Bells Bring Birds and Memories

Far off to my right, churchbells ring an epiphany of dubious quality. God says, "This is it, Creation! You are on to something!" It is no louder than the children squealing in the splashpark or the overworked cicadas, but the bells grab my attention because they are musical and they are novel.

Called by the bells and looking for the origin, a chorus line of geese begin their long slow march across the grass. They are not deterred by anything except for the Korean woman who wants her husband to stand with them for a photograph. It is impossible to coordinate: he approaches, they veer away, each goose turning diagonal for a moment to yield their passage. Thwarted, the Korean man attempts to corral ducks instead, and then he gives up and walks away.

The heat and the bells blur yesterday into today: there's nobody here to tell us about slaughter. No man offers cures for laryngitis as suffered by sloe-eyed and apparently vacant waitresses. Tourists do not gasp for the last drop of lemon water from an antique glass. Yesterday continues to intrude: the arts are overpriced, the elderly move slowly, papa-goose grunts his dissatisfaction and the children are making animal noises. The Goose Girl isn't here...I'm 42 days late.

The churchbells stop and are replaced by the sound of a dump-truck in reverse.

The Strangeness of Muffet

I live with a delightfully strange cat. People have asked me how Muffet and I have been getting along, and the best short answer I can give is "delightfully strange."

The long answer is that she's incredibly annoying and funny. If she were slightly more annoying or slightly less funny she'd be unbearable, but even when she's going completely bonkers -- ricocheting off walls five feet in the air, for instance, while emitting a constant babble of shrieks and growls -- she is still entirely lovable. And sometimes she knows to leave well enough alone (though rarely).

She's too curious and active. She needs to explore everything, and if she can't climb inside something she needs to either push it or break it. Socks must be removed from sock drawers and shower curtains must come crashing down, usually at 3am. She must also be allowed a certain time on my shoulders, a game which we call "hunchcat" and which sometimes ends with her biting my neck.

Did I mention the fighting? We're always fighting. When she rolls onto her back, that means she wants to mutilate my right hand. I am a bad parent because I do not let her win, and at the end of it all I clutch my bleeding wrist and she looks at me with hatred in her eyes, huffing peevishly.

So yes, she's annoying and requires constant maintenance and she will destroy things if I don't pay attention to her. But I love her to death, and she puts on a convincing charade of loving me. At the roller derby last weekend I sat next to a woman who had to entertain her precocious eight-year-old daughter, and I saw an uncanny reflection of my own behaviour: the coaxing, the distracting, the humouring, the happiness, and the unfeigned tolerance and love.

SIDENOTE: A few months ago she managed to climb the bookcase where I keep her treats, and by the time I caught her she'd eaten half of a full bag. I put the treats in an even higher and more inaccessible spot, and the next day she'd managed to eat the other half. She expanded into a very fat cat shortly afterward and it's been a struggle to maintain her new diet, but let's just say she doesn't get treats anymore and that my shoulders have needed to become a lot stronger.

"et and "y

Here's a post for those who like to hear cat stories, or stories about me being analytically happy, or both.

Muffet is a pretty terrific cat.

Suddenly -- instead of the laid-back, sleepy, unconcerned pet that was Zsa Zsa -- I have this quirky, spunky, endlessly-curious kitten who loves me to death and strives to be permanently attached to me. She's settling in a bit more now, but for the last week she has spent every waking moment either on my lap or a few inches to the right of my lap...at least, when she's not racing up a flight of stairs and lunging to the left in an apparent attempt to kill me.

There has been one exception to her Muffy-love, however: she's afraid of my bedroom. I don't know if it smells particularly like Zsa Zsa, or if I accidentally kicked her off the bed the only night she slept there (she weighs 5 1/2 pounds and is therefore less detectable than a pea amongst the bedding), but as soon as she enters my bedroom she becomes a new fearful creature.

By contrast, Muffet-in-the-rest-of-the-house has never seen a nook or cranny she didn't want to climb into. There is no shelf high enough to deter her. She will rocket onto ironing boards, window sills, planters and kitchen appliances without a second thought...I keep a pot-lid on the stove to place over the elements when I'm finished with them, because my biggest fear -- seriously -- is that she'll leap onto a 350-degree burn. Jeez, no.

But as soon as she crosses my bedroom threshold she's like a small child in a haunted house: a discarded article of clothing is a ghost that must be tapped and evaded, a gentle hand is an evil claw, a creak in the rafters is grounds for a mad dash into the far-off basement. The first night she came back from the vet's, she climbed tentatively onto the bed and saw my right shoulder. She solemnly pressed it with her paw and then ran away in fear.

This made me paranoid, especially when my father said "Cats are known for detecting cancer and injuries before anybody else can." The next night she climbed onto the bed, gave me an evil look, and pressed both of her paws against my forehead. Then she ran away again.

