The Diamond Island

I don’t like doing it, but all my cats are neutered.  Doesn’t seem to have slowed Frankie down much, however.  She’s got that natural spark that makes you go, “Oh, that Frankie!”  Now it looks like she’s got an admirer.

There’s a local patrol cat that belongs to neighbors on one end of the cluster.  He’s a sleek, grey haired, very polite fellow K and I call Smokie.  A friendly cat to the max.

He comes and visits every couple of days, and Frankie can see him stride up the sidewalk to visit.  Her tail poofs out like a racoon’s, she rushes downstairs to look out the kitchen window, and gets excited.

Smokie trots up the stairs and waits patiently.  After a while of Frankie staring at him in full battle mode, he takes off to the catnip lady next door and heals himself some hit points.

Finally, we decided to come outside to meet this courtin’ cat and take his measure.  He meows politely and offers himself up for a pet, which we cannot refuse.  We talk to him and he remains dignified and calm throughout the whole affair.

Frankie watches from the screen door, her tail thrashing furiously.  We take her out to meet Smokie, and she hisses at him.  Not want!  We chastise her and take her back inside, then feed Smokie some of our high energy lynx food.  He devours it happily, waits staring at Frankie for a respectable period, then moves on.

Now K and I have the drill down.  When Smokie comes a-courtin’, and Frankie starts spazzing out, we open the door and greet our fine gentlemanly visitor.  He gets a free meal and a brief chance to talk and peer at Frankie with the screen door chaperone (we leave them in peace for a few minutes, to say what cats do to each other in a moment like this).

Frankie seems to enjoy her visits.  Last night, we let Smokie give her a nose kiss, and she didn’t hiss.  Maybe she likes Smokie after all!

Frankie’s first crush.

Crumbs, sometimes you can’t sit down and write a post no matter what.  It’s like the summer of beat down and all I can do is go back spaces and slide down chutes.  Everytime I sit down to compose my thoughts, I get another random encounter.  But should I do something else, such as read a book or make a round of pesto, the random encounters hide behind the couch again.  I’m feeling like Batman in that awful TV Batman movie.

The garden has become a battlefield of weeds and failed plantings versus the last stand of the forces of yumminess.  The weather here has been so volatile, it’s hard to get out and do any work.  It’s hot and humid, with regular threats of thunderstorms that rarely materialize any rain, but look threatening to keep K and I indoors.  The onion and potato shields are down to 50% and falling.  The tomatoes are still weeded and strong, but growing slowly.  The leeks are okay for now, but the lettuce has all bolted, so that game is up until fall planting.  I was getting tired of lupin salads anyway.  The basil is online, thank goodness!

Half of the garden is overgrown with weeds, led by thistle towers and grass infiltrators.  The only good thing is we’ve had no bugs at all.  They don’t even want to touch what we’ve got.  The bees and butterflies are more or less there, but in scraggly amounts.  The birds use us as a syopover, but the general traffic all around is way down from last year.  A chippie-munkie has taken up residence under a fence post and is helping himself to our seeds.  As usual, the horseradish is indestructible and pushing the weeds aside.  One thing we do have a lot of are earthworms.  It’s almost as if the soil is terrible for everything but them.  Eat up worms, may as well since the garden’s on auxiliary power.

Meanwhile, the parental unit garden is looking great.  They’ve started to harvest their bumper crop of potatoes already, it’s sad.

K finished a spare kitty pie and I cleared the space between my metal organizers on my desk.  Combine pie with space, and Frankie has settled into a new roost.  That cat is spoiled!  Meanwhile, Michael has been getting fatter and more lethargic.  Which means his poop factory is at 110% reactor capacity.  The big cat news, however, is the installation of the new curtains.  By the Paul and K handycrew, that is.

The metal blinds that came with the townhouse have not been popular with the cats.  So they push them out of the way to look out the windows and end up bending the metal.  It’s a choice then, between allowing the blinds to be slowly damaged or no privacy when the sun goes down.  Plus, the noise the cats make when pushing the metal aside is annoying.

