Bendable Chocolate

I have about enough time for a weather whine before the house gets too hot to do anything but lie on the couch and groan.  Even with my newly bulging biceps–the result of a solid week-and-a-half of shoveling dirt, compost, and gravel to complete the drainage system for our yard–it is too much effort to hold up a book.  104 degrees in this non-air-conditioned part of the northwest is as shocking as much hotter weather elsewhere.  So far we have been to the movies three nights in a row. Dumb movies. True, if I lie on the couch the cat will come lie on my stomach, but since the ambient indoor temperature is already higher than feline body temperature I haven’t been bothering to push him off when he does this. He gets down on his own after about 15 minutes anyway, and stretches out on the floor flat as road-kill. Heat triumphs over bottomless need!

Okay, it’s too hot to type already, but at least I’m distracted.

The kitty is acclimated to our house. He didn’t die–he almost died, but he didn’t. At the end of his week spent squeezed into a hidey-hole in the basement, he emerged very ill on the Friday afternoon before Independence Day. I’d noticed he was congested the night before, but now he was rasping, sneezing, and burning with fever. I took him to the veterinary hospital. The vet confirmed a dangerous fever–possibly brain damaging if got any higher–and took x-rays to look for pneumonia. With such a sick cat they’d usually have wanted to keep him there, but since it was the start of a holiday weekend they’d have had to leave him without supervision over the 4th, and they didn’t want to do that. Instead they gave him antibiotics, a fever reducer, a water injection for dehydration, and sent him home.

According to the vet this happens all the time with shelter cats. Something like one in four locally! I had wondered why the shelter gave out a flyer on Feline Upper Respiratory Infection with the adoption packet. It seems the disease is almost impossible to get rid of once it infests a shelter, and a very large number of animals get sick. Naturally the shelters don’t play this up to potential cat adopters. It makes me wonder what they do with the ones that start showing symptoms IN the shelter. Cats sneezing gobs (pardon my bluntness) of green snot are not good PR. I suspect they put them down immediately. Rule of thumb: don’t abandon your pet to a shelter thinking it’ll get adopted because it’s so cute. Cuteness doesn’t cut it. It’s chances are even worse than you think. It makes me glad we got our cat when it had only been in the shelter a couple of days before it had a chance to get sick and get euthanized.

After that we nursed him for a week, poor critter. In order to keep him on hand for dosing we had to block off his access to the basement with boxes, which turned out to be a good thing. His trauma was the kind that required firmness. He didn’t really want to be in the hidey-hole; it was more of a compulsion. What he really wanted was for us to spend all our time coaxing him out, reassuring him of our devotion. During the hidey-hole week we had a strange ritual: every evening at about six he would start meowing faintly from his hole; we would answer back to him down the stairwell, he would meow, and after about 15 minutes of this–during which we advanced down the stairs and into the hidey-hole room–he would finally worm his way out of the 3″ crevice behind the seats taken from our minivan and lavish us with desperate affection. Then he would follow us upstairs. I’m pretty sure he would have liked to perform this ritual all day long, not just in the evenings, because occasionally I would catch a meow or two just on the edge of my hearing when I was working in the kitchen. There were probably a lot of other times I didn’t hear him. I would always answer encouragingly, but I couldn’t devote the requisite 15 minutes to begging outside his hidey-hole. The adjustment process went much better when the basement was off limits, and he was able to follow us around the house during the day. Exploring by himself at night had just been too overwhelming.

Dot was so right that he is a people cat. I am beginning to think that we made a mistake getting just one cat, because the two of us are not enough to relieve his ennui. Even the out-of-doors hasn’t helped. He is so easygoing that I think he would do well with another animal. He is not so much possessive of us as he is our groupie–our bored groupie, because as cat entertainment goes we are hardly rock-stars. He follows us around starting conversations that go something like this:
“Hello. Hello. Sit still. Sit down.”
“Mm hm. You’re a pretty cat.”
“Hello. Hello. I’m coming up. I’m coming up as soon as you sit down, you know. So you should sit down.”
“Yes, you’re beautiful.”
“Hello.”
“Mm.”
“Hello.”
“Mm.”
“That’s right. Now devote all your energy to my happiness. Though I have no idea what I want.”
“Yes, you’re sweet. You’re lovely. Such a soft kitty.”
“Not like that! One stroke on the head is just an insult!”
“Mm hm.”
“Sit down. Sit down. Make a lap now.”

