Category Archives: etc.

Sapiosexual Seeks Same

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If I were ever to write a personals ad, this is what it would say:

Sapiosexual Seeks Same

for friendship and conversation. If you like literature, science, trivia, genre fiction, cats, humor, journalism, artistic pursuits, creativity, and above all intelligence, I’d like to meet you. Race, appearance, gender identity unimportant. Prefer non-smokers. I’m open-minded. Are you?

Of course, I’m not going to write a personals ad, since I’m married, have been for 30 years, and barely socialize as it is. Polyamory is not an option at this point.

But there you have it. I don’t care about muscles, status, income, or what kind of car a man drives. I want someone who is bright, witty, and creative. Preferably with facial hair, although I will let that slide if everything else meets my criteria.

That describes my husband, my past boyfriends (even the disastrous ones), and my male friends, past and present. We are all interested in, attracted to, aroused by intelligence. That’s what “sapiosexual” means.

(It once occurred to me that the qualities I look for in a man are all above the neck. In fact, three of them – the most important – are above the eyebrows.)

Female sapiosexuals sometimes have a hard time finding someone to socialize with, date, love, and even marry. Part of this, I fear, is due to the ruthless socializing of women in what makes a man desirable – no fatties, no baldies, all the things you regularly see in personals ads. There is less of that among sapiosexual women, as many of them have learned to look past the physical in the search for the intellectual.

Many men are intimidated by sapiosexual women. First, many of us don’t meet the media’s idealized standards of beauty. (Let’s face it, hardly anyone does, so if that’s what you’re looking for, you’re apt to be very lonely.) We have large vocabularies and wide interests, and probably know more than a prospective male friend does on at least one subject. Many of us can and do hold our own in arguments.

These traits lead us to be seen as know-it-alls – Hermione Granger types – who don’t know how to have fun and don’t want anyone else to have fun either. The know-it-all complaint can be true, I must admit, but sapiosexual women do indeed know how to have fun. It’s just that our opinions about what is fun, like so much else about us, diverges from the norm. We have fun in conversations. We enjoy variety and newness. We appreciate learning something new and being challenged. We even enjoy doing those things in bed.

I don’t however, fall for just anyone who is bright, witty, creative and has facial hair. I try to avoid intellectual bullies and nose-looker-downers, those who wield their intelligence as a weapon to intimidate, humiliate, or dominate. You know, those people who glare and shout, “It’s pronounced ‘dis-sect,’ not ‘dy-sect’! TWO esses!” when you’re still in the middle of your sentence.

No, in addition to the above-mentioned traits, I want someone who’s kind. Believe it or not, kindness can be compatible with intelligence.

And let’s not forget that there are different kinds of intelligence. Some people, like me, are word people, who gather information by reading. You often hear readers put down others who watch a lot of television. But some people process information visually or in other ways. Also, some people forego college degrees to practice and improve their creative skills. And some people, like my husband, are experts on people and how they interact. I’ve learned a lot from him.

Where do you find sapiosexuals? Nearly anywhere. If you limit yourself to colleges and think tanks, you’re missing a lot of possibilities. I have known sapiosexuals who work as tow truck or front loader drivers, parks and rec workers, and restaurant managers. I have met them at work and at science fiction conventions (always a place rife with sapiosexuals). I have found them at folk music concerts and house parties. I found my husband outside a food tent at a music festival.

Is there a sexual component to sapiosexual relationships? Absolutely. Despite the stereotype of the brainy nerd who never gets laid, a sapiosexual can be physically as well as intellectually stimulating. Many a relationship has started with a mutual interest in poetry and ended up in bed.

And that’s the point. Sapiosexuals may have a hard time finding fulfilling relationships – whether friends, flirtations, lovers, or marriage partners. But when they do, it’s something special.

Where Have All the Waterbeds Gone?

cats, etc., family, funny things, humor, , , , , , , ,

You don’t hear waterbeds discussed much anymore. It seems like they died out with all the old hippies.

But there are still a few around. The waterbeds are now called “flotation sleep systems.” The old hippies are called “me and my husband.” And we have a waterbed.

Actually, we’ve had one for years. Not the same one, you understand. Waterbeds have a shelf life, and this will become readily apparent at some point.

The operative word used to be “point.” Old-fashioned waterbeds were simply plastic bags of water that you covered with whatever cloth was available. Neither the plastic nor the cloth was all that thick, even if the owners were. Try as you might, you could never find a quilt that would cover the whole thing at once. (Duvets were still far in the future, or in Europe, or somewhere.)

