Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Floof Shui (floofinition) – Traditional practice that animals use to arrange themselves for the best energy flow.
In use: “Parent animals quickly teach their offspring floof shui, noting, for example, that for many, the best sleeping position is to curl up in a tight ball with their head upside down.”
Timefloof (floofinition) – 1. An animal who is consistent about their activities.
In use: “Barb has little need for an alarm clock because her little black cat was a timefloof who woke her every morning at 5:55 AM with food demands.”
2. Ancient race of extraterrestrial animals who have command of time travel.
In use: “Pets sometimes disappear and reappear without people knowing where the animals were, because either the animal is a Timefloof, or they’ve been traveling with a Timefloof as their companion.”
Floofy Sapient (floofinition) – 1. A wise animal, or an animal who appears wise.
In use: “Many times think their pets seem seem floofy sapient in the way that their eyes drink in human behavior.”
2. A person who is knowledgeable about animal behavior, needs, treatment, or care.”
In use: “Often someone is called a ‘horse whisperer’ or ‘dog whisperer’, when they’re really floofy sapient from being caring and patient with animals.”
Gold filled the cloudless sky as the sunblast kicked off at 7:27 AM in our valley on this Saturday, January 29, 2022. With the sun rising, the gold dipped. Blue flooded in as the sun’s beams surmounted the mountains at last. The temperature was 32 F. Now at 36, we expect to see 63 before the sun takes its show over the western horizon at 5:21 PM. Look at that, almost ten hours of sunshine and February hasn’t started it session yet.
In bummer COVID-19, all the county libraries are completely shutting down for a week. All materials due during that period will be automatically extended as the drop boxes will be locked shut. Hold pick-up periods will be extended, too. All this is because of personnel shortages driven by employees or their families sick with COVID-19.
While that’s happening, some genius suggested in an editorial that the best way to deal with the skyrocketing COVID-19 numbers is to open all the businesses and not restrict any of them. Save the economy and give everyone’s morale a boost. But…as the numbers are skyrocketing, people sicken, and the hospitals fill, who is going to be there to work?
Sadly, many see this bizarro logic as an ideal solution. Yet, hospitals across the nation are pressing nursing students into working for free to help with the caseload as personnel fall sick. Other nurses are being ordered to work longer hours, sometimes while foregoing pay, because of shortages. These are the same people who think that bare shelves are a political issue which can be resolved by just making more people work. They completely miss the dynamics engaged.
Enough of that. Sorry for the rant. Haven’t had coffee yet.
Today’s song is a repeat. “Maneater” by Hall & Oates came out in 1982. I was stationed in Japan, on Okinawa, at Kadena AB in the military at the time. That has nothing to do with the song’s occupatoin of my morning mental music stream. The song is there because of the cats. Why, yes, of course.
Sometimes when I’m feeding the cats, maybe just five out of five times, Boo and Tucker will suddenly become oblivious to me. After begging me for their morning meal with patient meows as they follow me around, I’ll put the bowls down and say, “Here you go, Tucker. Here, Boo. Come and get it.”
Hearing that, they’ll sit. Look around. I can hear their minds saying, “Boo? Tucker? Never heard of ’em.”
Papi, the young ginger, will dart pass them to the bowls, give me a meow, and begin eating. I then say, “There you go, Papi, eat up.”
Hearing “Papi”, Boo and Tucker will rise and come. “Papi,” they say. “Why, that’s me.” They say this even though I tell them, “No. You’re not Papi. You’re Tucker and you’re Boo. You two are black and white. He’s a ginger.”
They act like they can’t understand a word of what I’m telling them.
Of course, when they finally came is when I said in my head, “Here they come.” Which started Hall & Oates and the bassline for “Maneater”. Thus is how my mind works. At least before coffee.
Here’s the tune. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, as get the jabs when you can. I gotta get that coffee in me, you know? Cheers
Subfloof (floofinition) – 1. A physical object underneath an animal.
In use: “They knew the remote was subfloof again because the dog started moving around in her sleep and the channels began changing.”
2. Food or behavior that’s considered beneath an animal’s dignity.
In use: “Trying to entice the cat back into the house, he opened a can of food and called the cat, who sat down, watching him, clearly deciding that falling for such tricks was subfloof.”
It is mostly such a mundane dream. My wife and I are outside our home. We’re youngish, roaming about in our middle years. This is not the house we live in, nor a place we’ve ever lived in, but easily recognized as a standard, pleasant American middle class dream place, part of a planned development, a few stories tall, with a yard and neighbors in like houses. Not quite homes cut from the same design, but homogenized with individual flares and nuances. Our home is stucco and off-white.
As I say, we were outside, in sunny weather, in the backyard. Our cats walk about, being cats. One began scratching his claws on a headboard. “No,” I chase him away, telling my wife, “Don’t let him scratch this.” I set about repairing it. Adding a strip of wire grid that will keep murder mittens from scarring the wood. I pursue this past time for a period. It’s more tedious than I expected.
Railroad tracks are laid not far from our backyard. I’m up in the house, on the second floor, looking down when a train comes by. It’s an old-fashioned steam locomotive. I can see into the neighbor’s backyard on the right. They have a little train, about knee high, just an engine and coal car, that goes out and greets the train when it passes. I see this several times in the dream and conclude that the neighbors have a motion sensor along the rails. Or maybe they’re just sitting inside, waiting for a train. I never see them, though I know the man is bald, in his late fifties/early sixties, white and wears glasses and flannel shirts.
I’m back in the backyard, working in the bed headboard. It’s an old piece but mass produced, one we purchased from J.C. Penney when we were young, with decoupage flowers.
The cat, a ginger, starts talking to me. His enunciation isn’t very good but it’s clear enough that I know that he’s talking about birds. I snort this away, amused. Cats and birds are like sun and sky. The cat insists, “You have to see these birds, Michael.”
I follow the cat just to appease him. We go down a sloping meadow to a small cottage surrounded by glossy dark green bushes. “There they are,” the cat tells me.
I hear the birds before I see them and know that they’re parrots. Five of them, green, red, blue, and yellow prominent among them, flock toward us, chatting at us while coming up to see what and who we are. I worry about the cat and birds fighting and hurting one another, so I’m wary and cautious. But the birds interest me. I tell the cat that they’re parrots. He’s intrigued. I tell the birds that the animal with me is a cat and that he and I live up the hill from them.
I then see a snake. Don’t know what kind it is. It moves fast and is gone. I worry again: will it bite or harm me, the cat, the birds? I tell the cat, “There’s a snake here, watch it.” He’s immediately interested in trying to find it.
I retreat back up to my house with him, away from the colorful, noisy parrots. Back in my yard, I tell my wife, “There are parrots down there. Come down and see them.”
That’s where it ends.
Michael Seidel, writer 