A Short Story About a Kitten

Our long-standing cat, Franny left us suddenly one night in May while I was toiling away in the mental hospital. I got a rare call from Melissa at 3:00 am, and I didn’t even think about the time; when you work all night, the clock is just an ornament that tells you it’s time to go home.

Melissa had taken Fran to the all-night vet and the deed was done. We buried her in our tiny yard under a tree where, with any luck, her spirit will reign on this little corner of Rusty Hinge Road until long after someone digs holes for us.

It was sad. The house was empty. Now, full disclosure, Franny had been a handful for years. She required daily infusions of subcutaneous medications related to a kidney problem. She had never quite figured out the whole cat box procedure and toward the end, her stomach became unforgiving. Still, she was a sweet cat, a loving and predictable cat. And after she was gone it was spooky. We continued to watch our step, and now and then we’d think we’d seen her shadow coming around a corner or her dark shape tucked into the couch.

At first we thought, tentatively, that it would be nice to be free of the tether of a pet at the house. We could come and go as we please, free from worry and responsibility, and free from the heartbreak of losing a pet.

It was settled.

In a week or two Melissa arrived home with two kittens. One was names “Tilly,” a feisty tortoise-shell, reminiscent of out previous cat, and Tess, a little ball of fluff who looked like a cross between a raccoon and a possum. Once released from the cat carrier, they immediately hid behind the downstairs toilet in fear.

In a few days though, they began to understand where the food came from, Tilly and Tess provided hours of endless entertainment. Tilly took the lead, proving to be the more agile kitten, nimble on her tiny feet. It suddenly became clear that she was bullying her “sister,” who needed to see the vet soon after they moved in to have an infection, which made her a bit punk, treated.

Before long it was kitty entertainment central. We couldn’t wait to get home and watch the little rascals get into mischief. Tilly was the curious one. She’d come into the bathroom and stare through the shower glass while one of us was in there. She was the first to venture into the upstairs bedroom and make herself comfortable at night. Tess, was shy, often having to be coaxed out from under the couch. Eventually all four of us were comfortable with each other.

Now we were ready to have two cats, companions to each other during the long human-less days and to us at all other times.

In August we went to the lake for vacation, and packed Tilly and Tess off to our neighborhood vet. We hated to leave them behind, but back in the days of Franny we’d either have to take her or stay home, so part of our new, healthy cat scenario was we’d be able to board them as needed.

The lake was great. Cool evenings on the shoreline. Relaxing.

At some point, mid-week, we got word that Tilly was sick. The vet wasn’t sure what was going on but she was treating her and there was nothing to worry about. She felt that the little cat might have picked something up at the cat rescue place where she had stayed.

By the time we got home Tilly was in quarantine. She had bloated up. A virus caused fluids to empty into her abdominal cavity. A Google search on the condition proved so horrific it would make your hair fall out. The prognosis was grim. But the same internet also gave us scant hope and we sought all sorts of treatment. We got Russian antivirus medicine. We got cat interferon. We got contradictory advice.

Tilly was laid low, but did not to appear to be in pain. Her sweet face and spark glowed from the pillow we set up in the corner. Tess looked through the French doors, longing to wrestle with her sister. But stress would exacerbate Tilly’s condition so we kept them apart. Every couple of days the vet would sedate Tilly and drain the excess fluid from her tummy. Her weight hovered just under 4 lbs.

After four weeks, we couldn’t keep hoping. The poor little cat was trapped by her own body. She had stopped eating and was unable to make it into the cat box.

We buried Tilly under a paving stone in the back yard. Her little body carefully wrapped in an old sweater and fleece. When we walked back in to the house, all of our love turned to Tess, who, while we were so wrapped up with Tilly’s illness, had turned into a large, sleek cat who seems healthy, loves to eat and play, and knows where the cat box is and doesn’t mind using it.

Sweet Tilly was not meant to stay long. Perhaps she came into our lives because we needed to practice compassion. We love Tess and we know that another cat will find us if that is what is intended. In fact, we have an interview with two promising kittens tomorrow.

If I lie on my back will you rub my tummy?

Let us leave.

Summer's over.

Actually, as I write this, summer is going full blast, drying out what passes for my lawn and I awake from my sleep after dreaming all night that I am trapped in a whale's stomach.