Back to the point. Or points, rather – those appearing at the ends of the toes of cats. Cats do not make good waterbed accessories. The first article I ever sold was to I Love Cats magazine, about how to make waterbed and kitties get along. (It took layers and layers of sheets, blankets, pads, and comforters. And those were just the bottom layers. You still needed blankets and comforters to go on top of the sleepers.)

Nevertheless, at some point (yes, I said it) a waterbed will spring a leak. In the Olden Days, that required a patch kit, rather like those used for bicycle inner tubes, which also no longer exist. The waterbed patch kits didn’t really work. All you could do was drain the waterbed, haul it outside and get a new one.

I had not been sold on the idea of getting a waterbed at first. The early ones squished and swayed and set up riptides, and I have an inner ear problem. I pictured myself throwing up every morning and giving my husband a pregnancy scare.

Now waterbeds are “waveless,” which means they come with long vinyl sausages, each to be filled with water, inside what is essentially a cardboard box. The mattress also comes with a patch kit, which is also useless. But at least you can drain and haul only the one leaky sausage and replace that one.

If you can find one. There are stores that will sell you a single sausage, or at least order the right model. We had to sleep on recliner chairs for a week and drive thirty miles to get one. Then again with the draining and hauling and let me tell you, even the individual sausages are heavy. Do you have any idea how much water actually weighs? I do.

Waterbed heaters are now out of vogue, owing to the possibility of electrocution, but for a while they were the must-have accessory. The one we bought (which managed not to fry us) came with a programmable alarm system. Not, as you might think, an alarm to warn of impending uncontrolled voltage, but a regular alarm of the sort that wakes you in the morning.

The SalesDude told us that it would wake us gently with a “tune.” OK. Sounds nice. Until the first morning it went off. Nee na nee nee nee na nee, nee na nee nee nee na nee, nee na nee nee nee na nee, nee nah nee nee nee na neeee! By the second nee na nee nee nee na nee we were fully awake and aware that the “tune” it was playing was “It’s a Small World.” We fumbled around and got it turned off before we lost our sanity, but only just barely.

When we went back to the store to complain, it went like this:

Us: Did you know that the alarm feature plays “It’s a Small World”?

SalesDude: No. ::snerk:: I had no idea! Hey, Jeff, did you know that the alarm feature plays ::snerk:: “It’s a Small World”?

Jeff: No! I had no idea! ::snerk:: ::snerk::

Us: Well, do you have one that plays anything else? Even “Edelweiss” would be better. Or “God Bless America.”

SakesDude: ::snerk:: No, that’s the only model there is. Isn’t that right, Jeff?

Jeff: ::cough:: That’s right. ::cough::

So then we had to buy a regular alarm clock too. Somewhere else.

The waterbed we have now keeps its tunehole shut, waves as much as your average fishbowl, and grudgingly accepts regular deep-pocket sheets. It fits in the frame of an Amish sleigh/spindle bed and looks like something that belongs in a bedroom, not a head shop or a crash pad.

Well, except for the old hippies sleeping on it.

Guest Post!

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Today I have a guest post on Insights from a Bipolar Bear. You can see it here: http://www.insightsbipolarbear.com/brain-vs-brain/

What I Hate About Facebook

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We all complain about Facebook – from privacy issues to the lack of a “dislike” button to strange-acting news feeds. But there are a few other things I see all the time on Facebook that bother me even more.

Chain letters. You remember chain letters that came in the mail. You had to mail out a certain number of copies by a certain date or risk dire consequences. Or maybe you were supposed to send $1 to the next person on the list and eventually receive thousands in return. Some of them even required saying of a certain number of prayers in exchange for blessings from God (or more specific payoffs).

(God and angels are not fairy godmothers. They’re not in the business of granting wishes.)

I never liked these when they came in the mailbox and I like them even less online. In addition to those standard types are ones requiring the reader to cut and paste a paragraph into his or her own timeline and see how many people respond. (For some reason simple sharing is not allowed.)

I don’t see the point of these, especially when they say “I know who will pass this on and who will not.” If you already know, why bother posting the thing at all?

