At Play in the Posh Zone

I had to go over to the posh zone today to buy cat food. Taiga, my 13-year-old Siberian, has been suffering from constipation, and on advice from Bethanne and other non-veterinary specialists, I was able to locate a pet store where they sell grain-free cat food. In fact they sell something called Solid Gold (an indication of the price) Indigo Moon Holistic cat food: no grain, no gluten, no wheat corn or soybean, no animal fat, no sugar, no artificial preservatives, no salt, no sunflower oil. (You have to pay extra for all this to be left out.) I got a few samples of it last week. He loves it, and it cured his constipation, so I had to go buy some.

While I was over there, breathing rich people's air and watching rich people drink and dine in rattan chairs on the sunny summer sidewalk, I drifted into a hat store, where I tried on a fine-looking linen canvas fedora that costs $240; then I sat in a molded plastic outdoor chair at Williams-Sonoma on sale for $200 (similar chair sold at discount stores for $5), sniffed a one-ounce tube of men's eucalyptus facial moisturizer that sells for $65 at Kiehl's, enjoyed the air-conditioned fragrance of rose petal potpourri at Pottery Barn, where I could have purchased a bedspread for $900, and generally had a good time pretending I was rich and wondering where the shoppers (because all these stores were doing a brisk trade) earn their money. It's a mystery.

All I bought was cat food, and I marveled at myself because normally I detest shopping. Maybe it was more bearable because I knew I wasn't going to buy anything.

I paused at a scrupulously-groomed courtyard at a very exclusive apartment block, where the bushes must have been manicured with fingernail scissors, and as I was focusing my camera on the patterns of the bushes and the brickwork, a man and his dog arrived and let themselves in. I'm not saying he's rich; I don't have any idea. He might be a hard-working social service provider who slaves away at a non-profit agency, is about to be laid off, and was just visiting a rich relative. But oh, the air does smell different over there. High tones of vanilla and fresh linen, with a soupcon of citrus essence and an undercurrent of leather and new hundred-dollar bills.