A new year, a new cat

Hello, especially to friends whose calls I haven't returned or whose e-mails are languishing in my inbox, along with 900 other items from 2010 I intend to go through. I have excuses, believe me. Illness - generally covered in my last post. In me, illness tends to be accompanied by depression; so do the holidays.

But maybe missing the holidays is worse. We still haven't had our Christmas with Cassie and company, don't even have the gifts wrapped. I missed the Christmas Eve service at church, still sick and on the wrong antibiotic. Missed the post-Christmas service too, busy throwing up with a kidney stone passing. But I wasn't wholly enthusiastic about attending these things, because post-transplant I am afraid of "church food," that wonderful reception that follows the Christmas Eve service, a hundred kinds of treats made in home kitchens and handled by many unsterile hands, and even by people harboring germs of colds, pneumonias, TB . . . it's true, folks.

But on New Year's Eve day, after I posted, desperation overcame my reasonable paranoia about zootropic disease, and went to Cat Welfare just to visit, to scout the kitties (as they are called there, though most of the cats are mature, and people only want kittens). Let them know what I was looking for. I thought I'd wear the mask I keep in my purse, but I tell you, I dropped it in the van and couldn't find it, not that it would be useful after that. And I thought, To hell with it. I'd rather be dead than feel like this.

And sure enough, petting a cat filled my chest with that baby-love feeling. And it seems possible that The Next Cat found me. In any case, I brought her home that afternoon - on warranty. A six-month-old girl, just fixed, looking much like a Russian Blue, maybe with bigger ears, and acting like a nervous Meezer once she was here.  She absolutely loves being petted, once you coax her near, and pick her up.  But inbetween pettings and knocking over plants, she acts like we are strangers, the menacing kind, and tears through the rooms, skidding on the wood floors when she reverses directions.  You have to admit, it's cute.

Nameless Cat is waiting for Laurie D. to come and suggest alternatives to Tami, the name the shelter gave her, and Amanda Starpaws, the name I came up with, which doesn't lend itself to calling and nicknames.  I am waiting and hoping NC will get over this nervous-cat thing.  I see now that years of old cats spoiled me; Sweetheart is still a kitten, very interested in the cords that dangle from the laptop in the den, and clearly exploring my bead table at night, selectively knocking things over.  Ah, yes.  A house is not a home without an animal as the heart.
[photo:  Rubber Duck Nativity.  Why not?  We take ourselves too seriously.  Some day I'll take a picture of my Buddha Cat and post it here.]