So we scanned for some cheap thick curtains, scored big time, and put them up.  The blinds went up all the way, and the cords were stashed.  Now the cats can poke their head through the gap or around the sides without any problems, and we can shut out prying eyes when we don’t feel like being on display.

The coolest thing though, is the box bay window.  We put the curtains up so the cats have a private sunroom with cushions, blankees and kitty-pies.  It’s like a big tiger den they can retreat to and snooze, snoop out the window, or loaf regally.  Frankie went ape for it, and her happy meter went way up, since she’s a tiger anyway.  Michael just found it and approves, in a “it’s about time” kind of way.  Blink has her own den, in the towel closet, which she has figured out how to open.  She climbs up a few ledges and falls asleep on the sweaters.  Cute +1!

Finally, K and I have been watching Charmed.  We just finished the first season and are starting the second.  Oh, dear, sweet potato pie the writing is horrible.  But it’s like a train wreck, you just can’t stop looking and cringing.  I like the premise, and the demon-of-the-week plots are mildly interesting, but it’s an acting-free zone populated by dysfunctional plot elements you can see coming a mile away.

Three hollywood-beautiful witches gain superpowers and the ability to cast spells from a spellbook when they inherit said spellbook (called “the book of shadows”) from their grandmama.  They become “the charmed ones”.  That means they fight evil, protect the innocent, and struggle with all that real world stuff like career, getting dates with hollywood thud-studs, and working out their family issues.  Hey, what’s not to like?

Unfortunately, the lame writing is filled with convoluted plots and illogical character actions.  The actresses can’t act worth beans, which makes the terrible dialogue and scene pacing agony to watch at times.  The WTF moments per minute is very high.  But, hell, I know I’m eating a Big-and-Nasty here, not a burger I cooked on my own grill with all the fixins.  It’s interesting to me because there’s so much potential in the show.  That potential gets picked up, dropped, and trod over.  But it’s still there, so I watch and gaze in wonder at this two-headed baby with dull surprise.

In garden news, the potatoes are coming up nicely. The tomatoes need a lot of care, so it’s touch and go with them. Onions and chives are on target. The lettuce, contrary to last year, is being really difficult. It looks like it might surge forward soon. I hope so, it’s been a long spring.

The basil croaked, which really surprised me. The other herbs are doing well and spreading rapidly. I’m psyched because our cooking gets so much mileage now out of them, and we now know the power of saving herbs for later in the winter. The garden is teeming with earthworms, which it wasn’t last year. I guess word has gotten around that this plot is active.

K and I have a huge amount of plants in moss packets ready to plant, hopefully this will start the serious attack of garden goodness. Oh yes, and we have a new blue hose with a purple multi spray attachment that rocks the mike. Our major challenge this year is keeping the weeds, which have mounted a massive attack on all fronts. My back is killing me, and the thistles ruined my gloves, requiring me to get a fresh pair. Sheesh!

Frankie has taken to bullying Blink, the older and weaker female cat. It’s gotten to the point where Blink is always hiding and skulking about, and it’s driving K and myself up the wall. In all other ways Frankie is a honeybear, but when she doesn’t get her way (such as wanting to get a walkies outside and we say no because the landscapers sprayed the grass with pesticide today), she acts out on Blink.

We’re really not happy with our vets. We took Frankie in for a respiratory infection, and they decided to give her the latest round of shots because we hadn’t been in to update them. This was in addition to the antibiotics they prescribed. Now, we hate giving Frankie her shots because she becomes weak and sad for three days, and it’s heartbreaking to watch. So for them to give her the shots before we could protest, when she was already feeling crummy because of an infection. Well, the vets are on my poop list. I’m going to go empty my wallet somewhere else. Frankie hid under the bed and sulked for days, and it made me mad.

