Cats, Rain, & Parker

Another cat viewing. After all these years of not noticing television, both of them have discovered our television stand. I think Dusty started it. He saw movement above him one evening and got up there to see what it was all about, batting at a bad commercial. I’d agree with him about the bad commercials, but he tends to block our view, so I dutifully get up and shoo him off. And now Squeakie, the follower, thinks it’s a good idea.

We’re in the middle of maybe the most rainfall we’ve had here in the Valley for the past fifty years. Up to five inches in a three-day period. And it sounds wonderful to my ears. But the weather folks prefer to call it a monster storm blowing in from California, and they love to break in to tv programming with “weather alerts.” I find them irritating rather than amusing. I mean, why break in at 4:00 when the local news comes on only thirty minutes later? Couldn’t this news about rainfall wait for half an hour? In a state that sees rain so seldom, I guess it takes precedence over regular programs. I still think it’s silly. It would be different if a tornado was sighted moving toward the viewing area. Okay, that would be breaking news in more ways than one.

Bad news a few days ago: Robert Parker died at 77. Another of my favorite authors bites the dust. First it was John D. MacDonald taking with him all future Travis McGee adventures; then it was Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter) taking with him all the 87th Precinct as well as Matthew Hope; and now Parker, taking with him the one-name Spenser and Hawk, and Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall, all gone to that big library in the sky. Who’s next? Will it be Dutch Leonard? Will it be Lawrence Block? Those guys are both getting a bit long in the tooth, but with advances in medicine, maybe they’ll both outlive me and I won’t run out of their books before I run out of time.