BPOTD

 Nothing. My mind is blank and my eyes refuse to stay open. Just the remnants of a Madonna song come to mind. Something outside sounds like a crying puppy. Piddled on the floor and got swatted with a rolled-up magazine. Probably a catalogue.

Okay, to blog. This is a blog post. The topic today is the thundercats who are scampering back and forth, cries of "Mrr!" issuing from their pink mouths. What makes the cats thunder? I didn't know where they were all night; they sneak around on little cloud toes that don't quite touch the ground and could have passed me one hundred times. In the dark I was alone. Now they thunder. It feels like a thunder of joy; kitties gleefully thundering past shouting "Mrr! Mrr!" Occasionally one stops with me, to survey the milieu, and to remind me that I'm special. Then he leaps off and resumes thundering, "Mew!"

When you have a mood disorder I guess it's kind of like being a thundercat. When you're down, low affect, you just want to silently obscure yourself in the dark. When that feeling lifts, you can join into the noise of daily life. Walk with enough force to sound a footstep. Stand close to the thundering trucks. CatcEh the "Mrr" of the birds. Speak above a whisper--make yourself known. Take a deep breath and thunder with a "Mrr"!

Alas, for the felines thundercat-mode only lasts moments and for their human counterparts it is the same. Every day a cycle: down-down-down-down-down-up-down-down-down-down-down-down-down-down-down-down-up-down-down-down-down-down, something like that. For the thundercats, this is a predictable day. For the mood disorders, as for God, the word 'day' is meant figuratively. The moments of up are sudden and unpredictable. 

What triggers the thundercats' moments of up? They thundered last night when I got home from the dance. They thundered again this morning, the moment I got up. Although they didn't sleep with me last night (what were you up to, then, thundercats? I'm sure they had their reasons), I have noticed over the time I've been co-habiting with them, their thundering tends to correspond to my patterns. There's always a thundering when I'm up in the morning. There's always a thundering when I arrive home from work. A celebratory thundering of the arrival of their special person. 

According to our observations of the thundercats, then, we can infer that those moments spent with one's special person will trigger up moments. This is worth further investigation.  

Certainly I feel up on those mornings when Alec is up. His presence, just the aura that comes off him when he's in the same room, can make me want to get out of bed. On the days he is absent, without my person or the aura of my person touching my space I am down. Nothing to rise for. Walking home gets me up because he is there, but then on those times he isn't, my up fails. Is that why they didn't sleep with me last night? I have two thoughts on that--one: they sensed Alec's bad dreams and wanted to stay close to him. I feel like they can take some of that bad energy off the dreamer, and that's what they wanted to do for Alec. Or two: Alec has become part of their collection of special people. Was it me they were thundering about this morning? Or have they migrated to sleep closer to Alec, and it was his emergence this morning they were celebrating? Either way, these kitties are getting very attached to Alec and they're going to be as down as I am when he's gone. 

Melancholia.