On the bath front, my aunt gave me an awesome array of bath salts from Pretty Baby, and some cool dude bath bombs from Lush. Alas, I’ve used up the gift boxes and I emptied out my main store of goods the other day. Not having the requisite ability to meditate my cares into valuable cash and prizes at a certain level is of course, intolerable. But understandable, since my stress levels have been off the wall the last month and a half.

Actually, I have a whole stash of bath bombs I’ve been holding onto for karmic reasons, which I’ve been unable to touch. The victims I’ve planned these for will no doubt benefit, but for me it means lean times. So K and I made a brief run and I picked up some more of my faves. There’s this pine-volcanic gravel bomb that does the trick nicely, and I’ve been jonesin’ to make use of that kind again. Stimulates my brainstem nicely, and I’m glad to have it back.

Picked up the third Age of Bronze, titled “Betrayal Part One”. It’s as good as always, and I read through it so quickly it’s sad. The Trojan War is finally starting to heat up, as both sides start to maneuver their pieces into position, while the personal stories of the characters continue to develop in interesting ways.

Of particular interest to me is the diplomatic mission to Troy to regain Helen and avert the war, where several people reveal their character in really cool ways. I never get tired of Odysseus’s trickery, and I have to say Palamede’s honesty is starting to win me over. Paris’s cowardice, arrogance and treachery are really going too far. Troy is doomed.

K has been getting the hiking bug, and after a long search she finally found a pair of boots she could deal with. REI had nothing but high priced, weird and poorly manufactured junk. That surprised me. LL Bean just didn’t pass the muster. So we hit the local Ranger Surplus, because I needed a new pair of jungle boots and a new pair of fatigues. K was skeptical, but she found exactly what she was looking for there. Durable, support, reasonably priced, and not made cheaply.

I swear by my army boots and fatigues. My old desert storm boots and fatigues have been slowly falling apart this last year, despite my best efforts to milk them further. I’ve worn the fatigues for twenty-one years, and the boots for eleven. The service, when it comes to the basics, knows how to make long-lasting, hardy equipment and that’s no joke.

The boots breathe and stand up to anything while giving you support and protection. The fatigues cover your legs with cool/warm air as necessary, and they protect you from terrain, foliage and insects like nobody’s business. Plus the pockets are awesome. I’ve carried empty beer bottles in all four at the 9:30 Club, saving my friends and me the hassle of throwing them out while the music is raging. It’s good to have a new set. I feel it’s appropriate, in a way, with the way my life is going.

The progress on my book continues. I’m 87% through the revisions, and am about to tackle the climax of the story. Come on, big creative push!

I got my hands on the DVD for Hawk the Slayer, and am very pleased I made the acquisition. It’s a sword and sorcery movie from 1981, and is actually watch-able, in a Beastmaster kind of way. The dialogue, characters and plot are all hilariously awful. I place the movie somewhere between average and good. It’s not “good enough” to be good, but it isn’t “average enough” to be average. This is the kind of movie you can watch with friends and have some laughs. Though nothing will beat the sheer WTF-ness of The Core. All I can say is that the universe must have taken pity on me for having suffered through The Return of Captain Invincible, and compensated me with a movie that is both bad and fun.

Just finished Season 1 and 2 of Heroes by means of Netflix. K’s new computer, plus our nifty high speed FIOS connection, equals “watch now”. Apparently, you can watch Netflix movies on your computer, who knew? Because we subscribe, we get a certain amount of free hours of viewing each month, so we’ve been draining that account dry to get caught up with the show. Maybe I’ll go into analytic detail of the show in another post, but for now all I’ll say is the show is worth watching. Lots of problems and plots that don’t add up, and Season 2 drops in quality significantly, but I’d say Season 1 was a heck of a lot of fun.

Musically, I’ve been listening to The Cure’s Wish and really digging it a lot. It comes on the heels of Disintegration, which carries the distinction of being my big breakup album. So to hear the post-breakup energy many years later after putting college way behind me, it’s very cathartic and enlivening. I’ve also been listening to Deutsch Nepal, a dark ambient sound that I’m really starting to dig. I’m going to have to get some more of this stuff. It puts me in the zone when I need to concentrate at work or hash my book revisions out.

