[ Unrelated: My friend Mark Webb (who works at Seattle’s Road Runner Sports store, which is a great place to go for shoes.) just sent me a link to this article in the New York Times. It’s a good read for swimmers of all levels. Nothing really revolutionary, but it shows that swimming technique is never "good enough". Now on to my non-triathlon post: ]
This week is a rest week, so I’m pretty much sleeping as much as I can, doing maintenance workouts, and getting caught up on schoolwork. Last night was later than normal because I was playing Monopoly with Brian "road kill" Davis and his wife Marijana (I won for the first time in my life), so this morning I was keen on sleeping in as late as possible. Around 2am, my cat decided to join me, but he was in a hyper frenzy. He jumped into bed, head butted me awake, and flopped down next to me while I petted him. If I stopped petting he would go back to step 2 (head butting). 20 minutes later I fell into a miserable sleep, dreaming that I was riding the bumper cars and had been stuck with the crummy slow car that everyone else attacks.
Next I dreamt that I was hiking through the jungle and being attacked by mosquitos. I woke up several times to roll over, wondering why I was so itchy. I figured it was dry skin from the chlorine, but around 7am when the morning light made its way past my curtains I awoke to see that my dear kitty was long gone, but his gift of miserable sleep kept on giving. There was a trail of dirt and grime from the floor to my pillow to the side of my bed, and where that trail ended there was a pile of cat puke sitting right next to my book (A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore – not as good as Lamb, Which was brilliantly funny, but still worth a few laughs).
"Troy!!!!!" I jumped out of bed, ran to the shower, ripped off my sheets and started a cat hunt.
It’s easy to find my cat in a hurry. You just walk to the pantry and do the tuna call: "Troy, you want some tuna? I’m making a tuna sandwich!!!! Troooyyyyeeeeeeeee!" It never fails. On rare occasions I have to actually crack open a can of tuna before he shows, but before the can opener can make a round Troy will be there. My cat could be a mile away fighting raccoons or chasing Peppy Le Pew and he would make it to the pantry in time for first dibs on tuna (the dog always gets served second).
No tuna for the pukey kitty today. It was straight into a bath. I should probably also try to figure out why my cat is bulimic, but at least for now he’s clean, allergen free, and toasty warm wrapped up next to the fireplace.
He may be anoying sometimes, but at least he doesn’t have IBS like Shoes.
As soon as I change the sheets I’m closing my door and going back to bed.
I stepped in cat poop in my brand new Thermo-molded ZOot Recovery sandals – which by the way was actually outside but I didn’t notice because IT WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WALKWAY. I think proceeded to walk into the hallway, into the kitchen, up the stairs where I must have done the cha-cha and then into my walk-in closet. How do I know this specific path? Well, it was documented with a cookie cutter of the word Zoot, in cat poo all through the house. I’ll take a pukey troy any day.
I had a cat that could sense tuna being thought about when he was a mile away, sadly he is no longer with us, but LC likes to steal anything with egg residue on it. In fact over break I was rearraging the storage under my bed and found THREE spatulas that my mom said had been missing for a could weeks. She takes them out of the sink and runs away, granted most are longer than her body so it is quite entertaining to catch her in the act. Also she likes plastic bottle caps and carries them around like a dog.
Cats are silly sometimes.