Clackety-clack…clackety-clack-clack-clack…clack…clackety-clack-clack-clack… So goes, every weekday, the staccato clatter of the Female Handler’s fingers upon her computer keyboard. The sound, come to think of it, is of similar cadence and timbre to the first spray of raindrops from a roiling storm as they pelt, tentatively, on a corrugated steel roof. No human, it seems, is immune to the romance of the pitter-patter of rain. Being a cat, I regard it as merely one more thing to sleep through. And how could I not when FH only encourages this activity (if that’s the right word) by keeping a feline-sized blanket spread on the upper right corner of her desk! And being the sensitive soul that I am, how could I ever upset her by ignoring her attentions to me? I’ve got it good here. Let me tell you, nothing aids the digesting of the previous night’s adult capybara quite like a 9-to-5 siesta.
One day last week FH was gone; something about needing to go across the river to chat with clients. Siestas on the desk aren’t the same when she’s not around. She leaves me in the care of Male Handler. While his intentions and attentions are good, they are not of the same caliber as FH’s. Instead of doting on me all day as should be his first priority...he takes advantage of having the car all to himself, after dropping FH off at the ferry terminal, and goes shopping.
What I’ve heard about any shopping experience with MH is that it requires the patience of Mother Teresa. MH reads each and every label, compares size, volume, thickness, strength, whether he can repurpose the container once the contents are used and then …compares prices at not just one store, but all that are available in the departamento (county). To buy a single dish sponge requires two weeks of comparison shopping. In the meantime, guess who’s getting more and more frustrated as she washes the dishes…
On this particular shopping excursion, while he was crouched in the cleaning-supplies aisle of Precio Mas Bajo (a grocery store) intently examining--as though for ticks--the various brooms, squeegees, and scrub brushes on offer, a store patron asked him (in Spanish—the nerve!) where she might find such-and-such. Not catching the name of the article that she was looking for, even after asking her to repeat herself, he acquitted himself with a curt “No sé” (“Dunno”). Moments later, the patron returns to where MH is still parked examining cleaning supplies. Bending her torso forward while saying the word paño to herself, she extends her arm directly in front of him to pluck a couple of cleaning cloths from the bottom shelf, where they had been largely concealed by his crouching form. “Paño … paño …. Yes, yes, I know what that means!” MH muses to himself in the moribund eddy of the patron’s swift departure.
Shortly afterward, MH is removing from a shelf nearly all of the 1-kilogram bags of a particular brand of ground coffee (the cheapest) in order to find one that hasn’t been pinpricked by machine. Failing to find a bag the freshness of the contents of which has not been compromised, he turns to neatly replacing the bags on the shelf when another patron passes by and inquires about the price of an item on sale. In a dutiful attempt to be helpful, MH points out matter-of-factly that there is no price on the shelf that corresponds to the item in question. The patron, it turns out, is already aware of this obvious fact. She is expecting a little more assistance … until … “Uh, you don’t work here?” she utters, her peremptory belief slowly being dissolved by the embarrassing truth.
Being mistaken for a store clerk restocking merchandise was not easily accepted by MH. All the clerks at Precio Mas Bajo were wearing RED fleece and he was in his BLUE fleece. “Perhaps management wears BLUE,” suggested FH .…
FH had a good trip across the river. It was an all-day strategy meeting, among other things, with one large client. Because these affairs can be quite draining, she allowed herself to relax on the return voyage by finishing a book that had been lent to her two months previous by her friend Maria called Tres Deseos (Three Wishes). With a title like that, you know something bad is going to happen at the end, and, sure enough, FH spent the entire trip bawling her eyes out. The poor gentleman seated two seats over kept glancing at FH, really not sure what to do to assist this woman in obvious distress, and was sweet enough to delay getting out of the aisle such that FH could compose herself enough to wipe all signs of tears away. Returning home, MH suggested that she read such novels from back to front.
More signs of spring…
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