But I did give him a whole bunch of Pepperidge Farm Xtreme Cheddar Flavor Blasted Goldfish...straight out of the really cool quart sized cardboard carton...relatively new packaging for Pepperidge Farm.
The Goldfish hailed from god knows when...sometime back a bunch of months ago when I happened upon a Pepperidge Farm outlet store on a day when I had ten minutes to kill and no Starbucks in sight. Now personally, I'm not into Goldfish, but I do vaguely remember coming home that day with many, many boxes of Pepperidge Farm Snack Sticks for which I did assume complete consumption responsibilities.
But the poor little Xtreme Cheddar Flavor Blasted Goldfish never got eaten.
They just sat in the cabinet next to a box of Keebler Club Crackers until tonight.
I would say hi to the Goldfish now and again when I saw them. I would make fish faces at Smiley Goldfish, the little yellow fish with black shades. But there was just never a reason to actually open the Goldfish box. Nobody wanted to eat them.
Until tonight.
Tonight Boo whined for an hour straight. There's no other word for it, even though he's a cat and not really a people. It wasn't meowing. It wasn't any identifiable cat noise. It was just a very distinct and highly annoying whining noise.
And he just wouldn't stop.
He wanted food even though I had already fed him. And I tried everything to distract him.
I let him lay on top of me and cuddle against my neck. That didn't work.
I let him bite and then lick my fingers. Didn't work.
I threw a million rubber bouncy balls for him to fetch (yes, I have a cat who fetches). Of course he chased the balls since Boo can't sit still when a ball flies. But then he'd return and start whining again.
After a while, Boo took up residence in front of me on the living room table - staring me down. He just sat there and whined again.
The final straw was when he began the Boo-campaign of knocking things over.
He knocked pretty much everything off of the living room table. The bottle of nail polish, my watch, two magazines, a water bottle, my glasses. But when he realized that I still wasn't getting up to go to the kitchen, he went for the Starbucks cup.
Boo seems to understand that if he taunts me with threats to dump my Starbucks fix, I'll do what he wants.
Tonight he used that knowledge to his advantage.
The problem was that I had no food for him. Well, I did have wet food; but Boo had already eaten wet. And I don't want him getting used to more than a day's portion of his favorite.
But I had no dry food in stock for Boo-snacking.
Well, no dry cat food, that is. But there were Goldfish. And I was getting pretty fed up with him.
It turns out that Boo likes Goldfish. I'm not sure that Xtreme Cheddar is his favorite flavor, but it certainly did the trick tonight.
He just now got up after a very loving cuddlefest on my chest. He was just so happy and content. What a little bastard.
Now he's hanging out near the basement steps, a favorite spot of his. In a while he'll come back to stretch out on top of me. His life is pretty simple.
A couple days ago, I heard a lady on the radio talking about something she does with her family at her dinner table. They go around and everyone says what the high point of their day was. They also tell the low point.
I thought the idea was great. I also got stuck thinking about the high point.
Knowing the low point of your day is generally pretty easy, I think. Something you wish hadn't happened. Something that didn't happen that made you frustrated or sad.
But the high point?
Every night, when Boo jumps onto my lap and climbs up to cuddle against my neck and chest, I feel one of the best feelings I know. He sleeps for a while and then stretches a bit. Then, he'll look up at me for a minute before cuddling back into a slightly different position.
That's a high point.
But I'd be a real bore at the dinner table if I told the same Boo cuddle story every night.
My high points - besides Boo - are generally pretty insignificant. And yet they make each day the best day.
My high points usually have to do with the people I see or talk to during the day. Not much else really seems to matter.
But maybe that's boring too. Especially if you make it a goal to ensure that those moments happen each day.
Maybe your high point should be something you had nothing to do with. Something that happened that you didn't plan or anticipate. Something that surprised you.
So, eliminating Boo and the other living creatures in my life from consideration, what's the high point?
Well, today it was waking up to a radio show called Soundprint. I hadn't set the alarm, but I hadn't turned it off either. It went off at a time unrelated to the time I needed to be up. When the radio went off, I had the luxury of laying in bed for quite a while.
On the radio was a narrative of a moment in the life of the producer's mother. She had been an accomplished pianist. Now she has Alzheimer's. The narrator talked about the period when his mother is forced to leave her apartment and her upright grand to enter a nursing facility.
The story was sad and beautiful. The narrator's voice was lovely and soothing. The time I got to just lay there and listen was a gift.
My day started with the gift of another person's story.
Boo's day is ending with the gift of another person's Goldfish.
Since there's no official dinner table tonight, I think I'll skip the low points portion of the exercise.