Tuesday, May 20, 2008

where the wild things are.

This is Dunquin (so named because she is the color of the wintry skies in this little town in Ireland I visited a few months before I got her). (On a side note, Sarah Vowell talks about parentheses in Take the Cannoli - "I tell him yeah," she writes, "I have a similar affection for the parenthesis (but I always take most of my parentheses out, so as not to call undue attention to the glaring fact that I cannot think in complete sentences, that I think only in short fragments or long, run-on thought relays that the literati call stream of consciousness but I like to think of as disdain for the finality of the period)." This explains me perfectly, and I love her for it. Anyone who gets my emails regularly knows I have a problem with parentheses. Back in my software days I was often told by engineers that I'd make a great LISP programmer.)

So Dunquin likes to sit in things, she loves to be carried around upside down, and she likes to hunt. Back before she lost her hearing (I will advise you to never, ever go to this vet), she was a terror, and she hasn't slacked off much. Last Mother's Day she brought in a butterfly bigger than her head, and when our relatives were visiting from Venice she trotted up to them with a small bird. Such a gracious hostess.

Yesterday morning (way too early), I woke up to a mad scramble in the corner of the bedroom. She has a toy mouse I'd seen there recently, but when I looked over, even in the dim light I could make out a long, dark tail. That particular toy mouse doesn't have a long, dark tail. Drew jumped out of bed and rescued the garter snake, which was over a foot long. Just after he left for work, I walked past the bedroom door and saw her pawing at the rug before she looked up at me, guiltily. I called Drew in the car, and he turned around and came home. (I know you're rolling your eyes, but seriously he was only two minutes away. And I love snakes and save spiders on a daily basis - but I don't think I can handle the INJURED snake. I could never be a doctor - I couldn't even look when they were taking my blood last week.) He walked in and threw back the rug, and there was the poor snake, all curled up. He took it back outside, and made sure it got away safely, and I temporarily grounded the cat in the house. After a few hours she was so miserable, I caved (won't I make a stellar parent?). And less than five minutes later, I hear a shrieking sound and she comes trotting in with a VERY LARGE BIRD in her mouth. I caught her before she could drop it, tossed her out onto the porch, and made her open her mouth. The bird didn't even hit the ground - it just flew away. She's now trapped in the house indefinitely. Enough with the wild kingdom, yo.