Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Aqaba Thomas, Full Moon Kitty

Three in the morning is good writing weather. Sleep evades me, the room is flooded with moonlight, and Aqaba Thomas, the Cat Unexpected, is sitting on the window sill, silhouetted in the silver light, as still as a shadow. Fifty meters from where he’s sitting right now, he was attacked by an animal in the woods, nearly killed, and Aqaba may or may not be thinking about this right now. It was a full moon the night he was attacked, and I wonder if the moon triggers memories of that morning.

I drift towards sleep, not quite there, not awake, and listen to Wrex snoring. The night is silent except for this sound, and a moment later, sleep flirting with me now, Aqaba jumps up on the bed, purring loudly, and I pet his head, finger and thumb on the side of his face then brushing back as he pushes forward. I do this until he starts to slobber, and now I have a cat sleeping beside me, a warm spot near my ribs, and I can feel the purr.

At no point in time during the twenty plus years that I’ve lived here did I think a cat could survive living in my house. Abbi Gale the Cat from Hell came with me, and disappeared. Wakita, a stray who wandered up tried to survive Sam, Sam, The Happy Hound, but he, too, went missing. Sam wasn’t interested in sharing space, or a yard, or a planet, with a small mammal. Sam treed the neighbor’s cat, Climber, and would have waited at the base of the tree until one of them died of starvation. I intervened but Climber stayed in the tree for another hour. Cats know which dogs mean it.

So twenty years passed without a cat here. I found a dead cat in the woods when Sam was still here, buried the body outside the fence, and never spoke a word of it to anyone. My neighbor’s never asked, and I assume they realize that small mammals in the woods are living on borrowed time. Climber disappeared one night, and I still miss him. Climber was the cat who was in the well house with me when I took the pressure switch off and water sprayed out everywhere. He never quite trusted me after that because it was cold that morning.

An orange cat appeared in the front yard a decade ago, and was gone the next day. That made me miss having a cat all over again. Cats are different forms of energy than dogs, just like a female dog is a different form of energy than a male dog. It’s like sharing time with a woman over sharing time with a man. Even if you’re just hanging out with the woman, and physical intimacy isn’t an option, the energy they bring to the room is different. I’ve been tree cutting with two different guys in the last week, and miss the woman I once sawed with, many years ago.

Aqaba stops purring and sleeps now. I’m going to get up and write, but sleep ambushes me, and when I awake it’s past five. Wrex thumps his tail once or twice, waits for an invitation or some sign I’m awake, then joins me, laying down so as to miss pushing the cat. Wrex is like that. He has manners and won’t invade personal space. He gets belly rubs before we get up. It’s his ritual.

Breakfast for everyone, even me, and then writing. One meter southwest of where I sit, and one meter up, a cat sleeps in his tree. Aqaba is a good Muse, and he knows it. He guards the words as I write them, never bats them around, even though he would like to, and needs to, sometimes, and he sleeps through the sound of the keys tapping. The moon has set, the morning dark until the sun rises in another hour or so, but Aqaba cares not at all. He’s home. He’s safe. And he knows it.

Take Care,

Mike

Aqaba head butting Wrex
Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Aqaba Storm Cat

At midnight, the first rumble of thunder sounded off to the east. Drifting in and out of sleep, another boom, this time to the south, echoed through the woods, and I felt the power of the storm deep inside my body as the windows rattled. Now, it was building, scudding towards us, and would soon arrive.

By the time I released the dogs at four, the main body of the storm was coming fast. They came in just as hard rain began to fall, and breakfast was served with the background noises of thunder and rain.

Aqaba went to the door, stood up on his hind legs, and told us the storm was arriving. This cat has a thing about weather. He meows at us all, telling us it’s raining or a thunderstorm is coming. This morning, Aqaba is vocal, very vocal, which means the weather is going to be bad. This is one cat who spent months out in the woods and rode out Idalia, a CAT One hurricane. People dismiss category one hurricanes because they’re inside houses and safe. Aqaba was in the woods and on the ground. There’s a very good reason this cat is interested in the weather.

I opened the front door to look out into the darkness, and Aqaba got close and peered out, too. Rain pounded mom’s wheelchair ramp, which was the same spot where Aqaba first approached the house, walking up the ramp as if he wanted in. After six months inside, it must be strange to look out, and see the world that once nearly killed him.

