I read a book. A real one. Not one on my phone. It wasn’t from the library. I bought it. It was a hardcover book. I read it.

How did this happen? How did I go for several hours in the last few days and not turn on the tv but instead opened a book. A real one.

I was cat sitting at my brother’s place. They have a TV. Two in fact. Yes, I knew how to use the remote control to turn it on. (Because let’s be honest: other people’s remote controls are stupidly complicated, even if they are the rare people who only use one control for everything [the average is two controls just to watch the local news]. You can write detailed instructions, you can draw all the diagrams in the world but the guest will always manage to hit something out of sequence and then the screen goes blank. It stays that way until the owners return.) But I treated this as a mini-vacation. I read a book like you do poolside at an all-inclusive resort. Except this resort was off of Sunset Boulevard, had three cats and a half full box of Crunch Berries.

The book was The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins. It was good. Even though I figured out who did it, I still enjoyed it. Very quick read. Like a beach read. Except no sand save for some kitty litter granules that made it out of the box.

Once the sun went down so did the book. Because if I read a book after 7pm, I fall asleep in ten minutes. So the TV went on. And the volume would go up and down every few minutes. The reason being is that the TV had to compete with the outside noise. For those of you who’ve never been to Hollywood, picture a place like any other but drown out the noise with the sound of hovering helicopters. At one point I thought, does this building have a helipad?

So yes, I did watch a little TV. Two of the cats and I watched X-Men: Days Of Future Past from the recliner. I had seen it but the cats had not. Ramses recognized Beast from the Jaguar commercials while Anna Paquin getting credited as high as she did for not having any lines confused Anubis. The third cat, Ollie, was asleep.

The other thing we watched was Harry Potter And the Goblet Of Fire. I thought it was weird that HBO was running that one again because that was the last HP film in rotation a few months ago. But really, does it matter? An HP film was on so I was watching it. To be honest, this is not my favorite of the films, as I explained to the cats. Yes, it is the turning point in the series when it becomes one story from here on out. Yes, they did a good job of consolidating the events and making it coherent. I agree on those points. It’s the weird hair. Harry, Ron and the Weasley Twins have weird long hair while Viktor Krum has a crew cut. Out of all the things to change from the book, why this? Krum has the long hair!

I HAVE OPINIONS ABOUT THESE THINGS.

The cats, however, didn’t care. They are feminists cats who didn’t like that Fleur, the lone female champion, was written to forfeit the second event and then get swallowed by the hedge maze in the final event. I guess that is straight out of the books but the kitties could not be consoled on this matter. Why couldn’t Krum get overtaken by the Grindylows in the Black Lake? BECAUSE HE HAD NO HAIR TO GRAB ONTO.

Yes.

No.

At this point, I realized I should pick up the remote and turn off the TV and go back to reading the real book.

If only I could remember how to do that.