Sunday, August 4, 2013

Let a cat guide you



    The question that struck me as I entered my office was not how the cat got into the keyboard drawer of my desk. Cats are nimble. No, the question was: how did Gizmo—that's his name—contrive to put the keyboard up on the desk, out of the way, so he could nap. It had been on the drawer when I left the room earlier. Now the cat was in its place. Cats aren't that nimble.
     I had a hunch, and asked my older son, who is very solicitous of the cat. He surprised me, rather than teasing me or stringing me along or being evasive, as he is fully capable of doing, by just saying outright what had happened: he was checking something on the computer, the cat jumped up on the drawer and pawed around, looking as if he wanted to make himself comfortable. To facilitate that, my boy whisked the wireless keyboard out of the way so that Gizmo could settle down—albeit in a hard place—for a brief nap. Which is where I found him.
    Making the cat comfortable reflects good values on his part, and it pleased me. I didn't want to spoil Gizmo's rest, even for something as important as this post. Which is why there will be nothing in-depth today. Far be it for me to disturb a sleeping cat who, truth be told, looks very comfortable, despite a piece of hard oak as a pillow. Cats have a genius for finding comfort in the most unpromising places. A skill we humans could learn from them. We do not want a wooden pillow, but if all we have is wood, then wood will do.


Oh, the telephone. The AT&T dial telephone. I figured people would notice that. Five bucks on eBay. I just wanted to have one. Iconic. Beautiful, in its own right. And yes, it works, though it's better for receiving calls than dialing them, since most times you need to push button your way through an automatic switchboard.



2 comments:

  1. Yeah, the phone was the first thing I saw & I read & do understand your reasoning.
    The only part on most of those phones that breaks is the dial itself. One day it just won't rotate.
    Otherwise, the phone is nearly indestructible as the shell & handset are made of ABS, not any ordinary plastic.

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  2. My monitor lives below my desk, and I view it thru a glass pane on the top of my desk. Two of my last 3 cats have loved to lie on the glass so that I cannot see the screen. Their thinking seems to be, "How can you be more interested in the screen than in ME?"

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