Brain cancer and mounting vet bills aside -- not to mention her occasional 5am scream-fights with the Neighbourhood Badass Cat -- life with Muffet is wonderful. She is beginning to learn how to entertain herself. She smells things in that idiotic open-mouthed way that cats sometimes have. Catnip turns her into a whirling dervish. She is clean and healthy and strong and active.

Zsa Zsa reminded me of a middle-aged film star, a sort of Liz Taylor creature who preferred to lounge and smoke and share fond memories about former lovers. Muffet, however, makes me think of a Peter Greenaway character; a Cissy Colpitts, maybe, who collects esoterica and doesn't notice when her vag is showing. Which, because she's a domestic shorthair, is always.

In honour of cats and those who love them, and also in honour of British eccentrics, here's "Cat House" by forgotten indie-minx Danielle Dax. If you haven't forgotten her then simply telling me so will bring more joy to an already joyous weekend (and it hasn't even started yet!)

Muffet

When I wrote my initial post about Muffet I was in the process of dropping into the depths of grief, panic, and depression. That is not a good time to adopt a new pet, particularly not when that pet is in heat.

Fortunately I was able to book an appointment at the vet's the next morning, and while waiting for my saintly parents to drive us there, I finally saw the GOOD side of Muffet.

Previously she'd been a manic, yowling demon...a drunken, sex-crazed lunatic without any pants or underwear to disguise the sight of her insatiable desire, a creature who I was afraid to even touch lest I set her off into another seizure of rolling and screaming and perhaps even spraying. In the morning she was still that, but she took time out to explore, purr, sit on my lap, and demonstrate her considerable intelligence.

To elaborate on Muffet's smarts:

• After two attempts to sharpen her claws on my new chairs, and two gentle removals to her scratch pad, she returned to the scratch pad and has been using it exclusively.
• "That's my litterbox? Okay, I'll poop there."
• I couldn't figure out why she kept climbing around in my laundry basins, until I realized she recognized them as places where water comes from. Carrying her to her water dish has done the trick.

Since then she has been a constant observer of everything. Nothing I do escapes her notice. She even watches me in the mirror. Right now she is sitting on my desk in front of the computer monitor, watching me type this blog entry and no doubt learning to spell.

Anyway, I took her to the vet, and after a rigorous checkup (and a rabies shot) I was told that they could keep Muffet overnight and spay her, then I could pick her up on Saturday morning. Buck Animal Hospital, you people are WONDERFUL.

They also said that here's no way Muffet is two years old...more like one year old, which would explain her zest and zeal. Her narrow face, skinny body, and long legs also imply that she's part Siamese, hence her frequent and expressive (and potentially excessive) vocalizations.

I felt bad leaving Muffet with the vet for two days, but I was rapidly turning into a basket case, and for the interim I wept and wept and gradually pulled the pieces of my life back together.

And now, on Saturday, she's home.

First things first: Muffet likes and trusts me. From the moment I picked her up to this very moment now, she has come to me for comfort and affection and play. She purrs and purrs and purrs when I am around. This is wonderful.

Secondly, she's frightened of the environment -- the wind outside, the furnace noises, and footsteps on the stairs in particular -- but every hour she is more confident of this house. She still retreats to the basement whenever things get too hairy for her, but I no longer have to spend any time coaxing her out; I call and she comes (usually with a barrage of meows).

Third, she's still a raging ball of hormones, but not nearly the way she was before. Apparently it will take some time for her sex drive to go into neutral. This, coupled with her extreme reaction to catnip, makes me worry a bit about the state of her incision; I'm trying to distract her whenever she gets too wild, and she actually slept for a while in her fuzzy cat bed.

Finally, my other worry is her food: she isn't eating her Science Diet or the soft food that the vet provided, but in my experience cats don't eat like pigs anyway; I assume that when she's hungry she will eat, and eventually I'll fall back on the super-expensive kibble that the vet gave me (and which she happily ate in her crate when we were driving her home).

Muffet is a wonderful cat. I am returning to a point where I can even be a wonderful owner. She will be a handful: energetic, hungry for affection, and playful in a very kittenish way. She will be impossible to outwit, and she's so active that I'll need to be permanently watchful. In these ways she is nothing like the relaxed and stoic cat that Zsa Zsa was, whose response to adversity was "Oh well, I didn't care about that anyway."

But Muffet is also delightful and pleasant and sociable, and I see some indication that she can entertain herself when necessary. She's a much-need attraction and comfort, right now, when I absolutely need to be kept busy.

Muffet, thank you. You're not Zsa Zsa -- however much I probably wanted you to be a few days ago -- and you're not going to reduce the stress in my everyday life (especially as it relates to the huge wads of money I've spent and will need to continue to spend), but I'm very glad to have you and I'll do my best to be good to you.

Hot on the Feline Heels and Hot to Trot and Anxiety

If I hadn't gone out to find a new cat companion, I would probably be in an agony of depression right now. Instead I'm in an agony of worry, which is really no better or worse I suppose.

