As a Person of Size (yes, this appears to be the new PC term for "fat guy") I would be somewhat more inclined to excess surface moisture than the norm anyway, but even before I was heavy I tended to perspire freely. There are pictures of me at age 15, at a cousin's outdoor wedding on a humid summer day, in which it appears that I've recently had a hose turned on me.
My tendency to schvitz is not so bad that it's a clinical condition, but it's annoying enough that I've usually got a clean handtowel stashed in my bag, year-round. (I always know where my towel is... thanks, Douglas Adams.)
Well.
New York City has had unseasonably warm weather this November, and the rocket scientists at the MTA have been having a little trouble with the climate control on the trains. One recent 60-degree evening, I was headed home on the subway, in a packed car, which not only had no air-conditioning (necessary even on temperate days due to the heat subway cars generate, to say nothing of the bodies crammed inside) but may have actually had the heat on; if you threw a few bricks in one corner, you would have had a very satisfactory sauna.
Naturally, while in this very uncomfortable configuration, we got stopped by traffic control... and sat in the tunnel, between Christopher Street and 14th Street, for what seemed like an eternity but must have been only ten minutes or so.
Everybody on the train had long since shed their jackets, and a couple of people had stripped down to T-shirts; I just stood there, an unhappy straphanger, quietly soaked to the skin. There I was, less than five hundred yards from home (were it not for the third rail I could have forced the doors open, walked through the tunnel in either direction, climbed up on the platform when I got to a station and been home in ten minutes) and there wasn't a thing I could do but wait. And sweat. And hope that someone might at least come by with a dish of melted butter to baste me with.
As soon as I opened the door to the apartment, in more or less one motion I kissed a slightly startled Carrie on the cheek, scratched the dogs behind the ears (the cat was not close by;
And when I got out (here's the catblogging part) here's where I found Mister Gato:
Atop a sweaty dress shirt.
Now, that's love.
Be sure to check out The Modulator's Friday Ark tomorrow, and don't miss the Carnival of the Cats this Sunday, at Catymology.
2 comments:
LOL! He looks as if he's daring you to try taking it away from him, too. True love, indeed.
Some cats, like my Sam, take meet-at-the-door very seriously, though. (Hey, you never know when she-who-shops might bring home catnip!) If I fumble the keys or don't get the door open quite fast enough, it's his cue to start nagging - yeooowww-oow!
Last summer when we visited we hopped on a subway with all the cars crammed full except one. That one had only one person on it. So we got on. In an instant I realized a NY rule... "Never get on a subway car that is empty or has only one passenger".... It is the clue that the air conditioning was broken. We are talking the heat wave last July as well. It REALLY does feel like a sauna.
Bless Mr. Gato for loving you that much. Mine would do it just to make sure they got as much cat hair on the shirt as possible.
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