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I know what you did last summer (and I'm telling management!)

Downstairs in the cafeteria (they call it a café but I know better), there is a sign that reads simply:

Friday is the new Wednesday

My finger hasn’t discovered that particular pulse, so I’m not going to be calling myself Wednesday Films or anything, but I would like to ask the person who made that sign one question:

Eh?

That’s all.

In the toilets, in each stall, they’ve posted a provocative (and laminated!) sign that reads: What’s the rush? Remember to flush…and wash your hands.

What do you take me for, smug and anonymous bailiff of personal hygiene? My impetus is always to take a big black marker and scrawl THEN SORT OUT THE PLUMBING, YOU TWATS. But then I remember where and who I am (an adult, at work) so instead I pump the handle several times to make the water flow and then scrub my hands at the sink.

Assholes.

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

Just when I thought the fun with sterilized needles and collapsed veins had come to a deliciously faint end, I received a second message in the post stating that I needed to repeat yet another test – this time something slightly more worrisome than a screening of B12 levels. I’m hoping it’s just a matter of having been too friendly with the pre-med students at the blood clinic. Didn’t you guys see the rings?! Sheesh!

About a cat

Last night, Bruce and I heard a noise at the window that startled us from our intimate discussion about the quantum effect that occurs in dominant semiconductor materials, like silicon nanocrystals, and ironically enough – we noticed one of the cats standing on the wrong side of the glass.

It was Sophie, and she was perched on the wide ledge beneath the window out of which she’d somehow managed to squeeze herself (someone had left it open) (okay, I’d left it open) with few ideas on how to jump back inside.

Remembering how only a few nights previous she’d spent a giddy two hours jumping out of that window and onto our sleeping faces as she leapt back in through the one in the bedroom, Bruce went to open the bedroom window. This had the opposite effect of what we’d anticipated, and when I next poked my head out, I saw that she’d done a rapid tightrope walk into the window well belonging to our neighbours.

Panicking, we did the only thing we could think of and went to find a box of food to rattle. But when I looked outside again, she was gone.

After that, we did not see Sophie for a very long time. We heard Sophie often enough. Sometimes it sounded like she was on the roof. Sometimes it sounded like she was buried in the bushes beneath the window. Sometimes it sounded like she was blocks away. Bruce and I took turns with the torch, exploring every nook and cranny of the building and the courtyard itself. Neighbours appeared at their own windows to send us running off after indignant and dissimilar cats.

We went back to the window after nearly an hour of this. We reconvened. We didn’t know what to do.

At the window, I turned the torch left and right and left and right until finally I saw an ear and then a face belonging to a cat who was most definitely our Sophie.

She was still in the window well. I had no idea a cat could make itself so small!

We put out a bowl of tuna, which she completely ignored as she jumped back through the offending window and then for the rest of the evening paced the flat with her tail lifted like a triumphant flag.

And that, my friends, is lunch.