So a few things happened today. It’s late on a Thursday in March, and it’s snowing. Bill de Blasio, the Mayor of New York City, declared today a snow day, so school is canceled for all New York City public school students. The crazy thing is, though, the snow hasn’t really been that bad. I mean when I was a kid, if it snowed six inches or something, that was no big deal, you trekked to school and you got there. But it’s a kinder gentler world now.
I slept late because I was up all night writing three stories for my website, genxchronicle.com. We cover news, culture and lifestyle through a Generation X lens. One story was about the 15th anniversary of the Iraq War. In my view the war has been a disaster for everyone involved, both Americans and Iraqis.
The second story was about sitting in front of the kitchen window late at night listening to Phil Collins sing In The Air Tonight on the Google Home, and reflecting on the essay I wrote about Iraq. It was a great relief to finally get my opinion out there on the Internet.
So I go to bed around 6:30 a.m., wake up at 2, and head to the gym. I have a good upper body workout. I do chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, and traps, which are the muscles on top of the shoulders next to the neck.
The snow is coming down pretty hard, but it doesn’t bother me, it’s pretty beautiful. I love how snow makes the city look beautiful for about 12 hours, and then it all turns to slush. But it’s an incredibly beautiful 12 hours, it really is.
So I walk in the snow to Key Food, my local supermarket, and I get some supplies for dinner. I’m psyched to cook tonight. I’m making chicken with peppers and mushrooms in red sauce, Italian style. I haven’t made this dish in a really long time, but the one other time I made it it came out great. So I’m excited.
I come home and chill out in the kitchen for a while. I look out the window at the snow falling. Then I go into the living room and start watching CNN. They have a panel discussion about Trump and Russia and all the stuff going on. It’s really stressing me out though, it’s really stressing me out.
So I go into the bedroom to look for Copper, and I can’t find her. I know she’s hiding under the bed though, so I bend down, push the backpack that’s under the bed just a little bit towards her, and boom! She pops out and starts walking around the bedroom. So all she needed was a little push, just a little push from me, to stop hiding, and then she was ready to hang out with me.
So I lay on the bed and she stands on the floor, and I pet her and pet her and pet her. It’s great. I pet her for a good 15 minutes. She’s rolling around on the carpet, doing her back flips and rolling around and putting her four paws up in the air and exposing her belly, which is a sign of extreme trust, according to my mother. The whole experience is just incredible.
The TV is still on in the living room though, and we can hear Trump’s voice. I say to Copper do you know who that is Copper? That’s President Trump. He’s the president of our country. She looks at me with quizzical eyes, like she has no idea what I’m talking about.
But then she rolls over and lets out a meow that sounds exactly like “I know.” It sounds exactly like “I know.” That’s what it sounds like. Like she’s telling me she knows Trump is president. Obviously there’s no way she could know this, because she’s a cat, and we are humans, but it seems like she’s saying “I know.” That’s what the meow sounded like, it sounded exactly like that. It was pretty cool.
I lay on the bed and pet her some more, and I say I love you Copper, I love you Copper, do you know that I love you Copper? She rolls over on the rug again and lets out a louder meow. It sounds like she said “I know” once again. “I know!” Like she knew that I loved her. Could she know that I love her? It’s hard to imagine a cat having that kind of cognition or comprehension, but who knows? There’s so many things about life and nature and animals that we just don’t understand fully.
Finally I make a decision. I want to hang out with her on my bed. She’s so shy about hanging out on elevated spaces like the couch or the bed, but I want her on the bed with me. I’m also tired from my workout I don’t want to keep bending over to pet her. So I just go for it. I lean over, grab her under her stomach, and lift her up onto the bed.
There’s just one catch. She doesn’t like it at all, and she scratches me pretty hard. She scratches me on the left arm and left bicep. Dang! She just scratched the heck out of me. She let me know that she did not appreciate being lifted and picked up.
I drop her on the bed, and she jumps off. I’m left with three pretty bad scratches on my left arm, which isn’t the end of the world, it really isn’t. I mean I know they’ll heal, and hopefully they won’t leave scars. I don’t think they will. They’re just scratches really. Just a few scratches. But it’s the first time she’s really ever scratched me hard. One other time she scratched me a tiny bit on my finger, but I barely even noticed that one. This time she drew blood, and a decent amount of it too.
So now I’ve learned a lesson. Copper the cat does not like to be picked up and placed on elevated surfaces. At least not yet. What I think I’m going to have to do is let her come onto the bed or onto the couch in her own time, like she does every once in awhile. I can’t force her onto the bed or the couch.
I put a couple Band-Aids on my scratches, and I go back into the living room. I sit down to dictate this Copper’s corner episode. I know she didn’t mean to hurt me, she was just defending herself, because she was probably scared, and she didn’t like being picked up. She’s probably not used to it, or maybe she had a bad experience with being picked up at the animal shelter, who knows?
But now I know what to do, which is not to pick her up, at least for a while. Don’t try it again, give her some space, and then maybe give it another shot in a month or something like that. So that’s the story of Copper saying she knew Trump was president, Copper saying she knew I loved her, and then Copper scratching me when I lifted her onto the bed. It was three adventures all in one day. Pretty darn cool. We’ll see what happens next.
