PeaceBang

Friday Cat And Baseball Blogging

Ermengarde has a toy mouse of which she is extremely fond. She “hunts” this mouse in the wee hours and occasionally wakes me with loud cries so that I can celebrate her catch with her. I dutifully do so, as I want her to know that I appreciate her skills. She is a good mouser of toy and real critters.

This favorite mouse is purple with a yellow and orange candy-striped tail, which is to say that it’s not very easily mistaken for a real mouse.

I understand Ermengarde’s need to hunt and catch this mouse when the appearance of a real mouse is a rare event due to the good works of our exterminator in 2006. I understand her desire to impress the Big Mommy Kittycat who feeds and cares for her (although of course, in her mind, she cares for me). What I do not understand is why just today I found the mouse next to me on my pillow, quietly placed there with no feline wailing and hunting fanfare.

It just so happens that I’ve been kind of depressed. I think she knows that. I think the mouse was left as a gift of love.

If she had wanted to wake me up, she would have cried or pawed my back — two things she does on a regular basis. But she just left the mouse for me, the feline equivalent of a bouquet of flowers on the nightstand.

It’s amazing to me that an 11 lb. animal who has no powers of speech and no opposable thumbs can minister to the member of another species like that. It was quite a gesture. It made me happy. Such sweetness.

And speaking of small things that make me happy, I have become the kind of person who wants to watch or listen to Red Sox games every night that they play. This is a totally new phenomenon for me — I always watched some, but I have never been a park-myself-by-the-TV type before. Why am I loving the game so much this season? So much so that the other night at the colloquy, I drove to the beach and listened on my car radio.

I love the drama of it. I love the wide open spaces of the baseball diamond and the grace of the players as they work the field. I love the apparent cool of pitchers like Dice-K and Josh Beckett who reveal their frazzled nerves by walking three runners in a row (Dice-K) or by screaming with fierce competitive glee when one of their fielders tags a guy out at second (Josh).

I love that even a guy like Julio Lugo — a haunted, hunted looking Goyaesque figure when at bat — will become a beautiful, smiling kid jumping into Manny Ramirez’s arms after smashing in a grand slam.

I love the irrationality of caring a lot about these games. I love the way the hours of the game unfold as I watch with one eye and read with the other, the way the phone doesn’t ring, the way the sermon doesn’t beckon, the way no one expects me at an evening meeting. I love that I don’t have to have anything interesting or meaningful to offer throughout the several hours but cheering and yelling at umps.