So about an hour ago we brought home the beautiful and much-awaited Beemer.
She was nervous about letting go of the kind ISPCA lady who’s been taking care of her for the past month. “If you decide you don’t want her…” the lady said, sounding wistful, and trailed off. But I’d say there’s little chance of that, unless Beemer gets into some unresolvable personality conflict with either Squeak or Goodman.
Right now Beemer’s upstairs in the bathroom attached to Peter’s office, with food, water, a kitty box, and a cat igloo to curl up in. When I saw her last she was hiding behind a downhanging towel, behind the towel rack and against the wall. She looks suspicious (and so would I if someone put me in a cardboard box, drove me away from a place that had become familiar to one that I didn’t know at all, and then put me back in the box and drove me to someplace else equally unfamiliar). She’s not terrified, or even unduly distressed, as far as I can tell; this is just one more in a chain of weird things that have been happening to her. We’ll give her some days to calm down and get used to Peter’s office before letting the boys in to see her.
Meanwhile something slightly unusual has happened. We’re having a day-long power outage — the ESB, the national power company, is doing transformer work nearby — and the fountain in the fishpond is off. This means that Squeak has been able to see the fish clearly for the first time. Three golden orfe, three shubunkins, and a little black Mystery Fish that slipped into the net and got thrown in for free — they dart around in the pond, in mortal danger, and don’t know that Death is eyeing them, Death with nasty sharp pointy teeth — well, all right, just a few teeth: Squeak has had an active hunting life — and drooling cat drool into the pond, making wackawacka noises. Whether he’ll work up enough enthusiasm to do anything about the fish, I have no idea. The fountain will come on again, with the power, around four, and probably put him off the whole idea.
Then again, this is the cat who interrupted a conference call with a German production company by bringing us a live (though very pissed-off) duckling from the pond behind the house, causing Peter to utter the memorable phrase, “Entschuldigen Sie mir bitte, wir habe ein Entenproblem.” (“Please excuse me, but we’re having a duck incident.”) I should know better than to assume anything where Mr. Squeak is concerned…
[tags]cat, fish, pond, shubunkin, orfe, duck, incident, German, production company[/tags]