My mother and I went to the Humane Society after being unable to find a suitable cat at Petcetera. The Humane Society was full of people checking out the cats and climbing into their cages to sit with them, so I was already feeling a sense of urgency.

When I walked past the cage of Muffet, she reached out and gently pawed at the glass, so I asked to sit with her and evaluate her personality.

Muffet was very outgoing, wanting to be rubbed and making lots of vocalizations. At the time she seemed like the right cat, so after ten minutes or so with her I asked for the adoption forms.

But as I was filling them out I began to realize that Muffet's rolling-and-meowing routine wasn't stopping and -- frankly -- was getting a bit annoying. When the Humane Society volunteer returned, I said I was having second thoughts, and she said "Oh, I see what's happening...Muffet's going into heat."

She reassured me that getting her spayed would fix the problem, and also that veterinarians will spay cats in heat. Relieved, I filled out the forms and handed them in...

...but something was in the back of my mind. As I stood waiting for everything to be entered into the computer and processed, I began to wonder if I should adopt a cat who I had only interacted with while she was in heat...what if her personality radically changed afterwards, or what if she continued to be this manic? Something in me was struggling, I wanted to say "Wait, maybe not," but adopters were wandering around the halls pouncing on cats and I was afraid that if I waited I would lose a potentially great companion.

Then, after I paid, the receptionist heard that Muffet was in heat. "Oh, you're adopting a cat in heat? Bless you!" she said, laughing.

Oh shit, I thought. What am I getting myself in for?

The woman at the pet store had equally ominous "cat in heat" stories to tell, and everybody online talks about what a disruptive and annoying experience it is for cat owners. They also say that vets may refuse to spay a cat in heat, so I may be looking at two weeks of this "ominously-described" behaviour.

I say "ominously-described," because Muffet hasn't really done much yet. She's still getting used to my house so -- in between coaxed exploration -- she's hiding in the basement crawl space. No "caterwauling" yet, but when I pet her she begins to rub herself all over me in the "cat in heat" way, and I automatically get anxious...

...and is an anxious pet owner a good pet owner? Am I already souring our relationship? Is Muffet going to do things before I can spay her that will make me dislike her?

I say this as a person who is quite obsessed with my routine, my sleep, and my stretches of "quiet time." A cat in heat sounds, to me, the way that kryptonite probably makes Superman feel.

So I'm WORRIED. Part of this is because this is a new situation and I don't respond to new situations well. It's also that I kick myself for not giving it all more consideration before I took Muffet home (I feel irresponsible), and the knowledge that if somebody had said "Muffet will yowl loudly and constantly for hours on end at all times of day and night," I would not have consented. I didn't know what was involved.

I tell myself that if I can't get her spayed until she's out of heat, and if her heat-behaviour drives me over the edge, I can surrender her back to the Humane Society and accept the lost money (and the additional outlay of the surrender fee), and also accept that this is not fair to her, it's annoying for the Humane Society, and it will probably negatively-impact my chances of adopting another cat.

The thing is, when I'm on the brink of uncertainty I absolutely torture myself with worry and anxiety. As an adolescent I would work myself into full-blown, incapacitating panic attacks, and while I no longer (it seems) react in such an extreme way as an adult I still do put myself into a bad state. This coupled with a crushing grief about Zsa Zsa and the additional anxiety of a Saturday-night drag show and a (next-) Wednesday-night spoken word stint.

I'm writing all this out because I recognize that my anxiety is based on cognitive-reasoning flaws, so when I express everything (as I have here) and see that it isn't half as catastrophic* as I thought it was, I can calm down to a point where I can (hopefully) sleep eventually. You blog readers -- and "you blog" itself -- are at this moment substitutes for a friendly, logical, reassuring voice.

What, ultimately, do I need to recognize in order to calm myself down? The same things that I ALWAYS need to recognize but I so often manage to forget:

1. I can deal with the situation.
2. The fact that I got into the situation in the first place does not make me a bad or worthless person.
3. If I CAN'T deal with the situation, there is a solution.
   

In my head I believe all three of those things. Now if I could only convince my adrenal glands...

* Pun!

Dogs: The Neighbourhood Icebreakers

Today my mother came by to help me fix up my foliage. I've kept it all wet and I've even done some weeding, but there's no substitute for a green-thumb matriarch with a bag full of mulch.

On a beautiful day and under a beautiful sky we worked at separate tasks, drinking and not really speaking. She did the heavy lifting, being only about five feet tall but actually having a functional shoulder. I did the first REAL weeding I've ever done in my life, digging out the grass that's sapping the life from my burgeoning maple trees and my bleeding hearts. It's amazing how tenacious grass can be, it spreads a thick network of tiny roots through the soil. It's almost a shame to pull up such a capable weed.

After my mother left and I was standing on my patio admiring her work, the dog arrived, a huge bouncy orange creature who barked playfully at the children next door. It had come running into their back yard, followed closely by Pearl, a neighbour I'd only previously seen dancing during an impromptu long weekend celebration on our mutual fire route.

