Me, yesterday in two separate conversations: I'm lucky. Polly doesn't bother me when I'm sleeping. She annoys Comrade but leaves me alone.
​
This morning:

​Living with Selina is like sharing a house with a malfunctioning smoke alarm with dying batteries that follows you around the house, occasionally headbutting you.

I am often pessimistic in imagining how my friendships are going (I was that way with relationships, but I long since passed that threshold with Comrade. I'm not sure why I was able to be comfortable with a relationship within a year, and yet I still worry that I've misjudged a friendship I've had for over twenty years if the other person doesn't return a text or an email because...you know...life happens.).

When Comrade and I were scouting for a new cat last fall, I instantly fell in love with Polly (though she wasn't the first cat we'd met that I loved), and so did he. He was the one who went and brought her home and spent the first day with her. She adores him. She also adores me. But we've joked about how much more she loves him than me.
This is not true. Like most affectionate cats, she loves whoever is the most recent addition to the room. I know this.

But the other day, as I was working on editing, and Comrade was at work, she sat on the floor, stared intently at a picture of Comrade with his dog, Luna, and began meowing pitifully. I tried calling her over, but she just stood there crying at his picture.
I guess she really does love Comrade more than--

​And then she leapt up and caught the tiny moth she'd been patiently stalking, and brought it over to me.

Goose passed in August, and one of my friends, who works as a vet tech, picked her up and took her to be cremated. And then Goose got lost. Our postal carrier is neither the best nor the worst I've encountered, but we often get packages that are clearly addressed to houses a couple of streets over, and there have been a few documents that have never arrived that were sent by responsible people who wouldn't lie to me about sending them.
It is what it is.

When I realized, in October, that we still didn't have Goose's remains, I went to the post office to see if maybe I had missed a card that requested my signature or something, and they claimed not to have anything.

I couldn't remember the name of the place where Goose had been cremated, and I didn't want to bother anyone because I figured it had either been delivered to the wrong address, and there was nothing that could be done about it, or I had just run into someone at the post office who wasn't the best informed employee, and they would send the remains back to the crematorium. I didn't think anyone was deliberately trying to steal cat ashes for some elaborate scam.

On Tuesday, I was at work when my cell phone rang.

Guy From Crematorium: Hello?

Me: Yes. How can I help you?

(I was at work, where I routinely get to be rude to telemarketers and scam artists.)

GFC: I'm calling from Forget Me Not Crematorium.

So, it's ironic that I forgot the name.

GFC: I'm calling because we just got the remains of Motherfucker Goose back and wanted to know if we should try and resend her to you, or whether you would like to come and pick Motherfucker up. I should let you know that we played rock, paper, scissors to see who got to call you because we all wanted a chance to swear at work.

Me: "I don't think I live too close to you, but I could make some calls and figure something out. Can I call you back in a couple of hours."

GFC: "It doesn't need to be today. Motherfucker will be waiting here for you. She's on the Shelf Of Honor until you can figure something out."

Me: "Thank you."

​GFC: "No problem. You have a good day. We'll make sure Motherfucker is back with you soon."

I've been living with Selina for most of the last 14 years. She and Goose each have/had their bad habits but they never understood counters/tables or eating food that wasn't in the bowl. I couldn't train them with treats because they would only ever eat the treats when it was placed in their bowls.

Polly gives no shits about counters or tables. If she can stand on it, she's going to jump on it and see what's there. We tinfoiled the entire kitchen counter for a week and a half before I saw that she was still jumping up on the counters, just not when we were in the kitchen watching her, so I removed the tinfoil.

But now that Selina has seen Polly on the tables, she has started hopping up on tables. And she has seen Polly investigating plates and bowls so now she does it. (She still HATES Polly but she's learning from her.)

Friday night/Saturday morning, Comrade and I woke up to a crash. Comrade wandered around and came back with the report that Selina had knocked a spoon off the living room table.

This was not the case.

She had, in fact, hopped on to the living room table and pushed off a bowl that had been in the center of the table.

Who cares?

I grew up with ugly blue 1970s Greek inspired (but definitely not actually Greek) plate and bowls. They were grey with cauliflower inked plants. Plates aren't a big deal to me. I'll eat off napkins, paper towels, paper plates, plastic plates, and ugly blue 1970s Greek inspired plates. It doesn't matter.

At some point in the 90s, my family upgraded to modern white plates and bowls with a dark blue rim.

I don't remember any plates from when I moved off the Cape in 1999 and when I moved to Cambridge in 2011. And I only remember the dishes from The Crooked Treehouse because they were the aforementioned 90s dishes gifted to me by my father.

When I got back from Bad Times In Florida, 2019, many of my belongings had been put in storage, but the plates didn't make it. It's no big loss. All of the actually important things were rescued, and I could have totally gone back to that house until July 0f 2021 when they finally started taking the house apart (nobody went into that top apartment for over two years, my roommate's old AC hung out the window the entire time, and I could see my old bookshelves still standing in there from across the street) to get them if they mattered.
When I finally got that crappy little apartment in JP, I had no furniture, and I didn't yet know that The Crooked Treehouse had been preserved while the family fought over which piece of shit owned it. You, my very cool friends, helped me raise enough money to afford/donated things like a bed, pots and pans, towels, and other things that hadn't made it out of The Crooked Treehouse, and that I couldn't really afford to buy myself (since my employer at the time stole thousands of dollars from me in wage theft, which he has decided he doesn't need to ever repay, but you know, he's a "nice guy").

