Sneakers has continued his rain of terror and my father has dutifully cleaned up piles of clothing left out so Sneakers upped his game. This morning he lept on my father’s bed, meowed waking my dad, and when my dad reached out to pet him, peed on the comforter.
Me: So, are you mad at him?
Dad: Not really. More jealous.
Me: Jealous?
Dad: Yeah, I can’t get away peeing everywhere like he does and at my age, I wish I could make a stream like he does.
Ah, the human prostate, nature’s timebomb.
My Roomba has become the 3rd pet in our household after Max the dog and Sneakers the cat. When he gets stuck on a stack of papers or pinned under furniture, the housemates know how to extract him, tap his clean button twice and have our robovacuum continue on his merry way. The other pets have also welcomed it into their hearts by having coping strategies beyond merely scattering should it come within 10 feet of them as they did when the Roomba was first acquired. The cat now blithely jumps to a higher surface and lets the Roomba go about its business. Max knows that the edges of his bed are sufficiently that the Roomba is stopped by the plush barrier and retreats to it when he hears the Roomba’s whirring.
Today, Max was a bit more splayed out than usual and the Roomba kept hitting his extended paws. Max would dutifully nudge over an inch, the Roomba would hit him again, and Max would rotate a bit more. The Roomba got Max to do two full revolutions before Max found a pose where he was entirely within the confines of his dog bed. The Roomba now had another role, dance partner.
The cat has a nonchalant attitude towards snow. He recognizes that it’s cold and to be avoided but seems to use his tail as a periscope in the deep stuff. My dog on the other hand treats the stuff as would the caveman materials scientist. He will pee in it and marvel as how he can carve a path through it. It’s the only time I’ve seen a dog watch itself pee. He seems to realize snows lightness but hops from place to place not like a kangaroo but like a blind person on a pogo stick. There are divets separated by gaps which form canine crop circles whirling across the yard near his favorite bark-at-nothing-in-particular spot. Most impressive is how he periodically stares at the snowscape, becomes one with the Matrix essence of it and lunges for something at the level of the actual ground. This process repeats itself maybe ten times and then he moves on to whirling dervish mode before resuming his nasal spearfishing.  Most impressively, he’s learned to wait on the walk mat to have the snow removed. If only he could repeat this trick when covered in water, mud, kitty litter, or groundhog fur.
At 2:00 AM, Monday, September 14, 2009 a blueberry cake died. It started off as a good cake, straight muffin mixed and true. The carrot cake recipe was pushed into service with heavy cream replacing yogurt and shortening for butter to make ends meet. Instead of carrots of most carrot cakes, this used blueberries, not the freshest but still a blueberry to be proud of. The batter was poured into a cake pan and the rest has been determined by forensic investigation:
Time to wake up late, hit the bakery, find something nice, slip it into my cake tin and make it look shitty so people think I made it. I’ve only done this once before, I think people could tell, but they were nice and lied to me.