Persian adventures with Iris the Tomish cat

About one hour ago, I finished work for the day, closed my computer, shifted from the north end of this old red chesterfield to the south end and picked up a book called Garden of The Brave in War, Recollections of Iran, which is one of the most enjoyable books I've found in, oh, let's go with a week.

I started the book on Saturday and was quite looking forward to it after work today and thought, heck there's nobody else around so I might as well lay flat on this couch and get back into it.

The writer Terence O'Donnell, lived in south Iran for a few years and sort of took the same approach to travel writing as I would. In other words, he talks to everybody he meets and says yes to every opportunity so winds up sleeping in strangers'  houses, spending entire weekends with opium smokers and vodka cadgers and going on big game hunting trips over the course of which not a single bullet gets fired. 

At one point, O'Donnell finds himself face-to-face with a senior-citizen-aged panhandler in the middle of nowhere, Iran, named Baba Abbas who, if you refused him money flashed you, so you pretty much had to pony up.

Like I said...my kind of travelling.

So down I lied to resume reading and what  happens?

Iris. 

Iris the cat climbed up on the back of the chair from where she looks out at the world and assumed her position.

You should know that the red chair that Iris perches on is mated to this couch. I grew up with this furniture.

I have no idea how old it is but it came from my parents' house and I know that when my grandson Mateus was an infant and fell asleep where I was lying, that made him the fourth generation male Carter to carry on the proud tradition of passing out on this chesterfield..  

This couch and chair are the dial-up Internet of the modern bed-sofa.

The chair flattens out and when aligned with its matching footstool, becomes a single bed. The back cushions of the sofa can be removed and laid out in front of the main part then the other cushions laid on top of them so in effect it becomes a double bed, admittedly a horribly uncomfortable one, but still. 

Laid out thusly it looks like the kind of surface that writer O'Donnell found himself flopping down on in strangers' houses in Iran.

My point, though, was just as I stretched out on the red couch ready to read, what does Iris do? She climbs up and sits in the window.

This should not seem to a normal person like a time for quick and covert action but Iris's personal sign writer had assembled a few bon mots, (I know, I know) about a week ago but Iris had selfishly avoided sitting in the window behind the sign to get her picture taken. 

Until now. 

I had to get up from my red comfort, unplug my charging phone, walk softly to the front door, make the decision to NOT PUT SHOES on because you never know how long Iris is going to stay put; I opened the door, peeked over to see that she was still in the window (she was). I walked in my sock feet to the walkway in front of the house, camera at the ready, and what does Iris do?  

She jumps down off the back of my late father Tom's chair. And with a flick of her tail implies: "I'm glad you're finding those Persians in that book so fascinating, but can they make you walk outside on a wintery day in your sock feet?"

Every day I'm more convinced that Iris is a reincarnated relative.

And I just remembered something my late brother Tom used to do when I was little.

I would be leaving a room and Tom would say "Peter wait a sec. Come here. I've got a question for you."

I, because I'm an idiot, returned,  and Tom asked, "How far do you think you would have been if I hadn't called you back."

We laughed and laughed. 

 I forget what my point was.