On the cat zone, K and I got a large bath mat for the upstairs bathroom, and Frankie loves it. She uses it as a springboard to dash downstairs, then comes back up and rests on the bunched up mat. Frankie made sure to trill at K and give her the head-butt leap of affection to let her know this was approved. Meanwhile, Michael and Blink got a new soft throw to lay on. The fuzzy warm goodness does well on the couch, and when a human sits there with the throw over them, the two cats gravitate. Even independent Frankie has been taking turns resting on it. Wow!

My car was broken into the other night. I drive a bucket, and one of the doors doesn’t lock all the time. Needless to say I never keep anything valuable in there. Just a glove compartment jammed full of napkins ripped off from fast food joints, some moist towelette packets, and a pad of paper with a pencil. I could follow the progress of the intruder exactly. First, the pad and pencil tossed casually to the floor of the car. Then all the napkins got shoved out of the way and left on the passenger seat. Finally the moist towelette packets had been thrown on the ground outside of the car in disgust before leaving the door semi-closed. I had to laugh, because it’s a lot of effort to clear the compartment out for zero returns.

It may be winter for all practical purposes, but I’m still looking forward to next spring’s planting. K and I got ourselves a garden weasel finally, and aim to test it out as soon as the ground dries out a bit from the recent snow we had. The ground hasn’t hardened quite yet with the cold, but the weeds and other plants are on the defensive. I’ll give the scoop on how reliable this ding dang darn thing is when compared to the TV commercial soon enough.

And on a final note, I have yet to begin writing my Xmas cards. The beat down looms!

As I mentioned earlier, I used to hate all cats with a passion. The time has come for me to tell the story of what made me hate cats so much. Why, why the hatred? Well, here it comes, and it ain’t pretty.

Back when I was living with my folks, post college graduation burnout, next door there is a house we came to call the Hell House, because the family that lived there were a psychological cesspool of dysfunctional, rancid energy. Fights, screaming, smashing things, littering. Name the drama, it happened there. One of the more unsavory mutations of that family lifeforce, while it inhabited the Hell House, was their chaos attribute of Infestation (Dumper Cats).

Specifically, they maintained a stable of cats in the general vicinity that ran loose at all hours. These cats bred with each other, attacked birds and squirrels, and invaded other people’s yards in large numbers. And, of course, they relieved themselves in other peoples’ yards as well, thus the nickname of “Dumper Cats”. Well, that’s not what they were really called, since the actual descriptive was a profanity. Use your imagination.

Since they were free to breed at will, plenty of yowling and mewing occurred at all hours. Yet the actual number of the cats didn’t seem to increase, although I always saw new arrivals with different shades. My guess is that the litters were sold off for extra income, with an occasional kitten kept over to replenish the stock when these cats inevitably fled or died from disease. Our only recourse was to have the super-soaker primed at all times, since the cats grew wise to the sound of the hose being turned on.

Perhaps it wasn’t so much the cats themselves, but what they represented. They were a visible sign of psychic contamination. The folks and I came to hate them with a passion, and reveled whenever we got a direct hit with the water. The family’s drama was bad enough, to have to suffer the invasion of your own personal space by numerous cats was a transgression. You’d be sitting in the backyard, enjoying the garden and the birds eating their seed or washing in the bath, when along comes a mottled white cat through the fence looking for a bird lunch. Peace and tranquility disrupted! You have to scare the birds while you scare off the cat, and your thoughts have been interrupted.

So all cats became known as Dumper Cats. Eventually, the family broke apart despite itself and the house was abandoned. For a long time it was a morass of psychological residue, and the cats wandered off in search of some other source of food. The house was bought by a nice handyman. He moved his family in, and fixed the place up so you would never guess it was once the Hell House. The Dumper Cats are ancient history. But it would be a long time before K would come along and show me the power of the non-Dumper Cats.