Ridiculous pass-alongs. Somehow the most annoying of these are the pass-alongs that say if you have a granddaughter/niece/dog /service member/victim of cancer in your family you love with all your heart, share this picture of a candle or a ribbon or a flag. Nearly everyone qualifies for one or more of those, but passing around the images is kind of pointless. An actual picture of said granddaughter/niece. etc. would make more sense. One or two. Not thousands.

Also pointless are the ones that say share if you hate cancer or pass this on if you disapprove of animal abuse. Who’s going to admit they like cancer or heartily approve of animal abuse?

If you look closely at some of these memes – as well as the humorous ones – you will find that they originate at radio stations. You can tell by the call letters. Why do radio stations care about cancer or animal abuse? They don’t. They are doing what is called “like-farming.”

Since online music streaming, iTunes and iPods, internet radio stations and podcasts, and services like SiriusXM, radio stations have fallen on hard times. In order to charge more to advertisers, the stations must prove that they have listeners – responsive listeners at that. By putting a meme online that everyone will want to like and share, they are proving that their station gets attention – not for its music, however.

Famous characters. Nowadays we see beloved icons of our childhood – primarily cartoon characters – being used to support assorted social and political causes, or just to deliver some lame-ass joke. The creators of Kermit the Frog, Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, and Calvin and Hobbes certainly never intended their characters to be used as vehicles for assorted, sometimes controversial, opinions. (Charles Schulz would probably have been okay with the religious memes.)

If a company like MetLife wants to use Peanuts characters in its advertising, they have to – and do – pay large amounts of money. Not so for the people who create Facebook memes. And they largely get away with it. Internet memes are so anonymous that it can take forever to figure out whom to sue.

And while we’re on the subject, I am so bloody tired of the Minions. These repulsive blobs appear everywhere, commenting on everything, joking about any topic. They are this millennium’s Smurfs, only yellow. The jokes or sayings aren’t even that funny usually, but apparently someone thinks that having a Minion presenting it will improve the humor.

Click bait. Ever since Ye Olde days of newspapers and magazines, headlines have been meant to draw readers into an article. But at least they gave some idea what the article was going to be about. Not so anymore. Headlines of the variety “A person did this and you won’t believe what happened next” appear on news feeds with stunning regularity.

Again, as with like-farming, this is simply meant to raise the number of click-throughs and generate excess interest for a story that’s not really all that fascinating.

I particularly dislike headlines of the sort that say “You’ve been doing X wrong for years” (eating sushi, flossing) or “What’s the best time of day to x?” (drink water, take vitamins). Someone somewhere thinks they know better than we do. What’s the best time to drink water? How about when you’re thirsty?

But if you really don’t want me to read your article, your meme, your opinion, or your joke, there’s a really easy way to do that – make it unreadable. Professional graphic designers and typographers make mistakes that render their efforts futile. Imagine what can be done in the way of illegibility by someone with no training at all.

So I beg of you – if you want to put an inspirational saying atop a lovely nature picture, by all means do so. But check out the color of the picture and the color of the type you’re using. White type on a light blue or pink background is not suitable even for those whose eyes aren’t failing. Screen captures are also notoriously hard to read. I know you can blow them up but it’s a real pain and most of the time I don’t find it worth the effort. I scroll right by.

Sometimes I don’t know why I bother with Facebook at all. Probably for the videos of kittens and pandas.

 

Procrastination Isn’t All Bad

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I’ve put off writing this post as long as I can.(1)

The truth is, I’ve been a procrastinator all my life. The number of library books I’ve returned past their due date adds up to quite a sum in fines. I always tell myself that this isn’t a character flaw, it’s just a way of supporting the library with my funds as well as with my votes.(2)

The one thing that I haven’t been able to procrastinate about is worrying. As soon as worry niggles its way into my mind, there it is, taking up residence, and threatening to stay for the duration.

However, the reason that I say procrastination can be good is that, if you wait long enough, whatever it is you’re putting off may just go away.

Once my husband and I were vacationing in Boca Raton. There was going to be a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral, on the other coast, on the day we were supposed to leave. Dan very much wanted to see the launch. I would have liked to as well, but I thought it would make our drive home to Ohio one of crazed madness, driving too far too fast, and not enjoying anything. We would arrive home stressed, exhausted, and angry.(3)

So we postponed having the fight. There were still a few days before the launch and there was a telephone number to call for updates. Every day Dan called and every day they reported whether it was still on schedule or on hold. Many of the days we called it was on hold. Eventually it got to the point where there was no way we could stay for the launch, make it over to the other coast of Florida, and still have enough time to get back to Ohio before we had to go to work.

