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.