Because I am resisting the inevitable starting of the furnace. The downstairs cat stayed close to me most of the night. Is she just using me for my body heat?

He doesn't really have anything to do with the night table, except that on the rare occasions when he is let downstairs he runs through every room sniffing things so he has probably rubbed against it a time or two. But as I say he is usually in his upstairs room and the night table is downstairs. Still, the downstairs cat got her posting, and he deserves one too.

He is large and black and shiny, and when he lies in the sun he gleams and you can see that he has a bit of red under his top layer of fur. He is loving and fond but also can be abrupt and male. He bites sometimes, but he doesn't mean anything by it. He just gets excited and happy and carried away. Rambunctious. Sometimes he stretches out on his side and pulls himself around in a circle on the floor. He is a fully alive cat.

His tongue is exactly the same shade of pink as the cushion on his bed. How stylish!

No doubt my attentive readers have deduced that I have a cat. Actually, I have two of them. One is an upstairs cat and one is a downstairs cat and ne'er the twain shall meet because when they do it is not entirely unlike what physicists might describe as the result of the meeting of matter and anti-matter. In short, they don't get along. The downstairs cat is an extravagantly lovely long haired girl cat with a sweet face and a bad temper. She is the one whose hair is in the lavender brush, but mere brushing does not do the trick on her fine, thick pelt. Every few months a friend and I have to put on leather gloves and long sleeves and hold her down and shave off the dreadlocks. She does not like this. We don't like it either but it must be done and she always feels better afterward. If only we could explain that to her or remind her of it beforehand. As it is, we muster our courage ( a glass or two of wine helps) and grit our teeth and listen to the screams. After, we are relieved and shaky and she is once again smooth and nice to touch.

While they were not on the table in the first inventory, they are now and often are. They are the kind you buy at the drugstore for $7.95 and are plastic. It is quite disconcerting when you realize you need reading glasses. The kind of thing that you know happens to almost everyone but you think an exception will be made for you. Like William Saroyan and death.

This is written on the title page of the dictionary on my night table. More completely, it reads "Away with Words, Christmas 1975." It was written by the man who gave me the dictionary, who at that time was my future husband and now is my former husband. He was an English teacher and a poet in addition to being a rock and roll guitarist and a motorcycle racer and later (after he blew out his knee racing motorcycles) a bicycle racer. Some people said he looked like Tom Selleck or Burt Reynolds but he didn't really look like either, though he was very handsome. He had the nicest penmanship of any man I've ever known.

It's the most useful dictionary I have.