Aqaba retreats turns and then looks again from a safer distance. This is Aqaba’s home now, not the house, but inside the house, and the rain that once drenched him, is now held at bay.

Aqaba wants to be a meteorologist, but he wants to do it from the comfort of his own home.

Take Care,

Mike

Posted on by Mike Firesmith · 1 Comment

Metric Fried Rice and Cooler Repair.

A friend of mine who just went through surgery won’t ask for help, won’t ask anyone to take out her trash or play with her dog, or bring her food, so her friends just do it. I called her and she said she was fine, the day after the operation, so I knew to go over and play with the dog and bring food.

The dog is a massive lab with muscles, and he likes to fetch and pull the rope toy until I make him sit to give it back. He’s used to playing with a woman that barely pushes one hundred pounds. I’m used to playing with big dogs. It doesn’t take me long to wear him out and wear him down.

But I got ahead of myself here. First, there was food. Let me say right off the bat, I despise living in a country that still uses gallons, quarts, and pints. I drop in on a Chinese restaurant and order a quart of shrimp fried rice and two egg rolls. The young woman behind the counter reaches over to a shelf then hands me a bag with food in it and smiles.

I do not smile back. I do not understand what just happened.

I look into the bag, and there are two egg rolls, but the container of fried rice is small. I explain to her this is not my order. She doesn’t understand. I explain I want a larger container of fried rice. She looks at the paperwork on the order and says something that isn’t English and I don’t understand it.

Meanwhile, because this isn’t nearly weird enough, there is a guy wearing a toolbelt trying to repair the cooler they keep drinks in. By the way, it is warm in this restaurant, and while not uncomfortable, it’s easing into that territory. The guy with the toolbelt is melting down. He can’t fix the cooler. How do I know this? Because he’s on his cell phone and has it on speaker.

“I can’t fix this, I don’t know how,” he says loudly.

“Replace the module going to the condenser,” the voice on the other end of the line says.

“I don’t know what that is,” the repairman laments. And he takes pictures of the guts of the cooler and sends them. They are basically walking him through the whole thing at a volume. But he sounds more than a little freaked out. I’m not sure why. This thing isn’t going to explode if he cuts the blue wire instead of the red wire, is it?

Is it?

Meanwhile, the young woman is floundering. I ordered what’s in the bag, so the bag is mine. She rings it up. No, it isn’t mine. Finally, she asks if I called in and I tell her no. She asks me if I ordered the same thing. I explained, yes, I did order shrimp fried rice, but a bigger container. Quart, not pint. And why, why on earth would anyone who is running a restaurant use these units of measure? But here we are.

Now. We have established what is in the bag is not mine. It is not mine because it is not what I ordered. The container, no matter what units are being used, is too small.

“Yes, too small,” the young woman smiles at me, and quite frankly, I never want a young woman to smile at me while using those three words.

And go.

A woman comes in, and it is her order. The young woman and I exchange a glance of relief. More customers come in, and another order isn’t right. The cooler repairman wails to his phone like a blues singer on a Saturday night. It’s getting warmer.

My order is placed on the counter. I look inside. It is exactly the same as the previous mistake.

It’s a pint, not a quart.

I could just cut and paste the previous section and save some trouble, but the manager wades in. Suddenly, she’s using the words “large” and “small.” Okay, large. Let’s ignore the menu and go from there, shall we? Meanwhile, this is going to add to the bill, which I have already paid with a card. I have enough cash to pull it off but have to wait. It’s getting warmer. The cooler repairman is getting excited because whatever it was they had him do isn’t working.

“The machine is unplugged,” I tell him. And by the way, he moved the cooler to work in it, and underneath that thing is a mat of black and ugly gunk that I would set on fire before I touched it.

My order is ready. It’s right. I’m gone.

But the whole ordeal cost me thirty minutes. What it did was negate what I was trying to avoid, and that’s the lunch hour rush traffic. I get stuck for ten more minutes trying to get out of it.

Let me be clear here. This isn’t an issue of having a woman from another country not being able to function at her job because of language. Yeah, that was a problem, but quarts and pints are stupid. Why use such things? Why do we live in a nation where two people cannot communicate the size or volume of anything because we’re still using units invented when a King was telling us we had to do it?

Take Care,

Mike