Aileen Jeffries

Our cat, Saks, spends most of the day outside, but come nightfall, we lock him inside to keep him safe from the zombies coyotes. Around 5:00am, he gets a little antsy and starts lobbying to be let out. If I’m lucky enough to be sleeping at this hour (which happens less often than I’d like) I’m surely not getting up to open the door for him.

So, naturally, Saks spends the pre-dawn hours roaming the house looking for items to destroy as some sort of petty revenge for his imprisonment.

This morning he found the beginnings of a mobile I was making for Kea. Of course, Kea’s nearly four months old now, so the time when her mind could actually be expanded by watching objects float about in the breezes above her crib has probably come and gone. My vision was grandiose: a flock of Western Tanagers made from colorful scraps of cloth and batting, suspended by filaments from a well-chosen branch. I made exactly one tanager before abandoning the project, which really, when I think of it, is an apt metaphor for the gap between my parental aspirations (I will sew her adorable yet comfortable baby clothes! I will teach her sign language! I will learn lullabies and sing her to sleep!) and reality (Hey look! She stops screaming when I turn on the TV!).

So, Saks found the lone cloth tanager this morning and rendered it asunder. Wings on the stairway, the body in the foyer, tail hanging on by a thread. Which is exactly what he does to actual birds when he finds one dumb enough to be caught by a cat as impatient and loud as he. I have to wonder if he was disappointed this one didn’t have nice crunchy bones.

BMW is building 500 electric Mini Coopers. For stupid California with their higher standards and their vision of a cleaner tomorrow and all that. I hold out hope that what a handful of lucky Californians can have today, I can have tomorrow. Surely BMW is aware that there’s more than enough interest in electric cars. I assume they’re just trying to figure out how to fit a very expensive battery into a relatively small price tag.

I parted with my 2002 Mini in April, as two-door subcompacts do not make for ideal family cars. However, should an opportunity to purchase (or lease, so I’d never have to replace said insanely expensive battery) an electric Mini arise, I will throw all rational purchasing decisions out the window.

[BMW to Make Electric Mini. Only in California. Only 500 of Them.]