two things
It starts with a cat.
A kitten, actually, who showed up on my porch on a Saturday night. I was sitting in my living room when I saw something on the low retaining wall just outside my window. I went out to investigate, and it was a kitten. She saw me and immediately started yelling at me, so I came over and petted her. She reared up and started making biscuits on my chest, purring loudly, and then tried to suckle on my chin.
She was four months old (so I thought), skinny, filthy, and hungry. I gave her some chicken that night, which she wolfed down.
She came back the next night and spent an hour outside my sliding door, yelling to be let in. The next night, I let her in, and she immediately settled onto my lap and kept purring. I got some kitten food the next day.
The morning after that, she showed up at my bedroom window at 4:30 am, yelling to be let in.
Finally realizing that she was actually a stray, I got a litter box and let her in the house.
Her name’s Merrill. It turned out she was six months old, not four, and we had a miserable weekend of her being in heat before I managed to get her spayed. Cleaned up, she’s soft and lovely, mostly grey tabby with orange ticking on her legs and a smudge of orange on her head. She loves fuzzy mice and sleeping next to my head.
So that was the first thing.
The second thing is the house.
Drive a winding road through greenery, towards the Sound. Park by the street; this place takes commitment. Find a winding staircase that takes you down by a fern-hung stream.
Keep going. No, farther.
My new house is the bottom level of a century-old house, perched just above the Sound. It’s an odd space, all low ceilings and strange support beams. It has a little deck, big windows overlooking the water, and it turns out that it’s absolutely perfect.
The place where I lived before was a big apartment complex, with people coming and going at all hours, shouting at each other in the parking lot at 2 am, and security lights that illuminated my bedroom brightly as sunrise all night long. I really tried to like it, but I completely failed.
I wasn’t expecting to move, but I am so happy that I did.
So that’s what’s been going on with me. Writing is still going slowly if at all, but now that I’ve moved, I’m feeling better about everything. I suspect a few more changes are on the horizon, so we’ll see where they take me.
