It's hot. Hot and humid. Actually, Alabama weather is just fine for Alabama, but we tender Yankees tend to wilt up here in the rarified clime of Upstate New York when the temperature gets too high and there's too much moisture in the air.

For all of you who think "New York" means "New York City"--well, come visit me sometime, in Upstate. I've been in north Georgia and northern Alabama--upstate looks far more like that, and acts far more like that, than anything you'd see heading downstate to The City.

Hillary Dickdeath will run for Senate downstate, and us upstaters will all be amazed that this corrupt, disgusting ice queen could possibly win. Downstaters will feel the power of the demo-commmunists.

Back to a far more pleasant topic: watering the cats in a time of heat and humidity worthy of the southernly states.

Allow me to let you in on what really isn't a secret. Cats don't much appreciate being watered. They have some sort of hereditary somberness that does not permit them enjoying what they actually do enjoy. You wouldn't think cats would be dour Scots Presbyterian by nature, but damn, they do Have Their Dignity.

Dogs I think are rollicking Irish. Cats aren't. I suspect cats are more a mix of Chinese with the spice of a mix of Cockney, Croatian, and alien from outer space than anything else.

What that means in real terms, is that I get bit, scratched, rubbed against (because cats ain't totally stupid) and purred upon... but I still get bit.

Fortunately for me, I am much bigger than most cats, and certainly bigger than Alexander (the great) Cat, and Chili Davis, the two felines who condescend to abide with me through this vale of tears, even if I'm not quite a worthy mortal. They're so sweet to do so, and all I have to do is feed them, feed them, feed them, and when they need it, water them, even though they bite me while they purr.

(All cats are female, even the males. Fact of life, I figure.)

I can understand this, believe it or not. They feel the water (a trickle only, sosze not to alarm them unneccessarily, the poor sweet tiny-brained idiots) and they cool down, and they bite, but gently so, mostly.

Then they go to sleep, a cat's main preoccupation in life, far as I can tell. I go to sleep as well, it being too hot for anything else, and lucky me if I don't have a huge scratch across my cheek, thigh, or mark of the little beastie on my forehead...

What gets me, though, is they do actually like this. They just have to pretend that they don't, as if there was some sort of Universal Cat Behavior Mode they must adhere to, or else be called bad names by other cats, not fortunate enough to be kindly swept under the faucet and wetted down.

Damn. It is hot, this 10th of June, year of Our Lord, One Thousand and Ninety Nine, in the last quarter of the last century of the last milliennum...

Whoops! Wet cat on lap! Gotta go,
Patty

© Patricia Neill 1999

---