October 17, 2010

Cats are mysterious. I like it when they get a stubborn idea in their head and it confounds me.

When our two cats were adolescents, wertperch and grundoon visited. I have an old house, from 1929, and it has quirks. We had put the cheap little metal hair catchers in the sink, because the old drain mechanisms were broken and the plumbing has some challenges.

While wertperch and grundoon were here, I kept finding the hair catchers out of the drains. I returned them to the drains, but after a while I wondered what, indeed, my guests had against hair catchers. Were these somehow offensive to them?

Then I found one half-way down a hallway and realized that it was not wertperch and grundoon, but the cats. Ah!

Another time I was sitting at the computer and I heard splashing, from the nearby bathroom. It started and stopped. I sneaked to peer in: black cat Boa was digging in the toilet. She had an air of determination, as if she would figure out this plumbing thing. She worked on that for a time period. I'm not sure what she learned.

Both cats know if we're packing. Boa circles and protests when I get the suitcases out, while Princess Mittens gets upset because Boa is.

If I am upset, the cats will "guard" me. Boa will sit on the corner of my bed facing the door and Princess will sit in that cat-ham position, all feet tucked under, in the doorway facing out. I notice, realize that I am feeling guarded about something and that the cats are being protective.

When I had influenza viral pneumonia, my chest hurt. The cats worried. Boa would sit on my chest and purr, and that was one of the few things that made it hurt less. It took two months to heal enough to return to work.

Currently the cats have something going with a doll. Not just any doll. I have china dolls. Grundoon and I and cousins played elaborate games with them when we were little. We made furniture and clothes and collected things for the houses. I wrote tiny school papers. I have strong packrat genes, so I still have all of it, even the cracker jacks books. Those were treasured.

The dollhouse is a set of shelves at the top of the stairs. When the Introverted Thinker set it up, she only used half the furniture that I had stuffed in to it, and she put the rest away. It is open and open to the cats. One of the dolls belonged to my grandmother and we have clothes made when she was little. But the doll that holds the cats' interest is named Kitty and was the one that I identified with the most.

The cats are carrying Kitty around the house. This morning she was down a floor and on the stairs leading to outside. The cats are allowed out in the early morning, when I crack the back door. There is a landing with the back door halfway down the basement stairs. A half-basement, I suppose.

I retrieved Kitty and returned her to the dollhouse. I haven't caught the cats carrying her around, but my son commented on them moving her a few days ago. I've retrieved her twice so far.

I'm not sure what this is about. The cats are mysterious. I hope they don't carry the doll outside to lose her but as always, I am interested in what they are doing. Why that doll? And why now? I wonder if the doll has something to do with me or with my daughter, but I do not know.

Some friends and I were at the park, throwing frisbees around when the universe took a deep breath and sighed. Afterwards nothing was the same.

***

That was a dream I had, once. I don't remember it any longer, but the fact that I at the time found it interesting enough to write down is quite cool. I wish I could remember it; if just a smidgeon of a fleeting memory of a feeling.

Some dreams are vivid in my mind as I wake up, only to fade and be gone by the time I get to the bathroom. Some dreams stay with me, clear and distinct, for days. Some even for years, but of course as time passes the details will be forgotten and only the outline remains; what I thought and sensed was important will run like a little video now and then, projected onto the back of my skull. It may not be important at all, and maybe what my mind was trying to tell me is lost in the details that dropped off. I'll never know.

I noded a dream once - one of the most important dreams I ever had - but I seem to have deleted it again. I don't even remember deleting it, which is rather odd. The dream itself was so significant that the decision to delete it ought to have been equally significant; some kind of realisation that I had come to terms with the experience with which the dream dealt. But I don't actually remember. When I looked for it in my nodeshare I even started to doubt that I ever posted it. If it hadn't been for some remarks from a couple of noders at the time I could probably have convinced myself that I never noded it at all (it was during the short period of time, I assume, when nodeheaven wasn't working properly).

I have been... suffering, I guess, from writer's block for a long time now. It started out with me getting severe iritis and not being able to read for months, feeling pretty shitty to begin with, and slowly progressing to a state of mind where I am unable to piece together all the ideas floating around in my head. My brain is always a mess of odds and ends that need tying up and sorting out, and usually, before, in the old days, back when, that mostly meant that a story swam into focus as I rearranged and combed the strands of thought and association. Not so now.

Often, these days (nights) I dream that I can't see. That's probably significant.

I have decided to write and post rambling daylogs with non sequitur pipelinks, just to force myself to put fingers to keys and words to the screen. Maybe, just maybe, something'll give.

Don't get me wrong: I'm still in a good place. I just wish that I could write again.