Speaking of whale stomachs, I am on a diet. No, really.

My doctor, a surly type, with a specially built scale that registers 10 pounds over the one we keep under the vanity, has once again looked over the top of his reading glasses, my most recent lab reports in hand, and pronounced me "unhealthy."

The reality of it all is, no matter how you weighed me, on earth’s gravity, I was out of control.

My labs are all askew and the doctor has assured me, once again, that I can drastically improve both the numbers and my chances of seeing 60, if I lose 50 pounds.

As a medical professional, I cannot dispute him. And it just so happened that through his office, I recently enrolled in a wonderful, easy and painless program intended to help me slim down, become fit and live long enough to attend my own retirement party.

This wasn’t the first time I’d been told about the program. Until now, I did what every other self-respecting tub-o-lard does, I took the phone number, and then I put it off for as along as I could.

But this time, since I was completely out of excuses, I made the call and within a week I was getting large boxes of food sent to me by UPS.

The way this diet plan works is instead of eating bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches three meals a day, I actually have five mini-meals supplied by the diet company and a sixth meal consisting of a small slab of meat and a large handful of approved vegetables that I am required to prepare in my own kitchen. All six meals are eaten at three hour intervals along with copious amounts of water, all the time, all day.

The mini-meals consist of milkshake-like concoctions, granola-ish bars, watery soups and gummy oatmeal.

It's sort of like being an alcoholic, wherein you've done your damage with the booze and now it's time to give it up. Except, everyone needs to eat so it's not like I can take the pledge or anything.

What I have done, as I began to see the tips of my toes emerging from the edge of my gut as I looked at the floor, is decide that "real" food can wait. Until I started this thing, I would eat just about anything and everything I could maneuver close to my mouth (except lima beans): nothing was taboo. This is in spite of the fact that I have several underlying medical conditions that would be less scary if I could steer clear of sugar, fat and everything else delicious.

So, as I type this, I have shed close to 20 pounds. My clothes fit, as opposed to “sort of” fit. I get a bit more tired as I work all my night shifts, but I sleep like a rock when my head hits the pillow.

Like an alcoholic who needs to steer clear of bars, I have to watch my step and keep driving past the pizzerias. I now leave the bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches to those skinny skunks who can eat just about anything and still take off their shirts at the beach.

Here at the hospital, the great tech, Anthony, has just finished a philly cheese steak with all the seductive aromas and satisfied gustatorial grunts that properly accompany such a feast. I have just downed eight ounces of a strawberry Crème "milkshake” that contains essential minerals, vitamins and fiber.

This diet has sharpened my senses and now I am much more acutely tuned in to the world around me. Even the food we feed our wonderful new kittens makes me slobber in Pavlovian ecstasy. A trip to the grocery store is like an adventure into the Forbidden City and if they are giving out samples? I need to be put into restraints and removed on a stretcher.

I am sure, if I stick to it, all my pain and suffering will be well worth it. I'll get to see how my feet are doing. I can buy new clothes! And one day, if I am good, and I mind my P’s and Q’s, I just might eat a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich again one day.

On whole wheat bread?

Why do we remove the corn husks at the store now? What do modern children do while waiting for barbecues?

In the Red

Regular readers might remember a story I wrote a few years back about my old, faithful 1977 Ford F-100 pickup truck that I reluctantly sold to my across-the-street neighbor in a panic, after holding on to it for almost 25 years.

Hardly a morning breaks where I do not catch the rusting, silver and red heap out of the corner of my eye as I survey the day from the porch of my house.

Those with keen memories may recall that I paid $4778.25 cents for the vehicle back when Elvis was wheezing his last few breaths. Now the truck spends a great deal of idle curbside repose as my neighbor, Skootch Johanson, keeps the rust at bay and adds his own little style flourishes to my old ride.

Since that transaction I have gone through an awful lot of vehicles, including only one actual brand-new car and a lot of used ones over the intervening years.

I have been thinking about buying a new vehicle for a few years now. Almost every day I have seen one I briefly consider: minis, maxis, hybrids, Japanese, Korean, German.

The whole situation boiled over my back burner last summer when, while on a family vacation, I rented a Ford Flex.

