The Perils of Bartleby

I talked to my brother last night about insisting that Bartleby come inside and stay there. She really does enjoy just spending the entire day lying in the grass up against the trunk of the living oak but there's been a verified sighting of a coyote on the other side of our peninsula and, although it's several miles away, those beasts can travel far when they want/need to. Also, where there's one there's more.

And Bartleby, with her bum hip, can't climb a tree or run away and she certainly would never think of fighting back even if it might do any good, which it wouldn't. She doesn't even try to protect her food from the birds when they land four feet away from her and start eating out of her dish.

My brother said she would prefer not to come inside. Well, of course not! She's Bartleby. But I know he secretly wishes she would come back in. I think he likes her better than any of the other cats. She does have the sweetest disposition, matched, possibly, only by Paribanour who just loves being groomed and petted and fussed over.

Bartleby will come in. Neither my brother nor I could stand it if she were hurt.

Temperature Inversions

Now that we're officially into summer the water in the taps switches temperature. Cold runs hot and hot runs cold.

Technically, the hot water only runs cold until the water from the heater pushes the water that's been cooling down in the insulated piping through, then it warms up again. And, technically, the cold water only runs hot until the water from the outside (buried) pipes pushes the water that's been heating up in the uninsulated piping through but, until then the water from the "cold" tap can easily get over 115F. Even when the cold water finally cools down it's only to room temperature and never anywhere near the brain-achingly delicious New England well water I grew up with.

This is because our house is built on a solid concrete slab. Our pipes, once they get to the house, do not (can not) run underground but rise up and travel through the attic/crawl space and then down through the walls to the various taps. The attic with the merciless Florida summer sun beating down on it. The hot water pipes are insulated to keep the heat in which slows but does not prevent heat loss but also slows heat gain. The cold water pipes, being uninsulated absorb the full effects.

This is a common situation down here, although frequently an unpleasant surprise to visitors and new residents. I doubt any homes in the area have basements or cellars in which to place utilities. We're too close to sea level and the water table is too high.

The cats haven't figured out what to do with the ice cubes in their water dish, yet.

'Tis A Puzzlement

Last week my brother received a letter from an on-line billing service regretting that they could not complete setting up his account because some critical information was missing. He had not tried to set up an account with this service and did not, in fact, know of the service's existence until the letter arrived.

Over the weekend a brand new smart phone arrived in the mail. It was addressed to my brother and he had to sign for it. He has a relatively new smart phone already, does not need a new one and would certainly not (and did not) order one from some no-name outfit in New York where this one apparently originated.

He contacted the on-line billing service and was told that he did indeed have an account with them which he informed them was fraudulent and needed to be cancelled. (The billing service, for the record, is a legitimate division of a very large web company.)

My brother also received in the mail and article of lingerie direct from the factory in China. The care instructions are in English but the rest of it is all Chinese. My brother's tastes in clothing do not run in that direction.

He was informed by the billing service that another smart phone is already on the way to him.

Here's the puzzlement:

His bank accounts have not been accessed. No money has been taken from him. The phones (and the filmy flimsy) have been paid for as far as the supplying parties are concerned. He is not being billed for anything. He is not being asked to return anything. The fraudulent accounts have been closed and notices issued so they can not be used in the future to gain access to his assets.

We can not figure out how the perpetrators have benefited, or planned to benefit, from this. Our best guess is it might be somebody in the neighborhood who was hoping to intercept the packages from our mailbox but, since the phone, at least, required a signature for delivery, that brilliant plan was not thought through all the way. Besides, one or the other of us is almost always home. My brother's most paranoid guess is that someone put malware in the phones but he intends to donate them so they will get nothing (from him at least, and it was his identity they were apparently trying to steal).

Either this is some fiendishly subtle and devious plot that is beyond our comprehension, or an act of sheer stupidity.

Right now, I'm leaning towards stupidity.

Apologies All 'Round

I went in for this month's bloodletting today. So much for the left arm being a better donor site than the right.

