Ingredients: One 8-9 lb cat named Marshall who likes little rituals and routines. One neighbor who is deaf, and her VERY extended family (4 generations - between 3 and 8 people living there at any one time and they own at least four cars). Certain days the street cleaner comes -- if you're parked on that side of the street, you get a ticket. One kitty-gym scratching post by my front door. One front door comprised of 36 panes of glass.
I go home for lunch almost every day. It's a nice break from the office, and I get to spend some time with my cats. It's easier to park out front, so at lunchtime I enter and leave through the front door.
Marshall likes to jump up on the kitty-gym scratching post when I'm leaving - I call it "the kissy-place". If I tell him to go to the kissy-place, he jumps up for his kiss goodbye.
Last week, all of these things collided like the story of the Old Woman and her Pig. I was home for lunch and was ready to go back to work. I told Marshall to go to the kissy place. Just as he was jumping up, the deaf woman next door burst out of her house screaming at the top of her lungs - members of her family were outside and she wanted them to move their cars because the street cleaner was coming. That scared the life out of Marshall, who decided the kissy place was not such a great idea and went the opposite way. Through my feet. In order not to snap him in half and perhaps fall into/through 36 panes of glass, I elected to take a dive sideways onto my lounge chair. That gave my ankle one of the better twists I've had in a while. So tomorrow I get to see an orthopedic surgeon.
No moral, no point. Just seeing if I could put this story together coherently.