We named him Howl. For this novel by one of our favorite authors:

Not for this movie by one of our favorite directors, which really has nothing to do with the book:

Our cat has a lot in common with the Wizard Howl in the book (or Howell, as he is known in his home dimension of modern Wales), being young, vain, lazy, prone to loud complaints and elaborate baths.

One other wizardly thing about Howl is that he changes size. You remember I called him huge? Well, sometimes he is and sometimes he isn’t. He was close to thirteen pounds when we got him (if they weighed him right), and seemed bigger. He has lost a lot of weight since then, but he is absurdly long-bodied. When he sits down he looks normal. When he stands up on his hind legs or stretches out on the floor he looks like a boa constrictor or a sinuous dragon. He could honestly tie himself in knots. I’ve noticed he’s also a bit clumsy with his back legs which, after watching him closely, I credit to the fact that they are so far away he tends to forget what they’re up to! I’ve never seen a cat like this; everything else is normally proportioned, there’s just extra length in the middle. Before we settled on Howl, Serpent or Wurm or Slinky were the obvious choices, but those seemed a little undignified.

 

Dignity is my middle name

More Boring Cat Stuff, But Interesting To Us

It’s like having a Christmas tree with a particular (you hope) longed-for present underneath, and you are lying in bed at 4AM on Christmas morning unable to sleep.

That is: having an enormous grey-brown tabby crouching in misery under the wardrobe while it gets used to your house.

Sorry for another animal post. I like to keep on with with a thing once I’ve started it. As I said, the pregnant kitten has moved on to greener pastures, literally or figuratively. I have been spending every waking moment doing chores connected with the dirt around our house. In the midst of my zombie-like adrenaline push, I found myself looking at the cat profiles on craigslist and the local shelters. Der Mann was just as bad; he got me to the Petsmart for visiting hours with some shelter cats. You know, for fun–we thought. As Pooh says, it was terrible and sad. We are too empathetic with animals in cages.

So we got serious about craigslist kitties. By day I was putting in full days of standing in the sun with our new excavator, hauling around concrete post footings, filling bags with unearthed drainage rock, uncovering the sewer line with a shovel. By night I was all about search terms. “Big cat -lost” “brothers cats” “large cat” “litter mates.”

On craigslist I found a grey mother-daughter pair. The people who own them live an hour away. After a couple of odd reschedulings (one time they called and asked if we could let them keep the cats another two weeks “because the kitten was just at that really fun stage,” then called back and allowed that we could take them immediately if we wanted), we went to see them.

It was an old country neighborhood, the kind with 60’s ranch houses and pet goats and little vineyards on 1 and 2 acre lots. The family gave off an air of ruddy Elizabethan prosperity. The mama cat was only a year and a half old, this kitten was the whole of her third litter. “We meant to get her spayed, but kittens are just so much fun,” the father explained, jolly and unapologetic. He showed us his backyard chicken coop. It slowly became clear that they were disposing of their kitten factory because she had exiled their older male cats from the house. She was a tiny, reserved cat, totally wrapped up in her kitten. But we like reserved cats, and what can be better than a kitten? We couldn’t figure out why we weren’t more excited about them.

I believe the problem was that it was hard to visualize them being our cats because they were so clearly someone else’s. It felt like trespassing to offer a home to cats who so clearly HAD one they liked very well, thank you. More like cat theft than adoption. Certainly from the cats’ perspective.

Before we said yes or no to the grey ones, we thought we ought to look at the shelter cats. When Der Mann got off work last night, we went to the small local one.   The cats were in an even smaller cement block room with cages three high. We were allowed to open the cages and take the cats out as we pleased, but it was impossible to focus (much less compare and choose!) in that atmosphere, and we didn’t like to add to the creatures’ misery by invading their space. I was attracted to a year old male they were calling Kajiji, for his large head and stillness. The shelter volunteer said he was new, opened his cage, and gave him some head rubbing, which the cat warily accepted without leaving his corner. He took a sniff of our hands, stood up, looked us over, allowed us to pet his head purely out of politeness. Then he was done with us and with the stress of having his cage open, and said so by going back to his corner and lying down.