Everything was going great, vitals, etc., until the nurse stuck the needle in. It just didn't feel right. It hurt. We talked for a couple of minutes while the machine took its sample and began the draw. We even got the results of the sample test back. And then the stupid machine started beeping and wouldn't stop and my vein started leaking making a small but intense little purple hemorrhage and the nurse just pulled the whole thing.

I apologized to her for wasting her time and a draw kit (all that tubing--and there's lots of it--is one use only). She apologized to me for wasting my time and the pain.

She offered me a T-shirt, a meal ticket to the hospital cafeteria and a commemorative pen. I refused. I took a cookie for the pain and suffering.

We'll try again Tuesday.

"I will gladly donate Tuesday for a cookie today."

But Don't Panic

It's that time of year when the local and state authorities issue their warnings about the dangers of the great outdoors. Hurricanes, floods (June is Flood Awareness Month), mosquitoes (Seriously, 48 different species?! Including eleven that are unique to here?), toxic algae, poisonous spiders and snakes, alligators and sharks.

And now the best of all: brain eating amoebas!

O.K., they're very rare. But of the 128 known cases in the U.S. only one person has survived. They live in warm fresh water including possible drinking sources (3 people were infected using neti cups) and climb up through your nose into your brain where they feast on the gray goo behind your forehead.

I've never even heard of these things before this week.

Welcome to paradise.

Shining Cats

Wednesday evening I was making shortcake for my brother's Thursday birthday dinner strawberry shortcake dessert. All three cats were underfoot the whole time. Catnip is not one of the ingredients but you wouldn't know it from their interest. Yesterday morning I'm shelling shrimp for one of the entrees (shrimp in a bacon/garlic/butter sauce over linguini) and not a cat in sight. No cats when the crab legs come out of the refrigerator and into the pot, either. And yet, all three of them try to stick their entire heads into my glass of iced tea.

Last week Jasmine stole a corn cob out of the garbage and gave it to the kids. What is it with cats and carbs?

Last night, in the wee hours, they were all at my bedroom door, rattling the hinges and banging on the frame, little kitten paws scrabbling and scratching, reaching under the door itself and curling upward as if frantically searching for the latch. That was the third time they've attempted to break in. I half expect to hear the cat translation of "Here's Johnny!" one of these nights as they come smashing through.

An Offer Not Likely To Be Refused

So I'm in the local library at the moment, on the library computer, researchin', and the librarian lady announces, "Just so you all know, we're under a tornado warning right now and it's hailing outside (lightning has already knocked us onto emergency power twice) so if we come back and tell you all to move into a hallway real quick, please move into a hallway real quick."

You got a deal there, librarian lady.

Wonder if I can even get to my car for the trip home right now.

Reprieved

Looks like Paribanour is here to stay.

A few weeks ago, when I pointed out to my brother Paribanour's chipmunk striping, he countered with, "We can't keep four cats!" To which I had no compelling argument since he's the one buying the kibble and litter.

Since then Paribanour's striping has developed even more. In addition to the chipmunk stripes from shoulder to tail, she has now developed a subtle cross bar just below the shoulders and a pair of dots, not dissimilar to the false eyes found on butterflies and moths, in the lower angles made by the intersecting stripes. And while the stripey bits darken the rest of her fur is getting lighter, almost ash gray.

My brother revealed over the weekend a number of people had asked about the availability of any more kittens and he had told them, "After X (totally arbitrary) amount of time, too much bonding had taken place and it is no longer possible to break up the group," which is his way of justifying his attachment to the increasingly exotic Paribanour. As to hosting four cats, apparently Bartleby suddenly doesn't count anymore since she has decided to live outside (where she'll sit and watch from three feet away while a crow or blue jay steals her food. She's well-named).

On a side note, it seems Scheherazade is coping well with her new family. The one with the little girl, another cat and dog. She's eating and playing normally, gets along with the cat and, best of all, sleeps with the dog. Which is nice to know.

But I'm still happy Paribanour is staying.

Weather . . . Or Not

Tropical Storm Andrea has passed us by but a trailing spiral arm of wind and rain is bearing straight down on us.