The point is that at that time neither one of us could be angry about it. Dan missed seeing launch, but not because I was being a bitch about it. I got my long, leisurely drive back home without Dan being a resentful Mr. CrankyPants. In that case, procrastination may have saved our marriage.(4)

Here’s another example of procrastination as a marriage-saver. It’s in my nature put off large purchases by shopping around. Dan is more of the “see-what-you-want-and-buy-it” type of consumer. When we need a major appliance I procrastinate by comparing models, prices, ease of service, delivery charges, and so on. Then when I go out of town for any reason, Dan simply buys the appliance he likes best while I’m away.(5)

Useful as I find it, I am trying to break – or at least lessen – my habit of procrastination. That’s one reason I’m lying here in bed, beset by two kinds of antibiotics plus probiotics, allergy pills, antihistamine pills, and all the usual meds I take just to get through daily life. I have promised myself that I will post on my blogs every week on Sundays. To do that and do it well (or reasonably) I need to start writing by Wednesday at the latest.(6)

Fortunately my Samsung Galaxy Android tablet allows me to dictate. Then when I feel better I can go downstairs to the real computer and edit. Hemingway is said to have advised writing drunk and editing sober. I suppose writing while medicated and editing while recovering is at least close to the spirit.

Defeating procrastination is a question of whether you have power over it or it has power over you. With me, I guess it’s about six of one and half dozen of the other, or a little more on the procrastinating side. But I don’t have time to worry about that now. I’ll get to it later.

 

(1) See what I did there?

(2) It’s less easy to explain away how I managed to procrastinate on filing my taxes. I’m pretty sure that my next investment will have to be a tax attorney. When I get around to looking one up online.

(3) At least I would have. Dan would have skipped the angry part, since he would have gotten his way.

(4) I won’t say I’m recommending procrastination for everyone, all the time. I’m just noting that it has its uses.

(5) That’s also how he ended up with a pet hedgehog, which I suppose is better than a major appliance, though definitely not as useful.

(6) In high school and college I could put off writing like a champ. It was seldom that I ever wrote a paper more than a day before it was due. And I got away with it. Now I can’t – or at least don’t – do that anymore. Either I’ve gotten worse at procrastinating, worse at lying to myself, or better at realizing that my work needs more work. Whatever the reason, I definitely procrastinate less, when it comes to writing.

 

Whoa!

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It’s remarkable how much a horse is like a pair of cross country skis. At least in my experience.

Let’s start with the horse.

A number of my relatives have lived on farms, and one of the great delights of my childhood was visiting Uncle Sam’s farm on vacations.(1) We went fishing, picked blackberries on the way to the pond, gathered fresh eggs, used an outhouse (2), milked cows, played in haylofts, churned butter.

And occasionally rode horses. (3)

Mostly we rode them from the house to the barn, on a well-worn path alongside the cornfield. It wasn’t a long journey, or, truthfully, a very exciting one, but at the time, it was a longed-for thrill.

On one memorable occasion, it was even more thrilling.

Just as I was departing the front porch, which served as a mounting block, the horse took it into his head to start running. Galloping, technically. I don’t know why it took such a notion. Later we suspected a little dog had been nipping at its heels. Whatever the reason, it took off like a large, jouncing rocket.

Headed straight for the barn door.

Which was closed.

I could see doom impending, in the form of a horrible, splintering crash into a nearly solid structure of nearly impenetrable wood.

I had a few scant moments to make a decision.

I bailed.

Gracelessly, I flung myself sideways off the horse, landing in the cornfield.

The damn horse, of course, reached the barn door and quite sensibly stopped. I should have trusted it to be smarter than I was at that age.

I escaped with some minor scrapes and bruises, and was resilient enough that this episode did not end my attempts at riding horses. Luckily, none ever did anything remotely threatening to me again.(4)

Now we come to skis.

Much later in life, I was living in upstate New York in a log house on top of a hill. It was scenic as all get-out, with smoke curling up from chimneys, a few distant neighbors to wave to, trees which could be cut for firewood, and a winding road leading from bottom to top.(5) The road wound lazily through a few small towns. If you went far enough along, you encountered a fairly major lake, also very scenic.

Although the general area had several downhill skiing facilities, I was not then – nor am I now – known for my athletic prowess, so that was not an option for me.

