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I dreamt a sailor's dream of me
At eight in the morning, construction with bandsaws and jackhammers commerced on not one, but two houses immediately adjacent to our own. The noise came right in through the windows, even the closed ones. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel and I immediately stopped sleeping. The cats may or may not have been asleep, but they certainly weren't thrilled about the situation. The entire house rattled. It went on constantly. Naturally, this afternoon we had to take them both to the vet.
This was already going to be a slightly complicated process, because they are now full-grown cats and no longer fit simultaneously into the carrier in which we brought them home when they were two months old;rushthatspeaks had agreed to loan us a carrier into which we would encourage one cat, which turned out to be Autolycus because he sniffed at it and then went inside to investigate of his own accord. Hestia, who had never before displayed any fear of doctor's visits, was so on edge from the construction noise that she fled to my room and took refuge behind the curtain of the window beyond my desk, knowing she could not be easily extricated without knocking over everything. Rob did so with infinite caution and gentleness, but then she clawed him and wedged herself underneath the futon. We had to lure her out with treats. And then we had to carry two unnerved cats out into a hot, noisy street, right past the jackhammers because it was the only spot on the street where Rush could stash the car, thank you, Somerville parking. Hestia was already emitting a series of small, distressed mews. Autolycus began to yell. I had never heard anything like it. I have heard him call from one end of the house to another when he can't find his sister or thinks he needs more attention now, but this was the sustained, heartfelt, gonging unhappiness of a cat with Siamese ancestry and it was heartbreaking. The good news is that the vet appointment itself was efficient and possibly even soothing: the rooms were cool and quiet and someone much defter at the process than myself clipped all of their claws, so that Autolycus no longer clicks when he walks and Hestia doesn't accidentally fasten herself to screens. (Usually we trim their claws ourselves, but Hestia has never liked it and this last time Autolycus hissed halfway through the first paw, so we thought maybe professionals for a change.) They were visibly calmer when returned to us. It lasted exactly as long as it took us to step outside into the heat again. And then we pulled up on the other side of the street from our house, and I ran inside to unlock all the doors so that we could move the cats as quickly through the jackhammer zone as possible, and a UPS truck pulled up and double-parked itself directly between the house and the car. So instead we carried the cats around the UPS truck, which was also hot and noisy, and released them from their carriers as soon as we had them inside, and the jackhammering and bandsawing did not in any way cease until five o'clock in the afternoon, but the cats took it a lot more calmly after that. Rush got their carrier back. They were a hero of the revolution. The UPS truck drove away as soon as we had detoured the cats around it, because I don't believe it was on the street for any other reason. Rob promptly collapsed upstairs with the air conditioner and I worked for three hours and then passed out on the couch. As I type, Hestia is sleeping in one of her nests in my office and Autolycus is playing on the floor with an industrial-strength rubber band, occasionally making noises to indicate that I should participate a little more in the cat-entertainment and a little less in the delectable clickety noise that he is not allowed to hunt. I think everyone is going to be all right. It was not the best afternoon, though.
Unexpected nice thing of the day: I had my prose style in Ghost Signs likened to Joseph Conrad, specifically An Outcast of the Islands (1898). I'll take it!
[edit] Second unexpected nice thing of the day: I got back from running a late errand to find thatladymondegreen had sent me the DVD of the Alloy Orchestra's Wild and Weird. I saw this program of shorts at the Somerville Theatre with ratatosk in 2012. I wrote about the four films that most impressed me at the time. I guess I should get around to the rest.
