Cat blog

A few days ago, a commenter asked me about the status of my transient cat, who joined me in Juneau about a month after I moved here. I just wanted to report that the cat who hates to travel (and I mean really hates to travel), and who has lived with me in four different houses across a span of states more than 3,000 miles apart, appears to be happy at home.

It’s kind of a funny story how I ended up with this cat. I’m not a typical pet owner and never really set out to become one. I was living in a little studio apartment by myself in a quiet little town called Tooele, Utah. Geoff and I had spent the day mountain biking in the Stansbury Mountains, and we were unloading a slew of bike gear when this little cream-colored furball streaked into the kitchen through the open door. She had a dirt patch on her face and looked so small and frail that I felt compelled to rifle through my cupboard until I found a can of tuna.

“Don’t feed it if you don’t want a cat,” Geoff said.

“It’ll just be this one can,” I reasoned, and popped it open.

“Congratulations, you now have a cat,” he said.

I just laughed. She polished off the tuna and disappeared out the door. I thought I’d never see her again.

That is, until I found her waiting patiently on my porch when I came home from work the next day. I gave her an old can of pink salmon and shut the door behind her. She ate the entire can of greasy fish and left again.

But then she kept staking out my porch every day around 5 p.m. She’d sprint toward my car as I rolled into the driveway, meow loudly and trot behind me as a walked into the house. After I ran out of cans of meat, I began to give her bites of my dinner - macaroni and cheese, chicken, cherrios, goldfish crackers - there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t eat. Soon I found myself purchasing a little box of cat food at the store, and then a big bag of cat food, and then tuna treats, and then a litter box and cat bed - and before I even realized it, I had a cat.

For the longest time I called her “Kitty,” and sometimes “Sadie,” which is the name of my parents’ cat. So when it finally came time to admit that I had adopted her, several months after we first met, I finally gave her a name - “Cady.”

I nearly lost her when I moved from Tooele to Idaho Falls. She still spent most of her nights outside, sometimes disappearing for days at a time. I couldn’t find her when I made my final move, so I drove away from my empty apartment, convinced I’d never see her again.

I was so depressed about it that about a week later, my parents drove more than an hour one way just to look for her. It was probably a small miracle - but didn’t seem to be at the time - that they found her parked right in front of my house as if I had never abandoned her.

My parents have said that she’s the one who adopted me, and she must have not realized what she was getting herself into. Every time I move, she has to endure a painful transition of being stuffed in a cat carrier and carted across epic distances, refusing to eat or drink for an entire day and crying the entire time (and I mean the entire time). But every time we arrive in a new place, she acts as if she’s never been happier. I think she’s a lot like me.

It’s hard for me to predict how many more times Cady and I will move away, how many more new cat enemies she we make and how many more vole populations she will eradicate. But I do believe this - that if she could go back to that summer evening in Tooele, with the sickly sweet stench of apricots rotting in the hot August air and strange creatures hoisting scary metal contraptions into a dark cave of an apartment - that she’d still pick me.

Big snow

Date: Nov. 13
Total mileage: 10
November mileage: 161.9
Temperature upon departure: 27

A storm moved in today that has so far dumped more than a foot of snow. It could dump another foot before the clouds move on. That’s great weather for weaving a fleece-blanket cocoon, curling around two cozy cats, and soaking up steam from a big cup of hot chocolate. It’s also good weather for biking.

We went out for a ride this morning when the storm totals were closer to 4" - enough to send cars swerving all over the roads, but not enough to bog down the bike paths to the point of walking. It's a fun adventure to go out for a ride when the snow is coming down that hard. Familiar scenery disappears behind a veil of white static. And during rare breaks in traffic, with metal-tipped tires disappearing beneath soft powder, the silence is nearly absolute. I, of course, forgot my googles, so I spent most of the ride focused on abstract tracks in the snow.

Every single flight in and out of Juneau was cancelled today - in a twist of luck, stranding in surrounding airports all of the state legislators who were coming to town for a special session they didn't want to attend - and, in a twist of poetic justice, also stranding the Lt. governor who was partially responsible for the unwanted session in the first place. In the sweep of the storm, we were effectively cut off from the rest of the world. With nowhere to go and nobody but Juneau to answer to, residents closed offices early, ran errands on skis, went sledding down paved roads, and pedaled snow-caked bikes across town. And just like the lip-biting children praying for "snow day," I know we're all going to be glued to our radios tomorrow morning.

Veterans Day 8K

About twice a year, I go for a run. That's enough for me.

On a fluke this morning, Geoff and I entered the Southeast Roadrunners Veterans Day 8K race. I never quite know what to expect at these organized events. But when we showed up at the starting line 10 minutes before the race began, I think I expected to find a little more than two race organizers and about 13 other racers huddled beneath a tiny blue booth.

At 10 a.m., the small group was off, pounding the snow-packed path beneath eye-stinging flurries of snow. I watched the runners disappear behind the first bend, and just like that, I was all alone.

So I continued through the icy forest, thoroughly enjoying my iPod mix and thinking that I probably could run faster than 7 mph - but why kill myself? At mile 2, Geoff passed me hot on the trail of some young guy, followed by the only other woman I saw in the race, a few more men, a couple of old guys and finally, a 9-year-old boy. Then I was alone again and knew I would be for the remainder of the race. I stopped at the 2.5-mile cone, tied my shoelaces that had been flopping around for a mile and a half, took a few deep breaths, and began to jog back.

In the end, I finished dead last with a time of 45:37. That's 2 minutes behind the 9-year-old boy and nearly 10 behind the other woman. Geoff of course finished first in about 31 minutes, and then he jogged back another mile to finish the race with me. I guess a could let a performance like this hurt my self esteem, but I'm just not a runner and feel I can't really complain about 9-minute miles (a pace which, if it weren't for the stress on joints, I feel I could continue pretty much indefinitely - much like riding 15 mph on the road.) This is how I like to do these things. I don't like to be willfully uncomfortable, even in a race, but I don't mind going comfortably forever. I still maintain that the reason I finished dead last was because the only people willing to show up for a race across snow and ice in a 30-degree snowstorm were probably focused runners, and crazy ones at that.

But enough of this hike/board/ski/run nonsense. Time to get back on the bike.