Monday, July 03, 2006

Fred-at-window


Fred-at-window
Originally uploaded by tardigrade.
Grief! It has been too long! I have focused my energy to helping a friend get her work done for her thesis. It is now time for my stuff. I have a paper to finish, but it is getting there...

Fred, my old pal, loves to keep me company but I don't offer him any excitement up here in my small library nook.... but then again, he only has just so much energy for excitement. Do we, as mammals, have the energy when we get older but just can't get to it? Is it that our cells don't have the stuff to make the mitochondria to get us moving?

Sleep is good. My grandfather loved his dreams. He would wake from a dream laughing and then tried to explain the joke to my grandmother - who he had awakened from a sound sleep herself.... Somehow, the joke was not as funny in wake time. My grandmother would pat my grandfather and tell him to go get the punch-line again and re-tell it in the morning.... and then fall back to sleep.

Sleep. Cats are so good at it. Somehow even in Fred's advanced age, he can get into positions I wish I could. They drool when they sleep just like people.... Why, I am not surprised...

It has been exceptionally hot here. So, hot that Fred has had a hard time finding a good spot to sleep. He will find a spot, flop down, close his eyes - and you can tell by his ears that he is not happy... He will move to a new spot. There is a lot of agitation going on. Sometimes you can see it in the twitching back of a cat... they seem to be bothered by itchy things, too....

Mouse, his buddy, was so upset by the heat he thought perhaps the bathroom sink would be nice. He curled up there for a while - even tolerated the drip, and that was funny to watch - but he got the sink warm and so had to jump down and find yet another spot.... The endless search for a cool spot to lie down and sleep.

Sleep, Ernestine, my leopard tortoise, has a young male friend (also a leopard tortoise) courtesy of the Vet. His name is Jack. Jack has long legs and is shaped more like a football and is a very friendly guy. He loves Mouse the cat, but Mouse the cat does not trust a long-legged-variegated-mobile-rock heading like a beeline to him across the lawn..... EEEK!

Jack loves anything that is black and white or grey and white.... just like him. Ernestine stumps about eating grass and dropped fruit from the trees. then she takes naps.... under bushes where the soil is cool. And, jack goes to find her. He is young and doesn't know what to do with Ernestine. He understands she is something he should explore but he is confused. He tends to climb up the rocks and bushes around her. I will find him hung up dangling from branches just above her. I put him down next to her and in the afternoon I find them face to face or shoulder to shoulder tucked inside and asleep.

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