You have probably seen these on the road yourself: great window-covered shoe boxes with odd corrugated details. I liked the whole idea. It was a strange new ride, minimally advertised and seldom observed. I thought about it for a long time until one day when I should have been doing something else, I dropped in on the local Ford dealer. In the showroom I met a very young salesman in a sensible sport coat and tie. I described my interest in the Flex and we looked at a couple of samples. I was completely smitten. I thought and thought about it but couldn't quite pull the trigger. A new Flex costs ten times as much as the 1977 pick up of my undying nostalgia.

The young salesman poked around in his files for a used model that might better fit my budget but it was always the wrong color or not properly equipped.

At the end of each visit, I’d hear myself say:
"You will find it Steve, " – his name is Steve – "I trust you will, and in the mean time I'll come down and see you from time to time. Call me if you find what I want."

Meanwhile, deep in my subconscious, an idea was slowly forming. The Flex obsession didn't exactly lift, rather it sort of percolated on a back burner in my mind. Now and then I'd find myself driving by the dealership and I'd glance over the lots to see if there were any new Flexes in stock.

Occasionally, when I was supposed to be doing something else of pressing importance, I'd find myself in Steve's office shooting the breeze. We had nothing in common except my money, he wanted it and I couldn't think of a good reason to leave it in the bank.

The pages of the calendar peeled away and next thing I knew it was Summer, and the lure of the outdoors is upon me. The rooftops and side yards in our neck-of-the-woods are bubbling with the rhythmic noise of home improvement. Bang bang. Whir whir: usually while I am trying to catch up on sleep. We have had our annual argument/discussion/fantasy about renovating the garage and how it is full of just about anything except one of the four –count `em four – cars we park on the street for passing motorists to whack with shocking frequency.

“I am going to clean it out this summer, I swear!” I swore, simultaneously celebrating the tenth annual broken vow to clean the garage pageant. I also vowed, to myself this time, that I was really going to do it. I was going to put on a blindfold and empty every last crumb of crap out of the swayback structure and into the nearest landfill. So there.

How was I going to do that? I needed to buy a truck. That’s the idea! Stop the presses! Call Steve!

Nothing had ever appeared so clear to me. Within 24 hours I was sitting at Steve’s desk, signing a sheaf of papers and some guy with his name on his shirt was driving a brand new red pick-up truck up from New Jersey.

I picked her up by Thursday with a weekend off in front of me, a plastic bed liner behind me, I cruised the city, six-months of free Satellite radio filling the cab and the air-conditioner keeping things chilled.

I went to the dump a couple of times and bought some shingles for the carpenter to replace the rotten ones. I was pretty much glowing all over the place.

This may come as a surprise but, I will not share the price I paid for this truck. I realize if I keep this new one as long as I kept the old one, I’ll be close to 80 years-old and whatever they are selling then will have sticker price rivaling the price I paid for the freshly painted rickety house on rusty Hinge Road.

You know the house I mean, the one with the shiny, red truck out front.

Vroom! Vroom, suckers!

Fiddling on My Roof

(Dedicated to the memory of Franny the cat)

I am sitting here on my special bunker. There are the sounds of booms and bangs as the entire building shakes. Light streams into newly formed cracks in the walls and ancient dust and crumbs fall from above and onto the horizontal surfaces in my extra special hidey hole while a cat nervously purrs at my feet.

It is not Paris or Berlin, it is Rusty Hinge Road and I am having a new roof installed.

It all started a couple of years back when we were having a little work done on the house. Part of the work included a new skylight in the bathroom which included a new install on a tiny little roof. The carpenter, who I shall not be recommending upon request, boasted to me that “his skylights never leak,” which I believed, and also served as an omen for future leak problems and a disappearing contractor.
An associate of the same fellow, who I would recommend, in spite of never returning phone calls, , arrived in contractor #1’s stead and applied some goop around the skylight, the good news is he fixed the leak, the bad news is he noted other parts of my roof in mushy peril. Actually the skylight still leaks.

Thus began our search for a roofing contractor.

History and horror stories often indicate that roofing contractors are notoriously slimy. Even folks in the contracting business whom I trusted, wouldn’t offer me any names. So I resorted to the internet, finding a popularly advertised website that rates various local contractors. On it, after paying a fee, I located a company I’ll call “Choice Home Improvements.”

