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It was much darker at the time, don't you know?
With the exception of the night I spent at the train marathon, I have slept every night since the first of this month in the summer kitchen with the cats. They don't always turn in with me, but they are invariably in position on the futon when I wake: Autolycus at my shoulder, Hestia at my feet. The night before last, they switched up their usual routine so that I woke to find Hestia yawning and purring on the pillow beside me and Autolycus settled contentedly across my ankles. It has been very soothing even on nights when I feel terrible or when I can't sleep until after dawn. Last night was the first time this program failed. I had come home from physical therapy feeling exhausted and discombobulated, I had to run back out in the evening to vote in my local elections, I didn't have the focus to watch a movie I had been planning on. I showered early and read my way through John Griffiths Pedley's New Light on Ancient Carthage (1980). The air was suffocatingly muggy and the temperature climbed until it was just too hot to sleep under a blanket and Autolycus kept stepping on my face. He was pursuing small insects which were also intermittently keeping me awake. Hestia arranged herself on my feet, but there's only so much one little cat can do against an overheated environment and an enthusiastic bug hunter. At ten in the morning, I staggered upstairs into air conditioning, fell into the bed in Charlotte's room that used to be mine, and slept for three and a half hours of vivid, unlikely, unpleasant dreams. I really want to do something with my brain today. I feel existentially useless.
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I really appreciate it.
*hugs*
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Thank you. I know it is not Autolycus' fault that the world is full of exciting bugs and I don't sleep well in heat.
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Cloud also finds bugs very exciting, and to my consternation, her favorite thing to do with very large bugs (e.g. cockroaches) is to herd them toward me...
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She wants to make sure you're not left out of the hunt!
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Like the leopard seal with the photographer!
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You are not useless.
I recommend choosing air conditioning over cats tonight.
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Thank you.
I recommend choosing air conditioning over cats tonight.
I'm thinking I might have to. I set up the box fan when I got back from running an errand in Arlington Heights (on foot, in the heat, what was I thinking), but it's still pretty steambath down here. I hope they'll be all right without me. I am giving them fresh cold water out of the Britta pitcher frequently.
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How was Pedley's book?
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Thank you.
How was Pedley's book?
It's no longer the latest research, but it's sound and it appears to have become a form of comfort reading for me: it was the first academic material I read about Carthage that wasn't the Punic Wars in a Roman history. It's the collected first publication of seven papers presented at a small symposium in 1979, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology and its participation in the then-recent UNESCO effort to excavate, restore, and preserve the archaeological heritage of ancient Carthage; I picked it up originally for its opening article, Lawrence E. Stager's "The Rite of Child Sacrifice at Carthage." I did not realize until just now that the author has been, since 1985, the director of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, meaning he oversaw the discovery of the Philistine cemetery I was so happy to read about last week. At the time of the symposium, he had been directing excavations at the Commercial Harbor and the Tophet of Carthage since 1975; his paper is a short, solid survey of the evidence for child sacrifice versus other explanations for the urn burials of calcined human remains between the ages of birth and four years, with really interesting attention paid to instances of double interment (newborn plus older child, occasionally newborn twins plus older child) and the diminishing frequency over time of urns containing only the burnt bones of lambs or kids (interpreted to have been substitutes for the promised child). Other papers highlight aspects of Punic, Hellenistic, Roman, Vandal, and Byzantine Carthage, everything from urban planning in different eras to the defenses of the city to studies of its monuments, mosaics, and economies. I hadn't looked at it in a while and I don't have access to my own college-era copy at present, but I thought I remembered giving a copy to my father some years ago and fortunately I was right; as far as I can tell, it all holds up. I'd say it's worth your time.
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Glad to help!
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Thank you. That is the decision I've had to make: I was bitten by too many small flying insects while writing downstairs with the cats earlier this evening. I still feel like a bad cat parent. Autolycus literally flung himself into my arms the last time I went down.
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I appreciate it. The sea-dreams, however weirdly mixed with improv theater or trust exercises, were a distinct improvement.
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I have shut her out of the room a time or two, but it makes me sad, as I expect it did to abandon your little cats, however hot it was and however annoying the hunting.
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Exactly that! Only it is usually Autolycus who uses me as a lookout post-cum-launch pad while Hestia attacks the windows. They work in pairs.
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If Saffron could split herself into two cats for better efficiency both in keeping me awake and in chasing bugs, I am sure she would do it.
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