I see the bright and hollow sky
We are home. The Amtrak regional was late to Penn Station by an hour, with the result that we were late to South Station by slightly more than an hour, with the result that it was a little after three in the morning when we unlocked the front door and Hestia tried to make a break past my ankles, having evidently decided that in the absence of humans for a day and a half all was anarchy. I scooped Autolycus into my arms and he hooked his paws over my shoulder and purred. In the late afternoon we stopped briefly by the Subtle House of ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rosefox and sinboy and nonethefewer and Kit, who is now a year old and the lankiest baby I think I have ever seen, with dark-fringed blue eyes and creased little cheekbones; they let me pet the duckling-soft fluff at the back of their head and otherwise communicated in gestures and enthusiastic drool. We walked to the wrong subway stop on the way there, but since overshooting Grand Army Plaza took us past the Brooklyn Central Library and the Brooklyn Museum in rose-blue winter sunset, the architecture was worth it. I called my father to tell him that we were standing across the street from the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture; he grew up partly in the founding branch in Manhattan. We got out of dinner at Veselka (borscht!) just in time to discover how late we were going to get back. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel took the window seat on the train while I read Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016), but I saw an enormous sail of ivory-yellow moon floating over the Boston skyline as the taxi drove over the Zakim Bridge, huge freezing plumes of steam or smoke from what we think was the Mystic Generating Station on the far side of the Mystic River. Autolycus is sitting on a box in my office, grooming his extra claws; he makes his little smek smek sounds of satisfaction, which no other cat of my acquaintance does. This trip was worth all the snow.
rosefox and sinboy and nonethefewer and Kit, who is now a year old and the lankiest baby I think I have ever seen, with dark-fringed blue eyes and creased little cheekbones; they let me pet the duckling-soft fluff at the back of their head and otherwise communicated in gestures and enthusiastic drool. We walked to the wrong subway stop on the way there, but since overshooting Grand Army Plaza took us past the Brooklyn Central Library and the Brooklyn Museum in rose-blue winter sunset, the architecture was worth it. I called my father to tell him that we were standing across the street from the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture; he grew up partly in the founding branch in Manhattan. We got out of dinner at Veselka (borscht!) just in time to discover how late we were going to get back. derspatchel took the window seat on the train while I read Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016), but I saw an enormous sail of ivory-yellow moon floating over the Boston skyline as the taxi drove over the Zakim Bridge, huge freezing plumes of steam or smoke from what we think was the Mystic Generating Station on the far side of the Mystic River. Autolycus is sitting on a box in my office, grooming his extra claws; he makes his little smek smek sounds of satisfaction, which no other cat of my acquaintance does. This trip was worth all the snow.
no subject
(My late lamented cat -- also, in his way, a remarkable personage, though with the standard allocation of toes -- died several years ago, and I am not yet at a point where I want to seek out another cat, and for various practical reasons couldn't right now anyway. Thus I live vicariously through other people's cat-ownership.)
no subject
He is an enormous purrmonster and a mighty buttcat and I love him very much. He chose me when he was two weeks old and the runt of the litter who, I was warned, cried if handled by humans and was swiftly removed by the protective mother cat; I picked up the little soot-sprite ball of fluff with a tiny tadpole spike of a tail and minute fans of claws, it squeaked once, and then it fell asleep on me while the mother cat watched serenely. When we came back two weeks later, the runt who was not yet Autolycus ran to me and climbed its way onto my shoulder and purred a small but insistent thrum under my hair. Now he's huge and silky-furred and curls up with me to sleep at night. He is very important to me.
(My late lamented cat -- also, in his way, a remarkable personage, though with the standard allocation of toes -- died several years ago, and I am not yet at a point where I want to seek out another cat, and for various practical reasons couldn't right now anyway. Thus I live vicariously through other people's cat-ownership.)
I am sorry to hear of the loss of your remarkable cat. I'm glad it's all right for you to hear about other people's.