Their representative, Dino, answered the phone himself, made an inconvenient-to-him appointment, braved rush hour interstate traffic and arrived at our door at the agreed-upon time bearing samples and oversized ponce wheels, wearing a windbreaker emblazed with the embroidered company logo.

Dino’s jovial manner along with a scrap-book of awards and accreditations combined with photos of some of Choice’s choicer projects gave us a very warm and fuzzy glow of confidence. His estimate seemed fair. We liked him. The cat liked him.
We watched him as he loaded his samples into his truck. I was ready to write him a check right there, but cooler heads prevailed and we agreed to entertain other bids. So I called around. I asked friends and associates. I contacted trusted tradesmen. I collected a few bids, but none of them gave me the same comfortable confidence that Dino left at our kitchen table. He was firm about his timing, even promising to go over the periphery of the property with a magnet to pick up all the nails. His bid was the best.

So we made the deal and as I type this, a century of dormant house crumbs are bouncing off my keyboard.
He swore up and down that he’d be done in two days and that he’d be there on Tuesday. It rained, of course, so the crew arrived on Saturday – after a couple of perfect days. Meanwhile, I’d used up vacation days that I could have saved up for – well - vacation.

The Choice van emptied out like a clown car and soon the old creaky homestead was swaying under the weight of the handful of brawny roofers, prying and ripping. Soon, two layers of shingles were sliding down big blue sheets of plastic and making the yard look like the ninth ward.

Dino was confident that the whole project would be done in one day, and they were careful not to disturb the nest of robins who’d not asked first before setting up shop in the crosshatch of wires tethered to the corner of the west wing.

As night fell, the roof was not done, but I was assured that it was weather tight.

The forecast was iffy but I was promised an eight o’clock wakeup call Sunday morning.
A mercifully light rain had mocked us by moon light, and I anticipated a much more angry column by sunrise, but the clouds parted with dawn and the clown car arrived curbside. For once we beat the neighbors to the punch, firing up the gasoline powered compressor. Straight from the hymnal of the church of the Rusty Hinge.

By night fall the curbside dumpster was creaking under the weight of a century of roofing history. If you squinted, you couldn’t otherwise tell that there had been confusion, dismay and debris at our little corner of heaven. In their haste to get going, the crew left their magnetic nail picker-upper . So with the cat venturing out of the house after a weekend of being nervously confined to my office chair, I went over the battlefield with the left behind tool. I picked up hundreds of nails.
There is no DNA testing for steel, but by the looks of some of them, I sense that some may have been dropped at the turn of the last century.

The roof looks pretty good, at least from my view of the bunker, where I sit typing as I listen to what sounds like the gnawing of oversized rodents on the wall outside my window. The painters, working mostly in the afternoon, are preparing my house for a new coat of paint and me for a column for next month.

Alas, the sweet cat has departed this life for good, rest well my dear little friend.

Espirit d’accord

The Homemoaner’s holiday.

Bon jour! Recently, Melissa and I were lucky enough to connect ourselves to a to a tour group bound for Paris, France! As a public service to our readers, and with possible positive tax implications, I am using this column to dispel some myths and suggest some truths about Paris and Parisian culture.

MYTH #1: French Food is rich and delicious.

We love shopping, but since the dollar has no value at the moment, we chose to blow our budget on food. After all, we do, as our groaning bathroom scale will testify, like to eat, so where better to disregard our diets than in the countless bistros and restaurants of Paris?

An average block on a Paris street, Rue du Chapeau Hamborg for example, goes something like this: on the corner, a sidewalk café, next a patisserie (bakery) followed by a pied-à-terre and then an eyeglasses store. The next shop is usually an ethnic restaurant: Japanese, Senegalese, Thai , Moroccan, followed by a shop specializing in a product that is unclear and, unless you know the language (and we don’t), mysterious. Finally, back at the corner, another sidewalk café. Now and then, there is something called a “Tabac,” which is a place you go, not only to buy horrible French cigarettes, but virtually everything else necessary to survive in Paris: subway tickets, phone cards, tiny little cups of espresso, etc.