derspatchel and I immediately stopped sleeping. The cats may or may not have been asleep, but they certainly weren't thrilled about the situation. The entire house rattled. It went on constantly. Naturally, this afternoon we had to take them both to the vet.This was already going to be a slightly complicated process, because they are now full-grown cats and no longer fit simultaneously into the carrier in which we brought them home when they were two months old;
rushthatspeaks had agreed to loan us a carrier into which we would encourage one cat, which turned out to be Autolycus because he sniffed at it and then went inside to investigate of his own accord. Hestia, who had never before displayed any fear of doctor's visits, was so on edge from the construction noise that she fled to my room and took refuge behind the curtain of the window beyond my desk, knowing she could not be easily extricated without knocking over everything. Rob did so with infinite caution and gentleness, but then she clawed him and wedged herself underneath the futon. We had to lure her out with treats. And then we had to carry two unnerved cats out into a hot, noisy street, right past the jackhammers because it was the only spot on the street where Rush could stash the car, thank you, Somerville parking. Hestia was already emitting a series of small, distressed mews. Autolycus began to yell. I had never heard anything like it. I have heard him call from one end of the house to another when he can't find his sister or thinks he needs more attention now, but this was the sustained, heartfelt, gonging unhappiness of a cat with Siamese ancestry and it was heartbreaking. The good news is that the vet appointment itself was efficient and possibly even soothing: the rooms were cool and quiet and someone much defter at the process than myself clipped all of their claws, so that Autolycus no longer clicks when he walks and Hestia doesn't accidentally fasten herself to screens. (Usually we trim their claws ourselves, but Hestia has never liked it and this last time Autolycus hissed halfway through the first paw, so we thought maybe professionals for a change.) They were visibly calmer when returned to us. It lasted exactly as long as it took us to step outside into the heat again. And then we pulled up on the other side of the street from our house, and I ran inside to unlock all the doors so that we could move the cats as quickly through the jackhammer zone as possible, and a UPS truck pulled up and double-parked itself directly between the house and the car. So instead we carried the cats around the UPS truck, which was also hot and noisy, and released them from their carriers as soon as we had them inside, and the jackhammering and bandsawing did not in any way cease until five o'clock in the afternoon, but the cats took it a lot more calmly after that. Rush got their carrier back. They were a hero of the revolution. The UPS truck drove away as soon as we had detoured the cats around it, because I don't believe it was on the street for any other reason. Rob promptly collapsed upstairs with the air conditioner and I worked for three hours and then passed out on the couch. As I type, Hestia is sleeping in one of her nests in my office and Autolycus is playing on the floor with an industrial-strength rubber band, occasionally making noises to indicate that I should participate a little more in the cat-entertainment and a little less in the delectable clickety noise that he is not allowed to hunt. I think everyone is going to be all right. It was not the best afternoon, though.Unexpected nice thing of the day: I had my prose style in Ghost Signs likened to Joseph Conrad, specifically An Outcast of the Islands (1898). I'll take it!
[edit] Second unexpected nice thing of the day: I got back from running a late errand to find that
ladymondegreen had sent me the DVD of the Alloy Orchestra's Wild and Weird. I saw this program of shorts at the Somerville Theatre with ratatosk in 2012. I wrote about the four films that most impressed me at the time. I guess I should get around to the rest.
no subject
It's on Project Gutenberg. Also, thank you.
(I was really flattered. Conrad writes in dense evocative paragraphs and loved the sea.)
My profoundest sympathies to you and yours, whether two- or four-footed.
All mammals of the household appreciate it. (There exist some bugs of the household, but I don't care very much how they feel about jackhammers; anyway, Autolycus is hunting them as we speak.)
My mother and I once drove one Siamese and one domestic long-haired cat from Florida to Minnesota.
Yikes!
it was the tiny, tiny, eensy mew of the other cat that had us gibbering by the end of the day.
I can see that. I hope everyone has long since recovered from the experience!
no subject
We once had some kind of construction down the block that jarred the house so much that spiders fell from their webs (probably still better than jackhammers, because largely vibratory and bass-like), but mostly I doubt that insects mind one way or the other. Our cats also hunt them, whether inside or out. It's June bug season and I fear for the screens.
Thank you, my mother's cats did recover from their ordeal and after a few days of sulking regained their sunny demeanor.
The human parts of the trip will think long and hard about ever driving cats anywhere again, however.
P.
no subject
I missed Conrad in school, in the same way that I missed most of the Western canon after about the second century CE; I picked up Heart of Darkness on my own sometime in grad school, but I'm still way behind the curve. I like Freya of the Seven Isles (1912), an odd romantic novella with a tropical setting, and The Mirror of the Sea (1906), because it contains statements like this:
I have attempted here to lay bare with the unreserve of a last hour's confession the terms of my relation with the sea, which beginning mysteriously, like any great passion the inscrutable Gods send to mortals, went on unreasoning and invincible, surviving the test of disillusion, defying the disenchantment that lurks in every day of a strenuous life; went on full of love's delight and love's anguish, facing them in open-eyed exultation, without bitterness and without repining, from the first hour to the last.
I have actually read An Outcast of the Islands, but not recently enough to be able to talk intelligently about it; and I've read Nostromo (1904), because that happens to people who want to see if Ridley Scott was making any specific reference in Alien (1979). Otherwise, nothing. Now I feel like I should read a lot more!
It's June bug season and I fear for the screens.
We are having a similar problem, only it's moths on the other side of our screens. Hestia attacks them daily.
The human parts of the trip will think long and hard about ever driving cats anywhere again, however.
Understood!
no subject
We did the then-usual Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, and "The Secret Sharer." I remember liking the prose but not really the subject matter. I suspect that the class would have preferred the more romantic and fantastical stories, on the whole. I always meant to look them up. The passage you quote is wonderful. I see that I put Conrad in American literature above, which of course is nonsense; but I associate him so strongly with Hawthorne that it must have been a survey course of some kind.
Moths are greatly cherished here as well, but are currently in short supply. I sometimes feel that it would be better to just let or bring in a selection of insects, though the possible damage in that situation doesn't bear thinking of.
P.
That passage you quote is splendid.