Over Christmas break I talked with my niece about the situation regarding what to call Casper. It was helpful talking to her. She and I were in agreement that Casper should be his name, but she could also understand my dilemma as I was clearly in the minority with the majority of family votes being cast for Dipstick. But something she said cleared everything up for me, so that my struggle and apprehension immediately vanished upon hearing her words. “You’ll just have to call him by his middle name,” she said.

So Casper is his middle name and that’s what I call him. He and Tom were in a fight during a walk today. I had sandals on and didn’t want to walk through the wet leaves but I did. Calling to them wasn’t doing anything. Cats will attack each other and bite each other to where some of them have had some pretty bad abscesses as a result of bite marks. I wanted to throw my glove at Tom, but he really wasn’t doing anything wrong either. They were being cats. I tried to get them mostly away from each other.

This afternoon I finished reading The Year of Magical Thinking. I was feeling bad that maybe I had spoken rashly about the book or been too hard in my judgements. The last third was probably my favorite and contained more of what I’d been wanting to read which was more personal commentary on the events of her life. If I get at least one memorable line from a book then I am usually happy. This one was found in the opening chapters. The rest of the book was fine, but no other lines topped this one.

This was in reference to her and her husband’s routine of walking every morning in New York City’s Central Park. She says, “We did not always walk together because we liked different routes but we would keep the other’s route in mind and intersect before we left the park (p.36).” I thought this was a beautiful line that spoke to the individual nature of persons (having/liking different routes) yet acknowledges the action of love in concretely knowing another’s way and making the effort to find each other en route.

This was much more romantic to me than the reel I saw on Instagram that said maturing in marriage is realizing that nobody cuddles when falling asleep, and that instead, one partner snores while the other scrolls social media until their eyes get blurry. Not to bash someone else’s marriage or content creation or attempts at humor. Reels sometimes can really make me laugh. Lots of people commented that they actually do cuddle with their husband or wife before falling asleep. I was glad they did.