Nothing to See Here, Folks

Well, friends, not a lot has changed since we last met. I am still locked inside the Peaceable with a troupe of semi-domesticated critters. At least one of us is writing, and having a grand old time doing it. Patrick is still in Salamanca, despite his appeals to me to come there and let him go home.

Paddy has some sort of sciatica-type painful nerve thing going on in one leg. He is usually a game sort of fellow, and when he volunteered to go to Salamanca in November he was feeling fine. But pain makes Paddy into a different person. A not-nice person. I will not elaborate here, but it ain´t pretty.

Paddy wants to come home. I would go and take his place, so he can come back here and suffer just like he is there, but with Tim´s snout laid across his knee. But the Stars mitigate against that.

The star this week is John Murphy O´Pusquat, the broken kitty who now is on the mend. I took Murphy back to the University of Leon Veterinary Hospital on Monday. They shot new X-rays of his legs and let me ooh and aah at the inner workings of all these awkward wires and wands they left sticking out of him over the past month. Then they emailed the images off to another vet school in Italy.

It seems Murphy´s surgeon is presenting a symposium there on how to fix just this kind of busted cat, and Murphy´s inner workings are being screened internationally. We´re supposed to hear soon just what this wanderous cat doctor thinks of Murph´s healing process, and when/if he can remove the splints and thus return to Murph his grace and dignity.  If I don´t hear anything by tomorrow, I will start making phone calls.

And this is why I cannot go to Salamanca, and send my Patrick home. Only I can drive the car that takes the cat to the vet. We can, evidently, only deal with one bad leg at a time. Got that?

And so I stay here in Moratinos and ponder how to use-up three dozen eggs. I got a H1N1 shot (and the aches and listlessness that followed). I think a lot. I wonder if this writing business is just self-gratification, if this story is worth all this work, if this book thing is just another monumental waste of time. But mostly I write. Which is what I love best once I get started.

Other than that, I am proud of myself in little ways. I managed to move our internet cable from the freezing-cold lower kitchen up to the main house. Now I can sit in the living room and write blogs and listen to the chickens pecking at the window. I can kick a dog carcass out of the way and warm my feet near the fire and enjoy a glass of lovely Vino Virtud.

Sometimes, if I set up the wires just right, and the stars are properly aligned, the internet even works.  

I wish there was something more profound or moving to share, but this is all there is, folks. Nothing to see here. Not yet.