Okay, it’s Frankie time. It’s the night of February 14, three years ago. I’m going out to drop off the trash in the apartment complex compactor outside. It’s cold out, but that’s okay because it’s not a far walk so I’m only wearing a long sleeved shirt. I approach the complex and I spot a partially grown kitten. The kitten spots me, perks up, and immediately runs towards me as if she’s won the lottery. It’s almost as if she’s been waiting for me. I drop off the trash, play with her, and decide to come back with K and a handful of food. She looks awfully hungry.

Fast forward to now. Frankie healed the cut on her lip and instead of sleeping amongst the trash during a sudden snowstorm later that night, slept on my chest after purring herself to sleep. She’s got her shots, and the other cats have accepted her as a reality that isn’t going away. She got through her kitten phase, praise the maker, and gets lots of regular feedings, a warm set of feet (mine) to sleep on every night, and many toys. Pamper = To The Max.

K and I named her Frankie after the character Angelina Jolie plays in the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Frankie is adorable. If you don’t agree, please report to the nearest reactor and volunteer for shielding tests! There’s a whole story about my hatred of cats that I will relate at another time. All you need to know is that I’ve had my Road To Damascus moment and really dig feline critters now.

Frankie, unlike most cats I’ve known, loves to have a leash put on her and walk around the neighborhood like a canine critter. One of her many names is “Frankie-doggins”. She gets really upset if I don’t take her out for a walk during the day, or hunting for moths at night. Its kind of weird how well behaved, and mischievous she is at the same time. When I look in her eyes, there’s an intelligence that goes beyond what I see in the other two cats, Michael and Blink.

I don’t know what it is about the time period from about 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm, but Frankie does some kind of “super-activating” and gets really rambunctious. She’ll usually be asleep in the bedroom absorbing major Slack points. Then, all of a sudden, she activates. Only it’s not the usual activation of a cat going into patrol and beg mode. Nope, she initiates what K and I can only describe as “the Frankie Tricksy Hour”. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing at the moment it begins, for the next 25-35 minutes you are in the Tricksy Hour Zone, where madness reigns supreme!

That’s right, it’s an “hour”, even though technically only 25-35 minutes pass. You’re on Tricksy time, and it’s time to pay the piper. Frankie begins jumping onto counters and shelves and knocking things over. Not big things, little things. Pens. Keys. Magazines. Papers. She’ll look at you as if it wasn’t her, but the Not Me Goblin who did that. She’ll wait until you are looking away, and do it again. You get up and chastise her, and she meows at you like you’re being mean. You put her on the ground, and a few minutes later she leaps up and starts doing it again. Frankie will then change her tactics and come up to you to begin meow bombing. Unlike Michael’s shrill and incessant artillery barrage, however, Frankie’s meow bombs are sweet and heartrendingly cute. “Please? Oh please? Won’t you do whatever it is?” Nope, she can’t tell you what it is. Good luck finding out!

Emergency thrusters engage! Frankie’s tail goes poof, like a huge raccoon brillo pad, and she runs through our home in bursts of speed, then looks to see if anyone is watching her. Random meows ensue, then she’s off again, up and down the stairs. She looks out the windows and meows some more. What? Is there a giant cheeseburger out there or something? If, at this point, you don’t get what she’s going on about, then she repeats the cycle and goes back to knocking things over. Humans can be so dense sometimes!

Yup, she wants me to grab the leash and harness, and take her out on a walk. There’s meeses, and cheeseburgeroids, and probably an ani-mani-mal or two out there. She’s got to make her patrol because it’s the moment of super-psychic fluctuations in the space time continuum. Ugh, but K and I are busy doing chores, watching the Netflix Channel, or writing/playing games on the computer. It’s your choice. Take care of business, or suffer the Tricksy Hour until you are free. Frankie comes up and rubs her head against you and starts to purr. Who knew being lazy could be so much torture?

