More cat adventures: my parents have had a recent increase in the number of new empty cardboard boxes being left around for reasons nobody has bothered to tell me. I assume it's part of an organization scheme which will someday come to nothing. A couple of them were stacked on top of this chair that's left by the wall, under the light switches, so that people who do sit on it will stand a fair chance of leaning their heads back and thus turning off the lights in the room, to my father's delight.
I noticed the middle cat standing up on the ground, prodding at one of the boxes, in that curious fashion of cats who haven't decided whether something is worth jumping on top of. She was clearly thinking about it, from the way she wiggled in that pre-jump pose, but then stopped as, apparently, she realized the available space on the box and chair was not quite enough for her to have a steady perch, and the box on top of the box she was pushing was now sliding inevitably down and towards her.
She hopped backwards a cat's length, then twisted and jumped away as the box came to its crashing stop, which she looked at from over by the kitchen.
Out of the new-fallen box the kitten poked her head up, looked around, yawned at me, and then ducked back into the box. The middle cat finally wandered over, looked into the box, and went in to my parents' bedroom.
Incidentally, I don't want it thought by whatever people who might be responsible for The Price Is Right who happen to read this journal to think that just because I didn't mention it earlier I didn't notice that during the opening sequence of Monday's show, while the announcer talks about ``here it comes'' and ``from the Bob Barker studio at CBS in Hollywood'', that they only had two promotional blurbs pop up on screen (``Laughs-a-plenty'' and ``Big Prizes'') instead of the correct three. I trust this was a curious aberration.
Trivia: Over the course of the 1918-19 Spanish Flu pandemic, influenza or its complications was the cause of 47 percent of all deaths in the United States. Source: The Great Influenza, John M Barry.
Currently Reading: The Wizards of Armageddon, Fred Kaplan.