I’m not on Twitter, so, apparently, the Orange Man’s campaign has reached out to me through the medium of the shadow cast by the towel we use to clean mud off the belly and paws of the low-hanging dog before he’s allowed back inside after a walk or after harassing whatever wildlife there is to be found in the backyard.

Speaking of wildlife, Rose, the braver, feistier sister of Gaston, was the duck of our next door neighbors’ who didn’t survive the alleged wolf that hopped over three fences to drag her off in the middle of the night a few nights back in a flurry of feathers. I think it was a fox, though, which can also leap even high fences (and the neighbor has complained that ever since the cornfield where the fox lived was mowed down, the fox has been wandering into the artist studio she leaves the door open to all day long). Surely a wolf would have gone for a sleeping alpaca instead. Anyway, RIP Rose, who has already been replaced because Gaston, having lost his anchor, wouldn’t stop pacing the garden.

Also RIP Big Kitty, who was my cat for 15 years, who passed away yesterday after having what must have been a number of strokes. I’d seen it coming (about four days ago, she suddenly very clearly had lost most of her vision and a bit of her balance and seemed a bit…vague…), but was unprepared for how rapidly it all unraveled yesterday morning after a bigger stroke hit. At least the alpaca people knew about a very kindly vet who makes house calls, even on Sunday mornings in the middle of a resurging pandemic (because Big Kitty was so evacuate from all orifices and froth at the mouth kind of terrified of car rides, there was no way I was going to subject her to one in her last hour).

That’s the third cat this year. Have I mentioned yet, fuck you, 2020.

I’m catless now, for the first time since 1988, if you include the five years where the cat I had at that time lived with my mom and I lived in England.

Anyway, Orange Man, the towel campaigning is way too little, way too late (and you didn’t stand an ice cube’s chance in the place I’d happily believe in, if it would guarantee you end up roasting there for all eternity). I already received my absentee ballot, filled it out, mailed it back, and got word from the country registrar that it was received and the signature was verified and my vote, which was not for you, will be counted.