It’s 3:59 a.m. on a Thursday in March, and I’m finally winding down for the night after a very busy evening working. I wrote a large section of a chapter of my memoir. It’s the chapter where I met a beautiful woman from the South and we had incredible and wild times together from Arkansas to New York City to Montreal. So I feel really good about where I’m at in the memoir.
I also published two stories for my website, genxchronicle.com. We cover news, culture and lifestyle through a Generation X lens.
The first story I wrote was about Saudi Arabia’s illegal and brutal war in Yemen, and how the Trump Administration has been supporting them with arms and training and funds. That was a tough one to write, because there are so many civilians who are really suffering. But I felt I had to get it off my chest, and to get the story out there as much as I could.
The last story I wrote was a fun one. It was about The Backstreet Boys, and how they were the best of the wave of 90’s boy bands. They ushered in a new era of R&B beginning in the mid- 1990s. They were also the Godfathers of groups that came after them, such as in N’Sync, the Jonas Brothers, and Justin Bieber.
So I finish work around 3:50 a.m., and I’m pretty wired. I pop on the Google Home and say “Hey Google, play some music.” Out comes a loud and hard Beastie Boys song. Now I usually love the Beastie Boys, but it almost 4 a.m. on a Sunday night, after a solid 8 hours of working very very hard. So I don’t feel like hearing the Beastie scream at me.
So I go to the bedroom to check out Copper, and she’s sleeping in the cat bed on the floor. I walk over to her, extend my hand, and started petting her back. She smiles, widens her eyes, stands up, and gets out of the cat bed for me to pet her more. So I do.
I pet her for about four minutes while she’s was standing up, and then she walks over to the area rug in front of the TV, the white area rug, and lays down on and on her side, and spreads out. So I start stroking her back while she lays sprawled out with her front legs above her head, and her hind legs sprawled out almost like she’s a horizontal hot dog. She’s just laying down and chilling.
So I kept petting her back and petting her back and making longer and longer strokes, starting at her forehead and going all the way through to the end of her tail. It’s incredible. I feel so relaxed and at peace. I stroke her from forehead to tail and I just feel a sense of calm come over me.
I’ve written about this before, so I know I’m repeating myself, but it’s just that she’s like a human meditation machine. She just chills me the heck out every time I pet her. The crazy stimulation of the Internet washes away, I forget about Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I forget about ESPN SportsCenter, I forget about text messages to two or three friends, and who said what to who, and I just chill out with my cat Copper. We bond and we love each other and it’s incredibly great.
So she rolls over and over a few times while sprawled out. I pet her and per her, probably for a good six or seven minutes in total. Finally she stands up from the rug, and she slowly makes her way out of the room. I get in one last pet as she’s walking away, and then she’s gone.
The whole experience was amazing. She just absolutely and totally chilled me the heck out. She’s an amazing cat, and I love her with all my heart. We’ll see what happens next.
