Down From the Attic:
In the Heat of Summer

by Mewsette

Do you suppose everybody loves summer as much as they say? Maybe in June, but not by August. I like some things about summer - lots of sunshine and birds, soft green grass I wish I could still go out and walk in, pretty flowers. But is summer over-rated? A bit overdone, like a burnt meatloaf?

Take bugs, for example. Please. I always thought most bugs were heaps of fun, but the more summers I spend with a mom getting paranoid about the most innocent little bugs, the more I change my mind. They were much more fun outside. If we get a fly in the house, or a lightning bug, my sisfur will have the greatest time chasing it, and even my mom thinks that's cute. So what does she do? Gets a fly swatter and swats my sisfur's bug! Let one little ant get in this house and my mom gets crabby, more than that and she turns into a warrior. And so will yours.



When we lived on a mountain in the woods, we had bigger bugs. Lots more fun, except for wasps that got on the porch. A wasp stung my sisfur Phelicity's face out there one day. She was probably trying to eat it. She was okay, but my mom cried for days. You'd have thought a rhinocerous had attacked Phelicity. And moths would get in at night, nice big ones, called Millers. Oh, those are so fun to chase! Except when your mom is screeching and waving rolled up newspapers around. Spoils the whole game.

Best of all is if a cricket gets in the house. You can have the most fun hunting a cricket. Of course, crickets are dumb. They hop away, and just when you wonder where they went, they sing out and tell you. Not much of a challenge there. And did you ever see your meowmie face off a cricket? Groan.

So maybe you can have too much of a good thing.

Take heat, for example. Please. I love to have doors and windows open and breeze wafting in, but I can't when it's an oven outside. I don't know why humans don't do something about that; they control everything else. I lived in Texas when I was young. Summer there is most of the year, but they only call Summer the part they get heatstrokes in.

When outside was a white-hot glare, I stayed in and spent my time on a big hassock sticking my face up as close to the air conditioner as I could get. There were five of us cats, and it was a popular spot. I had to get there early. My sisfur was the littlest and she never had a chance. But she was little enough to lay right on the top ridge of the window a/c all day. For months.

The heat isn't that extreme most places, not where we live now. And I know everyone says cats were originally desert animals but, excuse me, we wear fur coats all year. Our cozy pile of quilts or snuggly tunnel bed aren't as attractive now as they were in cold weather. That cool cotton pillowcase on the bed your mom didn't make feels better. Eventually, so does the kitchen floor. You know how we stretch our bodies out longer in hot weather, on a cool surface, to get every inch of us against it that we possibly can? Okay, we may not need as cool a house as humans think they do in summer. I don't know why some of them turn the a/c up till it's 50 degrees in there; they're not wearing fur coats. They're wearing next to nothing. But we do appreciate a reasonable amount of it.

Reasonable is the key here. Let's be reasonable. We would like a medium-cool, not cold, house. We would like to chase a harmless fly for a few days or until it dies of old age, whichever comes first. And I, at least, would like summer to be over with in a reasonably short time. See? That isn't a lot to ask for this trip down from the attic.