Pearl was talking to the small children, and I found myself drawn to the dog. "Can I pet him?" I asked, and suddenly I realized that dogs are "people bridges" who entice reserved people into talking with each other.

Through this dog I met not just Pearl, but also the kids next door and their mother...I don't think their mother is my biggest fan as of yet, but I'm convinced that it's 99% due to the usual problems with neighbours: we haven't spoken yet. I waved at her across the yard and she smiled genuinely and waved back, and wished I hadn't had that second drink with my mom.

Sensing that the children wanted to talk to me a bit, I turned to one of them and said "When I first saw this dog I thought it was yours."

"No," he sighed sadly. "We don't have anything...except for a baby named Jackson."

So I think that people who move into a new neighbourhood should be able to RENT dogs, so we can stand around and wait for somebody to say "How old is he? Can I pet him? What's his name? How big will he get?" followed shortly by "Hi, my name is..."

The Great Duckling Rescue of 2010

I didn't participate in last year's Great Duckling Rescue, because my shoulder was an awful mess and I didn't want to aggravate it. Workmate Dave did the honours in 2009.

This year I dived back into the bushes and it was Dave's turn to stand and laugh (and also to stop me from breaking my neck after an ill-advised jump on the stairs). After the problems of past rescues this one went pretty smoothly.

First, the preliminaries: after four years of this ritual, mama duck no longer considers us a threat, and when it's time for the babies to leave their impossible nest she actually comes to the front door of the office and quacks. Then she takes an enormous, smelly dump on the steps (presumably because she's been holding it in during the last few days of intense nesting action).

This year, though, she retreated back to the nest by the time I got out there, and she absolutely REFUSED to let me near the babies. Maybe she realized that one of them wasn't ready to go yet. I made a few half-hearted attempts to approach her, only to have her hiss ominously, which is pretty spooky when you're wedged face to face with her among the gridlocked shrubbery.

Half an hour later she was back out and down on the lawn, quacking for her cheeping babies to come down. Time for us to get to work.

I've discovered a good technique for trapping ducklings in our work planter: I push myself deep into the torturous foliage, with my hands free to scoop the huddled birds out of their nesting corner, and with my left foot against the wall to block their escape. Any ducklings that got past me were ably trapped by workmate Mark, who participated for the first time and probably managed to totally destroy his office casual attire.

Our other innovation was a stiff recyclable grocery bag, which we could put on top of the bushes and drop ducklings into as we caught them. Previously we had to climb partway out of the planter and drop them one-by-one work workmate Aurora far below, which allowed the remaining ducklings to reassemble in a more remote spot and also resulted in more than one baby falling beak-over-tailfeathers into the flowers on the front lawn.

We got eleven of them out and the mother walked toward the creek with her entourage, but one poor duckling was unable to keep up; maybe he was a runt, or maybe he was damaged or deformed, but he seemed to have trouble walking quickly. It was absolutely HEARTBREAKING to watch that poor little baby trying EVERYTHING to catch the herd, occasionally falling helplessly on its back and peeping terribly.

Amidst the usual unhelpful and pointless comments from passing coworkers -- "Nature's cruel!" "Natural selection!" "Let them die!" -- I wondered whether I could adopt this bird. But I've got a cat who LOVES to eat cute little things, and you can't housebreak a duck, and I've got enough things to worry about in my life as it is. So instead I picked him up and helped him along whenever I could, and when he finally got into the water he seemed able to swim well enough to his mother, so maybe he'll live.

It's inevitable that every year a few ducks will hatch several hours later, requiring us to catch them and take them down to the creek until we find the mother. This year, though, it was just a single bird that hatched late...and the parents actually came back for it! I don't know what they'd done with the rest of the brood -- probably left it with an aunt or something -- but after we dropped the latecomer down the three of them waddled back to the water. This is the first time I've seen the mother come back, and the ONLY time I've EVER seen the deadbeat father get involved.

Maybe he's off the booze and is trying to make a second go at family life?

Monday Morning Cartoon

The ZsaZsaBlog VII

Every day for the last year I've come home expecting to find Zsa Zsa either dead or dying. During that time she has gotten terribly skinny and bowlegged, and her posture has changed and she's not as concerned with personal hygiene as she used to be, but otherwise she's exactly the same cat. Which is weird!

She still yowls for food and for the privelege of sitting on the patio (or, at the moment, stepping onto the patio and saying "Oh wait a second, never mind"). She climbs up and down the stairs with no problem at all. She jumps from my armchair to my bed -- a seemingly impossible task -- without batting a whisker. And at every opportunity she snuggles up to me and purrs and purrs and purrs.

She has even developed a new vocalization ("Eeeow, yow, yow!") which means "I want to play!" Seriously, this arthritic and organ-failed cat loves to jump up on my bed -- always the bed -- to play the two games that still tantalize her: "Catch the feathered toy when it scoots past you" and "Stomp on the pen-tip papers when I flick them at you." She's playing the second game in the picture above.