We hurried off to the big, new fancy shelter across the river. It has “play rooms” where attendants will bring you the cats, some of which are displayed in big shop-window cases with perches and stage-set suggestions of furniture. To our surprise, it was hard to find any cats that attracted us there.

But we managed to pick out two. The play rooms are claustrophobic triangular booths with cold floors and a bench. Either they are a very bad idea, or we have an eye for neurotic cats. The first cat ignored us and spent the entire time trying to get out of the room, scrabbling up the walls. The second cat peed all over the attendant as soon as she was brought in, then proceeded to jump five feet straight up in the air, over and over, trying to get a hold of the blind-cord and presumably out the window. I have never seen such terror.

Scratching a mutual itch, we shot back to the smaller shelter for a last look at Kajiji, even though it was too close to closing time to adopt him. Der Mann has an obligation that requires the car this weekend, so we asked if they would hold him until Monday. They said they couldn’t. I tried to think of a way to get back without a car (no bus runs on the weekend), and I think that made them take pity on us. “Just fill out an application and we’ll see how it goes from there.”

So, the nice shelter employee squeezed us in before quitting time on a Friday night. The huffy one gave us dirty looks and pointedly started turning off lights and drawing blinds as we waited for our cat to be brought out.

Here’s the funny thing. The cat seems to be more scared of our house than he is of us. We set him up in the guest room/office and left him alone to come out in his own time like the books say. At the end of the evening he started crying for us. We went in and sat down, he marked us with crazy head rubbings, purred, collapsed, and was petted–all while staying extremely wary. This went on until Der Mann (I warned him!) committed the venal sins of Standing Up and Transporting Wicker Objects. The cat hissed and was back under the wardrobe until we went to bed. Then more crying. He even worked up his nerve to come into our bedroom and jump up on the bed, which because of Der Mann’s allergies is going to have to be off limits. Plus, it was kind of scary to have a huge cat we don’t know twining around our bed in the dark; we don’t have a headboard at the moment, and our bed is pushed into an alcove under the slope of the roof. There are a few feet of dead space between the knee-wall and our heads there, and the cat seemed to want to occupy that area, crying, and standing up on his hind legs to with his nose at a level with our faces. Extremely unnerving. In the end I got him to follow me out of the bedroom. I petted him a little more in the hall, went back in the bedroom, shut the door, and went to bed–too exhausted for any more cat therapy. I could still hear him crying on and off through the night.

I wonder what his old family was like. They say he was left behind after a move, and is used to children and other animals. He was only at the shelter for two days. Maybe he is looking for the rest of the people and pets who should be here.

By this morning he had disappeared. He is probably under the basement stairs behind a stack of boxes. I am letting him alone, so no picture.  Do you think that is an okay strategy?  Should I try to draw him out?

We think his name may be Owen (or Ulf, or Knut), though we are not sure, not knowing his character. If things go badly we can name him Owen Mistake.

Any name ideas? How did you name your pets?

The Blur of a Rushing Fool

It’s official as of last night.  We are the proud owners of a pregnant cat.  I keep wanting say, “Pregnant-but-it’s-not-our-fault!”

Since we realized she was pregnant, Der Mann and I had been hashing out the issue of cat ownership in constant, exhausting little conversations that went nowhere.  The decision was wearing us out even more than a strong-willed cat could have done, and I suspected part of not being able to decide was not wanting the finality of saying no.

We tend to be excessively responsible when it comes to animals.  That’s why we are so careful about acquiring them.  Finding out the cat is pregnant makes everything so much harder and yet we both had the response: “Well, now she needs a good place to have her kittens. And at least we would get them all neutered and farm them out sensibly, unlike some people.”  Suddenly we are running a home for unwed teenage mother cats.

In fact, it all seemed like such a bizarre project and such horrible timing, I guess we couldn’t resist making our insanity complete with a basket of kittens–like the banana-covered turban on the exotic dancer.  Our yard looks like No Man’s Land.   In about a month, my dad and sundry family members will come tear the basement apart.  They will need the basement workroom with the outside access door.  They will be sleeping in all the rooms and clomping around with heavy shoes.

