Winter it seems has finally arrived just as it should, in a normal year, be getting ready to leave. Tonight the wind is howling, bands of rain are slashing against pavement and building, my windows are shaking from the impact, and I am warm and toasty inside and thoroughly enjoying this rainy storm. It is one of the few we have had this year. The toilet room window (separate from the bath room, don’t you know) was open and the comet (we don’t have Comet here but any scrubby cleanser is “comet” to me, like any tissues, including the half-gone toilet paper roll I carry now as a bona-fide Israeli, is a kleenex) that was sitting on the back of said toilet blew into the bowl. Euwww. Except that I didn’t mind terribly given that we are having this so-rare this year bit of winter. I fished it out going, wow eyzeh ruakh (wow what a wind!).

The cats are absolutely going nuts. Well, those who haven’t decided that such blowing and blustering means to curl up in the nearest cat bed for a warm snooze, are going nuts. All the under-5s are going crazy, ricocheting off the sofa to the cat habitrail to the table and then into the bedroom and back again. They have been keeping up a frantic, racing pace, jumping over one another and darting here and there and startling from nothing for several hours. This would be why I’m enjoying the storm from my sofa rather than my bed, as the cats were darting and startling across the bed (and me) before we all formally got up and moved to the living room. Heh.

It is a selfish delight in this storm though, as I sit here in my two layers of warm clothes with a blanket around my shoulders. The kitties outside are not delighting at all as they try to find shelter from the driving wind and rain. People with schizophrenia and alcohol or drug addictions who are on the streets (and thus don’t have the sense or reasoning to go to a shelter) are also suffering. I can’t do anymore for the cats than I am already am doing but perhaps I should think about volunteering in a soup kitchen through the spring on my evening off. I, and my little cats, are really so blessed to be able to sit (or run around) enjoying this storm. And what a storm!