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Schools

Of Science Projects, Tax Returns and Cats in Heat

Friends with benefits?

The person who decided to make elementary kids’ science projects due the same week as tax returns deserve a special place in Hell. One with thumbscrews and pokers to put out eyeballs. Hot pokers.

I went to bed Friday dreading the weekend. Neither kid had finished the science project that was due Monday and neither fully understood the process. And the taxes were undone.

I woke at 5:30 – maybe two hours too early – to the full-throated howls of a cat.

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Yes, Iris the slender, timid barely full grown cat whose only sound normally is an occasional sweet tiny kitten meow was in heat. And putting Janis Joplin to shame with the full-throated yowls of unsatisfaction. It was like the wails of a college girl. “He didn’t C-A-A-A-A-LL!  He didn’t C-A-A-A-A-LL! He didn’t C-A-A-A-A-LL!”

She tried to interest the elderly morbidly obese tom in some fun but he couldn’t really remember what the fuss was. He seemed to remember once being interested, but couldn’t think why.

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"What’s heat?” the kids said.

“You know when teenagers wear too much make-up and clothes that are
cut too low?” I said. “It’s like that.”

And Son went off to save Sligo Creek by picking up loaded diapers, bottles and related crud. I made gingersnap bars for the Boy Scouts while Daughter – who loves design and had finished her science research – started making her display.

We were, of course, out of paper. We go through reams of paper. Daughter loves to watercolor, decorate with glitter glue and do anything artistic. Son makes paper airplanes We are usually out of paper. We were also out of glue.

Daughter did what she could while we finished the Boy Scout treats. We dropped them off and bought the paper and glue. Back at the house, Daughter finished the project,  which determined that tomatoes don’t rot in three weeks no matter if you put them in the refrigerator or the cupboard but they do disappear if you put them on the counter because your father will eat them not noticing that they have the numbers 1, 2, and 3 written on them in black marker.

Clearly, we should not have put the tomatoes in jars straight from the dishwasher. The jars were so close to sterile that nothing was going to rot in them.

Daughter also wanted to know why Iris was wiggling her butt at Buddy. “Huh,” I lied, “I didn’t notice that.”

I made an appointment for Iris to be fixed on Friday.

Toward the end of the day, Son set up his project, and we once again discussed the difference between an independent and dependent variable, and why you absolutely cannot have more than one independent variable. Son likes to have lots of variables and is very insistent about keeping them all. It can get tiring. We had another discussion about the differences between a hypothesis and a prediction and the results and conclusion.

I dropped into bed, and at 3:30 a.m. Iris began what can be only described as the feline version of drunk dialing. She wanted every Tom in Montgomery County to know she was ready for Mr. Right Now. Booty call? No problem. Friends with benefits? Hell, she didn’t want to be friends. Just give the poor cat the benefits. 

The howls reverberated. It was blues, for cats. Passion, intensity and pure horniness? Howlin’ Wolf had nothing on this one. We learned why it’s called caterwauling. After an hour of the pre-dawn ruckus, we contemplated getting a knife and spaying her ourselves.

Bleary-eyed Son, thankfully, was able to run the trials for his science project – do paper airplanes fly further if you launch them with thick or thin rubber bands – by himself. He again, however, inserted new variables – how the plane was launched – and had to run the trials again. The cats chased the tape measure.

Son nicely typed up his presentation, ignoring the screaming biology behind him as Iris writhed in what she hoped was an alluring way at obese Buddy. He regarded her mildly.

Bleary eyed parents stared stupidly at tax forms before giving up,
too tired to focus.

The science projects are done. The taxes are not. We may move up that vet appointment.

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