Emergency Cat Fostering Needed Again--New Hampshire or New England thereabouts

Sooooo, the cat fosterer's landlord will not allow the cats to be kept more than two weeks, which means that by May 29th, we'll need more fosterers for the cats. I fucking hate this.

There are two elderly cats, no health problems, asides from sometimes allergies, and meds can be provided to mix into their food. If possible, it'd be great for the two cats to stay together, since they've spent their entire adult lives together, but considering how difficult this is already being...

Please spread word of this. We hope we can find a place for these cats.

Mara, by Lois Metzger (1981)

This is a short story for pluralstories that I found in the sci-fi library, in an apparently impossible-to-find anthology called WomanSpace: Future and Fatnasy: Stories and Art by Women. It came from New Victoria Publishers, a long-shuttered feminist press. While digging around in the library archives, I stumbled upon it, and it's short enough that I decided to type it up here for plural posterity.

Mara
by Lois Metzger

I don't wear glasses, but I put them on. My mother's face was a blurry haze; her clothes were without detail, only color.

"Please give them back," she said. I took off the glasses and saw clear gray eyes and white hair. My mother was sixty-two.

"You won't cause any trouble?" sh said.

I listened and heard nothing. "No trouble," I said.

My mother cried. Mara told me a story: On my world people don't cry: their skin changes color. When they're happy they look yellow or red; when they're sad they turn dark blues and greens.

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