What? Where? When?

Early hours of Sunday morning: Picture the scene: I'm sitting on my futon; above me the aircon hisses away, the tv is on - it's the news. In Japanese. I can guess what the stories are but I'm not paying that much attention. In front of me are things, behind me are things. In fact, see me as the centre of a clock with numbers in every direction. Now change the image of those numbers to - things. Things, things, things.

I'm going through the extremely tedious job of picking up every piece of paper, every object, and trying to decide whether:

• it will never be needed and is crap to throw away,
• it will never be needed and can't be thrown into normal rubbish,
• it is useful, but not to me,
• I'll need it between now and Friday,
• I'll need it during the summer,
• I won't need it until the end of the summer and so need to get it boxed up to send on Monday,
• I can't actually decide so it can sit around for a few days... and then I'll probably dump or chuck it.

There was (is?) a stray cat outside my sliding doors. I had the doors and curtain open, and suddenly saw this little face staring at me. I opened the mozzie screen to see if the cat would come in. It wouldn't. But kept staring. I put my hand out but it wouldn't come towards it. I noticed it had infected weepy eyes and some mange. It moved back a little. I held my hand out again and it moved forward, cautiously, and swiped my hand. Long claws. Ouch. Luckily it didn't draw blood. I didn't know what to do. I don't actually have anything edible in the house that I could have given the cat anyway. It kept staring. I got bored. Eventually I just shut the doors and curtains. And felt guilty. Until I realised how many bugs had come in during the time the screen was open. Then I stopped feeling guilty.