Nonetheless, we are going to steer the cat toward having her kittens in the workroom.  She’s already appropriated a basket.  We’re going to install a cat door and start feeding her and making much over her down there.  I’m hoping the kittens will be old enough to move by the time my family comes to start the demolition.

Most cats I have known hate upheaval more than anything and would have disappeared for the full duration of the mess.  This one was gone during the day, but in the evenings she would come right back and settle on her canvas chair, unworried by the changed landscape and the rotten boards, rusty deck nails, and rescued plants cluttering up the porch.  Last night I was walking around the piles of dirt to show Der Mann all the places the excavator ignored the markers his boss set out.  (Der Mann is going to stay home from work this morning to have a word with the boss.  The digging his crew does today it is our last chance to save ourselves days of  backbreaking labor with a shovel to clean up the places they went wrong.)  I was not in a happy mood.  Suddenly the cat trotted up to me as if to say.  ”Well, here I am.”  Expecting me to be pleased.  And I sort of was.  We let her in the house and went over to tell our neighbor that we’d take her.

Note to Self

Note to self:

Next time a misbehaving half-grown cat tries to adopt you, get her spayed immediately, even though you’re not sure you want her and she is far to young to have kittens.  She may turn out to be one of those, “but in some cases as young as 4 months” cats you’d never heard about.

I’m Traumatized

Reading is not enough to keep my mind off the destruction outside. They started it yesterday.

One thing I noticed as I was taking the “before” pictures is that it is almost impossible to capture topography with a camera. The flattening effect of photography. I think painting and drawing do a lot better.

Anyway, they are digging great honking mountains of dirt out of our yard with Big Machines. Pretty much no area of our lot will be untouched.  They are going to dig deeper than what you see now, too. My front yard will be a pit when they’re done. I’m thinking a drawbridge and a crocodile moat would be about right.

A long series of events led to this. At first we thought the “slight negative grading” around the foundation that the inspector mentioned could be corrected with shovels and wheelbarrows and our own muscle. Then we discovered what a mess the soil was. Beyond awful. The house is 96 years old, but most of the dirt is much newer. Generations of yahoos thought the answer to the fact that it was built on a slope was to haul in truckloads cheap fill and gravel and at various times, allowing them more places to park their cars. The fill caused water to flow toward the basement. In one place, right under a mis-laid pipe from the downspout, a non-draining cinder block retaining wall held it against the foundation like a dam.

We only discovered the extent of the water problem when we started taking down the raw, cheap tongue-and-groove that had been nailed to the basement ceiling and the 1/4 inch unfinished plywood that had been nailed to the sheet rock walls as wainscotting. We knew about the small moldy wall by the cinder-block dam, but we thought the rest of the basement was okay. They had done such horrible things to the rest of the house for no apparent reason–except possibly laziness–that we were willing to believe they had gone crazy with the rough wood in the basement both because they had no taste and found it easier to use a nail gun than to sand and paint the sheet rock. We called it The Man Cave and laughed, thinking it would be an easy fix–at least compared to the rest of the house.

But no. The basement had only been finished recently, and it turns out the former owners didn’t use any kind of a moisture barrier–the studs were in direct contact with the foundation and floor. Naturally, the walls were soon infested with mold. What to do? Cut the sheetrock away to a height of two feet off the floor in a laughable attempt at mold abatement, then cover the gaping holes holes in the sheet rock and moldy studs with plywood to fool prospective buyers.

Then didn’t we feel dumb! We were even looking for mold when we first came to look at the house.  I thought my bloodhound-nose for mold was infallible.  Because of the moldy farmhouse we lived in, and my resulting allergies and first-hand knowledge of the near impossibility of eradicating mold, it was our deal-breaker.  Only it didn’t.

My dad is going to help us re-frame the whole basement. Or rather, help Der Mann do it, because my allergy is really bad. Just the one patch we uncovered has made it hard for me to spend time there. I try to run up and downstairs with my loads of laundry before I start to cough.

We reasoned that it wouldn’t to do any good to re-frame the basement if ground- and roof-water was still being directed toward the foundation. That’s where the big machines come in.  I would have liked a cheaper and less intrusive fix, but once I started looking at the lay of the land, I could see it just wasn’t possible. In order to take away as much dirt as you need to take here, you have to take even more there. Which is basically what the experts said.

