QUANDABUS

Q: How is this cat misbehaving in this photo?

This looks like a satisfied cat, now, doesn't it? Emmy was helping with dinner last night (pumpkin ravioli with brown butter sage sauce, tilapia, roasted balsamic broccoli and potatoes). Maybe it is because the weather is cooling, but she is staying very very close these days. She spent a good bit of this morning lolling in my lap. Perhaps my judgment of her as not-a-lap cat has more to do with the availability of laps. In my current desk configuration, I am usually perched on the edge of my seat, as if I am about to get up (and I am likely to).

Days later. Turns out Emmy IS a lap cat. And I do need to 1) sit still more often and 2) make appropriate accommodations for her. In many chairs, my feet do not sit firmly on the ground so I can't comfortably support a kitteh, meaning said kitteh will slide off. 

Logan Pearsall Smith is pretty funny. Yes, he is a bit arch and archaic in his writing, and perhaps his view is a bit obscure as well, but I thought this was an interesting tidbit, among many, given that this was published in 1939. He was born in 1865. 

There are few human beings more detestable to me than spoiled American children, who, full of their own importance, demand continual attention, and are the ruin of all rational talk among grown-up people. But my hatred of these noisy little monsters is — or at least it ought to be — tempered by the recollection that I was in my childhood one of them myself, ... which my American parents would, of course, have done nothing to abate."

This was observation was occasioned by his preaching Quaker parents having been invited to Britain to do their thing in some mighty fine houses, as some of those Brits were wont to have. I wondered if this all had to do with the Second Great Awakening, but evidently that movement was much earlier. Smith is pretty funny on the Quakers. Also of interest, before I leave the topic for today, Smith's sisters Alys and Mary were married to Betrand Russell and Bernard Berenson, respectively.

Reading. Cooking. Listening to some music. Worrying. That's what I'm up to. My schedule is such that I find it difficult to post here, although I think about it quite often.

Random thoughts:

It is nearly impossible to stay asleep through a fresh brewed pot of coffee. (If I am not up before she is, M's morning ritual often creeps up the stairs, knocking on the need to get on with the day.)

With the bells on her collar, living with Emmylou (and to a lesser extent Cooder) is like having rattlesnakes around, with that warning sound emanting from random places at random times.

I have been around the house quite a bit awaiting some possible developments on the employment front. I did decide to take Albert for a short walk at the reservoir bike path the other day.

Proof that fall is a-cumen.