A Thorough Bath Courtesy of the Small Cat

Hammett seems to have decided that my lack of hygiene is reflecting poorly on him, and so he has been licking me with great determination, including several sessions during the wee hours each night. Undaunted by my being 31 times his size, he tackles a few square inches each time he has a few free moments.

The diarrhea he had in his first week after being adopted has cleared up, but he still tends to have soft poop pretty regularly, which means he leaves a little brown smear wherever he sits right afterwards. I’ve gotten in the habit of rushing into the bathroom to mop his butt off after he poops, just as I had to do for Thelonious in her final weeks.

He also had a very smelly butt for several weeks because his poop wasn’t firm enough to fully express his anal glands, so Dr. Gordon expressed his anal glands last week.

In the course of that, Hammett got a little scratch next to his eye, perhaps when they put a hood over his head to reduce injuries to the doctor or technician. Dr. Gordon gave him a kiss on the top of his head and murmured comforting phrases. His eye itself was fine, and in the next day or two, the scratch healed up, but just recently, it has opened up again and seems even larger than it was to begin with, a red gash. He may have scratched himself. We will see Dr. Gordon again later today. I’ve been putting a hot compress on it now and then and it’s improving.

This past Saturday I went to a qigong class at Quan Yin, which I was hoping would help a lately aching knee and back. It was quite strenuous and is probably not the right class for me. There is a class on Wednesday, reportedly more gentle, that I may try.

After qigong class, I embarked on a long-dreaded chore, visiting Bed Bath & Beyond to buy a new shower curtain and a couple of other items. I always feel overwhelmed in those large stores, plus it often takes me absolutely forever to make the smallest decision, and I start to feel overly warm and sort of desperate and woozy.

I vowed not to spend all day mulling over any one item, and was very pleased when it took only five seconds to pick out a shower curtain (clear, so I can see what’s going on in the outer world) and five more seconds to pick out a couple of pillowcases (organic cotton flannel).

I selected a new comforter cover, also not too difficult a decision because they had only one line that was cotton and reasonably affordable. I’m sure Hammett will put a million holes in it in no time, as he has the existing comforter cover.

However, after that, I got hopelessly bogged down in the pillow protector department and there was much opening and closing of the packages that could be opened and closed, and starting over at the beginning in case I overlooked the ultimate pillow protector, and almost falling for “Treated with ULTRA FRESH” before remembering that means “Dipped in chemicals,” and plentiful agonizing over the various features. Finally, a selection was made and I raced for the checkout before any other consideration could arise.

On to Trader Joe’s to see if they had anything I should be eating. I got some potato chips recommended by my mother (the ridged ones in the red bag) and they were superior: extremely greasy.

I had plans to see a play that evening, preceded by burritos at Mariachi’s, and vowed not to eat beforehand so I would be hungry for dinner, but then the little voice said, “Surely you’ll still be hungry if you test just one potato chip,” and thus it was that I ended up keeping Tom and David and Lisa and Terry and Nancy company as they ate at Mariachi’s, though that was a step in the right direction, because usually if I plan to have a burrito, I have a burrito, regardless.

Lisa, David, Tom and I went to Intersection after Mariachi’s and saw Hamlet: Blood in the Brain, a retelling of Hamlet set in Oakland in 1989. I enjoyed it, and I will always see anything Sean San Jose is in, though I’m starting to think nothing will ever surpass their production of Dave Eggers’ Sacrament!, which I saw thrice.

Sunday was cooking day.

I recently finished The First Desire, a novel by Nancy Reisman. It was a bit writerly for my taste: filled with details that are supposed to make people say the book was “finely observed,” but that don’t sound like anything I’ve ever observed and thus merely seem to bog down the story. Overall, not enough happened for the number of pages read.

Now I’m reading Marian Fontana’s A Widow’s Walk: A Memoir of 9/11, which is the opposite. Her husband, Dave, a firefighter, was not even supposed to be on duty on 9/11. It was their eighth wedding anniversary and the start of a one-month vacation for Dave, who was still at the firehouse that morning, most likely waiting for his tardy replacement to arrive, when the call came to go to the World Trade Center.