After she soaked the basement carpet with urine, however, it was obvious that something needed correcting. So I cut the carpet into pieces and removed it under cover of darkness and I bought her a second litterbox, one with tall sides. I also removed the hood, and put one of those doggie pee-pads around it (thanks, Lydia!)

This has worked. She's stopped using the old litterbox almost entirely. I think she still TRIES to pee outside of it, but the edges are high enough to block the stream. I also bought her a cat water-fountain (her FOURTH) which seems to have improved her life immensely.

Getting her to eat can be a hassle. She used to be the least finicky cat in the world, but I think that food is less interesting to her than it used to be, and maybe it makes her a little sick. The vet prescribed Azodyl to supposedly remove some of her uremic toxins, but it's difficult to know if it's working.

Most strange is the way that our relationship has changed. For nine years she was a roommate who needed very little attention or upkeep, whereas now she relies on me constantly. I have discovered that if I interact with her through the day -- pick her up and let her look out the windows, play with her, put her on my lap, talk to her -- she becomes far perkier (and hungrier) than on those days when I'm distracted and selfish. It's to the point -- and has been for almost a year now -- that I'm afraid to leave her alone for an entire day, in case she might just give up.

So Zsa Zsa, now, is a surprisingly capable invalid. I'm hoping she lasts until the spring at least, so she can finally enjoy the patio at its best. I'm also hoping she dies when it's warm so I can bury her in the garden that she loves to play in.

But the way things are going, she'll outlast me!

Cock-Crow of the Bantam Car

I understand that '30s periodicals were not particularly sensitive -- offenses against God and Country excluded -- but I'm a bit surprised by the pictures in this March 1st, 1930 advertisement from The New Yorker. They represent the "American Austin" car as the victorious rooster in a bloody cockfight.

The rest of the advertisement is simply a list of statistics and celebrity endorsements. The cockfight metaphor is only addressed in the pictures. It's SO BLASE.

This is particularly strange because cockfighting was illegal in New York state in the 1930s, and I only know this because Morris Markey wrote a great piece about it ("Feathered Warriors") in an issue of The New Yorker just one month before. And while the magazine itself made lots of explicit (and complicit) mentions of the illegal liquor trade, the ADVERTISEMENTS never did so (though they did sell cocktail shakers and such).

In short, showing this cockfight imagery would have been akin to saying something like: "The American Austin: The best bootleg gin around!" They couldn't do it for booze...why could they do it for a bloodsport?

Eena, Deina, Pitera, Pimp

I'm reading "Lost Country Life" by Dorothy Hartley, based around Thomas Tusser's famous 16th century farming calendar.

Being totally unsourced and written in a know-it-all tone, some of the book seems a tad dubious; you wonder if, being 87 herself when the book was written, she held more stock than she should have in her own intuition, memories, and the homey parables of her mysterious gardener.

But at the very least the book is full of beefy (if scattered) information about the smallest tasks of the medieval farmers. If this isn't really how it was, then it is how it SHOULD have been.

Many of her insights provoke interesting questions, even if you don't exactly believe her answers. For instance: how did people with no education manage to separate a specific number of animals -- say twenty -- from a herd? With "shepherd counts," apparently, regionally-specific "four-finger" counts that used words instead of numbers. "Eena, deena, dina, das; catiler, weena, winer, was," you'd say in the West Riding, or -- if you were in Rochdale -- "Eena, deina, pitera, pimp."

She also explains how all those beautiful British hedgerows were built, and the crazy methods for making rennet, and the various uses of both cows and oxen.

It's taken me a week to actually start enjoying this book (due to its informal and poorly-organized preface), but now I'm learning all sorts of things I've always wondered. I'll never USE these tips for plowing a strip of land or washing a sheep, but it's fascinating to learn how medieval mind explained the mysteries of land and animal, and how they slowly began to innovate.

My New Neighbourhood

Up a hill! Down a hill! I never realized there was such a big hill on the edge of Uptown Waterloo. All sides of it are fantastically steep, and there's even a bit of a valley nestled right in the middle, so I get lots of exercise to and from work.

While coming down the hill towards Weber street there's a BEAUTIFUL view to the north, overlooking Moses Springer park and then -- far off -- the student slums of University and Columbia. I'm intrigued by a huge microwave tower out there.

There is always a lone dove sitting on a powerline near Lincoln and Weber, which is also where the few pedestrians diverge to various buses. Even though there is a bus which goes very close to my house, its route is circuitous and seems to almost willfully avoid the main line. Transfers and waiting at University and King is the only way.

The most beautiful homes are up on the hill. Affluence, in this area, means being set so far away from the road that you are completely surrounded by forest. One house appears only accessible up a long, winding wooden staircase with a mailbox at the bottom. I want to live in that house!