This layout means that you have a minimum of three dining opportunities on each block of the city. In order to complicate things, each dining establishment displays the bill of fare on a chalkboard propped up on the sidewalk. On the one hand, this makes it easy to scope out the individual restaurants, but on the other, not understanding the language, we often had to make our selections based on penmanship.

The results were often surprisingly disappointing. We had about twelve meals in restaurants and probably only three of them were even vaguely mind-altering. Yes the sauces were rich, the vegetables properly cooked, but the results often left us underwhelmed and on one occasion, exiled to the hotel room for a full day suffering from “Napoleon’s Revenge.”

MYTH # 2. All Parisian Women are Beautiful.

This is true. So are the men and the pets. The denizens of Paris all dress fabulously, never a hair out of place. We were there in still chilly March, and every living organism within the city limits, including houseplants, wore a scarf. Since I did not bring a scarf of my own, I tried to find a shop where a Parisian might purchase one. When in Rome, right? I could not, for any price, find a decent scarf. There were plenty of scarves for sale on the street, but most of them were manufactured, off shore, for the tourist trade. I never once saw a Parisian wearing a scarf that said “J’taime Paris.” Not once. Also: there are no fat people in Paris. I tried to find one but the only one I could find was in the mirror.

MYTH #3. The French Make Bad Cars

Here’s the thing. The French took a bad political hit a few years back. It got so we started renaming things like French Toast, “Freedom Toast,” (The French call it Toast.) I think we might learn a lot from the French when it comes to national pride. The French try not to buy non-French goods. This is nowhere more prevalent than on the streets of Paris. Peugeot. Renault. Citroën. These are brands that prevail on French bumpers. While they have Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans – even Fords – the French buy French and they also buy small. Gas is really expensive. There seemed to be endless models of tiny little cars that have no trouble dodging around confused tourists in crosswalks. Easily 85 percent of the cars in Paris are French made.

Even the subways, which are efficient, safe and run on rubber wheels, are of French design. Are they badly engineered? I can’t say, but maybe we could learn something. I’m just saying.

Final MYTH: The Parisians are Rude

I was ready for this, but a seasoned tourist told me to remember to say hello to everyone I meet. In the shop: Bon Jour! In the street: Bon Jour! Bump into someone: Pardon! Someone does something for you: Merci!

Storekeepers love money. Anyone’s money, but when the little bell rings over the door, the first thing they say is, Bon Jour. Not “may I help you?” If the first thing out of your mouth is “How much is this?,” you have broken a cultural expectation. It is so easy to be polite. I believe Parisians have gotten this rude reputation based on their reaction to rude tourists.

More than once we were helped by passing strangers who spoke far better English than our paltry French. As long as we said “Bon jour,” up front, and “Merci,” on the way out, all of the Parisians we met were helpful, friendly, scarf-wearing people.

Non, c’est le tourist, with their backward baseball caps and t-shirts that read “I’m With Stupid.” With their flip flops flapping, their cameras flashing and their voices raised on the principle that, louder is easier to understand, it is they who are rude. And it’s embarrassing. There I said it.

Like our trip to Paris, I have run out of time. Merci.

Combien d'argent? WOW!

Never Mind.

All this stuff about Tiger Woods - does any body, except his wife, kids, etc., care?
Infidelity, addiction, stupidity happens all the time. I am not condoning it, in fact I make a living off of the victims and perpetrators of all these things.

When a politician gets caught with his pants down, it is only important if it is a politician who has run his/her campaign on the moral highroad. All these gay-bashing latent homosexual a-holes should be held in complete contempt for their hypocrisy. Lawmakers who swoon with indignity when an opponent amasses additional, covert dry-cleaning expenses outside the matrimonial boudoirs, only to later admit to their own peccadilloes, should be skewered and roasted with sprigs of fresh rosemary and fed to brawling, inner-city pit bulls.

I am inclined to feel that a person's private life should be private even if their life is public. UNLESS their behavior is counter to their ability to do their job. OK?

I am not condoning this behavior I am just saying it is none of OUR business.

Now, as far as Tiger Woods is concerned this is how I feel: they could remove all golf courses, golf balls, golf channels, magazines, hats, shoes - whatever - It could all be gone tomorrow and the world would not be effected one iota. Even half an iota.

