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.

Cleon Throckmorton, a Very Odd Man

Aha, now that I've got my eye out for Cleon Throckmorton's bizarre advertisements, I'm finding more hidden gems. This one's from the June 7, 1930 issue of The New Yorker, tucked in the bottom-left corner of page 94.


Is this a joke? Was Throckmorton just incredibly strange, either with his finger on the pulse of underground '30s humour or so far in his own world that nothing made sense?

I don't know. I can only assume he's advertising to be hired as an interior decorator, a sideline to his scenic designer business. But at least we can be assured that he was a Really Serious Person.

It Is Doubly Difficult to Get Out

I am reading William T. Vollmann's second-latest enormous book -- "Imperial" -- and I came across this apt, wonderful, and terrible paragraph which addresses why the New River (in Mexico and California) remains so terribly polluted.

Maybe the New River wasn't anybody's fault, either. People need to defecate, and if they are poor, they cannot afford to process their sewage. People need to eat, and so they work in the maquiladoras--factories owned by foreign polluters. The polluters pollute to save money; then we buy their inexpensive and perhaps well-made tractor parts, fertilizers, pesticides. It is doubly difficult to get out. And it's all ghastly.

Sigh.

Total Grief

I am so sad. I feel like a permanent part of me is gone. I'm missing Zsa Zsa every second, especially when I come home. She was always around, and every square foot of floor and furniture is imprinted with her. When I moved here I put everything away with some consideration given to her needs, so everything I do and everywhere I look makes me think of her.

The worst thing is that the fridge has always made little noises that sounded like her "hello" meow. To come home today and go into the kitchen and hear that sound! Out back is the garden where she's buried, and the living room was where she'd lie on me and sleep while I watched TV, and the comfortable bedroom chair for reading is where she'd relax, with or without me being there.

I know this gradually gets better, and when it builds up and builds up I can finally bash out in a huge long cry that helps. I didn't have any time or energy for a big cry yesterday, but today -- with Muffet getting spayed at the vet's -- I'm back home alone in this house that I feel so much of Zsa Zsa in, it's like suffocating.

I've had my huge come-home crash-and-cry. I can see some good things. This is the worst feeling in the world. My heart goes out to everybody who has felt it, because I think everybody has, and if they haven't yet then they will.

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!

Bad Advice from General Electric

Goodbye, Zsa Zsa

I figured that when it came time to put Zsa Zsa down I'd want to write a huge memorial post. But I think this is too personal to talk about, at least for now. And sad death stories don't do anybody any good.

I do feel really, really awful. I dread all the times I'm going to think I see her out of the corner of my eye. I'm going to try to consider that a gift instead of a curse, though, because we actually had a fond last night and that's the thing to remember. And in terms of suffering I don't think she really suffered at all until the very end.

Bye, pretty cat.

1966 Emmanuel Bible College Yearbook

"You" said you wanted more pictures from the Emmanuel Bible College yearbooks...who am I to refuse! I just wish I had a working scanner, instead of a small Hewlett-Packard device that makes a terrible grinding noise and whispers "Need more ink cartridges" when I turn it on.

As I've said previously, yearbooks are fascinating and funny things in so many ways. The EBC yearbooks, however, have an additional interest for the secular reader because they're so totally focused on God, but without the "Christianity is COOL!" element that would no doubt be there if they were external, proselytizing documents.

Ready to see the bible students in their natural habitat, like rabbits in a glass-walled hutch? Without further ado, here are some choice moments from the 1966 edition of the EBC yearbook, "The Pilot."

First off, the prayer/bomb drill/corporal punishment picture that will soon be the subject of its own fetish.


Now that we've got that over with, a few words about the degrees. It seems like the ultimate goal at EBC was to be a "Bachelor of Theology," but I find it interesting that the only B.Th graduates were males, at least for the first several yearbooks that I have. The "Missionary Course" and "Christian Education" degrees, however, were granted to both sexes.

Here's the president of the college at the time, Reverend H. B. Wideman, on a day that I charitably assume was windy.


Some sleuthing has revealed that the other man is Reverend Kenneth Geiger, and the book he's presenting -- "The Word and the Doctrine" -- is a collection of papers from a conference about Wesleyanism. What's Wesleyanism? Damned if I can figure it out! That's why Wideman was the president of EBC and the Bachelor of Divinity, not me.

A few thoughts about the teachers that year: none of the women were pretty and most of the men were schlubs, except for Mr. Wilson T. Wiley (English & Guidance Instructor), who wore a small fedora and looked like he wrapped his secret gat in a copy of "Catcher in the Rye." You'll be comforted to know that the "Social Dean of Women" and the "Social Dean of Men" were a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Warner Spyker.

Here's some insight into student demographics:

The afternoons are times of service, study, and wage earning.

Many students work with Child Evangelism, teaching Bible Clubs for boys and girls. Other students find opportunities to witness while working at a part-time job. At Emmanuel, we have a barber, an auctioneer, carry-out boys, salesmen, office workers, nurses, teachers, farmers, waitresses, and construction labourers.

Here are some girls harassing an old lady to score Bible Points.

My favourite 1966 EBC students -- my votes for "king and queen of the prom," so to speak -- are paino-playing Fern Densmore and plump squirrel David Hills. The latter's graduation poem is a good example of the beloved artform of BAD YEARBOOK POETRY:

From working in a paint factory he came,
So that he might better uphold God's name
By studying the Word with hope that he
One day, in the service of the Lord may be.

What makes this a bad poem? The ungainly swapping of sentence fragments, sacrificing style (and clarity) to the altar of Thee Almighty Rhyme.

Here's another good poem, for Mervin ("Merv") Richardson, notable for its vague attempt at being personal:

A goal, a goal in hockey
(Even when the road is rocky)
Leading music at Lincoln Heights
Keeps him busy various nights.

I think the yearbook staff got that one in just before the deadline.

To wrap up the 1966 year, here's my favourite picture of them all. I'm not sure if it's supposed to mean what I think it means but I sure hope so!

Dr. Seuss and Flit: "Self Defense"

The usual assortment of Dr. Seuss insects form the "Self-Defense Association of American Household Insects," and their charibug has a brilliant plan.


Something tells me that this is a reference to a contemporary organization -- the name seems a bit too specific to be a total throw-away -- but I can't find any proof. Maybe I'm just hunting for connections where none exist...

Cleon Throckmorton, Scenic Designer and Reverse Psychologist

While reading the May 31, 1930 issue of The New Yorker I ran across this advertisement, tucked into the corner of page 46. It was so small that I had to zoom in to read it.


What kind of guy relies on such a self-defeating advertisement, which doesn't even mention what he's advertising FOR?

An eccentric fellow with a high degree of name recognition, that's who. In this case it's Cleon Throckmorton, architect, set designer, and bohemian painter of spunky dancing girls. If you really want an eyeful, check out Erica De Mane's photographs of some of his works at Ristorante Volare.

Meanwhile, over at Shorpy you can also find this amazing 1921 photograph of "Throck" at work (go there for a larger version), along with additional information from amateur sleuths in the comments. Apparently that's his wife puffing on a stogie while modeling.