Someone, however, convinced me that cross-country skiing was just like hiking, really. I had hiked in the Adirondacks a few years earlier, so that didn’t seem entirely out of the question.

I borrowed some skis and the expertise of the person lending them and went down the driveway to where it met the road. There I was strapped into (or technically, I suppose, onto) the skis and handed poles. Then like a bird being shoved out of the nest or a child learning how to ride a bicycle, I was released into the wild to make my way on my own. All I had to do, my instructor said, was begin moving forward.

Unfortunately, however, although I was facing forward, the road behind me went downhill. And so of course did I. It was one of the many times I noted that gravity is not, and never will be, my friend.

As I began sliding backwards, visions of swooping all the way down the hill, through the towns, and into the lake flashed before my eyes.(6) I did the sensible thing and panicked. Then my instincts took over. Just as I had when riding the runaway horse, I bailed.

Sideways.

Mostly I just fell over, landing on the snow-covered road, which was better than a non-snow-covered road or a cornfield (7), and waited for someone to come hoist me up.

Although you often hear people say that you should get back on the horse that threw you, no one ever says anything about getting back on the skis that dumped you on the road.

So I haven’t. And my life has been richer for it. Not to mention longer.

 

(1) Yes, really. I had an Uncle Sam. On the other side of the family I actually had a real Aunt Jemima.

(2) Okay, I can’t say that was actually one of the great delights.

(3) Once I rode a mule instead. My mule-riding tip: Don’t, unless you have a mule-saddle. Mules’ backbones are exceedingly, well, bony. I had no mule-saddle.

(4) Once one bucked, but by then I had acquired enough sense to hang on.

(5) Or the other way around, if that’s the way you were going. This becomes important later.

(6) I know you’re supposed to see your past, but I envisioned the future. I never seem to get these things right.

(7) Or a possibly-frozen lake.

Social Life on Social Media

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Nothing can beat a cup of tea and an intimate chat with a close friend. Or a warm hug from someone dear. Certainly not technology.

Except that my husband, my mother-in-law in Pennsylvania, and I have koffee klatches every Sunday. A friend and her granddaughter in Colorado Skype games of charades. I belong to support groups with members in Germany and Australia.

Before you say that pre-smart telephones could be used for most of these connections, think about the lack of video on old-fashioned phones, the difficulties of multi-person teleconferences, and the lack of ways to share photos and videos across the country, or even across continents. Mail can’t provide the immediacy; landlines can’t provide the visuals. Only computers and the Internet can put together the complete package.

Without the Internet, I wouldn’t have heard about my Girl Scout friend’s brain surgery until after it happened. We only recently got back in touch, but she posted daily updates. I couldn’t have expected daily phone calls.

Without Facebook, I wouldn’t have seen my great-nephews having breakfast with their father or shared awful jokes with my husband’s niece. Think of the phone bills I would have if I passed a joke along to all my other friends!

Without instant messages, I wouldn’t have been able to give a a dear old friend confidential news and personal advice that wouldn’t be overheard.

Sure, there’s a special quality to a face-to-face conversation. No electronic gizmo can replace the intimacy of a hug. You can’t dry someone’s tears over a cable modem. But there are times when you need to cry without letting the other person know you’re weeping, to listen to a confidence without showing that you’re shocked, to share a family moment without admitting that you’re alone.

Without computer technology, it would be much more difficult – if not impossible – to keep up with my friends in Philadelphia, Ann Arbor, Ventura, Newcastle, and Mumbai. For that matter, it would be an almost prohibitive hassle to telecommute with a company 75 miles from my home.

I know that the good old telephone and U.S. mail are still available when I need them. They let me arrange an evening with a high school friend who’s still in town. They let me send presents at birthdays, or Christmas, or just because.

But, to tell the truth, most of those gifts are selected, paid for, and scheduled for delivery with electrons and pixels. The songs I share are mp3s, the pictures jpegs, the personally designed cards ordered from who-knows-where.

I’m closer to the people I want to be close to, even if we’re physically far apart.

Perhaps we only share coffee virtually, but still we share.

A Little Means a Lot

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You know those pictures you see of a celebrity presenting an oversized novelty check to some person or organization? Well, I had that experience once – as the giver, not the givee.

At the time I was the editor of a magazine called Early Childhood News, which was for child care center owners and operators. It included articles on legal issues, safety and hygiene, playgrounds, food, self-esteem, volunteers, and more – polls on interesting topics and annual toy awards, to name two.

