average

i guess there is no doubting that cats are animals. i often wonder about their lives now that anna and i are leaving. who will feed them? who will play with them? do they need anyone to take care of them? will they jump over the walls and run away to some long forgotten cat world?
in any event, they were in my room last night being playful/annoying. fat-fat has this thing where he takes abot 30 minutes to get comfortable in a place, so he crawls and prowls around in a circle no matter if he has to crawl over you, your clothes, your food, etc. it is one of his charming things. then, his sister, tentatively named, schmeeberq, is in the habit of attacking his tail when she wants attention. therefore it is quite difficult to relax while cats are around. they are kittens though, so its funny.

also, anna and i have taken to not sitting in the living room anymore. we are leaving soon and have nothing to really prove in the apartment. also, we have a laptop that has a dvd player, so we retreat to our room to feed our sopranos obsession. this includes watching while eating. and, last night i made turkey curry and put it over rice. i made a few variations on the normal turkey curry i would make. for example, i used swiss chard instead of celery. i used cinammon sticks. i used dried mushrooms for the broth. these things make a little difference. but, i wouldnt necessarily prefer it that way over the original way. its just that i was restricted by what i could buy here (celery is outlandishly expensive), and how big the pot was (not very - not enough to fit a good amount of cauliflor). it turned out good enoughand i finished it ravenously and put it on the floor because i couldnt be bothered to reach over to the night table. schmeeberq was cool about it and continued sleeping on the foot of the bed, but fat-fat, who is problematically jumpy, nearly had a heart attack at all the motion going on around him. he jumped down and hid under the bed. moments later, i heard some real animalistic laping noises. with great effort, since i slept on my neck wrong the other night and had a pinched nerve, i leaned over the side of the bed to see what was going on and saw f at-fat dragging my nearly cleaned turkey leg bone out of the bowl and onto the floor so he could gnaw at it easier. schmeeberq was also intrigued by this and was roused out of her curled position and hopped down to join her brother in the feast. moments later, i heard, emitted from the bowels of fat-fats cat soul, a deep growl that stunned his sister.
its weird though because the only cats these cats have ever met are each other and theyve only lived in the backyard, so its interesting to see what kinds of cat behavior they exhibit and to wonder what kinds of human behavior we would exhibit if the tables were turned.

so, it turns out that the dvd player wasnt working so well last night. it kept freezing and so rather than throw temper tantrums and throw things, anna and i decided to spend a quiet night reading. i just got this book from the book exchange yesterday. its one of those books that everyone read a couple of years ago and i didnt, but it seemed like a fast, interesting read. it turns out that the narrator is autistic. i normally dont like when narrations are too heavily affected like that, i feel that its a way for authors to fill their books with mundane observations that are supposed to sound interesting because its coming out of the mouth of a child or an autistic person. usually not my cup of tea. but then again tea wasnt really my cup of tea until recently.

oh, and i was also thinking about something else today: on the one hand, new york is a police state. you cant go anywhere or do anything without noticing or feeling police presence.  we are told in new york that the more guns we put into the hands of eager 22 year old officers will result in more safety for the rest of us. the statistics tell a different story. on the other hand, here in cuenca, people have a tendency towards spending the night on the ground where they fall when they are drunk. every morning you can see any number of non-homeless people laying around, groggily standing up, or not, after a night of so many bottles of zhumir. these people would be rounded up in new york, especially because they dont always choose out of the way places to fall. on the third hand, i saw one such man lying outside my building this morning. he was on his back lying in the gutter part of the street. this man was slightly different though because his face was covered in blood and very much bruised. i walked over to him and another man did so too. he asked me, "have you seen him breathe?" we both looked at him for a couple seconds. then, he breathed. i saw it and said, "there." satisfied, we both continued onto our jobs. now, im not calling for a police state, but perhaps some interventionist attitude is necessary sometimes. me? im excused because i dont know the abulance phone number here in cuenca nor do i have a phone. besides, he was gone by the time i got back from work and there was a huge puddle of water next to where had been lying. i guess someone from the apartment above didnt feel like looking at him there and carnavaled him.