Neptune Square Ascendant

Is this why I decided it would be a really good idea to foster a cat while I'm here in the city, so Sweet Pea would have someone to play with? If there's anything I don't like about being here it's because he seems to be so unhappy and bored. After being used to being let out at daylight to go and roam on his own six acres and wherever else he has the courage to go and coming in, if he feels like it, at dusk when it's time for some wet food, I imagine him feeling so confined and miserable while he's here I can hardly stand it, me being the soft-hearted dope I am.

I play marbles with him and run backwards and forwards dragging toys, but his response is very half-hearted. He sleeps most of the day, which is probably exactly what he does outside in New Mexico, but I don't see it then, and here, all I can think is how lethargic and dull he's getting.

It seemed like the perfect solution then, to foster a cat until it found a permanent home and give Sweet Pea someone to play with. What I didn't realize was that when you agree to foster, you basically get who-ever's up next on death row in a city shelter, which is how I ended up going up to 116th Street on the full Moon to get Mr. Patches. (His shelter name was Kitty, but as he weights nineteen and a half pounds that didn't seem appropriate and because of his coloring I immediately re-christened him Mr. Patches - The Venerable Mr. Patches, to be exact, on account of his advanced age (ten) and his general air of stateliness.)

He was supposed to be in perfect health which didn't make any sense at all as they gave me a vial of antibiotics for him when I picked him up. He had what looked like a cold sore on his nose and also had a terrible wheezing cough, and the short version is he went into animal hospital on December 8th and I got him out again, cold sore and cough-free, on Saturday the 12th.

Since then, he and Sweet Pea have been - and still are - working out some kind of uneasy truce. When Mr. Patches was sick he hid out in any cubbyhole he could find for himself, and there was not much Sweet Pea could do. Now Mr. Patches is feeling so much better he sleeps all day - as does Sweet Pea, alas - but then in the evening and at night begins to prowl around the apartment, followed now by Sweet Pea who would very much like to play. Unfortunately, and I know this because I saw it last year when I rented the addition in Silver to someone with a cat, SP's idea of playing is to launch himself 18 inches straight into the air and land, four legs extended, on whoever he thinks he's playing with. Mr. Patches is yet to be convinced that this is anything but war.

The vet tells me that the two of them will work it out eventually, so at night I doze fretfully listening to yelps and yips and meows and murmurs, sweep up all the tufts of hair in the morning and hope for peace in our time, or at least before Neptune stops squaring my Ascendant next year.

And I Thought It Was Me

I had such a productive week I was amazed at myself. I listed the house as a rental on Craigslist, both on the Las Cruces list and then on the Anchorage one after someone told me a lot of people from Alaska come to Silver in the winter. Two weeks before deadline, I proofed the special edition copy of Soldiering On that Oneactplaydepot is printing, then in spite of knowing I didn't meet the qualifications, applied to a Playwrights/Directors Workshop at the Actors Studio that a member friend told me about.

(Whether that last can truly be called productive could be up for discussion, as there's not a chance I'll be accepted, but it made me write a letter introducing myself as a playwright and send a writing resume, a completed one-act and 10 pages of the play I've been working on on and off for 12 years, and anything that makes me actually admit that I write plays can, for me, only be good.)

I paid the house insurance on time, remembered to transfer money from savings (hah!) into checking in time to cover my New York rent, ordered and picked up my Celexa Rx from Walmart, kept my appointment with Silver City's only dermatologist and happily found myself to be skin cancer free - the list of responsible and adult things I did would be even longer if I could remember them ha ha, and so help me God I had a few discrete moments of congratulating myself on my sudden ability to focus and - dare I write this even knowing no one will read it? - put it down to Pluto stationing in my eighth house of Self Mastery. Aaarrrggghhh!

Today, Labor Day, I played tennis if you want to be generous (batted a ball backwards and forwards with someone almost as pitiful as me if you don't), came home, dragged great big rocks around, which is known as gardening here in Silver City, for four hours, took a shower and began to look at what I have of Act II of the play I've been working on for 12 years. As it's Monday I turned the page over in my Week at a Glance desk diary where I keep track of transits and there, written in for Wednesday the 9th, in my very own hand-writing and in red ink, it says Saturn trine Midheaven exact. Talk about a letdown, but at least I can still laugh.