My cat sitting service employs a marvelous person who (for a mighty sum) feeds and plays with my vague cat twice a day and each time sends me stunning photographs and a multi-paragraph update. She is a pro (she also feeds my adult kid’s cat when we’re away, plus others) and has it down to an efficient, friendly routine.

Last night at 10:00, I realized she hadn’t sent me her usual update, so I worried a little about her and about the cat. Finally, I texted her and she said she had composed her update and forgotten to send it because she was running for the bus. She sent it immediately, and so I received a friendly, chatty update and a series of photos that had been created around 5:30, by the evidence of the time stamps, and received four and a half hours later.

Of course, it is a formula that she copies and pastes with minor variations, but it’s a personalized formula that reassures me someone is petting and feeding my cat, and provides evidence.

Yesterday evening I took the grandchild to the arcade on the boardwalk after dinner, where we sat side by side playing Halo and shooting enemies. It was intense. He was cheering and shouting, while we both were grimly mowing down anonymous armored soldiers.

Later, back at the house, my adult kid showed me a photograph of the two of us. They had gone themselves after we left, to play the lone pinball machine in the corner, and took a photo of the two of us playing Halo. My kid sent me the photo.

My cat sitter is available to me. I am available to my adult kid. People can see us, from wherever they are, and I can see them, but not necessarily in real time.

As I lay in bed last night in the vacation house, I thought about the ways that our marvelous methods of communication have steadily unmoored us; we drift gently into the current of time and spin, slowly, all the while being quite sure that we are at anchor and among friends. As we drift, other people see us and occasionally take our photograph, which they may or may not share with us.

Everything is immediate, and nothing is. We are under surveillance, but it is unpredictable surveillance, and while sometimes it’s threatening, sometimes it’s friendly, and sometimes it’s just there.

Hopefully (as I sometimes think when watching videos online that purport to be of unscripted events), it’s not from multiple camera angles.