The Way That Gangsters Think

• Continues To Be Slow Season
• Some Luck
• Cat Food Eatoffs

Fancy Feast Fish and Shrimp Flaked Feast was soundly defeated last night in a 3 way match-up against  Friskies Turkey and Cheese Shreds and Friskies Concoctions Cod and Cheesy Bacon -the latter 2 flavors finished very close, but there was still some turkey and cheese on the plate, while the cod and bacon was licked clean. The fish and shrimp, the most expensive can of the 3, had what looked like only a few bites eaten from it.
Harold first went to the fish and shrimp, which was a new flavor to him, and I thought that it was going to be the winner. But, after I had gone into the kitchen and made coffee, I returned to the living room to see that Harold had abandoned the new flavor and was attacking the others.
It may have been the type of fish, or shrimp that Harold had an aversion to.

Some observations about Harold.
It is probably a testament to the long running relationship between humans and cats that cats would even develop a taste for fish that swim in the deep ocean, and would have only come off of fishing boats. It speaks of them having found human companionship near the oceans.
Or it could be that the taste for fish that cats were adept at spearing out of shallow pools and streams translates to ocean fish, since they are both basically fish.
Harold has an interest in water.
Once, after I had first gotten him, I was soaking in the tub and Harold was attracted to the water just by the sound of it, I think. He climbed up and seemed mesmerized by the ripples and and the optical illusions they created. I came so close to knocking him in the water with me, I remember. That would have been funny, but more to the point, Harold is not interested in tree climbing, or heights in any other regard.
I once went outside to hear his frightened cries coming from atop an awning that is off the back of the church next door, which sits about 15 feet off the ground.
I started to climb up and another cat -the reason Harold had climbed up there, I'm guessing- was frightened by me and actually jumped off of the thing, plummeted the 15 or so feet and then disappeared into some bushes; while Harold, being not quite so brave around heights, clung to the canvas of the awning and mewled for help.
Bringing the subject back to food; I think this is why Harold seems to like fish more than birds. A cat that is afraid to climb trees has probably not evolved a taste for bird meat, although the birds that Fancy Feast offers for consumption (turkey and chicken) probably wouldn't be found up in trees out in nature.
I wonder why it seems there is a taboo against using all kinds of birds as food sources. Outside of the pheasant and the duck -other birds that don't really fly that well (just ask the falcons and the swifts)- birds as food are of a very limited variety. Could it have been that the smaller birds were just so hard to catch or shoot throughout man's evolution that he never developed a taste for them?

The 5 Dollar Tuesday

Well, not much stands out in my memory of last night. I found 15 dollars laying against the curb right across the street from where I have been grabbing a milk crate from the side of the Quartermaster.

The bills looked like they had washed to that spot, being misshapen in the way that water would leave them; a 10 and a 5, laying just barely touching each other, not as if they were folded together when dropped and had landed the way they lay; more like they had taken a ride along the curb on a stream of muddy water and mule piss.
But, anyways, I went on to make only 5 more dollars before knocking early at midnight.

The Prostitute

There had been a woman, whom I think was a prostitute, sitting at the Lilly Pad when I walked up.
I explained that that spot was the only place that I could play, and told her about the gate that I sit directly in front of which opens to the alley over which Lilly and her neighbor are in court over, and how Lilly has positioned me there, I think, as a token of her rule over the alley.
I was making small talk with the girl, who had a very masculine aspect to her face, and it crossed my mind that the person might have been a trans sexual sort, or had once been a man, if that's not redundant.
I played a couple of songs and the woman, whose name was kind of Celtic sounding, seemed to enjoy them.
After she asked me for a cigarette, I realized that she was going to be a liability, discouraging others from tipping who might see her as having already engaged me in musical business which they don't want to barge in upon.
I explained that my "hustle" was to be sitting there by myself, alone with my art, pushed to the fringe of society, and that when I had "a friend" sitting with me, people just don't tip me.
"Well, I was here first," said the lady who was dressed very sexily but whose face was kind of masculine despite being made over with sculpted eyebrows, etc.
I had been very polite in explaining to her that the particular spot was the only place where I could sit and try to make money; the only place where I could hang my spotlight so it would shine down upon me, and that the vine had actually grown in such a way as to cradle the spotlight; either because of the heat that the light put out, or just the fact that it was trying to grow around the light, etc. and that it wasn't going to make her any more or less money to be sitting next to me and costing me money.
She left after I had taken my phone out, and told her "Well, I'm going to have to call my friend, because she told me to, in a case like this..."
"I don't usually do this," she said "but I'll move over."
I wondered what her usual habits were; and to what code she adheres to whereby being asked to move by someone is considered a power play and an occasion to defend one's territory. That's kind of the way that gangsters think.
She moved down to the next stoop and I played, pretty well I thought, and after about a half hour and no tips from the few passers by, I could almost sense her thinking: "You aren't making anything even though I moved."
I did get a couple to eventually stop and demonstrate to the girl on the next stoop that they had indeed done so because I was sitting by myself and kind of lost in my own music...