Rainy Day

It's rainy so our male cat, Snookie can be periodically found hiding. He's afraid of the rain. We don't know why. His sister/wife Itsy is not-- like with most things she's quick to investigate and Snookie's default setting is to leap away and run for safety.

Snookie is the cat version of an Olympic athlete-- capable of 8 foot horizontal leaps and perfectly executed landings on kitchen cabinets where he really shouldn't be. We are regularly amazed at his athletic skill. Itsy however, is the cat version of a Corgi, and a rather stout one at that. Short legs, sturdy, she's muscled like a pit bull but doesn't seem aware of it. Snookie is the Alpha and is known at times to bully poor Itsy, who literally outweighs him by 50% but almost always capitulates.

It's fun to watch them play together though, as Itsy has learned to look him in the eye and "roar" like a lion. The sound of her roar is nearly imperceptible. It's not a "meow" and she only does it when staring directly into his eyes in a play session. Think of it: locking eyes from 8 inches away and very, very quietly; “Roar.”

So here is Snookie now, hiding under the furniture because it's raining. I manage to coax him out and say to Sheryl, "Good thing it's not a Monday." and Sheryl laughs because we're both Baby Boomers and know that song by the Carpenters circa 1971. No, not that Carpenters song, no not that one either, the other one. Yeah, Ok, maybe you got it right the first time, but it was long ago and oh so far away, so maybe you didn’t.

And me being me who just made the 1971 pop culture reference joke, has my brain stuck on the fact that Karen Carpenter was a world class drummer and I never knew that as a child because Misogyny. Or we knew it unconsciously but would only ever talk about Buddy Rich or John Bonham or Ringo Starr whom everybody had to say, “No really, Ringo is a good drummer, I mean . . . he’s good in context . . . I mean, did you know he’s left handed? I don’t think Pete Best was a better drummer and only got kicked out of the Beatles because he was better looking than everybody else in the band and all the chicks dug Pete and ignored Paul, George, and John. That’s just an ugly rumor.” But we didn’t talk about Karen Carpenter’s drumming because maybe it was too good.

What we did talk about was her anorexia. And because it’s raining and I have a brain that memorizes details and attaches to them randomly: I’m stuck on the fact that she never had a long and satisfying relationship with a man, even though that’s almost all she ever sang about. She was perfectionist to the max. She was never thin enough, her voice never perfect enough, and probably her drumming was never perfect enough either. I hope in some ways she did have happiness in her relationships of all kinds, that she knew how fucking good she was. How her voice really was perfect and six year old me, sitting on the kindergarten carpet fell in love with her the instant I heard it, and that never stopped. And she starved herself to death at age 33.

Snookie is hiding under a chair in the bedroom again, because it’s raining. Good thing it’s not a Monday. Itsy walks over to check on him and almost sub-audibly, Roars.