My coworker, who is less a "nice guy" and more of a Good Person, was helping another friend empty their parents' apartment out after one of them died. She arranged and moved four dining room table chairs, a couple of end tables, two standing lamps, and a very comfy living room chair to my new place, which I've moved twice since then (and she helped me move both times). I also went through that apartment's cabinets and took flatware, glasses, and a set of 1970s yellow and white dishes called the Sundance pattern, which was in circulation for two years before being discontinued. I don't know why I like them. I'm not super into yellow, but I do like plates that feature geometry as opposed to flowers.

They have also come with me through the last two moves. During our first few months together, Comrade broke one of the four bowls, and we both scoured The Internet looking for a replacement, which is when I learned they were discontinued almost half a century ago, and weren't around for very long. C'est la vie.

Friday night, Selina broke one of the other bowls, which means there are only two left. (I think we have eight small plates, and six large plates with the same pattern.)

Comrade has saved the pieces, but there's a dozen pieces, not just 2 - 5 so I don't see it being worth reconstruction.

But I did go back online and saw that there were two auctions, each for a set of 4 dinner plates, 4 salad plates, and 4 bowls last year. One went for $500. One for over $1000.
I'm not alone in liking that stupid pattern.

(Don't worry, this doesn't end in me asking for donations to buy a fucking salad bowl. That's not where I'm at in my life.)

While searching, I found THE LAST SUNDANCE SALAD BOWL ON THE INTERNET. (It didn't say that, but I looked. It's the only one I could find. And I couldn't find any in 2021.) $20 on Etsy. I bought it.

But for $80, I could get a whole nice set of new dishes/bowls from the same company that made the Sundance set. They have three or four more modern designs that I could probably care about, given time. So why the Sundance nostalgia? A couply thing since I met Comrade fairly soon after getting them, and we've used them ever since? Something to focus on as a post-coma new life thing? I appreciate and like the chairs and tables, but wouldn't be at all sad to replace them.

I don't know.

I just know all this introspection is Polly's fault for teaching Selina new, awful habits. Selina is already a scratcher, but I try and catnip the scratching pads every week or so, which tends to get her to focus her sharpening there, and it's always worked.

Polly rolls around in the catnip, and then goes to scratch the couch. I put scratching pads in front of the couch legs, and she pushes them out of the way to scratch the actual couch.
Last night, I dreamed that we clipped her nails.

What a waste of a dream.

In a discussion where I mentioned that my family had a dog when I was very young but my mother was allergic to it, I mentioned that I didn't know whether the dog died or was given away. I only knew that I was told it "went to live on a farm".

​Comrade: "The dead dog farm?"

Me: "It's more of a dead dog petting zoo. All the dogs are really well behaved. There's, like, no barking at all. I know some people like to go apple picking at orchards in the fall, but my family always used to take our trips to the dead dog petting zoo. I think that's where we should adopt our next pet from. Think you can remember to take it out for a drag twice a day?"

Comrade: "What is wrong with you?"

Last night, around 1000pm, I made a joke about how the Moon Knight comics were so bad that I would rather mop the floor.

Last night at 10:30, I mopped the gaming room, the TV room, the kitchen, and the bathroom. Only the office (which is too cold to use right now), the spare room/library (which only I use, and not very often), and the bedroom (where Comrade was doing online D&D were not mopped. I planned on doing those rooms tonight when I got home from work, or tomorrow.

This morning, at 10:30, I went to work.

This morning at 11:00, Motherfucker Goose took a wet, sticky poop, none of which she left in the litterbox. Instead, she dragged it across every inch of the kitchen, straight through the gaming room, into the TV room, on to the still newish couch, back through the gaming room, into the bedroom where she dragged herself across various piles of laundry that needed to be folded before hopping up on the bed, and waking up Comrade.

Just poop, Everywhere.

Tonight, at 7:15ish, I arrive home.

Comrade: "So, I looked at a couple of apartments that don't allow pets today. I'm not leaving you, or moving out, because I love you. But I just wanted the thrill of imagining what it would be like to never live with cats again."

Tonight at 8:30, I remopped the gaming room, the TV room, and the bathroom. I bathed the very sad cat who had spent the day in jail (the kitchen). She screeched. Selina (who hasn't had to have a bath in a year because she takes care of herself) screeched in sympathy. I dried off the still yowling Motherfucker. I mopped the kitchen. Comrade put the couch cushion covers in the washing machine (he'd cleaned them with the products they gave us with the couch earlier, but hadn't realized the covers come off and can be machine washed (but not machine dried).

​The cats are still in jail.

Comrade: What would it take for you to get rid of Selina, so we can get a dog?

Me: Selina loves dogs, and dogs ... some dogs tolerate Selina.

Comrade: But she's The Worst cat.

Me: She's not the worst.

Selina runs into the kitchen, jumps on the table, knocking a full tub of duck sauce on my lap and the floor, then runs back out.

Me: I fucken hate that cat.

Comrade: Just think how much better ANY dog woud be.

Me: Well, not Any Dog. But ... yea, most dogs.

Selina runs into the overturned duck sauce, and runs out again.

I grab some paper towels and start cleaning up the duck sauce. "Can you ... put her in the other room while I clean this."

Comrade tries to corner Selina, she runs into the bedroom. Comrade goes into bedroom, Selina runs into the living room. Comrade goes into the living room, Selina runs back to the bedroom. Comrade begins squawking like a chicken and running at her, full speed. Selina runs into the office (aka The Cat Room), and Comrade shuts the door behind her. 

Me: Thank you.

Comrade: Do I get some sort of reward?

Me: I'm going to slather you in duck sauce and--

Comrade: No. That is not something I'm going to do for you.

Me, invading his personal space: Quack for me.

Comrade: I've been meaning to ask you ... what do you think about having a more open relationship?

​Me: Q...uack?

Me, to MF Goose: What's up, jerk?

Comrade: Why is she a jerk? She's the good one!

​She jumps up and knocks over all of my Scrabble tiles.