The No Kitten Saga Continues and of course Omega

It has been hot. It has been humid. It has been hell on wheels for me. I didn’t suffer the hot weather much when I was younger, but now it gets me, wastes me. But nothing stops and I have to do everything I normally do, just a bit slower and with more complaining. We taught at Omega Institute near Rhinebeck N.Y.in the Hukdson River valley this weekend. The classroom was airconditioned but faculty housing is not, so sleep and comfort are goners. We had a reasonably sized memoir workshop class – around 40. They were a good and lively group. But the food was worse than it ever has been, almost inedible, greasy, sometimes just a pile of brown vegan mush. It had been three years since I taught at Omega, and laundergone an emergency knee operation and was still in tremendous pain and unable to walk. Woody did it alone. The next year, the weekend they offered us we were not able to do. This year we taught together, as we like to. The heat and humidity were killers, but I found I could climb all the hills up and down and around. If it had been a little less torrid, I’d have had no difficulty at all. I can walk better than I have in years. We also made contact with an old friend I hadn’t seen in decades. On the way back, instead of driving straight home, we made a long detour to the C.A.R.E Southeast Acushnet shelter to pick up the black and white kitten we had selected before. But when we got there, no kitten. The kitten had contracted ringworm. Of course we couldn’t bring a kitten home to the other cats with such a contagious condition, but what angered me was that they had not bothered to call us and let us know before we drove two hours out of our way, when we were totally exhausted from the long hours of teaching 40 people in a workshop and driving in heavy traffic from Rhinebeck N.Y. I had my cell on and we could have simply saved ourselves time and grief by going straight home as we normally would after Omega. We were exhausted by the time we got here, threw together an impromptu supper @ 8 p.m., unpacked as much as we could before we fell into bed after two sleepless nights. Today I have to unpack the rest and finish both the usual Sunday laundry and the Monday, combined. Melenie, who was my long time assistant and is a dear friend, and her husband Jay stayed here. They kept everything together and they even washed their sheets and towels before departing! The cats were very easy with them and Willow and Mingus slept with them. However, Xena wouldn’t eat and was extremely upset. When I walked in the door, she hurtled toward me and almost bowled me over. She refused to be more than a foot from me all evening while I was unpacking. She is a fairly silent cat, but last evening she had a great deal to say. Every cat slept in the bed but Xena refuses to let me out of her sight even today. She had a terrifying street kittenhood and mistrusts outside.