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Rooms that I once lived in, rooms that I've since left
I have internet that does not come from a wireless hotspot! The Verizon tech arrived to set up the internet almost at eleven o'clock on the dot, left about two hours later, the internet actually turned on at a quarter to five. At first it moved with the sluggishness of non-ironic molasses and I had to spend further time on the phone with tech support, but so long as I am not directly uploading or downloading any files it appears to function at a decent work-and-amusement-enabling speed. (I miss my account with RCN. They do not service the street on which I live. I did not quite realize until I moved to Somerville how weirdly gerrymandered the phone service in this city is.) I slept an hour last night and feel very shaky, but I can stream all the movies from TCM now.
Yesterday was a ridiculously productive day. After staying up all night to write Calormene fic while listening to Bill Laswell and Coil, I fielded a surprise repair visit from the property manager, made my PT appointment, visited the bank, actually remembered to eat lunch for the first time in several days, made a major dry-goods grocery run to Market Basket, retrieved some items from my cousins' place, visited the library, did a full day's worth of Nokia and somehow stayed awake.
Outside of Verizon, today was mostly work and lots of phone and e-mail conversation with the property manager and with cat rescue services because there turns out to be an abandoned cat living in the morning glories by the front steps. (We have a plan in place. In the meantime, I am feeding the cat. He is talkative, affectionate, hungry, lonely, and keeps trying to get back into his former apartment, which is heartbreaking.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks met him on Saturday night.) There were some very loud leaf blowers. I did manage to get out in the evening to Walgreens and the Winter Hill Bakery, the latter of which furnished me with a loaf of incredibly delicious Portuguese sweet bread and some cookies whose names I don't know, and on my way back ended up in a really neat conversation with a woman about my age and her four-year-old son whom I met while photographing two emergency electrical switch boxes in the back of a brick building. I passed out as if stunned for an hour after dinner and ate some coconut-milk ice cream when I woke. Hestia leapt joyfully into an empty cardboard box in the closet which then overturned on her, trapping her like an extremely grumpy hermit crab. Rescued, she promptly leapt into another box as if to show it who's boss. I still need to write about a whole bunch of things. Have some pictures until then.
Yesterday was a ridiculously productive day. After staying up all night to write Calormene fic while listening to Bill Laswell and Coil, I fielded a surprise repair visit from the property manager, made my PT appointment, visited the bank, actually remembered to eat lunch for the first time in several days, made a major dry-goods grocery run to Market Basket, retrieved some items from my cousins' place, visited the library, did a full day's worth of Nokia and somehow stayed awake.
Outside of Verizon, today was mostly work and lots of phone and e-mail conversation with the property manager and with cat rescue services because there turns out to be an abandoned cat living in the morning glories by the front steps. (We have a plan in place. In the meantime, I am feeding the cat. He is talkative, affectionate, hungry, lonely, and keeps trying to get back into his former apartment, which is heartbreaking.
rushthatspeaks met him on Saturday night.) There were some very loud leaf blowers. I did manage to get out in the evening to Walgreens and the Winter Hill Bakery, the latter of which furnished me with a loaf of incredibly delicious Portuguese sweet bread and some cookies whose names I don't know, and on my way back ended up in a really neat conversation with a woman about my age and her four-year-old son whom I met while photographing two emergency electrical switch boxes in the back of a brick building. I passed out as if stunned for an hour after dinner and ate some coconut-milk ice cream when I woke. Hestia leapt joyfully into an empty cardboard box in the closet which then overturned on her, trapping her like an extremely grumpy hermit crab. Rescued, she promptly leapt into another box as if to show it who's boss. I still need to write about a whole bunch of things. Have some pictures until then.
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May one ask privately what the plan is?
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I am incredibly not impressed with his former owner.
May one ask privately what the plan is?
You can even ask semi-publicly: I'm working with Charles River Alleycats to surrender him to a no-kill shelter where he can be adopted. I can't take him in and neither can the property manager (who already has two rescue cats) and even if we wanted to let him become a kind of communal cat who lived mostly outdoors and slept in the building's foyer during winter or bad weather, one of the current first-floor people is allergic. Also, I feel he deserves a real home with loyal, affectionate people, not the kind who would kick him to the curb because it was too much trouble to do anything else. There are some logistics which make it a little hard to plan an appointment, like the fact that the cat does not sleep on the property every night, but I expect to manage it. CRA is sharing pictures I've taken of him with local animal control on the infinitesimal chance that he's really a lost pet with improbable timing, because that possibility should always be ruled out before proceeding with the surrender of a stray cat, but even my contact at CRA thinks he was abandoned. And also thinks he's beautiful, which is only fair.
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Yes. The first time we met, he followed me into the foyer and tried to encourage me to let him into the first-floor apartment. Until then, I'd assumed he was a night-roaming indoor-outdoor neighborhood cat who was just very friendly and interested in people. But he wasn't trying to follow me up my own stairs, as if he were tagging along wherever I went: he wanted entry to a specific unit. That was when I decided to feed him, because that was not behavior that made sense for a cat who had a home to go back to. The only way I could get him out of the foyer was to bring the can around the side of the driveway. When I talked to the property manager about him, she told me that he only started to be seen around the building after the first-floor tenant who was known to have a cat moved out. So we're double-checking for reports of a missing pet, but I'll be stunned if someone else claims him. He has a collar, but there are no tags on it. My mother suspected instantly that his owner removed them before dumping him. I suppose it is also conceivable that he was accidentally lost during the move, but then I can't imagine the former tenant not calling the property manager every day to see if their cat had turned up!