Also, we have to unbury the porch to keep it from rotting, which meant removing the cement walkway that led to the buried porch.

The only good part about this mess is that there was no remainder of the original landscaping to worry about, after the depredations of the former owners. I love old gardens. It would have been hard for me to make the decision to grade properly if it had involved tearing out antique snowball bushes, bridal wreath, lilacs, or the decendents of flowers and herbs planted back when the house was new. (Actually, I should correct myself. There is one old Rose of Sharon and one lilac. Luckily, they are in places where the machines can word around them (knock on wood).

I am learning that it is hard to communicate with equipment operators. I’m having the opposite problem from what I expected: it’s hard to get them to take away as much dirt as needs to go, as much as they agreed to (I thought.) I say 4 inches, they take 2. I’m afraid this is because we chose to pay a set price, rather than hourly plus dump fees–and they had already underbid the job in their eagerness to get work. The more dirt they take away, the less profit. Politeness plus directness seems not to be effective. It’s like I’m talking to the air, if the air could get annoyed. Maybe they are so used to bullying and cajoling, that unless I bully and cajole, they think I’m not serious?

One, maybe two more days of this.

Prodigals

I made two discoveries soon after we moved. First, that I had lost my laundry stick and second, that I now had only five handwoven napkins where I used to have six. This bothered me. I could make a new laundry stick, but it wouldn’t be the one my granny gave me, twin to her own. I could make another handwoven napkin, but it wouldn’t be part of the set. I kept the napkins rolled up in the top kitchen drawer, so I was pretty sure one must have rolled out the back of the drawer and was sitting in the bottom of the cabinet with the sawdust and spider webs.

What really bothered me, though, was the thought of it staying with my former raw-vegan-musician-nudist landlord.

This individual was such a trial there was no question of going back to ask if we could fish the napkin out of the cabinet or the laundry stick out of the laundry room. The goal was never to see him again. At all. The only thing more upsetting than the thought of my napkin remaining in his toxic (though unwitting) clutches was the thought of having to wake him up in the middle of the day in his white rajneeshi pyjamas and hear how the universe was ordering itself for his convenience because of how wonderful he was–a deeply held truth he inserted into most conversations–except when the universe wasn’t doing it’s part, which made him scared and mad.

Der Mann and I bore up by joking about him. Der Mann more than me, because I was around him more and tended to find him more scary than funny. Scary and pitiable. With an emphasis on the scary. Because a) he was very big and tall, and b) he was one of those guys who always has a toothsome groupie-girlfriend, and oozes a preening sexuality, and c) I grew up around mental illness and therefore have a very low tolerance for crazy people.

It’s interesting. The same situation that gave me a very low tolerance for crazy people gave me a very high tolerance for eccentricity. I tend to take what people say at face value, then analyze. When you are a kid in the care of a crazy person you can’t just get away from the craziness, so you become an expert at sorting it. Not everything a crazy person says is crazy. You have to assess situations individually. For instance, when an adult tells you that if a stranger ever tries to drag you off, you should yell “You’re not mommy!” as loudly as you can, because if you just kick and scream people will think you’re throwing a fit with one of your parents–that is actually pretty good advice. But when that same adult tells you that no, you can’t have any gum this time because Bad People might have replaced all the white chicklets in the gum machine at Sears with Ex-Lax, followed by an explanation of what Ex-Lax is and what it does–that is not really something you need to worry about at the age of five. (And I did not worry, but I did spend several years marveling over all the Ex-Lax f@tishists who went through the world scattering digestive mayhem. Oh brave new world, that has such people in it!)

So, I often find myself nodding earnestly as people tell me completely crazy things–like my landlord telling me about the apocryphal Gospel of Andrew, which is where he got his nudism–while I weigh the merits of their ideas. When I have collected enough opinions and soaked up enough vibrations, my intuition processes it all. It says either something like, “Huh. This guy has arrived at some uncommon beliefs in a fashion consistent with his personality and values. I wonder if he first encountered the Gospel of Andrew when he was a Hotshot Evangelical Youth or a Fundamentalist Christian Dad, or when he chucked his family and started hanging out with the Humorously Out-of-Date New Agers. His dome tent sounds cool, although I wish he would stop referring to it as a yurt.” Or my intuition says: “Something is very wrong here. Internal inconsistencies. Grandiosity. Strong whiffs of narcissism. I still feel unsettled days after talking with him. Yep. It’s the old allergic reaction. Once a bedbug-crazy zealot, always a bedbug-crazy zealot.”

