the cursed camellias

We have just got back from England. I say ‘just’. Yesterday – but what is ‘yesterday’ or ‘last night’ when you are flying across different time zones, sleepless, then enter a narcoleptic fug for hours on end only to enter it again, headachey, the ‘next day’? We have a nineteen year old cat, Mori, which makes travelling harder. Her one experience in a Japanese cattery or ‘pet hotel’- yeah right – was so traumatic for her (essentially just fed and kept in a small cage with other animals in the same space) that we have never done that again : we either have neighbours on a roster feed and check on her or – as we did this time – have cat sitters as she gets increasingly distressed being left alone and wails furiously on our return with various toilet revenges to follow at the sheer indignation of not being treated like a queen. I don’t really like anyone staying in my house while I am not there. It feels invasive. I feel self conscious and probed – our collective hoarding a window into…