Old So What

  OMG my cat is bleeding to death!! But it was just some blackberry jam from breakfast…

  When I run the water in the shower for too long, the cat comes looking for me. (She’s afraid of water.)   When I’m late with her meal, the cat comes looking for me. (Just a friendly reminder as she passes by.)   When someone knocks too loudly on the front door, the cat comes looking for me. (Irritated at the intrusive noise.)   When she hasn’t seen me for a while, the cat comes looking for me… just to see that all is well.

  To not go near your front door, side or rear door for that matter. I do this by making a buzzer noise when she gets too close to any exit. I try to make the sound nasty enough to dissuade her, but not so bad as to scare her to death. It works, but you must be consistent in doing this.

  At this season of the year between Christmas and New Year’s Day…I wasn’t feeling too hopeful being old, mostly alone, and fast going through the little retirement money I had left. I was making my (and my cat’s bed—we share, or really, she allows me to sleep in my own bed on whichever side of it she is not occupying at the moment). I was right in the middle of thinking that things were on a sure track to get worse…. When I heard a sound seldom heard in the house, uttered by a creature who didn’t like humanity very much or so I thought. (Somewhere before we met, she must have had an unpleasant experience with someone.) Then I put a name to the little creature, and a name to the sound. My cat was purring. A very hopeful sign, don’t you think?

  The dumbest cat is still smarter than anyone else in the room. A cat may not always know what you’re saying, but she’s willing to listen.

  Svalbard does not allow cats because of the potential for them to escape their indoor homes, and run loose on the tundra; then perhaps stalk and eliminate the local bird populations, of which there are many during the warmer months, including: Common Cranes and Purple Sandpipers. Also, the island does not allow anyone to remain when they can no longer financially or physically take care of themselves. There are no services or care homes for the elderly, or any form of public transportation. I personally find this discrimination in its worse form:   Age-based instead of ability-based.   But would I want to live through the rough conditions, including carrying a gun to scare away (and try not to actually kill the polar bears unless absolutely necessary)? No thank you!   I pass on that one.  

  “You’re killing her.   She’ll get Diabetes…” How did this happen?   I don’t know. I was feeding her as usual.   But something went terribly wrong. Unexpectedly she blew up to monster size.   Gone was that scrawny little creature for whom I had felt so sorry; now, there was this mighty overnight presence. (She was so big that you could almost envision her getting her own food.) I’m killing her, I thought.   I’m killing this little huge creature.   I felt different.   I looked different, like an axe murderer? The whole veterinary office was looking at us as we exited, whispering behind our backs, I was sure. “You have to lose weight,” I said to her at breakfast next morning.    She looked at me solemnly.   She knew I wasn’t saying anything good.   There were no words of food mentioned. “It would help if you’d stop eating your sister’s food as well as your own, and no more 10 AM treats, no more 1 AM treats. ...

  About 36,000,000 older adults fall every year. Well, this didn’t just happen. And I think that the brain tries to eliminate the memory of pain, but to be honest, it actually wasn’t as painful as I would have expected. Now having said that… After I fell down the cellar steps, not because something in my body snapped or through lack of calcium, but simply because I reached for a banister that wasn’t as long as I thought, and I had at the time lost my sense of balance due to dehydration. I laid there thinking that I hope I could get up again quickly so I could forget the whole unfortunate event.   But no such luck because any movement on my part led to an unexpected sharp pain. I looked up and saw this spider looking back from near the stairs, surveying the scene and looking as if it was considering the possibilities. Before it got too far into its plans, I decided to get up. I couldn’t.   So, sitting up was the next option. No one was coming back to my house for...

  Every time he shows up, he trips over the cat. (I suspect the cat is starting to see the humor in this.) The cat weighs 28 lbs. and there’s a lot of her to walk around. He has left a lot of chores half done, a lot of jobs up in the air.  The Repairman, not the cat.  At last count, there is still some junk in the basement, from the previous owner, last occupying the house forty years ago, that he still has not carted out through the cellar door.   There are floorboards in the hall that poke up just enough to catch my shoe every time I pass them.   And the doorknob on the master bedroom door keeps falling off. (Although he has worked on it several times through the years.) He did unclog the sink, and a good job he did, too.   And he unstuck the bedroom storm window just in time for the change of seasons. He repaired the carpeted wooden window seat for my fur babies, but not before it fell off and broke my middle toe.   I’m not kidding because...