As every morning, I was thinking this morning about how things are accomplished. Thanks to the book “Bird by Bird” Anne generously loaned me, which life experience corroborates, I even have an answer now: thing by thing. One builds, as I have said before, an igloo shovelful by shovelful. You write a novel word by word, everything is bit by bit. The title of the book comes from an anecdote about the author’s brother getting advice from his writer father to write a late report on birds “bird by bird”.

So, sitting at my table this morning, the phrase “mouse by mouse” came into my mind. It sounded good for a second, it seemed to make sense. Either it was god winding me up, or the cats.

My cats do send me messages, you know, of the extra-sensory sort. Sitting in the kitchen, I know when a cat wants out of or into the house. I get up, go to the front door, and there it is waiting with that feline “it’s about time” expression on its face.