(The logistics of getting him would be a bit complex.)
I appreciate even the contrafactual.
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I can, because we've never kept numbers of property managers after we moved out of a place. Does the property manager have the owner's number, and have they tried it? Because if they're missing the cat, well, and if not they deserve a bad conscience.
Glad you're feeding him-- he's been alert and friendly and adorable whenever I've seen him, and I had no idea he wasn't just a gregarious indoor/outdoor neighbor.
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That's fair. At this point I have already been in multiple conversations with Donna by e-mail and phone, so the idea of not keeping her contact information did not occur to me.
I have the impression that some attempt to make contact was tried and failed, but I don't know the details.
Glad you're feeding him-- he's been alert and friendly and adorable whenever I've seen him, and I had no idea he wasn't just a gregarious indoor/outdoor neighbor.
I didn't see him today, but I put out food and water in case he comes home at an unreasonable hour, as why should he not. The allergic downstairs neighbor confirmed that she sees him every few days and, if either she or her boyfriend is entering or leaving the building, the cat always tries to dart past them and get into their apartment.
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Hurrah for internet! Hurrah for productiveness! Hurrah for the Winter Hill Bakery! Hip hip!
Nine
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I don't think it should be difficult. He wants lots of petting every time I meet him and I have never heard him hiss or growl or snarl, which is more than I can say of Hestia.
Hurrah for internet! Hurrah for productiveness! Hurrah for the Winter Hill Bakery! Hip hip!
Now I just want hurrah for sleep!
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Yay TCM streaming!
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There is the slimmest of chances that he is a lost housecat rather than a forsaken one, but he would have needed to get lost in this area at the precise coincidental time that the former first-floor tenant who was known to have a cat moved out (after which a cat magically appeared in the neighborhood, sleeping beside the front steps of the ex-tenant's building and scratching at its doors). I've sent pictures to the local animal control just in case he matches the description of a cat reported missing, but the property manager really thinks he's the former first-floor cat. I met him this afternoon on the front steps where he tried once more to slip past me, with many loud mews until I petted and fed him. I can't give him a home, but I want to find him a loving one. People should not abandon their cats. I know they're incompletely domesticated predators, but that doesn't make it all right to throw them out on the street.
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I'm sure he has not been having the most wonderful time as a sudden stray, but he seems very good-tempered. The most obnoxious he's ever been with me was a determined attack of headbutting when I didn't pet him fast enough. He gets loud but not clawy about food. I'm hoping this holds through the stage where I have to put him in a carrier. I'm working with Charles River Alleycats, who are humane and adoption-oriented.
Yay TCM streaming!
Now I'll have even more movies to be behind on writing up!
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Your yesterday's fic was marvelous--congrats on a productive day!
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Hooray for the return of TMC, and proper, if slow, internet.
I have yet to read the Narnia fanfic, mostly due to personal exhaustion, but I like the premise. I've actually been stalking the Lion Hunt panels at various museums all over the world, ever since I saw the sign at the British Museum claiming that the rest were lost. In this case, lost seems to mean "Not in the British Museum", which, given their historical acquisition patterns is probably accurate. I'm looking forward to the fic!
May you have much joy of your new domesticity, self-boxing cats and all!
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I want to find him people who will treasure him. Nothing that I've seen of him so far makes me think it will be impossible.
And the bottom photo is wonderful.
Thank you! I really like how it came out, like a pair of complementary doors, almost: not quite ghost signs. I think you would have liked the people it led to the conversation with, too.
Your yesterday's fic was marvelous--congrats on a productive day!
Thank you! It was surprising but rather nice! I do not foresee today being as effective, but I have some things I want to do.
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Thank you. That is my hope. I'll feel much easier once I've gotten him to the shelter.
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Thank you. That's the plan. I strongly feel that he deserves a better grade of people. I understand that sometimes it becomes impossible to care for a pet any longer, but that's when you surrender it to the custody of the MSPCA or the Animal Rescue League or some other no-kill organization. That's sad, but it's not cruel.
I have yet to read the Narnia fanfic, mostly due to personal exhaustion
No worries. It isn't going to expire.
I've actually been stalking the Lion Hunt panels at various museums all over the world, ever since I saw the sign at the British Museum claiming that the rest were lost. In this case, lost seems to mean "Not in the British Museum", which, given their historical acquisition patterns is probably accurate.
Heh. Have you found others elsewhere? I'm most familiar with them in replica form in a classroom in Yale's Babylonian Collection, running like a border around the top of the blackboard and the rest of the room.
May you have much joy of your new domesticity, self-boxing cats and all!
Thank you!
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The building next door to my work has Assyrian style friezes, and is ringed all around with sphinxes. They are also now home to an LGBT shul, so I should go visit at some point.
Speaking of such things, they appear to have opened a blini and other Russian delicacies fast food place across the avenue from my work. I should probably send you a photostat of their menu.