All the homes were built in the '60s and look distinctly "Brady Bunch": A-Frame angles, tall narrow windows, ridiculously high ceilings. The people who live in those houses walk their children to work every day; one father piggybacks his daughter all the way down the hill.

My own neighbourhood is not affluent, it would probably be classified as lower-middle class. They're mostly new families and first-time homebuyers. Most of them seem capable of proper recycling and garbage disposal, but a few think that a bin marked "cardboard" is the place where you throw your old Javex bottles.

The supermarket nearby is exceptionally good. The Blockbuster store is badly in need of cleaning and renovation. The Canadian Pizza place makes great pizza, and it's cheap.

I live near a water treatment plant and I am surrounded on three sides by enormous parks. I have done very little exploring but I'm amazed to discover that I live at the very end of Margaret Street, a long city-spanning thoroughfare which runs through every type of possible neighbourhood. This week I walked from the one end -- near my house -- all the way to the other end, which terminates conveniently at the Registry Theatre. It took about 45 minutes.

On my way to work I pass the cheerful, elderly school crossing guard. On the way home I used to greet the cheerful, elderly golden retriever who ran loosely up and down the immaculately-manicured lawns. But a few weeks ago his owners tied him up in the driveway, put down a blue tarp for him, and left his food and water out. I don't believe he is abused but he's certainly sad, sitting there, unable to greet people on the sidewalk. It makes me sad too.

Two days ago I finally realized that I really do live here. It hasn't sunk in yet that I OWN the place, but it's a start at least.

Fury. The Barracks. Zsa Zsa. Animal Behaviour. Sociology.

I am absolutely DETERMINED to keep my house in tip-top shape. Since I've moved in I have been developing routines for everything that requires maintenance: watering the plants as soon as I come home, cleaning the bathroom and kitchen once a week, making sure dishes and pop cans move steadily to their appropriate places...in short, organizing everything so that cleanliness and maintenance are easy to accomplish.

I haven't gotten the dish-washing routine figured out yet, and most rooms are still so unfinished that I can't get a handle on them, but for the most part I've been thrilled with my progress.

Then, today, I came home and discovered that my beloved cat has been peeing all over my basement crawlspace.

I positively f*cking SNAPPED. To see (and smell) all of my most meticulous attentions thwarted by what seemed (at the time) to be a flippant and whimsical disregard for her litterbox...well, I suddenly understood domestic hatred. I understood how people can -- momentarily -- wish that their loved ones were dead.

It was amazing. As I crawled around in the basement wiping up more and more fresh cat piss, I seriously wished that Zsa Zsa would die. I believed that if she died I would feel only relief. She kept trying to sneak back into the crawlspace, and I kept throwing heavy objects at her to drive her away. Finally I managed to build a barrier that should keep her out, and I told myself that if she peed ONE MORE TIME outside her litterbox I'd take her straight to the vet and get her put down.

As you can imagine, she studiously avoided me for half an hour, and by the time she reappeared I was ready to make nice, and by way of coincidental apology she peed in her litterbox shortly afterward...not even in the tin pan I keep outside the litterbox door, which she usually uses.

Tomorrow I'll buy white vinegar and see if it works as well as the Old Wives say it does, and if that fails...well, I hear that stinky concrete can be sealed, though I don't know how (or at what cost).

In the meantime, though, I'm a little bit shaken at my ability to see Zsa Zsa as nothing more than an inconvenience. I think I understand -- a tiny bit -- those people who go into screaming fits when kids bicycle across their front lawns. I suppose that investing a huge amount of money, hope, and emotion into an inanimate object can skew your priorities a bit.

The ZsaZsaBlog VI

Last month I noticed that Zsa Zsa was looking increasingly scruffy; she had tufts of fur sticking out every where and she appeared to have stopped grooming herself. She was also extremely lethargic. "That's it," I thought, "she's REALLY dying now."

But then I had a sudden brainstorm. I took out a comb and started to brush her, and in half an hour I'd removed sixteen inches of loose fur.



It seems that the sudden heat and her new frailty had dealt her a double blow, and whereas in the past she'd been able to remove all that fur, this year she just couldn't. It was like she was wearing a pair of snowpants in the middle of summer. As soon as we finished our hour-long brushing session she went bouncing around the room, suddenly cool and free!

As always, signs of her demise were greatly exaggerated.

Case in point: she caught at least two mice last week, and in keeping with her experimental nature she left them in various states of gruesomeness.

Last Monday I stepped on a mouse tail, which she'd left at the bottom of the stairs. Usually she eats the tails, but maybe this one simply wasn't to her liking.

Wednesday's mouse was the most disgusting yet, because instead of eating it front-to-back or back-to-front, she'd eaten in LATERALLY, from the underbelly up. Three of the feet, most of the viscera, and the lower jaw of the mouse were gone...but the tail, spine, and much of the bleary-eyed head were still intact. It looked like a horror movie prop: a mouse dipped in acid, its ribs gnawed back into little fingers and one little back foot hanging off.

