It’s going to be chilly and rainy in Chicago this weekend, but there is also good news: Professor Ceiling Cat’s back is steadily improving. Thanks to all the readers for their concern and their suggestions. I am a victim of evolution and, judging from the number of comments and emails I’ve gotten, so are many of our readers. Yet somehow it’s small consolation, when your back feels like it’s been branded with a hot poker, to marvel at the evolutionary phenomenon of our quadruped backs not having caught up to our evolved erect posture. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili seems oblivious to the beauty of a Polish spring, concerned as she is with her noms.
Hili: So much talk about this wisteria—and it’s just a plant.
A: But it’s so beautiful.
Hili: It tastes terrible.
Hili: Tyle gadania o tej wisterii, a to tylko roślina.
Ja: Ale jaka piękna.
Hili: Smakuje paskudnie.
Hili, you would look splendid draped in wisteria. It’s one of my favourite plants. The more you neglect and punish it, the more it blooms. There is something sublime about how individual florets, that look just like delicate sweetpea flowers, cluster together and dangle like big, fat juicy bunches of grapes! And the fragrance!
I, too, have been victimized by evolution in the same way. I had back surgery twice when I was younger, and both operations helped for a few years. Then the pain returned again, and never ended until I took to my wheelchair. Not that I took do the wheelchair to avoid the pain. I just remain sitting because I can no longer walk. Although my back pain is gone, my neuropathy now makes life miserable. Where did I inherit that from?
This is all just to say that I strongly empathize with Professor Ceiling Cat. Evolution has left us weak.
What a beautiful empress!
I’m trying to remember what the evolutionary or biological connection with Wisteria is. Something to do with the eponymous Mr Wister having funded or encouraged various “voyages of discovery”, including Wisteria and lots of interesting fossils. Or something like that.
Hmmm, Anatomist … vaccine guy … president of the American Philosophical Society … ah – got him. Proponent of the Lewis & Clark expedition, and co-describer of “megalonyx,” a giant ground sloth. Thought I’d heard his name in some context, and relatively recently.
“If only I hadn’t eaten so much of that plant,” Hili complained wistfully.
I have a cold and what is good about that is when my immune system is busy, I tend to have less pain elsewhere so less spinal pain in general!
Stupid systems need a reboot.
You know…catnip also has a quite loverly purple flower…just sayin’….
My own back is basically back to normal. Still a bit stiff, range of movement slightly limited, a bit of soreness in the morning…but no longer something hindering regular activity. Hopefully I’ll be good for exercising by Monday….
b&
The wisteria IS lovely! Poor Hili is just not equipped by evolution to appreciate it. Though my parents once had a cat who would have loved it; she liked napping on vine-covered arbors, especially the one that served as an observation perch for a mouse trail. Boots’ opinion of noms was that the cat food provided by the people was in every way inferior to fresh mouse.