, the feral cats leave no hair anywhere that it would need to be to be cleaned up, but every now and then one or another of the cats will befoul a flower bed by dropping a deuce sufficiently malodorous to penetrate the little pile of dirt the cat heaps over it. This afternoon one or another of the feral cats did just that in a flower bed just outside my open window. I had to go out and augment the dirt pile, lest the stench accumulate and persist far into the night. Again, ech.

But once these feline depredations had been dealt with, I was able to do my own bit of lazing, sitting in the back yard watching the dusk arrive, and then the night; listening to the last bird songs and the first cricket chirps, then seeing the moon rise and wash the pines with its dreamy light. In a month or two it will likely be too cold for pleasant moonrise-watching. Come autumn, it's good to store up memories of evenings spent outdoors, the way the squirrels store up nuts. Speaking of which, I have two dozen walnuts the squirrels didn't snatch from my walnut tree's crop. It's about time for another batch of brownies.

I like late September. Even with all that persistent summer cat fur to clean up.