A picture of a birthday cake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m feeling like a sybarite…despite the post-op pain, swelling, general discomfort, blah blah blah. I now have time to lounge, to think, to read. Hey! I can read the whole weekend New York Times leisurely! Hey! I think that maybe now is the time to read FM’s Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual! I think I’ll order a copy. After all it is my birthday today. I need to order myself at least one present. Funny kind of birthday, huh? But a good friend pointed out to me that it’s the birthday of my new knee too! So happy birthday knee! Another good friend told me to make sure that I blow out all the percocets on my cake! Hahaha!
Very importantly, I get to hang out big time with my special caretaker, Doucette the cat.
Doucette was a rescue. She used to be called Tipsy by her previous owner, who abandoned her to the shelter at East 110th Street. She was adopted immediately I guess because she is so pretty, but she was returned immediately, because she had issues. Big issues. Many issues. She had been abused. She has scars on her stomach. Well, since she is sort of a purebred–a Maine Coon–albeit a runty one, the shelter notified one of the agencies that works with the Mayor’s Office and they took her. Because of her issues, one of which is her abject fear of other cats, she had to live in a cage. When I met her at this agency, she had been living in a cage for seven months. I couldn’t even take her out of that cage to pet her. But I had an intuition.
Well, anyway, I adopted the former Tipsy, and since she was the opposite of sweet, I decided to give her that old-fashioned French name of Doucette, which means little sweet one (feminine) with the hope that she would grow into her name. She did. For a year she hid–in closets, under the bed, wherever–but she finally chilled and turned out to be mega-sweet. And now she is in close attendance. When I wake up at night I find that she is glommed to my head purring. She will not leave my side. How do cats and dogs know that one is ill? Rhetorical question I guess. So my fur ball nurse is taking great care of me.
Feeding Doucette these days when I cannot bend my left leg much is a challenge. So I inhibit and direct. First of all, I really think about how I should move before I attempt to move. I go into a modified lunge/monkey to get to her tray and replenish her food and water. She watches me do this with complete fascination as it deviates from my norm. Of course, Doucette has to be mischevious sometimes. Well…lots. Lately, her thing is to investigate the garbage pail in my bedroom. She knocks it over and looks for exciting toys, such as a piece of card board, a tissue, an envelop, the outer dressing to for my knee surgery (blech) to bat around the room. So I must use the lunge/monkey to put the garbage pail right and to collect the dispersed stuff to really dispose of it. I manage to do all this quite nicely even though I am the tipsy one now!
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