But that’s the price you pay for having a super-cat living in your home. Duty calls, and the safety and security of the free world depend on your help! No vacations when you’re the sidekick of an animal with super-powers. Who knew I was volunteering my home’s services as a Cat-cave with high tech gadgets and neat-o costumes? Yep, just call me Leash-boy. At your service, mighty Frankie! Golly gee wilikers! Let’s go foil those meeses but good! Frankie says, “Later leash-boy. First let me roll around in these pine needles and search for booby traps.” Sigh. The glory.

Ten years ago, if you asked me if I liked cats, I’d have said, “all cats must be destroyed”. Now here I am, going to a cat expo with K to check out the scene and look for vendors with cool cat toys. Wow, talk about the times they have a-changed.

Communications officer Jessica picks up a transmission about a cat convergence in the area. I put it on the list of things to make a report to back at starbase with K, when we’re planning the weekend explorations and patrols. I know she’s been jonesin’ to get some fresh cat toy tech, and the cats have been a little in the dumps lately, so I know it’s a cat maintenance power-up coming down the pipe at some point.

I mention it, and all of a sudden a blah Saturday turns into a chance for something exciting. Its like I told K we have emeralds growing in the gas tanks of our cars. Whoo-eee! Water bottle, check. Ducats, check. Printed out copies of the coupons, check. Backpack for the mule (me), check. Ready the thrusters, here we go!

Docking achieved, payment administration taken care of, entry achieved. All I can say is, “Zoinks, Scoob!” The layout of the place is eight judging areas, with all manner of contestants in their orbit allocations more or less around the judging central locus. Around them, you have the vendors selling wares and taking up what are the edges of the warehouse structure. Then there are the expected support structures on the edges. Food court, lavatories, security, etc. You get the drift.

Each contestant has a “space” with a table and chair. They plop their cat carrier on the table, along with all their accouterments, and sit on the chair until its time for them to participate in a judging. The cats seemed to be grouped according to breed, so all the Siamese are in one area, for example. I’m not sure what the system used was, however, as it was a little hard to locate the breeds based on the signs. They didn’t seem to follow a logical order.

What blew me away were the cat carriers the owners brought with them. Each one was different, even though many of the base cages used were the same. You seemed to have plastic tents with air holes and metal bar cages. Inside, I saw probably every variation of litter box, cat bed, cat hammock, cat toy arrangement, and cat dishes known. Almost all the cats looked zoinked out, and I don’t blame them. The overload of smells and noises must have been really stressful for the poor critters. The ratio of women to men was about 3 to 1, believe it or not. There are more of us cat guys out there than you might want to admit! The crowd ranged from the typical “best of show” obsessive compulsives and crazy cat ladies you’d expect, to people who looked innocent enough and were there to share their passion for cats with other like-minded people.

I saw one carrier covered in pink satin and done with taffeta ruffles and pearls. Inside it was pink plush cushions and a pink little litter box, with a number of fine china dishes with various kinds of wet and dry cat food. The owner and their precious were out, so I got a chance to look at the setup. The owner had the equivalent of the Terminator’s arsenal of weapons for keeping the cat looking good, all in specially made carrying cases that holstered on the sides of the carrier for easy access. 45 comb-slide, with laser sighting! Spas-12-gauge clippers! Phased plasma pulse cleaner, in the 40-watt range! It was crazy to see how serious these people came ready to fight to the death!

The judging was kind of cool to watch. Owners put their cat in a numbered cage at the back of the judging center. The judge had a table with a number of toys and ribbons, and a raised stage to place the cat on. There were chairs for everyone to watch the judging take place. K and I watched a Siamese and a Persian judging take place. We missed the Maine Coon judging, which was disappointing, as I wanted to see the judge try and tackle those large twenty-pound cats. The judge took each cat out of the front of the cages, and did a series of tests on their tail, fur, face, playfulness, and so forth.

