Our chemical romance

Ziva (cat no. 2) and Dory (no. 3) used to fight several times each day, really brutally; but since we’ve begun using air fresheners to pump feline pheromones into our house, they’ve gotten along much better. This gives me hope for the harmony of our household, and for that of humankind.

Seriously, things are more peaceful now.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

We attended a quite lovely wedding after-party this evening, in someone’s back yard. There were many children. There were dogs of very different breeds and sizes, to warm the heart. The music was from the nineties and early aughts; the catering was local Mexican. There also was much uninhibited vaping. I was amused to see the bride and groom puffing away together at their special table. But they weren’t the only ones. Everyone was at it. Perhaps all the vaping was what made everything harmonious. Halfway through the party, it started raining, and no one really minded.

The children played in a sandbox and got filthy. They had a precious time; afterward, we had to drag Daniel, kicking and screaming, to the car.

The crash; Should I marry a murderer?

Karin returned to the office after a week’s vacation. I am at home with the boys – including Samuel, who has been puking – and with the three cats.

“School of Hard Knocks” Dory still fights with Ziva and Jasper. We worry for her permanency in our house.

She is gentle with humans, only occasionally biting them (in self-defense).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Two noteworthy Netflix docs:

(a) The Crash

(b) Should I Marry a Murderer?

I don’t often look at Instagram or TikTok, so these two shows were something of a revelation for me.

Text messaging has for some time been a staple exhibit of the true-crime genre. (See, e.g., Lover Stalker Killer.) But, to my knowledge, only in the last year or so have documentarians made much of compulsive video posting.

The first show’s protagonist is a villain. The other show’s protagonist is a victim/​witness. The former is a teenager just out of school; the latter is a thirty-ish professional – a forensic pathologist (!).

It’s the teen who’s coldly calculating. The corpse dissector is warm-hearted, loyalty-torn, and ultimately heroic.

What they have in common is, they’re always posting video.

And, in the footage they post, using drugs.

(Each program goes to some length to explain that its protagonist’s drug use doesn’t affect the outcome.)

Both protagonists have unconditionally supportive parents, for better or for worse.

One show is as chilling as can be; the other is almost heartwarming. I recommend them both.

On holiday in the “Region” (Northwest Indiana)

Karin & I will soon have been married ten years.

To celebrate, we dropped off Jasper, Ziva, and Dory at a cats’ hotel and headed west with our three little sons.

Not very far west.

Not as far as Illinois. Not even as far as Gary, Indiana. We did cross over into the Central Time Zone.

Our activities in the “Region” were zoological, botanical, athletic, culinary (White Castle), and commercial.

We toured: Michigan City, Valparaiso, Merrillville, Hobart, and – unpremeditatedly – Beverly Shores.

Beverly Shores is a beach town next to the Indiana Dunes National Park. Our phone GPS took us there because we asked it to find a playground. But we couldn’t park the car without a city-issued permit, so our children didn’t play in Beverly Shores.

Instead, we drove and gawked. We could see Chicago across the lake, and there were spectacular houses that looked out in that direction. Some had been built for the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933 and then transported east, by boat.

I hadn’t known that there was such glamor in the “Region.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Our hotel was in Portage. It had a breakfast buffet and an indoor swimming pool. We used those conveniences daily.

It took all our effort to keep the children from destroying our suite. Abel, in particular, was a menace.

Samuel asked to go home and, the first night, was physically ill. He improved.

It was Daniel who took to the holiday with especial keenness. We hardly could coax him out of the pool.

One night, our family was bathing when a man and a woman came into the pool area. They looked very sheepish (they had come in and gone out once before). They disrobed, got into the hot tub, worked up some courage, and, I daresay, proceeded to do the deed while we were across the room. You’d think it was their honeymoon or anniversary; such was their involvement. But I suspect they were adulterers who had come to the “Region” to escape detection.

Dory

The kitten – now named Dory – is still with us. She came through her surgery just fine.

She’s a sweetheart. The children love her.

This photo is cute, but it doesn’t show how long-bodied and scrawny Dory is.

We mostly confine her to the bathroom. We’re introducing her to the house and to the other cats a little at a time, as advised in books. We’ll keep her if: (a) she and Jasper and Ziva get along, and (b) we don’t find anyone else who would like a cat.

A photo of Karin and Dory:

As you can tell, Dory already has ruined some of our blinds.

Cat people

My 2025–2026 reading cycle has ended. On the last day, I finished reading six books. I came up three books short. (The final tally was fifty-seven.)

I thank Karin for her tolerance.

I caught Samuel trying to put one of my books on its shelf. He couldn’t slide it into the space; he was jamming it in. I stopped him before he could wrinkle the cover.

He’d brought the book downstairs from his play-room.

“Why did you take my book upstairs?” I asked.

He said: “I just wanted to copy out some of the text.”

I didn’t object to that answer. Indeed, I was rather pleased.

We have a new cat in our house: a young “queen” that Karin rescued from a gang of “toms.” We’re keeping her in our bathroom. The plan is to get her spayed ASAP; we’ll then consider whether to give her up or keep her. She’s starved but friendly, a year or so old. She may be the offspring of the winsome, irresponsible cat that lives across the street.

The “toms” have been prowling outside our house all day. I just saw them have their way with another “queen.” One can’t save them all.

Jasper and Ziva are none too pleased, perhaps because a new cat is in the house, perhaps because Karin medicated all three cats against fleas.