(There's no good way to segue from the tragedy of yesterday's earthquake, but I don't have anything useful or profound to add, nor do I feel comfortable exploiting it here. You are all welcome to comment if and as you see fit, but in the meantime, I'm going to go back to some general lighthearted musing.)
I try to carry my point and shoot camera with me whenever I go out here, because you just never know what you're going to see. Part of this has to do with the fact that among a lot of locals, public and private life blend together -- they have small houses or rooms in which to sleep, but conduct their business (selling vegetables, for example), hang their laundry, eat lunch, play cards or Chinese chess, or generally sit around and gab on the adjacent sidewalk (more on that some other time, because it's a topic I find very interesting).
So it was that I was strolling along the other day and happened to pass a woman sitting on the sidewalk in a folding chair, soaping up her cat. I was a little amazed that the cat was taking this so placidly, as I have vivid memories of a moment in the late '80s when my cousin declared that my family's cat was dirty and needed cleaning. He and my father foolishly began to draw a bath, took the cat to the upstairs bathroom, and proceeded to try to sit it in the tub. My mother and I maintained our distance from this entire scenario, so I can't provide eyewitness details, but suffice it to say that therein followed a very loud yowl (cat), some equally loud yelps and yells (humans), a black-and-white blur streaking down the stairs and into the basement, and several severe forearm scratches.
In any case, the woman on the street clearly had a better approach, because her cat was for the most part sitting quietly while she gave it a moderately vigorous rubdown (honestly, it was even better behaved before I snapped this; she had just repositioned it when I clicked).
Until, that is, the tub of water made an appearance (note the spillage in the street).
Yeah, that's more like it.
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