Most cold is relative. In September, when the temps drop down to 50F (10C), we huddle into our coats and scarves -- while in May, when the temps jump up to 50F, we strip down to t-shirts, shorts and sandals. The cold in the Midwest these days is pretty well unrelativistically (to coin a word) cold.
But we are in our own Pacific Northwest kind of cold snap, dropping to below freezing at night, and slowly crawling up to a mere 45 F (about 7 C) around 3 in the afternoon, not long before the sun sets and the temperatures drop again. I really can't complain about it -- it's lovely and foggy in the mornings and evenings, and by midday, the skies are high with streaky gray-white cirrus clouds not quite entirely obscuring the blue heavens.
The felines don't like it. Harry, born under a deck in a Minnesota October, who used to gambol in the snow in subzero temperatures, has gone soft. He prefers to spend the cold days in a cave of fleece and feathers, if possible. Tasha, wise since birth to seeking out her own comfort, also prefers a nest of fleece.
Most of the year, the rule is clear: Harry has the queen-sized bed during the day, and Tasha at night. (I am allowed to share, as long as I am providing body warmth and the occasional midnight reassurance that one or the other is loved.) But in the cold, they have reached a detente, across a Berlin wall of pillows.
2 comments:
I _slightly_ disagree with your assessment that Harry has gone "soft" on you. Actually, it is my opinion that the real problem is that he's not, shall I say 'lived up to his name' (that is, Hairy)? Or in other words, during the winter here in Minnesota, he grew a deep and thick winter coat, but hasn't grown one out there in Oregon because he hasn't had the need for one.
Whatever
A bit late to respond, but I will say that Harry grows a winter coat here, too. It's not as heavy as the one he grew in Minnesota, nor as thick as the one the stray Jerzey grows, who sleeps in unheated somewheres. It's that very winter coat that cost me so much cash last month on a hairball that stuffed him up. (A hairball of shedded summer coat.)
Then again, your point may still stand. We had an unusually mild fall, so the coat he grew this year may not be as insulating as years past.
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