At the end, the cat goes back in the cage and some ribbons are placed on their cage according to how well they did. The playfulness test was the easiest for the audience to gauge, I think. The judge uses a short, sparkly toy to see if the cat will play with it. If the cat just sits there, it’s wah wah wahhh. One of the Persians was funny, because it was over enthusiastic, and the judge had to calm the cat down. It went nuts trying to get the toy. I’m not sure if that was a loss of points or not. The judge remained calm, and laughed with the audience. I had to give him kudos for keeping his cool.

But we were there for the vendors, and K managed to find some decent stuff for the kitties. She located a cat mat of soft material with pink and purple princess cats on it, with some matching mice toys filled with catnip. For Frankie, we bought a plastic rod with a series of strips of bunny fur on the end. K bought a white feng shui lucky cat for good health, and a lucky cat tea mug for herself. Not a mean haul, so we exited before the insanity took any more of a toll on us.

K loves the burgers from Checkers, and I have to say they are pretty darn good. But it’s not a luxury we get often because the nearest one is a ways away. But the cat expo is already halfway there, so we decide to go for it. The traffic proves minimal, and we make it there to fuel up on the Checkers burger and fries powerup. A bit of a drive home awaits us, but our happy tummies prove strong enough to get us through it, showing once again the power of the cheezburger.

We get home, and the cats each give the mat the seal of approval, and the mice toys soon disappear down the rabbit hole. Frankie goes wild for the new rod-flap toy we got, which is a good thing. Her previous one had been ripped and torn to pieces and was no fun anymore. The cats get their superzapper recharge; we get ours, it’s all good. Another successful mission in the day-to-day adventures of beat-down land.

There’s a white furred Norwegian Forest cat living with us named Michael.  K is his officially adopted human, as he came up to her as a kitten on her birthday and said, “I’m living with you now.  Feed me!”  Oh boy, Minnie the Moocher is an amateur compared to this walking food beggar.  Michael has perfected the Meow-Bomb technology to smart-bomb levels, and can pinpoint your location with the perfect frequency for getting on your nerves.  When he’s hungry, this little monticore snap-dragon powder puff won’t let you rest until his tummy has been filled!  In particular, he has a knack for meow-bombing you when you are right in the middle of things, such as an important phone call, or coming home from work and trying to decompress to a human level again.

His fur is soft and double layered goodness, so there is the pet factor to consider.  But his guard hairs fall out easily, and a lot of time is spent keeping the hair infestation to a somewhat acceptable level.  Michael is especially good at covering dark clothes in his protective layer of shed fur.  Give him a kitty pie to lie in, or a blanket in a corner, and it’ll acquire a soft layer of Michael-fur.  Most disturbing are the egg-cases.  These are white masses of matted fur that become tangled and are pulled off when he rolls around on a surface.  I swear, they look just like moth cocoons.  Did I mention that this cat’s other other other nickname is pig-pen cat?

Michael’s stomach, for such a greedy eater, is remarkably sensitive so he throws up a great deal.  Hairball remedies don’t seem to work, though Gerber’s Baby Food Squash seems the most effective in settling his stomach.  Though, if it fails to do the job, get ready to bring out the ammonia on that carpet stain!  The countless times I’ve had to clean up Michael’s barf, it really doesn’t bear thinking about, really.  When the little monster gets into a puking spell, it’s Charles Dickens misery all around.

But the worst part is, this darn cat is expensive to own.  K got him for free, but we’re still paying for him!  The cat has a million things wrong with him, yet he refuses to give up the ghost.  He has urinary tract issues, so he has to have his food specially bought from the vet, for thirty dollars every month or so.  He eats and drinks often, so he has to go to the bathroom a lot, which means we have to buy a lot of kitty litter.  He has cardio-myopathy, an irreversible swelling heart condition, so he has to have a beta-blocker pill every day.  Man, kitty drugs are expensive!  He has to get yearly sonic scans of his heart to see how he’s doing.  And after all that, we get the welcome worry that one day he’ll keel over and bite the big one anyway!  I stopped counting after a thousand bucks, but Michael’s price tag is easily over three times that by now.

