about that cat

Flamingo asked me the other day how Heisenberg was doing. Heisenberg, for those of you who don't know, is my answer to a housepet in an apartment (or tenement) lacking the allowances required for a cat. I named him after Heisenberg because, after all, every imaginary housecat needs a name, and a name that is more commonly associated to the words "Uncertainty Principle" seems, by very definition, suitable for a feline not-life form.

Anyway, Flamingo asked me how Heisenberg was doing, to which I answered something disgruntled along the lines of how the cat had added insult to injury by laughing at my sister's new circus groupie status, only to fall madly in love with a stuffed cat prize at a state fair. "I told him she wasn't any good -- all silent and unresponsive and definitely lacking in intelligence -- and that just seemed to encourage him." Which, after I'd said it, turned out to be the absolute truth. Here I hadn't thought of Heisenberg for months, and suddenly it turned out that all this time, he'd been living an entire shadow life behind my back.

This is the thing with imaginary cats. You may not have to clean their litter boxes or feed them or pet them or pay attention to them, but eventually they'll find a way to lead elusive, fascinating lives that are more interesting than yours.

So to recap: my sister is working with the circus as a big top cleaner, my imaginary cat is doing the nookie with some cotton-stuffed, hook-hanging tramp in a prize booth somewhere, and me? I had salad for lunch yesterday.

I'm not in any way regretting the relative staidness of my life in comparison to Sako's or my imaginary cat's or, I daresay, my mother's. Mom is apparently headed to Hawaii next month for work, or so I learned from a colleague of hers in San Francisco last weekend. "Your mom's quite a social girl, isn't she?" she marveled. "She has wine parties in her room every night."

("Something you want to tell me?" I asked Mom over the phone rather pointedly, later, to which she countered, "Do you know where your sister is?" After that, we established a cautious cease-fire and mutually agreed there are some things we're both better off not knowing.)

As I say, I don't regret my life -- there's enough excitement in it already in knowing I could be the very first Hirata spawn to have her own mortgage, not to mention that trivial wedding thing quickly sneaking up on me -- but there are odd occasions when I hear the adventures of others and feel, well, you know.

Tired.

Sako is back from Las Vegas/Red Rock where, it turns out, she was not with the circus at all, but on some random rock climbing expedition. Where she "sort of broke something."

"What?"

"It's funny. I always thought breaks would hurt more, but everyone tells me that breaks hurt less than sprains. So anyway, I'm okay." Sako, or rather, Rocks-Mountains-Ice-and-Big-Top-Climbing without Medical Insurance or a Job That Doesn't Involve Literal Clowns Sako, appeared to find this amusing. "Oh," she added. "Don't tell Mom."

This is one of my mother's nightmares, Sako getting sick or having to go to the emergency room. Now it's my new nightmare. "Do you need money?" I asked.

"Nah. I'm going to a free clinic. They'll take care of it. Anyway, I'm back at the circus tomorrow. I'll be there until I leave for Spain. I'm looking forward to Spain. Just wanted you to know everything was okay, and I'm back in town and stuff."

"Except for the broken arm."

"Wrist or something," she said vaguely. "It doesn't hurt."

I present to you my sister. She's starting to make me sympathize with Republicans.

(Heisenberg just ambled into my cubicle -- being imaginary, he occasionally follows me to work -- and asked with a suspicious nonchalance if I could look up feline STDs on the internet. If our IT staff monitors our internet usage, I'll be interested to know what they'll make of that.)