03 April, 2024

The Corona Diaries Vol. 110: Afterimage

(late September 2023)

(Watch the prelude.)

In the first couple days after Grabby’s death, Piper acted differently. I suspect she realized that her sister was gone. Piper seemed more sedentary, that is, she seemed to lie on the couch more instead of her usual peripatetic routine of hanging out there for a bit before wandering over to the cardboard bed and then to the cat house to grabbing a snack in the kitchen and then circling back to the couch. Grabby’s body lay wrapped in a towel inside a cat carrier, just as it was when I brought her back from the vet. My Frau was not quite ready to bury her.

Eventually we chose a spot in the yard and I dug a fairly deep hole to keep local carrion scavengers from digging Grabby up. We buried her one very warm evening, her loss hanging in the air just like the oppressive humidity. I now want to have a little marker made. She’s buried next to the deck and I’d like to have a wooden plaque hung on the stringer above her grave.

The Frau and I are adjusting to not having Grabby around any longer. We miss petting her extremely fine fur – the softest fur I’ve ever encountered on a cat. I no longer wake up to her staring at me when breakfast is a minute late. Her appetite was never satisfied and she would jump on our laps while we were eating or, at least, get as close to the human chow as she could and stare at it. Sometimes she’d drool. 

Grabby quickly learned the sound of a cat food can lid being removed and she came running into the kitchen whenever any can was opened, whether it was her chow or soup, tomato sauce, beans, or any other non-feline food. Now I open cans and look down reflexively to see Grabby at my heels but she’s not there.

She'd come into the bathroom when I was in the shower and hang out on the counter. Upon opening the shower curtain, Grabby would be there staring at me impatiently for, after I'd dried off and dressed, she'd jump on my shoulder and curl around my neck and I'd take her for a ride. She kept my neck very warm in the winter. The only way to get her off was the promise of treats. I still expect to see her there on the counter when I brush the shower curtain aside every morning.

Cat food and litter stocks are depleted at a much slower pace these days and I have less scooping and cleaning to do at the litter boxes. I call Piper Grabby by mistake sometimes.

There are just a million little routines and habits that have yet to change or disappear. However, I do not miss her farts. The lymphoma or whatever ailed her guts gave her the worst gas. She'd be lying on your lap peacefully relaxing and without betraying the slightest hint that she was trying to kill you, this miasma would engulf your head. Waving your hand in an attempt to disperse it was futile and only seemed to make it worse. And Grabby would just lie there as if nothing was happening, although I suspect she was gleefully chuckling to herself on the inside with feline schadenfreude.

For my part, I found myself going to the movies a lot.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my first visit to the cinema after Grabby’s death was to see this:

Cat Video Fest is just a bunch of people’s cat home movies/cell phone videos strung together. There were kittens sleeping on their backs with their little bellies exposed, cats attempting to jump on a counter and falling woefully short, cats spinning on ceiling fans, and cats casually knocking dishes and vases off of hutches. Plus much more.

Just good fun.

Next was John Carpenter’s classic commentary on the Reagan era, They Live. It screams the 1980s. I chuckled at some of the ladies’ Aquanet-drenched coifs and the men’s mullets. But it has that classic cinematic slugfest featuring our nameless drifter hero coming to blows with his co-worker Frank in an attempt to get him to put on the glasses that allow the wearer to see who the aliens are and exposes their subliminal messages.

A highly enjoyable blast from the past.

Perfect Blue is a bit more serious than the previous couple movies. It’s anime and follows a singer named Mima who leaves the music business to pursue an acting career. She is beset by a stalker and this is followed up by the murder of several people around her. Soon Mima shows signs of psychosis and the movie takes on strong Phildickian tones with questions of identity and what is truly real.

I’d rented this on DVD last year so it was nice to be able to see it in the theater. Not only did it look better, the big screen heightened the sense of the uncanny that this movie traffics in.

This is a wonderful little love story. I really enjoyed how the tension between the two main characters slowly builds before they realize they’ve fallen in love with one another. Their desires are so bright, so hot yet they remain unfulfilled. This is one of the most intense love stories I’ve ever seen.

And the cast of characters that inhabit that apartment building they live in are funny, especially the ones in the regular mahjong game.

I’ve read that this is the second film in a loose trilogy so I must seek out the other two.

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On a recent afternoon my Frau, a friend of hers, and I made a quick trek up to our beloved Lapacek’s Orchard. We were just shy of a month into apple season so I expected a fair variety of them to be available. Luckily they had this handy dandy analog tool letting you know which one are available(red), which ones are coming soon(green), and which ones are done for the season(yellow).

I was rather surprised at how many yellow apples there were. Some varieties do not sit on those shelves for long, especially ones with “strawberry” in the name.

Next to the availability indicator was a tub full of gourds.

Of course I went to see the goats. I love petting them. Look at this cutie!

Lapacek’s has the perfect Halloween/momento mori chair. (Grabby! ☹)

Lots of apples for sale inside. The Frau bought a couple half pecks, with a peck being a quarter of a bushel or 8 quarts. Silken and Wolf River, I believe.

Out back, the flora, including some very tall sunflowers, was still looking very nice.

Lapacek’s has a lot of barn cats. Some will let you pet them while others are cagey and prefer that humans keep their distance, like this one. She was OK with letting me watch her do a bit of grooming but pets were strictly off-limits on this day.

We went home with more apples than we knew what to do with and will have to find a way to eat them all. Sauce? Pie? With pork? The possibilities are endless.

If having to figure out what to do with a peck of apples wasn't enough, my Frau's friend bestowed some ground cherries on us from her CSA box. While I'd seen them at the farmers market recently, I had never had them before. Synchronicity!

At one point, I figured they’d sat in our refrigerator long enough so I pulled them out, removed the husks, and washed them. I popped one into my mouth and found it to be sweet, at first. A bit like a cherry but with a tomato element to it. As I swallowed, the sweetness wore off and it took on a more vegetal flavor. Very tasty.

Now what? Ground cherry clafoutis!

It was quite delicious. I am not sure what else there is to do with ground cherries – maybe put them in salsa? – but I am content with more clafoutis.

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Bonus photo. Earlier this month I spied this classic Chrysler New Yorker outside a diner in nearby Cottage Grove.

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