Why does Zsa Zsa do these things? I thought she was a cute little bundle who snores happily on my lap, not a wicked witch-monster who spends the early morning hours eating small creatures alive.

Of course this only makes me love her more.

Lazy Blogger Flush

Just a bunch of things that don't deserve separate entries (or do but require more time and thought than I can spare at the moment).

• Every spring I am amazed at the way robins really DO go bob-bob-bobbin'.
• Speaking of the animal kingdom, yesterday was "flying ant day" here at the Muffy Household. I killed at least thirty of them as they went copulating across my front window. When you crush them, they release a very strong chemical odour which smells a lot like cotton candy.
• They have arrested two people for the murder of Tori Stafford, and the police say they're looking for her body...and yet most of the forum comments say things like "Please God let her be alright!" This makes me wonder just how carefully people read the news.
• I've been exploring the '60s lately. I read a book by Abe Peck about the underground press, and this got me wondering about the social movements of the time. In particular I wondered why Woodstock turned out so well and Altamont was a complete disaster. Having watched both "Woodstock" and "Gimme Shelter," it seems apparent that part of the trouble was having 30,000 people pressed up against a stage that was only four feet high. Another problem was a bunch of stoned and rabid fans. A third problem was a bunch of drunk bikers being expected to deal gently with people.
• So I bought "The Worst of Jefferson Airplane" and I have to say they were pretty cool. Now I'm finishing off "The Kids Are Alright," and next up is "The Doors."
• I'm seriously considering buying a condo, and if things work out during the next month or so then I really, really will. Hopefully it won't burst into flame.
• This weekend I'll be timing the "sin bin" at the season opener for our local Roller Derby teams. That's excitement!
• Next weekend I'll be at Guelph Pride's "circus" event.
• A second squirrel family has moved into the attic. They fight all the time. The ones in the northwest corner always lose.

Eyeing the Intestines

A few nights ago I was amazed to discover a pile of viscera in the middle of my carpet. There were intestines, and a miniature liver, and other little bits and pieces all tucked inside that I couldn't really see.

My first thought was that Zsa Zsa had finally started vomiting up her own entrails, but these were far too small to have come from a cat. They were...mouse size.

As far as I know this is the sixth mouse that Zsa Zsa has caught. As though to express the changeability of her moods, every mouse is devoured in a totally different way; the first was left totally uneaten, the second was swallowed in a single gulp, the third was chewed and savoured in a leisurely way, the fourth was bitten into two pieces with only the top half eaten, the fifth was entirely devoured except for a tiny back foot...

...but this is the first time she's eaten everything BUT the entrails, which seems strange to me; why would she favour the fur and bones and tail, but leave the "choice bits" behind?

I wonder if there isn't some truth to that half-baked idea that cats sometimes treat humans as really useless kittens. Maybe Zsa Zsa left a pile of juicy mouse-organs for me because she thought I'd appreciate them, and she knows I could never catch a mouse if my life depended on it.

Even stranger, however, was how CLEAN and SELF-CONTAINED the viscera was. I've always assumed that such things were sticky and messy and gelatinous, but not THESE mouse guts; they were damp but coherent, a whole entity unto themselves, almost as though they could pull themselves back together and saunter off into the night.

I think it's wonderful that Zsa Zsa -- who now resembles Death's Own Pussycat -- still has the vigour to stalk, capture, and eat the resident mice.

Whining, Pain, Fury, Midnight Special

After almost two weeks of a really bad cold, on Tuesday I started feeling really good...I was getting healthy again!

That night I caught the flu, or something similar. Then today, while walking up my stairs, I slipped on some ice and pinwheeled my damaged right arm, and I was literally paralyzed with pain...it was like somebody had run over it. I couldn't even breathe and everything went white-hot around me.

I stumbled upstairs and got into the shower so I could spray some high-pressure warm water on it, and while I was washing my hair...I lost the hearing in my left ear. It's some congestion-related thing.

And all that time -- while I was stumbling up the stairs in absolute agony, and standing in the shower trying to figure out what had happened to my ear -- the cat was WHINING. She wanted me to put some water in the tub so she could drink it. I suddenly realized that she has NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in my state of mind.

I don't just mean that she doesn't comfort me when I'm upset -- I would never expect that from a cat -- but she doesn't even know when I'm ANGRY. She has no idea when I need to be left alone. Standing in the shower, listening to her whine with my one good ear, holding my blazing and limp arm with my one good hand, I realized that my cat doesn't have any interest at all in my behaviour, except when I'm making her happy in some way.

So I became furious, and when I opened the bathroom door and she came bouncing in out of some futile desire to drink out of the tub, I sprayed her with the shower hose. Pain can really distort your character.

Of course I felt terrible afterward, and if she gets sick I will never forgive myself. After tracking her down to her hiding place I toweled her off and tried to make her feel better. But even now -- when my pain and frustration has dulled to a pulsing throb -- I can't shake the sudden realization: my cat does not have the LEAST CONCEPTION of how I behave, let alone how I feel.

