This and That, and a Follow Up

The birthday-related offers and discounts continue to roll in. A free pizza from Papa Gino's (by the end of the month), a free drink from Dunkin Donuts (good through January!), $10 off at Godiva (this month) ... The Container Store offers me 15% off my next purchase, which is tempting, but I may refrain: it's awfully easy to go overboard there, with all the fun things. I have the whole month to use it, anyway, so I don't have to decide this week. (Hmm, fun with a little birthday money?)
 
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I had an odd little realization recently. As they sometimes do, a song randomly popped into my head, and it was one from a movie, so I googled it and watched that scene from the movie. And then I thought about how when I was a kid, The Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music were each on TV once a year, and that was your only chance of seeing them, period. Weird, right? Remember when classic Disney movies were re-released in theaters every seven years?

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Another little light-bulb moment: it is of course not a pleasant thing to clean up anyone's vomit, but when it's someone you love, then the "poor baby" factor helps balance the "oh, gross" factor, in my experience.

When, on the other hand, it's the cat who is most often kind of annoying, and very loud, and she was sitting on the back of the couch, so you get to clean vomit off the couch, a cushion, and the wall down to the floor, well, nothing is balancing that. Yuck.

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A while back I brought up the question of what to do with Pan's and Harold's ashes, and as requested, I thought I should let you know what I decided. Suggestions included:

1. Bring them to Florida with me at Christmas and scatter them there.
2. Compost them.
3. Scatter them outside, under trees or in someone's garden.
4. Bring them to my aunt's and bury them in her "pet cemetery" in the back yard.

I've decided to go with #4. It's the house where my grandparents lived since before I was born (in fact, my great-grandfather built it), so it's very much a part of my background, if you know what I mean. It's got a big yard that backs onto a meadow, so it's pretty and peaceful. I don't know that I feel like, "Yes! The one and only perfect solution!" But it will do. I've thought on it for a while and it will do.

As for the other options, I don't compost or garden myself, and somehow it felt wrong to ask if anyone wanted to have these ashes for composting or their garden. Maybe it isn't weird, but it felt weird to me. And my building actually has zero dirt or green on the lot (though somehow weeds come up around the periphery anyway); the trees I may seem to park under are actually across the street. If we had anything here, I would probably do it, but we don't.

I do have one other cat that I buried, my Honey-cat, who died in 1998, when I was living in Charlotte. I was renting a house with a friend, and we buried her in the back yard. I don't often think of her there, but when I do, it doesn't hurt to think of her being there, even with me not knowing who lives in the house now or anything. And mentioning that may sound like I'm contradicting some of my own reasoning in this case, but I think what it boils down to for me is that as long as the decision feels right at the time*, it will probably feel right later. Hopefully.
*At the actual time of burying Honey, she had just died and I was miserable; but burying her seemed like the right thing to do.

Not that this decision helps anyone else make theirs, probably, but anyway, that's my plan.

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And let's not leave it on that note! Here is a super-cute zoo video about the friendship between a cheetah cub and a puppy.



Quote: "Cheetahs are ... incredibly fast scaredy-cats."