So, who cares?

In fact I just burned up way more caloreis writing this than neccesary.

Barberism

Prior to February 9, 1964, every American male got his haircut once a week. That was the day the Beatles made their American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. The lads from Liverpool with their long locks and lurid lyrics, plowed furrows through popular culture to the extent that, within a couple of years, even Richard Nixon had John Lennon sideburns. The era of the local barber shop had come to a close.

Until that day, there was at least one barber shop on every Main Street in every town. On the main street of my town I recall three barber shops with a minimum of three chairs and three barbers. There was always a wait for a chair and always a pile of ratty old magazines to read while waiting.

The barber called you over and, using only a pair of scissors and a comb, removed all superfluous hair from your collar line up. When he was done, he’d wet down what was left with a bottle of smelly green liquid, comb it into submission and in an hour or so your hair would have hardened up enough to skate upon. The young folks would be offered a lollipop from a big glass jar. Two weeks later: back in the chair.

I grew my hair long as soon as I was big enough to face down my father who, in spite of his own sideburns and mustache, was unbending when it came to how his sons appeared on the street . When I hit age 43, I decided it wasn’t worth fighting conformity, and I began getting regular haircuts again.

This is not as easy as it sounds because I am a purist. I am dead set against paying for frills like mousse, expander and tea tree fire-proofing or any of the other options offered at the modern “salon.” One by one, over the years, I have frequented the rapidly vanishing shops with striped poles by the door; places where the barber’s license is taped to the mirror and the long, tapered combs are kept in a jar of blue disinfectant.

Eventually, I started going to the local beauty school. There, for a really good price, they’d throw you at the mercy of student, who would very slowly, painfully and methodically cut each of your individual hairs, sometimes several times. Now and then, when a student seemed to get stuck, an instructor was called in. Soon, the two of them would be staring at the back of my head, the frustrated student being chided by the scissor-wielding instructor.

“How many times have I told you NOT to do it that way?” The instructor might ask, or worse, “how do you plan to fix that?”

Whatever happened while I was in the chair, eventually they peeled off the drop cloth, my pate lathered in fragrant, waxy goo, and with any luck there would be no major divots reflected back in my rearview mirror.

One of the benefits of risking my carefully-crafted public image to the sharp blades of an untrained and often pregnant beauty college student, is that a trainee might eventually become your permanent hair care coordinator. Such is the case with Helena.

Helena is an artist and has the gift of gab and a natural gift for hair styling. In her chair, I was regaled with tales and adventures of the local grim youth. She would unravel wonderful travelogues of vacations at Disneyworld with her husband, and occasionally whispering the latest beauty school gossip into my newly protruding ears.

After graduation, Helena brought her scissors over to “Salon Niçoise,” a well-established salon in a nearby town. I faithfully followed her. Every couple of months, I would call the reception desk and get my name on the schedule.

When I got my nursing license and began working, I quickly realized that, in spite of the rigorous training, a job, once obtained, is still a job. And once in the work place, one soon finds themselves ensconced in a situation that is full of co-workers. Us new kids, freshly scrubbed and altruistic, learn – day one – that for every skilled and competent professional at the workplace, there is the equivalent number of disgruntled, incompetent, lazy do-nothings that complain all day and find new ways to avoid working.

Such was the atmosphere in Helena’s new salon. From where I sat, it appeared that the other salon workers did not have nearly the dedicated work ethic and skill set that verily gleamed off the tips of Helena’s scissors as she toiled over my shoulder.
When I called last week she wasn’t there. “We haven’t seen her in a month,” the woman on the phone told me. Was she OK, I wondered? How am I going to find her? I didn’t know her last name or anything about her other than where she worked and that she liked the Monkees.

And now she was gone.

I considered sitting in the parking lot of the salon and waiting for a familiar face to emerge and then attempting to pry information out of her former co-workers. That seemed not bloody likely.

Hallelujah! A google search of the salon led me to their web site and soon I was directed to Facebook where I quickly located and “friended” her. Lo and behold, a couple of days later I was hearing a blow-by-blow description of the straw that broke the camel’s back at her former employer, and the story of why I was sitting on an old stool in her grandmother’s kitchen.

Sometimes, thankfully, a mullet is a fish.