What got me through my blue funk was a good dose of another kind of funk: the "Midnight Special 1974" DVD. Besides a few stinkers -- David Essex, Golden Earring, Neil Sedaka -- the DVD was full of goodness, but...wow, how did I EVER forget Maria Muldaur's "Midnight at the Oasis?"



I LOVE this wonderful song! I don't think I've heard it since...well, 1974, possibly. "Send your camel to bed," I mean, jeez.

But the best performance BY FAR was by B. B. King and Gladys Knight, in what appears to be a bit of an improvisation for her:



She is SO beautiful and genuine. Those eyelashes! I think it's time I gave her music a closer listen. If I ever get my left ear back.

The Curse of the Recurring Canine

I live in a duplex, and over the past few years I have had three sets of neighbours: the girls who exercised, the family of wrestlers, and the smooth-playing horn-man.

These neighbours have NOTHING in common except for one bizarre trait: they all decide to adopt dogs halfway through their tenancy.

Why? I don't know. If I were to use my neighbours as a representative sample I'd have to assume that everybody in the world owns a dog.

The Skinny on the Skinny Cat

Thanks to everybody for your advice and encouragement regarding Zsa Zsa's troubles. After many trips to the vet -- including one enforced "cat daycare" in order to get a fresh urine sample -- the diagnosis is...

...inconclusive. Instead of knowing what she's suffering from, we at least have a better idea of what she ISN'T suffering from.

She doesn't have worms, for instance, which is particularly weird considering what I pulled out of her butt last week. It must have been a piece of string...or maybe a bit of undigested mouse.

She also doesn't have diabetes, and nothing is wrong with her thyroid. That's the good news.

The bad news is that her urine shows signs of approaching kidney problems...or maybe liver problems, they're not sure which. Fortunately these problems can be managed through proper diet, so we're now doing the three-day "New Cat Food Taste Test," which is kind of fun and which she absolutely LOVES.

I am instructed to keep watching her for further deterioration, and to buy a bathroom scale so I can monitor her weight. I had previously refused to get a scale because I suspect it would lead to compulsive weighing of MYSELF, but there are certain sacrifices one must make for one's unfailing companion.

As for Zsa Zsa herself, she's back to her normal behaviour, though alarmingly thin. She's just as social, active, curious, and thirsty as she always was. Her "bad spell" during the weekend may have been due to a number of things -- like the terrible heat and the worm medication I gave her -- but she SEEMED to get bad whenever I fed her Purina soft food, which I kept doing in order to comfort her. She may have developed an intolerance for something in that food. Very, very strange.

Anyway, Zsa Zsa no longer appears to be on death's door and is instead scratching back at mine. Thank goodness!

The ZsaZsaBlog III

After I wrote this morning's blog post, Zsa Zsa got even worse. It seemed to happen after I fed her; she nibbled at her food a bit, then climbed under the couch and twitched and rocked and purred. It seemed like she could barely walk. I immediately started canvassing friends for rides to the emergency vet clinic.

By the time Jenn W. arrived, Zsa Zsa was considerably better and had shown a real desire to go outside, where she chowed down on grass. We took her to the vet -- who turned out to be the same lady who'd squeezed the gunk out of her head last year -- and after examining Zsa Zsa and checking her reflexes she suggested three possible diagnoses: kidney failure, liver failure, or diabetes. Whatever it is, it has caused her to lose muscle tone -- she's skinny as a bone but her stomach is round -- and is putting her strangely off-balance. I'm to get her to my regular vet as soon as possible -- like NOW, because she's having a real crisis -- and have her blood and fluids checked.

Throughout the day Zsa Zsa has mostly been sitting in two "distress areas," either under my couch or beside my drag suitcase. She sits in an extremely odd way; this morning she was only squatting, but now she plops her butt down in an abrupt way that frightens me. I managed to coax her out onto the balcony, where she conked out for an hour or so. In the afternoon I finally got a few more hours of sleep and in the meantime she peed on the basement floor again.

Tonight she roused herself and started meowing at the front door, so I took her outside prepared for the usual "sit and watch the cat" routine...but instead she wanted to EXPLORE. She has NEVER wanted to explore before. We walked all the way down to the end of the block -- FAR beyond the front yard where she's spent most of her life -- and only came home because I finally picked her up and carried her back. You know how fun it is to walk a cat? But it wasn't like I was going to refuse her, and she seemed more lively than she's been all week.

I imagine that SOME of her strange behaviour is due to my increased surveillance and solicitude...maybe her urge to explore was prompted in a change in ME. But I think she's become sort of dozy at the same time, and therefore more liable to do things she wouldn't otherwise consider.

Hopefully I can get her to the vet tomorrow for a full checkup. What an incredibly crappy day. Endless thanks to Jenn, who responded instantly to my plea for help!