jaysaint Getting it all down on paper…

I’m trying to make this entry while Zoe determinedly tries to cover as much of me and the keyboard as she can. For such a little cat, she really can cover some territory.

Tomorrow I’ll go in to the office until about 1 and then I’ll head to LaGuardia and fly down to Atlanta for Tuesday’s shoot. I did lots of complaining and finagling to get this shoot scheduled before our vacation. I would have been so disappointed to find out the crew wound up going there without me. So now I get to have a big sushi dinner with the old gang. I think there will be 12 or 14 of us and I can’t wait to drink a Kamikaze (cold sake with lime juice and a shot of tabasco) and listen to my friends talk. I only wish Damon could be there, he’d love it too.

After dinner Sarah will come back to the hotel and we’ll have a sleep over. In the morning I’ll go to my shoot and she’ll head to the airport.

It all sounds pretty perfect.

Damon’s Ellis Island gig is finally winding down. This weekend was his first off. Saturday was saved for house stuff. The big triumph of the day was that he finished stripping my enormous closet door and got it re-hung. I got a reminder that I’m not so good with the home improvement stuff. I’d spent about an hour per glass door knob trying to get the old paint and gunk off of them. I made some progress, but they certainly didn’t look that much better. The thing is I did it one afternoon while Damon was at work. So yesterday he came and scooped them up and about 15 minutes later he said “I polished up the doorknobs.” I went and looked, and they were all sparkly and new. I have no idea what he did to them. I just said: They look really nice.

What else could I say? I just don’t have the skills.

Today was for fun. We had brunch with Charles and James. I asked for walnuts in my pancakes and this was definitely the right thing to do. Nuts in pancake filling needs more exploring. Then we went to the Natural History Museum and checked out the dinosaurs. After an hour or so I started to feel really sorry for all those old bones and spent some time gazing out over Central Park to regain my equilibrium. After, we went for a walk in Central Park. I think we were close to the zoo. At least it smelled like it.

Next on the agenda was a trip to Target to spend our wedding gift cards. I picked up a few wardrobe staples. Getting dressed would be much easier if I weren’t so freaking short. The pants all need to go be altered before I can wear them. I also picked up an ingenious little hand bag. When you open it, a tiny light comes in inside so that you’re not rummaging around helplessly. What a great idea! I also picked up one of those U-shaped travel pillows. Just like the ones you stick around a baby’s neck, just bigger. Damon has made fun of me on and off for the rest of the night, but I predict he will be begging me for a turn about 4 hours into our bazillion-hour flight to Hawaii.

Now we’re at home and enacting that sacred Sunday night ritual — Chinese delivery and movies. Tonight’s selection is lobster fried rice and ‘The Hustler.’

Soon I will need to go pack, which I usually like to put off until the last possible second. That way I’m sure to wind up on the phone with the front desk begging them to send housekeeping up with a toothbrush.

At the very least, I ran out of the office saying on my IM “I’m going to grab dinner, back in half an hour.” But the reality was that I went home, as the rest of the people still working are in Virginia. I didn’t see any reason to stick at the office past 8:30 or so.

Now I’m on my couch making unsupervised editorial decisions with a big glass of wine in my hand. But I seem to be doing okay. Of course, I suppose every slightly drunk person thinks she’s doing just a-ok.

I don’t so much mind working late tonight. I’ve got the weekend stretching out ahead of me and a very likely trip to Atlanta on Monday.

We’re going down to shoot a new Coach, so we booked a studio at Turner South for the day. it’s going to be such a nice day. My new pages will have launched (That’s what I’m doing tonight) and will be doing their job.

I will hop an early flight on Monday so that I’m in Atlanta in time to have sushi with my pals and then crash out at my hotel before a shoot that I anticipate being a pleasure. One of my CNN colleagues is our new Coaches’ publicist, which is how we struck the deal in the first place. So she’ll be there and we can catch up. She was my champion when I was an intern at CNN and hoping to get hired above the entry level. So I am delighted to get to throw something good her way via her client.

(I’m making up for a lag in posting)

I know I have cat people on my friends list, so I’m looking for thoughts and advice….

Zoe is a 14-year-old only cat. For 12 years she lived with her best friend/brother Darby as well as other cats who have come and gone (some went with my ex when we divorced, some were sheltered for friends, some were fostered until we could find them a home). When Darby was around, we used to joke that he was my cat and she was his cat. She was affectionate, but didn’t often ask for attention. After he died she became a different cat — very affectionate, needy really. Now she’s forever meowing and in my lap.

So… Is it that now that the alpha cat is gone she’s happily transferred to ruling the roost and sucking up all the human attention? Or is she terribly lonely and using us as a substitute? I’m happy to get another cat, or not. I just don’t know what’s best.

Let me add a few wrinkles:
— Zoe is 14. I think her capacity for coping with big changes isn’t what it used to be. If we got a cat and she came down with some sort of illness (stress usually equals illness in cats) I would possibly expire from guilt.
— We fostered a cat briefly and Zoe was not at all happy about it. Now this cat was a real nut and I wouldn’t have agreed if I had known things like a) she was recently fixed (and she was about six years old). Letting a cat go that long without fixing it bakes in all kinds of behavioral problems b) she had never met another cat.
— Zoe has never had much interest in any cat except her brother Darby.

If I did get a cat, I would look for a passive, adult male. You know, some big happy fatty who wouldn’t be interested in challenging/chasing Zoe. I hope.

One more wrinkle:
We’re going on a 10-day vacation in two weeks. On one hand, that makes it a terrible time to get a new cat. On the other hand, it’s the perfect time as then she would have company while we’re gone. We were just gone for 3 1/2 days and when we got back she was obviously really unhappy to have been alone for that long. But would two weeks be enough to acclimate her to him? I feel I will probably dither on this until it’s far too late to do anything before we leave.

Our DC vet says don’t do it. That at 14 Zoe probably sleeps almost all the time we’re not around and it would be a real shock to her system to make her live with a strange cat. She’s very nervous by nature. For example, she licks a stripe of fur right off her back. We’ve never been able to get her to stop. It’s just a nervous behavior.

Our NY vet says do it. He says cats are social and adaptive and they tend to do better when there’s more than one around.

Any thoughts?