MarQ1

I woke up yesterday morning, Saturday, at 6am. Habit. The paper had not been delivered yet, so I turned on the computer and messed around a while. It was cold outside, 26° when I woke up, up from the day before.

I heard a cat meowing. I figured that it was cold and wanted inside. It kept meowing.

I looked outside a couple of times, but couldn’t see the cat anywhere. I saw a woman walking her dog past our building once; the cat quieted.

A little before 9am, J and I headed out to go shopping. While I got the car out, J heard the cat and looked around for it. He found it in a seven-foot deep window well in the front of our building. It had fallen in, couldn’t get out and was freezing to death. It was barely breathing. We couldn’t get down to it and the folks whose window it was were out of town. J went next door, a building renovation, and asked one of the construction guys if they could help.

He got a ladder and I found a box, and he went down into the window well and scooped the cat into the box, in case it might fight back against its rescue. No struggle; it mewed weakly and showed enough life to make me hope. The construction workers took it back to their site, where they had a heater.

When we got back from shopping, J went next door to see how the cat was.

It had died.

I wanted it to live. I didn’t think it would. It was barely breathing when we brought it up from the window well, but I wanted it to recover.

At least, I didn’t want to know otherwise.

At home today. A mental health day.

Today is again Primary Day in NY. Five years ago on Primary Day, I voted early and went into the office in Brooklyn early for an 8 o’clock meeting. The meeting ended early when someone on the other side of the table noticed that the north tower of the World Trade Center was on fire.

We watch both towers fall from a safe distance in an office tower in Brooklyn.

I have less a sense of dread than I had last year, partly because I did go to work in lower Manhattan yesterday, though I felt like I should have called in sick for the first four or five hours.

It’s like that moment you realize that your legs are no longer fast enough to run away from danger. Age has caught up.

At work I found myself thinking that I should walk around the west side of the floor to get to the men’s room rather than the east: it’s less exposed to the street.

So it’s Ironing Day, among other things. Nothing complicated. Sprayed graphite in the front doorlock. Knit.

The Tuesday after the week after Labor Day used to be the first normal working day after summer. Everyone was back from vacation. We could focus again on business. It was cool enough to switch to the heavier, fancier shirts. It was a new start. No more.

Less personal

Regarding Primary Day: when Rudy Giuliani runs for president, please remember that after 9/11 he was willing to subvert the democratic process and postpone the primaries and the general election so that he could be mayor longer. The primaries were held two weeks later and Giuliani did leave on time, though four to eight years later than I would have liked.

And I did go vote.