My cat isn't always that insistent and needy that he lays on me until I give up my plans to go out -- but he always gets that way when the weather outside is genuinely treacherously bad driving conditions. Which is rather funny given he's been an indoor only cat his entire life and doesn't have any sort of access to forecasts and has never experienced walking on ice and his only knowledge of snow and mud is when it's clumped on the dog or me and shed on the rug by the front door where we remove shoes and wipe feet. And once the walks and roads were cleared, Spock was completely over us and went to sleep under my bed waiting for me to just leave him.  And yet, last night this was him when I was in the kitchen steeping tea and silently texting with my friend I was intending to meet at the Talisk show:

Just me thinking about how I had been intending to go and feeling bad if nobody showed up for the guys put my cat in defensive protective guardian "you shall not pass" mode.  And his hair and back didn't settle back down until I laughingly told him that I had no intention of going anywhere last night unless the dog needed out again and he saw me sit in my reading chair start reading. After he had calmed down relaxed, he moved to sleep on my coat so I couldn't leave without disturbing him.

It's funny because my dog is a high level empath and projector of everything she feels, but I'm pretty sure my cat sees contingent precogs and potential fatelines then does his feline best to make sure the worst ones can't happen. This isn't the first time he's behaved this way to stop me from making potentially dangerous/fatal life choices.  He's drawn blood to keep me from leaving out the front door when the weather's been particularly dicey. 

And then once the parking lot and roads had been cleared this morning, he literally disappeared under my bed wanted nothing more to do with me all day. He literally couldn't wait for us to leave, not even interested in any food I was eating or treats for the dog -- just wanted to make sure I gave him fresh food and water and cleaned his box then once more urged me to gtfo. 

O and books! I did promise I'd share about the latest batch of books purchased!!!before we start, I need to say that I had the hardest time getting pictures of this new batch without the animals in the pictures and in the way, lol. So if you see them in the corners of the frames, just know that was the best I could do this time.  Audrey was SUPER into the poetry books (especially the Seamus heaney text. The cat was super into The Penguin Book of Witches (a collection of witch trials and Medieval daemonologie texts to recognize witches) and the Louisa Morgan fictional books about witches (I had bought the most recent in Edmonds WA back in December and then discovered it's the third in a fictional world within a multi-generational family of witches and there's a new one coming out soon. I'll buy the newest one once it's available in paperback -- I dislike mis-matched editions if I can avoid it.... ) Now, what's funny about those being the ones the cat was most interested in is that Spock gets OBSESSED with specific books, will knock them off shelves to curl up on them -- but ALL his favorites have been about witches and/or occult: my other books on European and Salem witch trials, my multi-language copy Hieroglyphic symbols, transliterated hieroglyphics, English translation) of The Egyptian Book of the Dead, certain fairy tale books, and specific fictional works about/with witches in them. And those are the ONLY books that he regularly is interested in. Which is why his interest int he two Louisa Morgan books made me laugh.

See what I mean about the dog's fascination with the Irish poet book? She's actually still sniffing it touching it with her nose in that top picture, it's why the left corner is just out of frame, lol. The only way to get her out of the frame was after I took subset pictures I set the poetry books near her and let her use them as a pillow.

Nonfiction: 

These are fairly self-explanatory. I mentioned the Penguin Book of Witches above -- I also have a couple others like The Penguin Book of Mermaids and The Penguin Book of Dragons but those are primary texts about the myths/traditions whereas this is primary documents surrounding witchcraft trials and how to "recognize" a witch I have the later selected Seamus Heaney poems, but not the earlier. the book of Love Poetry is selections and some are poems I don't have in other volumes. The Last Duel is about the last judicial duel in France (where innocence versus guilt is shown by G-d based on the outcome of a duel.) It's a fascinating bit of French history I actually don't know this story and moment in French history. (I wasn't having a lifetime in France at that epoch. I was in the woodland tribes in North America.)

Sci-fi/YA: 

I have a couple other Jemisin series, but this one is new to me. And I was very excited to find Winterkeep on the BookTok table because I didn't think it was out yet -- I thought it was coming out in hardcover in March.... The lady at the counter was very excited too when I bought it because like me she's read the other three from before the cover art change, but didn't herself know this one was out. She told me that as soon as she finished with me she was going to get someone to cover her register while she grabbed her own copy or have someone fetch it to her if need be.

Fiction: 

So those are the books I bought on Tuesday.

I already read and finished Britt-Marie Was Here last night and enjoyed it a lot -- it's the followup of his other book My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry which I read last week. He's a rather new to me favorite contemporary author (Murakami is an old favorite of mine, Japanese magical surrealism) who I only discovered a month or so ago after reading A Man Called Ove for WB3 book club.  Backman is a more whimsical Scandinavian John Green and he manages to make you learn to love the most curmudgeonly on the surface unlovable characters and come to understand why their quirks are the way they are.  And I always love an author who helps teach empathy by inversion, turning upside down your initial perceptions and reminding you not to judge by surface appearances and behavior patterns.   I think that's an important reminder for people and it's something that Backman excels at writing through his novels.

O and Happy Pisces season!!