First Steps into 2012

It's a good thing I don't believe in signs as the first thing I did after getting out of bed this morning and heading for the bathroom was to plonk my right foot into a large soft puddle of puke, a well-thought-out symbolic message left for me by Sweet Pea overnight as he contemplated his year ahead, who obviously does. Believe in signs, that is. Leaving them, for humans.

Perhaps he was just telling me he doesn't like the new dinner I've been feeding him - Meow Mix Market Select assorted bits of Real Something and Whole Something Else in a rich gravy or flavorful sauce, instead of the Friskies Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers delights he'd gotten used to. Somehow I doubt this as with the Gravy Lovers all he ever did was lick up the gravy and leave the solids and with the Meow Mix he's been cleaning his dish every night for the three weeks we've been down here. It can't be that it was a new and different flavor that didn't agree with him, as last night's dinner was the second half of the can he had the night before, so unless it had been sitting in his stomach for twenty-four hours like a fragment of an underdone potato ha ha it wasn't that. Close inspection of the puke as I stood on one foot in the kitchen and wiped it out from between my toes with a piece of paper towel showed no cockroach or other insect remains, and no hairballs.

I do know that cats throw up, as the sun rises every morning and sets at night, if not with quite that regularity, and it's not the first time Sweet Pea has done it. I have a remarkable photo from last summer in Silver of a midmorning puke of his left on the front porch that contained one baby bird, a caterpillar and what looked like a very small snake but could have been a frog, and in that case no further research was needed for the reason.

By the grace of Craigslist, I'm saved from further rumination on the beginning of 2012 and what might be to come in the remaining three hundred and sixty five days (yes, it's a leap year) and fifteen and a half hours as I need to go and count the exact number of Trollope Society books I'm trying to flog and have just had a nibble about. Gosh, perhaps the year is going to be a mix of good and bad - oops, sorry - rewards and challenges. Good thing I don't believe in signs.