Friday Floof

Ghost Cat in warmer, less floofy months

It’s gonna be windy all day with the temp dropping from the current high of 22º down into the negative numbers by tonight. Tomorrow will be worse. Joy.

Naturally, we’re worried about our visitor boy, Ghost Cat. He’s a regular here (and has been for a couple years now) but is still extremely shy. None of us can get within ten feet of him—possibly he’s well aware that us humans are stupid COVID spreaders and that’s his reason for keeping a distance. I don’t blame him—I'd do the same.

GC is a Maine Coon Cat so he’s got a good coat and we imagine he’s got a safe, sheltered hidey-hole. Still we worry.

If Ten sees the good boy today, he’ll try to lure him in.

Cake porn

~~~
I fully understand that I’m an odd old duck…or cat. I suppose what I am depends on the day, the weather, if I’m enjoying the book I’m reading, if there’s ice cream and cookies in the house and shit. What I’m getting at here is that, I totally don’t need mental health fail on top of everything else that’s physically wrong with me.

Now that I’m getting up there in years I want to do all that I can to encourage dementia to pass me by.

Doctor Richard Restak, a neuroscientist and author, has a post up at CNBC—7 ‘hard rules’ for keeping your memory ‘sharp as a whip.’

Those seven include:

• Choose fiction when you can. The reason surprised me. It’s not about reading my way into a different, possibly happier world—it’s about the different way nonfiction books and fiction are generally organized and how we tend to read each genre.

He's not ALWAYS napping—HONEST!

• Never leave an art museum without testing your memory. Not just which artists and paintings you viewed but the specific details of a piece—easier to do with a canvas done by Edward Hopper than one of Jackson Pollock’s. 
  

• Keep naps under 90 minutes.
  

• Don’t sit on the couch all day. That's an ongoing struggle.
  

There’s more go read.
I’d like to add a few suggestions:

• Staying off Twitter or limiting myself to 5 minutes max a day. (working on it!)
  

• Not watching or reading Fox Propaganda (I don’t).
  

• Don’t read predictive opinion pieces. When they’re full of doom, they drive me to despair. When they’re full of hope and certainty of Republi/Fascist failure, I don’t believe them (even though I long to). Do I really need to live in a state of dread and/or false hope?    
  

• Keep at least one adult cat on hand at all times. Why? If nothing else, an older cat will make even the most slothful person (me!) feel active.
  

All in all, mental health-wise, I believe I’m doing okay. For now. It helps that, when I find myself doomscrolling, I immediately look for vids of adorbs and/or heroic animals, pets and their caregivers.