Quakey cat

Posted by Chuck at 7/29/2008 7:10 PM
Categories: Amanda
Amanda actually got up and hung around me in the kitchen as I ate a quick, early lunch. She never does that, she always just stays upstairs sleeping or thinking about sleeping.

As I left to go back to work, she walked to the front of the house and watched me mournfully as I went out the door. I even looked back in the window after closing the door and saw her still staring at the last spot she saw me. I though for a minute, like you do sometimes, how sad it would be if I never saw our cat again for some reason. Or never saw her as healthy and content as she is.

About ten minutes after I got back to the proposal room, we all looked up from our screens, searching each other's faces to see if someone else was thinking what we were thinking. It felt exactly like I have imagined it. It's more of a swaying than a vibration. It built up to the biggest sway in about seven seconds, then there were tiny tremors a few seconds later. Then it was done. Not more than 12 seconds all together.

All I could think was how animals know when earthquakes are coming. Maybe it's having their sensitive bare paws on the ground feeling tiny vibrations or hearing ultrasonic noises that human ears don't pick up on. So immediately I thought, "AMANDA!, NO!!"

But then one of the guys called his wife, and I figured that it's probably more prudent to be more worried about Kelly than the cat, since Kelly is across town and in an office building too. So I called Kelly, who was also mostly worried about Amanda. I didn't bother to tell her about the prophetic lunch episode. 

Just when I convinced myself that Amanda and the house were swallowed up in the San Andreas fault and Amanda saw it coming all morning and tried to warn me, I remembered what I had for lunch.

Sardines.

I've heard that anthropomorphizing animals is the worst injustice we can do them. So, while I was looking back at Amanda imagining how much she must love me, she was really thinking, "I can has fish?"

It's interesting to note that my boss' survival instinct during an earthquake is to shout, "BACKUP YOUR FILES!"

Information on the Southern California earthquake here. 

 
Trackbacks
Trackback specific URL for this post
  • No trackbacks exist for this post.
Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Leave a comment

 Name

 Email (will not be published)

 Website

Your comment is 0 characters limited to 3000 characters.