Last night, Pete and I sat on the porch with refreshing adult beverages. The night was peaceful as wind rustled through the leaves overhead. Our porch is close to the sidewalk, but our chairs are somewhat hidden from the street. At one point, I could hear voices but didn’t see people. Pete and I were talking quietly to one another.

Tata: Whose dog is that?
Pete: I don’t know.
Woman: Who asked whose dog was that?

The voice sounded familiar. I stood up.

Tata: I couldn’t see –
Woman: That’s our dog, and that’s our cat. We walk them together every night.
Tata: Cool! Wait – your cat?
Girl: Sometimes our other cat comes along, too. Come on, Jules.

Suddenly, I could see the dog wasn’t on a leash and the cat was Jules. For his part, Jules walked across our front yard, looked at us out of the corner of his eye and kept going. Pete and I were speechless. The mother and daughter walked on without another word. They turned the corner and disappeared before we caught our breath. Jules is the cat I thought was a stray, took to the vet for shots and gave to my co-worker, then had to give back to people who left him out during the last blizzard. It was a horrible experience all around, and it pains me to see Jules on my back porch some nights and early mornings. This did not stop me from laughing.

Tata: Did you see Jules pretend not to know us?
Pete: He practically told us, “Sshhh! Mum’s the word.”
Tata: I thought she was going to recognize my voice after all those times she called my office and I was going to have to throw a container of Bibb lettuce at her.
Pete: She might’ve taken flying salad as a peace offering.
Tata: She’s a terrible person, and I’d feel peaceful aiming at her head.

Drusy’s eye is swollen today, poor darling. I’m hoping it’s just an allergy, but each time I look at her I worry. Meanwhile, Topaz has that same bemused expression on her face Larry, the little black cat no longer bent on stealing your soul, used to have. Lovely Topaz has adapted to medication for her oral infection through repeated application of delicious tuna, but the steroids have done little for her dark mood. Sweetpea now gazes at me with such adoration I hardly mind when I wake up pinned to my mattress by a 12 lb. cat, though I get the feeling she might be a liiiiittle bit obsessive. I like to think I’m paying gentle, constant attention, but where the cats are concerned, I might overpay.

These pictures were in a little folder from the first months Pete and I were seeing each other, when Topaz perched on the highest surfaces she could find and played Bagheera. The kittens loved the wooden ladder as a scratching post and indoor tree, which I had forgotten until I saw these pictures again. What possessed me to put that ladder in the basement where the pussycats cannot climb it and fly through the air?

I don’t believe in God, but I see ghosts. I don’t believe people are inherently good, but almost everyone deserves a second chance. This week, I decided I firmly believe that good people work for the common good and people who work against that common good are not just apolitical or differently motivated or whatever euphemism you please, but actually bad people. As starter beliefs go in this corrupt and deeply selfish time, it’s not going to make me a lot of friends who aren’t covered with fur, but there my popularity is wildly secure.

Look, I do three stupid things before breakfast and the day I don’t shoot my mouth off has not yet come, so I’m far from a paragon of any virtue but the easy kind, but I am saying we all have to do better. The disastrous gas and oil leak in the Gulf is weeks from being capped and already our representatives are saying no energy bill will make it through Congress with or without expanded offshore drilling – which is to say no energy bill will pass without offshore drilling, because the Democrats will cave to their corporate masters before we have even assessed the spill’s true damage to our planet. That is not good enough.

Sweetpea, who has become a fourteen pound handful, developed a new habit last week: while I am eating dinner, she leaps on the table’s other end and sits next to my water glass. She wants nothing more than my undivided attention, so I bump foreheads with her. In the Pussycat Lexicon, this means we love each other. You’ve seen lions bump foreheads affectionately on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. I’m scared of lions, and I want to finish my dinner.

Today’s WikiHow was How To Thicken Soup. Perhaps it is because I am 900 years old, an age at which smokin’ hotness assumes new meaning, that simple solutions to common problems appeal to me. Children, I say, toss a couple of starchy diced potatoes into that watery soup and simmer. Or make a slurry by adding a few tablespoons of cold water to a few teaspoons of cornstarch, stir, then simmer in your soup. Or get some arrowroot and follow directions on the package. Or start with a roux in the first place and what’s the matter with you? You’re grounded.

Last summer, a friend asked how we would find each other in a convention center in Pittsburgh. Obviously, I said, you’ll listen for me to Wimoweh at the top of my lungs and follow the sound of people calling for Security. I didn’t end up in Pittsburgh, but it turns out I’d Wimowehed in public before. Sweetpea licks my hand, testing me for doneness and unsatisfied with the results.

Behold: tiny Drusy, nestled into a pale blue microfleece, patiently enduring the usual adoration. She is used to having us go all googly when she does something small, like rest her cheek against Pete’s or curl up in my arms like an infant. It’s not easy to be so beautiful, but Drusy never complains. Here, we have exhausted her with tuna treats, playing with the gray mousie finger puppet and our very attentions. Though she loves us, she would just like to gently close her eyes.

The seed potatoes arrived. Hooray! Pete’s off researching how to plant them just in case “place compost in bag, place seeds on compost, cover with four inches of compost, moisten and wait” isn’t everything a prospective potato farmer needs to know. Upstairs somewhere, I hear him shouting on the phone to his father, who grew up on a farm in Ohio. At least, I hope that’s they’re talking about. When two men who refuse to get hearing aids wax marble-mouthed on the phone it can be hard to tell if they’re having the same conversation.

We’ve had some successes and failures with Topaz’s medication. The drug store promised Topaz would love the tuna flavored medicine, but Topaz wouldn’t touch it. Fortunately, flavoring wasn’t expensive, and when the prescription refilled, out went the tuna flavor. We discovered that if Topaz was getting tuna water with medicine, Sweetpea and eventually Drusy also wanted a treat, so after further successes and failures, we found we could get each cat to eat at least an ounce of tuna. That was great news. When Topaz got sick, Sweetpea was guarding the food bowl from all comers and both Topaz and Drusy lost at least a pound each. Seven pound cats cannot afford to lose weight, so when they started putting on a few ounces at a time, hooray! Likewise, every Sunday, the vet and I chatted about details. He wanted to reduce her medication to once a week, but when we tried Wednesday/Sunday, Topaz spent her evenings lying on my lap, making a blinky face. After two weeks of limp Topaz, we went back to medicating her Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday, and Topaz is her old cranky self.

So every day around dinnertime, three cats run around in circles, chittering. Topaz leaps onto the counter, complaining about the service in this joint and running around my arms. Sweetpea, stands on the counter, too, protesting that Topaz might be closer to food than Sweetpea. Drusy sits on the kitchen island, waiting for her sisters to act more mature, shaaaa. I pour a teaspoon of tuna water into a custard cup and put it on the floor for Sweetpea at a safe distance from Topaz; then a second teaspoon for Topaz and put that on the floor far from Sweetpea. Finally, a tablespoon of tuna in a custard cup makes Drusy very happy. At just about that moment, Sweetpea and Topaz finish their tuna water and get a tablespoon of tuna each. The remainder of the can is divided between the three cats, and then I chase Drusy across the dining room with her custard cup. Sometimes she finishes the tuna, but more frequently Topaz does.

This takes about 15 minutes and at the end of it, the cats lap up water and I want to lie down. Crap, I’m tired, but Topaz looks great, Drusy’s fur is sleek and shiny and Sweetpea purrs dreamily – every day!