The irony is that I attract crazy people. Since I am noncommittal, polite, and take their ideas seriously, they are on me like flies on honey. (See my allergic reaction in my metaphor!) I know a clinical psychologist would be more inclined to see craziness as a continuum rather than a yes / no thing. They would also have a lot more interest in someone like my landlord. I can only plead that what I mean by crazy is someone who is not in treatment and who actively indulges their craziness to the detriment of others, and that I am aware the line I draw between crazy and not crazy is subjective.

If only my intuition worked faster! See, what happens is I am still smiling and nodding, collecting information, when someone else would have already said to themselves, “Oh my god. My new landlord has just told me that in the near future no one will wear clothes. And I have affably pointed out that I like clothes, handmade clothes can be an art form, and that I would like to make handwoven garments. In reply to which he has smugly informed me that come Nirvana-on-earth I can still weave blankets. This guy is so full of shit!“

Or more likely, someone else would have just skipped the whole hour-long conversation that led up to the blanket exchange, in favor of an immediate, “This guy is so full of shit!”

(The upside to my attractiveness to crazy people is that I also attract eccentrics–although they tend to be shyer than the crazies, and so not as many. This has studded my life with fascinating LONG conversations and a few very interesting friendships.)

To proceed.

Not long ago, Der Mann and I set out for our evening walk and discovered that our tiny town’s “First Friday” event was in progress, with an art-and-craft show set up in the community center. We wandered in. It was crowded and noisy and there was loud, re-verbed droning New Age music in the background. I figured we’d make a full circuit of the booths in a spirit of community support. Suddenly Der Mann stopped in his tracks and whispered, “I think that’s K___!”

“Where?” I said.

“The live music,” he said.

Like spies in a spy movie we had ducked behind a partition and were whispering. Der Mann ducked out, trying to get a sight line through the crowd without the man who was possibly K___ noticing him staring. The music swelled and droned in majestic digital excess. I said I was going back to wait in the other room where the naughty art was. I was really taken with the brash oils of sports cars and shiny gold human figures (a painting of a statue?) engaged in an act with a name which will not appear on this blog. They put that one at ceiling level. As if kids don’t look up.

Der Mann rejoined me after some reconnaissance. “I still couldn’t see, but it’s the hair. And the pyjamas.” We were both very giggly. We skittered outside feeling more like teenagers than we had in a while.

“And the car,” Der Mann added, pointing. At first I was willing to believe that someone else with a Volvo of that vintage and color was attending the art show, but it had the bumper stickers: Simplify. Begin Within.

We joked about our near miss all the way home. That awful music made me feel quite light about the whole messy business of extracting ourselves from the duplex. (I haven’t told you about the problem with the check he wrote us to refund our deposit.) Our former landlord is a skilled acoustic musician who could play anything he liked, and yet that is what he composes. That is what sounds good to him, and what he plays at paid gigs. Amazing. Those white pyjamas lost some of their sinister brilliance out in the fresh air, amid the pet-themed stained glass and homemade soap.

Further closure came with the napkin. A few days ago it fell out of Der Mann’s Homesar T-shirt. It had been in there since the last time it was washed, before we moved. I sang, I danced, I killed the fatted calf.

And when my granny told my grandpa I lost my laundry stick, he made me a new one.

First Time For Everything

So.  Not.

You’re Brave New World!

by Aldous Huxley

With an uncanny ability for predicting the future, you are a true psychic. You can see how the world will change and illuminate the fears of future generations. In the world to come, you see the influence of the media, genetic science, drugs, and class warfare. And while all this might make you happy, you claim the right to be unhappy. While pregnancy might seem painful, test tube babies scare you most. You are obsessed with the word “pneumatic”.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

 

At least I’ve read it.  Or rather listened to it.  Michael York did a recording that had me laughing every time he said “zippy cami-knicks.” 

Cally’s to blame.