Last April, as we were moving, Michael decides to go on a rampage and puke all the time while having problems going to the bathroom.  Turns out, he has three bladder stones that need to be removed or he dies!  Fourteen hundred dollars, says the vet, and thanks for sending me to the golf course this afternoon.  Despite the chances of croaking under the anesthesia because of his heart, the tough little cat makes it through without a single complication and is more meow-bombingly active than ever!  Aieeee!

When Michael is not demanding food, he is sleeping.  If one of us is not on the couch or other suitable sitting unit, he will chirp and scratch at you until you move to the designated seating position.  He will then begin purring, dig at you with his claws until your limbs are in the right arrangement, and then he will plop his heavy boned frame down on you and purr himself to sleep.  Chances are good that within 5-10 minutes another cat will be attracted to your properly pacified form and add their mass to your immobilization factor.  You’d better hope you put a good DVD in the player, because you aren’t moving.

I keep thinking, what unholy universe spawned this feline?  What brutal, unimaginable world did this viking cat from hell come from?  The creature is an investment now, and he’d better live for a long time.  But how much longer can one’s sanity take such responsibility?  I hear some cats live as much as thirty years, and if Michael is one of those Methuselah cats he’s got many years left on the life clock.  Then I get to thinking about the secret lives of cats.  Is Michael a spoiled brat living on his fortunate choice of human servants?  Could he be a hard rockin’ biker viking cat living la vida loca in a parallel universe?  What monsters is he keeping at bay with a fully charged meow-bomb, bathing us in a fur shield and keeping the peace with nap power?  It might not be as one-sided an arrangement as it appears.

Random encounter time! K and I drive into the shuttlecraft parking module and grab our civilization training gear, when lo and behold, we have a critter call! Slightly bony, gray haired kitty announces his/her low fuel gage and projects that psionic command line letting you know if its not happening now, you’re dead meat! Such encounters get added to your lifetime RSS feed when you come under the province of a cat’s karmic lessons. Yup, there’s our very own cat responsibility in the window silently meowing. Yeah, thanks for letting the rogue traders know where the soft touches are.

At first, I think its smokey, our nickname for the local cat constable for the neighborhood up the hill. Might well be, in which case, way to hook up with the protection racket, purr puff! Kitty is friendly, vocal, and affectionate. Yup, pulling out all the bonuses for the Beg Roll on us. Ha! The first meow knocked out the shields and put me on auxiliary power. No worries there, nagging hungry stomach that is the cat uber-psychic “now” of feline study on earth. I pass the retina scan and open the supply lines for a hit of the expensive vet stuff. K distracts the pit stop kitty with pets and praise (humans have a few desperate measures that can sometimes be relied upon to work, or at least reassure us that something is happening).

This paw-puff knows what time it is. The meow-bombing ceases, food is calmly assimilated into main reactor, and mandatory licking of mouth commences. Without any further ado, kitty powers up disruptors and goes back to whatever appointed quest or neighborhood duties may be pressing. See ya next time! Hey, this racket has been getting these creatures by for thousands of years. I don’t see natural selection weeding this behavior out with a ten-foot pole any time soon. Next, feed the cats that, you know, actually live with us. Just another night in the maintenance of inter-species alliances, I suppose.

Next morning, as I’m setting up the recycle pod for the local truck feeding, I see a white and gray cat in our neighbor’s yard, munching contentedly on catnip I swear wasn’t growing there before, but of course its reality change 22-732 and its been there all along. Whether it’s a change in the Matrix or the local cloaking device is down for repairs today, how would I know? I don’t make monkeys; I just play one on earth. The cat looks at me and chooses at that moment to munch dramatically to emphasize how lucky I am that there’s more than one fueling station. Hrm. I guess this is what in cat free trade practices is known as “opening new markets for exploitation”.