Cat on a Windy Day

Wind…

Phoebe: Sorry, on windy days, I get a little grumpy. Feelings of being unsettled, you know?

Jennifer: Absolutely. The noise, the wind howling and rising and falling. The change of plans because of unpredictability.

Phoebe: Not to mention the cat. She seems unsettled too. Wind starts blowing. Runs inside the house. Jumps into the basket. Sleeps until the wind drops.

__________

Voice-over

Wind can overwhelm the senses, to call upon a technical analogy – conflicting data from the sensors. Something out there bigger than us. Affecting our reactions.

•       Primal alarm reaction: fight or flight. 
•      Anxiety or even phobia of wind (ancraophobia or anemophobia) triggered. 
•       Elevated levels of stress hormone cortisol. 
•       Drops in barometric pressure activating the superior vestibular nucleus (SVN), a part of the brain that controls balance and perception. 
•       Air ions might change serotonin levels triggering irritability, fatigue and headaches.

An Air BnB Excursion

Raising his mug…

Guy: Here’s to the driver of this trip—me. 

Antonia: Driver? You barely managed to reverse into the driveway without flattening the hydrangeas. 

Guy:  Tactical parking. Hydrangeas are resilient. Anyway, I might not need a conductor on the bus.

Antonia:  It's not a bus thank God. It's only car. You wouldn’t get far. Remember, I’m the navigator right? Without me, you’d be circling the Parnell roundabout forever. 

Guy:  Roundabouts are just polite mazes. I enjoying going round twice. 

Antonia:  I picked this 1950s cottage so you could relive your glory days—when buses had conductors, not contactless cards. 

Guy: Back then, people respected the driver. 

Antonia:  And if I hadn’t collected the victuals, you’d be surviving only on tea and biscuits. 

Guy:  Tea and biscuits are a balanced diet. Biscuit in each hand. 

Antonia:  And how can you drive the car without my managing the cat. She’s eyeing your mug like she wants to drive the bus herself. 

Guy (to Afogato):  Don’t even think about it. You’re too short for the pedals. 

Antonia:  I’ve orchestrated this trip so you can feel special. Though honestly, the cat thinks it’s her birthday. 

Guy: Three cheers for Afogato, the actual passenger of honor. 

___________

Voice-over
It seems Guy wouldn’t make it far without Antonia along as navigator, accommodation organizer, cat controller, historian, chef, memory maker, celebrator… and therapist.

On FaceBook everyone knows you're a cat

Sketch of a General Cat    

Jerry: You Photoshopped your photo into a sketch?
Tom: What do you think?
Jerry: You’ve gone from being You The Cat to being merely a Generic Cat.
Tom: I needed a new avatar. I stuck with being a cat because, in the end, on FaceBook, everyone knows you are a cat.
Jerry: You got that from somewhere.
Tom: Maybe. Who cares? Everything these days is a derivative. A mixture. A mashup. OK, so the structure came from somewhere but the words are mine.

____________
Voice-over     
The deep structure generates a variety of sentences:

Location + Entity + Verb + Personal reference + Copula + Entity

On the internet + nobody + knows + you + are + a dog

On FaceBook + everyone + knows + you + are + a cat

Look forward to more quotations like this sheep in wolf’s clothing!

Chomsky might agree the surface structure is creative. A little.

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