Our Tornado Watch, which was supposed to expire at 11:00 a.m., was temporarily upgraded to a Tornado Warning after a waterspout was spotted on the surface of the Gulf due west of us. It moved north by northwest and was expected to make landfall a couple of counties away (where, if it survives the changeover to dry land, it will officially be a tornado) so the warning was reduced to a watch again but now extended throughout the day. Another tornado has just been reported on the ground in Belle Isle off to the east.

(Our tornadoes/waterspouts tend to be smallish thanks to the temperature shear effects of the land/water boundary.)

Our Flood Warning is in place at least into this evening. No one is giving an exact expiration time. The canals are quite full and many low areas (swales and ditches alongside roads and in highway medians) are already under water which is no surprise considering the intensity of the downpours despite their sporadic nature.

We're also under a Lake Effect Wind Warning through tonight but I find that hard to take seriously since most of the winds are southwesterly off the Gulf trailing Andrea and Lake Okeechobee is over a hundred miles away to our east.

Once again the worst of it seems to surround us while we get off relatively lightly.

My brother just went out to buy more cat food. Bartleby, who spent last night perched on her lawn chair in the pouring rain, has at least been convinced to come into the garage to eat.

Rainy Day Observations

Apparently, the weather folk were serious about Rainy Season this year. It's been spritzing on and off for three days now, the lame tail end of the monster storm system that's been tearing up the rest of the country, and shows little sign of stopping soon.

This morning I spent two hours flaying mangoes. There are still a dozen left on the counter and I'm running out of airtight containers. My brother takes a half pint container with him to work every day although he almost always brings back leftovers. Almost every day lately my breakfast has consisted of a bowl of cubed mango with blueberries and chopped strawberries usually augmented with juice, a slice of cantaloupe and a chunk of buttered bread or an English muffin. We're testing to see how long it takes before even the perfect breakfast becomes monotonous and I'm betting we'll still have plenty of mangoes left when it does.

The kittens have discovered bugs. Flying ones make them crazy and they will run heedless across the house jumping blindly in their attempts to catch one on the fly, as it were. They've also discovered, now that they're about 2/3 mom-sized, they can "play" with mom like they do with each other (meaning kicking and biting and throwdowns that would make the WWF proud). Last night they chased her all around the living room. She leaped up on the coffee table at full speed, hit the slick and glossy Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, slid completely across the table and back onto the floor where they tackled her. She's developing a shell-shocked, slightly haunted look in those golden eyes.

Mittens has also learned the phrase, "Naughty kitten!" means "Get your fuzzy little butt off the counter/toaster/stove right now!" especially when accompanied by a Serious Glare. Sometimes the Glare alone suffices, but only if I'm right in her face. Paribanour doesn't climb forbidden objects nearly as much.

This morning, both kittens squeezed onto the kitchen windowsill and sat with their noses pressed against the glass while a rain-soaked blue jay perched less than a foot away in the bougainvillea and taunted them.

Meanwhile, Bartleby has taken to living perched on the top of the back of a lawn chair under the live oak where it's mostly dry. She has a standing invitation to move back into the house but only comes down for food and drinks.

Premonitions

Hurricane Season officially began today.

We've been pretty cavalier the last few years in our preparations to the point where I'm not sure exactly how old the water jugs in the pantry are although I am of the opinion they're probably past even my relaxed concept of expiration dates. And we've been letting the stockpile of pasta and canned goods slowly decline as well.

Something about this year feels different in an undefined, and probably undefinable, way. It's just a feeling both my brother and I have that we've been lucky the past few years and should not become dependent on that luck.

So . . ..

My brother has put out several large sheets of plywood we can use to board up windows, if necessary. They're stacked up by the corner of the lanai, which is where they'll most be needed but also because city code enforcement objected to keeping them on a side of the house visible from the street. (Priorities, people!)

We'll make sure the propane tank is filled. We'll refill the jugs with fresh water. We'll continue our normal food purchase routine but every time we buy a non-perishable item we'll pick up one extra for the reserve. New batteries are probably a good idea, too, although we have hand-cranked radios and lights.

Of course, the more prepped up we become the less likely we are to get a real storm which is fine because a few extra boxes of pasta and cans of tuna are a whole lot cheaper than a new roof.