Monday night, we had a guest on our back deck.
Cute guy (or girl, we could hardly sex them). After eating he scrambled under the tarp on the right, which is where we keep the heated shelter for Snowdrop. It was getting down into the teens that night and TYG, already worried about Snowdrop in the cold, became more worried the opossum might seize the shelter for his own. So when Snowdrop showed later in the evening and came inside for food, we shut the door on him.
It was like Spider-Man trapped by the Spider-Slayer only, you know, not.
Snowdrop has not been pleased with this development. On the other hand, he’s adapted better than we hoped. Outside of pissing on the couch once, he’s been going in the litter box (Dr. Elsey’s brand cat-attracter litter works!). He sleeps, occasionally snuggles with us and doesn’t constantly whine to go out.
On the downside, he does meow loudly a lot. Sometimes to be let out, sometimes for attention, sometimes for food (we’re barely starting to learn which is which). And he does it most in the night, so for the past week, regular as clockwork, I’m jarred out of my sleep at 12:30 AM. This morning I put down food, which satisfied him (I’d put some down before going to bed; it was gone when I got up), but after I returned to bed I’d hear these erratic meows from the living room, strong enough to be heard all the way upstairs. I tried a couple of naps during the night but one or other of the cats made enough noise that it was impossible.
It’s a relief when Snow goes under the coffee table and hides, as he’s quiet there. It’s sweet to have him snuggle next to me, but it’s hard finding a position I can sleep in.
Overall I was too tired to get a good work week in. I even gave up most of Tuesday’s writer’s group zoom meeting — I was worried Snowdrop would attempt to bolt while TYG was wrangling dogs for walkies, so I came down to watch him.
Plus no matter how early I got up, the cats seemed to distract me enough I didn’t get any extra time in. I also got distracted by umpty-zillion little tasks. I set aside Monday to do a bunch of small things — bills to pay, subscriptions to cancel, items to order, paperwork to sort, contractor appointments to make. Wednesday I worked on The Local Reporter, planning to watch the Carrboro town council meeting and write it up, then use the afternoon to watch Jekyll and Hyde movies. Turns out it was a three-hour council meeting so that sucked up a lot more time.
Thursday morning I did something I’ve had on my To-Do list since I upgraded my blog-hosting plan, putting PayPal buttons on my Behold the Book page. WordPress makes it simple but reconfiguring the layout and doing the work still required more time than expected (hopefully I got it all right).
(Figured I’d throw in an extra photo of Plushie for your enjoyment)
In the end, all I got done on my own writing stuff was spending Tuesday working on The Savage Year. Cat or no cats, I’ll have to do better next week.
For reading — well, you could buy some of my books direct from me, couldn’t you? But if not there’s an article on the Carrboro Film Fest and one on that town council meeting. At Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about the debut of Sesame Street —
— my perennial MLK Day topic of “getting out of Egypt” (and what the Silver Surfer has to say about it) and blogging about the new DC Finest’s Legion of Superheroes reprint book filling a gap in my collection.
Hopefully by the time next week starts we’ll have figured out how to keep Snowdrop quieter during the night. Or I’ll have come up with some other workaround. Stay tuned.
Art by Steve Ditko (Spider-Man) and Nicholas Cardy (Legion). All rights to images remain with current holders.
