Buckminster & Amber - 4

A Rainy Day in Seattle

I’ve found a nice warm spot to nap, but it’s a gloomy rainy afternoon and I’m having a bad hair day. It’s been over forty hours since my last grooming and I’ve got a snarl between my shoulders I can’t reach. The woman of the house has been in constant motion, peripatetic the humans would say - running up and down the stairs, taking stuff out of closets and stuffing them in boxes. I’m starting to dream about boxes, they’re everywhere. I’m not even curious about them any more. I just wish they’d stray in the same place for at least a week. Is that too much to ask?

            She's gone past me three times as I write this, last time with a load of laundry. What is her problem with odor? Now what? She’s back again, and with the cursed wind snake this time. She’s plugging it in now and . . .  There it goes, making an ungodly noise, a sort of sucking painful roar. She sweeps the floor with it. I’m out of here and passing though the kitchen now, into another room with a desk and chair. There are some boxes on the desk of course, but not much more. There used to be a cat-scratch pole but that has disappeared. Almost everything’s gone except Bucks. He’s on the top box looking bored and sad. He's often bored, but lately he seems so depressed.

            “Hey Bucks, you want to try and catch me? Just for the hell of it, you know? Maybe knock a glass off the kitchen counter—Whoops!” He always enjoys that, but not today.  

            “Forget about it,” he tells me. “I’m okay.”

            “You’re not,” I tell him. “You’re depressed. What are you thinking?”

            “Nothing,” he says. “Males have a secret ability to think about nothing. Zen Buddhists talk about it sometimes. It’s not easy.

            “Yeah  . . . whatever.” If the trick is doing nothing he’s a master of the art. I saunter into the  front room and launch myself onto the couch without noticeable effort. There’s a nice blanket. It would be warm here by the window if it wasn’t raining. I get almost comfortable again, then hear the wind snake coming through the kitchen, sucking up some spilled dry cat food from the floor.

          
             Buck’s makes a leap to the carpet and runs past me into the hallway on his way to the color box room. I follow in time to see him heading for the warm spot I abandoned in the first place. He can have it. I’m going for the top floor of the only cat tree left. Maybe I can get some sleep. It’s been that kind of a day.