Morning. I sip my coffee. I look at the sun on buildings. I listen to the parrots squawking somewhere nearby.

Michael and I have been sheltering in place now for two weeks.

To keep fit, I’m running my laps around the dining room table. I’m being nudged from mental sloth by occasional emails from my co-workers. We’re all learning how to manage events online. I’ve set up a Zoom meeting at noon today with the Events Director, and our film curator and been in touch with our licensing company. (No, there’s no problem with telling our patrons, “such-and-such movie is available on Kanopy/Hoopla, etc. Watch it and we’ll meet by Zoom on Friday to discuss!”)

Strange incident yesterday with the cat. She was curled up asleep on her stand next to the window. I walked over to look out at the street and she woke into a back-arched, flat-eared, wide-eyed ball of puffed fur. Didn’t go so far as to hiss at me, but came close.

I reached out to stroke her head reassuringly and she ducked, staring at me as if I were a stranger, tail still puffed, a line of fur down her back standing up. Then she hopped off the stand and ran to her usual refuge, under the dining room table. It took her a minute to return to something close to normal, and even then she seemed doubtful (though not about Michael, whom she allowed to pet her while she kept her eyes on me.)

I left her alone for an hour and after that she was perfectly fine. No explanation for this other than that I might have awakened her from a bad dream about her feral past. Maybe it was the loose, black shirt I was wearing.

How can I blame her for being a little crazy? My own anxiety about COVID is barely kept to a simmer, bubbling up occasionally like low-grade nausea. A paperwork SNAFU has left me without health insurance until they untangle it. We checked the wrong box on a form. “You aren’t the only people who did this” the sympathetic representative told us over the phone. It will be sorted out. But until then… It’s irrational perhaps, but I’m afraid of even stepping outside.

I now think of our neighborhood markets the way I used to think of jaunts to the wine country or Point Reyes.