Back in Vermont after an impossibly fast week away. One night in Cambridge, Mass. Six nights in Provincetown, Mass. One more night in Cambridge, just for the hell of it. Me mostly obnoxiously happy during all that, hanging about with friends.
Remembering what I like about Cambridge/Boston: life, activity, lots to do. Great people-watching. Decent Mexican chow. Plenty of live music. (Watched a set at a teeny club in Porter Square, a good band whose singer desperately needed time with an image consultant.) Tree-lined streets, gardens in full bloom.
Next morning, post-rush-hour, on the road heading toward Provincetown, remembering something I don't especially like about Cambridge/Boston: hellacious traffic. An accident well along the Southeast Expressway turned what would normally be a five-minute drive into 30 minutes of stop-and-go. Ah, well.
And then Provincetown, out at the very tip of the Cape. A sweet, wacky place, packed with big crowds of people at this time of the year, surrounded by water, beaches, wetlands, lighthouses.
Stayed with friends, G.&S., in their squat on the bay. Ate good chow. Relaxed. Endured daily television coverage of the tour de france (a fetish of S.'s).
G. returned to Cambridge on Sunday, S. followed on Monday, leaving me to relax, enjoy a day of perfect weather, feed kitties, etc.
So. Monday evening: me sitting on the sofa, shoveling down the evening meal, watching a DVD. The cats had been putting on a bizarre show with their litter box during the previous day or two -- spending five, ten minutes at a pop going through the motions of burying kitty waste, much of the time flailing at the wall or at the box's plastic lining, producing annoying sounds, getting nothing done. Often doing this at night, when nearby humans were attempting to get a little shuteye, free of bizarre, insistent scratching noises created by psychotic felines.
As I sat eating, one of the cats -- the saner, more approachable of the two -- starts flailing away in the litter box (positioned conveniently right next to the sofa). I attempt to ignore, attention on food and movie, until I am just about knocked over by a wave of stink -- some of the foulest, lung-burningest kitty poop stink I have ever had the bad luck to breathe in. I look over at kitty box, cat jumps out, races away guiltily. I stand up, look more closely, discover that for a change the cat has actually left something that needs to be buried -- a hair-raisingly long (much longer than anything that should ever come out of a housecat's body), poisonously aromatic bit of kitty toxic waste. So undilutedly aromatic that I just about hurled.
Disposed of it as quickly as possible, opened windows, attempted to return to food/DVD, trying not to inhale too deeply until sea air cleared out the stench.
This explains the cats' ongoing displays of strange, wayward motor activity -- their nervous systems have been brutally damaged by repeated exposure to whatever the hell it is that's coming out of them.
The good news: that was the only moment of trauma in the entire week. Pretty much everything else: obnoxiously wonderful. (No, really.)
[continued in following entry]
España, te echo de menos
rws 6:44 PM [+]
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