Slow-Living Sunday

Last Sunday, I had the best day ever, not because anything exciting happened but because of how peaceful I felt in my heart. I played with the cats, polished the furniture, carefully cleaned and rearranged my collection of Fiestaware, and hung a little garland of pine cones on the mantelpiece in the dining room. It was a delightful day of puttering.

In the late morning, a great sunbeam spread itself across the dining-room floor, so all the cats gathered to bask in the warm, golden light. They dozed and stretched and got into lazy wrestling matches. Meanwhile, I took pictures of them and complimented them on their cuteness.

I was calling them dumb nicknames. I was calling Buntin “Miss Beauty Lady,” for example, and Carl “My Little Cutie Boy.” At about eleven, Rob joined us in the dining room, and his nicknames for the cats were even dumber than mine were. He was calling June “Jan,” for some reason.

We groomed the cats with an array of different combs and brushes. Then we gave them some Cat Sushi (bonito flakes). As we watched them eat, Rob was jabbering on about FSU football. During college football season, it is all he talks about. (He’s a Booster and has season tickets.)

“The cats are big FSU fans,” he said.

“No, they’re not,” I said.

“June is,” he said. “I mean, Jan is.”

We like to pretend that smart, busy June is a local Quincy business tycoon with questionable ethics, and that Elroy and Leroy, our chubbiest, shyest, most babyish cats, are her two hapless employees; she’s always taking advantage of them.

“Ticket scalping is where June’s interest in FSU football begins and ends,” I said. “I guess you saw Elroy and Leroy at the Duke game, standing on the corner by the stadium.”

Rob nodded, playing along. “June wanted them to wear FSU jerseys while they were working, but she wasn’t about to pay good money for them. So Elroy and Leroy had to make their own shirts.”

“Yeah,” I said. “They wrote ‘FSU’ on some old undershirts in Magic Marker. Some of the letters were backwards.”

Rob spent the rest of the day watching pro football while I continued to play with the cats and make tiny home improvements. After I hung the pine-cone garland on the dining-room mantelpiece, I repositioned the painting on the wall above it. The painting used to hang too low, so it was touching the clock beneath it. I moved the painting up just a couple of inches, and the result was “amazing” (as I bragged to Rob). I was pretty proud. I took more pictures and savored my small but sweet success.