It was a small magazine (in terms of circulation), so our author payments were not extravagant.

Once I asked a person who was quite well known in the field to write an article, and asked whether I should send his check to his home or university office.

When I told him how much (or rather, little) it was, he said, “Just donate it to a Head Start program.”

So I called the Dayton Head Start program and told them that I had a $200 donation for them, courtesy of the professor.

To say they were flabbergasted would be an understatement. When I came to present the check (a normal-sized one), they figuratively rolled out the red carpet for me. I toured the facility, I met all the administrators and teachers. I had my picture taken presenting the check. (I was glad that I had worn my good green dress that day.)

Until that moment I never realized how such a relatively small sum could have such a big effect. It meant they could buy supplies without caregivers having to dip into their own meager funds. Or provide a special treat or party for the kids. Or purchase books that would enrich children’s minds for years to come.

To me it was modest compensation for what was an ordinary transaction in my business. For the professor, it was an amount too small to bother with. For Head Start it was a windfall.

I think we sometimes fail to realize what even our smallest good deeds – or ordinary actions – can mean to people and groups that struggle. I still had a lot to learn.

That fact was again brought home to me again when I heard someone tell a story about an educational conference she attended. When the topic turned to snow days, she said to the teachers, “I bet you really look forward to those.”

She was met with a profound, awkward silence.

Finally, someone explained it to her: “On snow days, we know that some of our students won’t get a good, nutritious breakfast or a hot lunch. They’ll go hungry.”

It’s a bit embarrassing to think about. To most of us, a snow day means relaxing with hot cocoa, staying in bed an extra hour, or baking cookies with the kids. To teachers and the children they serve, it may mean something a lot less heart-warming.

I’ll admit that I hadn’t thought of that effect of snow days either. Like the woman at the conference, I thought of snow days the way they had been for me in my childhood – a break, virtually a vacation. Because that was all I saw, I thought that was the norm. And for well-off suburban kids like me, it was.

A free or reduced-price school lunch program, or a local food pantry, can mean the difference between hunger and a full tummy to a child. A small donation can help a nonprofit service fulfill its mission to improve children’s lives. In this time of talk about budget cuts for social programs and safety nets that become “hammocks” of dependency (as Paul Ryan believes), let’s spare a thought – or even a small check – for people, especially children, to whom hot, nutritious food; safe and loving care; and enrichment for the mind are luxuries.

It’s something we often think about during the Christmas season, but need is year-round.

The Power of the Purr

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My father hated cats – until he cared for Bijou.

His feelings toward cats had their roots in his childhood. Once his mother was bitten by a stray cat that she was trying to help. For that, my father held a grudge. Bijou changed his mind.

Bijou was a smallish tortoiseshell calico, my very first cat. I picked her out of a roomful of cats at the shelter because of her gentle demeanor and because her quiet ways didn’t seem to garner a lot of attention from the other prospective pet owners. Over the years she became a cuddlesome kitty who slept curled up in one of the curves of my body, behind my knees or snuggled by my waist, safe and cozy and sharing warmth.

When my husband and I went on our honeymoon, I asked my parents to look after Bijou. I knew my dad’s feelings about cats, but I felt sure he could at least give her food and water, if not warm up to and love on her as she liked.

My father had cancer – multiple myeloma – a particularly vicious form of bone cancer. It was hard for him to move about, so when he went to our house, he usually ensconced himself in the barrel-backed chair while my mother did the honors filling food and water bowls.

But then Bijou jumped up on his lap.

And purred.

She had been avoiding us a bit before we left, preferring to take up residence under the bed or behind the sofa. We thought it was just a normal reaction to all the confusion and chaos surrounding a wedding.

Actually, she had feline leukemia. She was isolating, as cats often do when they don’t feel well. Maybe the stress of the wedding preparations caused her disease to become active. Maybe it was just her time.

Whatever it was, it touched my father. He had never been one for cancer support groups with names like “Make Today Count.” But one small cat, purring her way through pain and illness that would ultimately defeat her reached him the way nothing else could.

Maybe he saw in her the tenacity in the face of suffering that he too would need. Maybe he read her purr as acceptance of her lot in life. Maybe he saw a cat with every reason to strike out at someone choosing instead to jump up and purr.

However she did it, Bijou changed his mind about cats.