Moon Pie, Rosita & suspicion of covid: it’s just another day at the Tiffany

Monday morning I was headed back to my apartment from the laundry room, and saw my neighbor Opal talking with Rosita in Rosita’s doorway.

(Rosita is from South America, 25 years old and stands around 4’9”.  She is a doll, and a dead-ringer for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.)  She occupies the studio apartment next to our floor’s elevator. 

I asked how things were going, and where was Moon Pie, Rosita’s cat. (She’s beautiful, with bright green eyes.)  Rosita looked at Opal, and Opal said “She heard me coming and took off running!”

Rosita said “That’s not true… please don’t say that, we need you!”   Opal said to me “Rosita has to go on a business trip tomorrow, she’s leaving at 5am and not coming home until 10pm-midnight.  So I’ll be down here off & on during the day checking in on Moon Pie.” 

I smiled and nodded my head, yes, yes okay.  Before walking away I called out “Bye bye Moon Pie!” in my goofy falsetto voice.  Right away Moon Pie came to the doorway and meowed.  Opal said “You should get Doug to watch her instead of me.”

Rosita asked me if I would.  I had nothing else going on, and frankly I was tired of looking at the same walls in my apartment, so I said okay.

I wish I could show you this young woman’s studio apartment.  I took several pictures while trying to take photos of Moonpie to send Rosita during the day, but I feel it would be a real invasion of privacy to show too much here.

(Plus, Opal told Rosa it’d give me something to blog about.  Rosita said “Oh really?  What is the name of your blog?  I want to see it.”  I apologized, but said I didn’t want to tell her.  She said “That’s okay.  Maybe I’ll look for it on my own.”  Ulp.)

Except for a cot to sleep on in her walk-in closet, and a deflated bean bag chair by her one window (studios only come with one double window, 1 bedroom apartments like mine have 5 windows) this young woman had no furniture, zero none.  No sofa or chairs or even a lamp or tv.

How could this be?  I know what she does for a living, she works in Foreign Currencies at Melloncorp downtown—it’s identical to the IT job I had at Mellon in the 1990s and it paid quite well. 

Anyway, of course I have no right to judge—and truth be told, while I don’t consider myself that old just yet, being a 25 year old single is a whole other mindset.

After a half hour or so, I knew I couldn’t take it.  I picked up her litter box & cat dishes, and took them down the hall outside of my own apartment’s front door.  I then came back and said “Moon Pie, your pad is depressing the hell out of me.  You can either sit there in your cat-house, or come down and spend the day with me.”

I went to the front door, opened it and said “Coming?”   Moon Pie jumped right up and followed me down the hall to my place.  (Here she is, exploring.)

I learned a couple things that day:

1) I’ve been looking at my own place all wrong the last couple weeks.  It’s not so plain, I have a pretty nice apartment.  It’s a clean one too—with plenty of places one can sit!

2) Moon Pie is funny & sweet, a real character.  When I gave her special treat at noon (half a tin of Fancy Feast) she would take a bite, run over and rub my toe with her nose, go back and take a bite… she did this 10 times!   I was cracking up!

But I realized something else that day too.  I don’t think I want a cat of my own after all, apartment cats require a lot of TLC.  

Oh and finally: after I returned Moon Pie and came home, I began shaking.  What the heck was going on?  By 11pm, I had a fever of 101 and here it is Wednesday night and I still do. 

I am wrapped in 3 blankets as i write this, I’m pretty sure I have covid for the third time.  I’m going to take a covid test Thursday morning before posting my blog, I’ll share the results below.

I knew it.  I gotta go back to bed.