The tale of the BMW X3

(NOTE, May 28, 2018: According to this post, recently discovered in my drafts, I picked up the BMW on June 7 and swapped it out on June 12.)

I've written before about how, while taking our cat Bowie to the vet's on May 31, 2017 to find out why she kept vomiting every time she ate (it was because of an abdominal tumor, part of the cancer that would kill her in seventeen days), my mom's car was rear-ended when we stopped for a woman pushing a baby stroller across a crosswalk with a flashing yellow light - and the guy in the SUV behind us didn't.

The car was damaged, but driveable. It took more than a week to arrange to have the damage repaired. We didn't know how long repairs would take, and my insurance would only cover a total rental of, I think, $500.00. I went to one of the few rental agencies in the area, and found that they were preparing to move into a new location. Their vehicle options were limited. Only one vehicle was available, really - a BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle®. (Yes, apparently that term is a registered trademark.)

It was a bit more car than I am used to, considering that I spent twenty years driving a 1996 Toyota Tercel. The official website refers to its "intuitive controls," but I beg to differ. The inch-thick owner's manual came with an inch-thick supplement to explain how to use the radio. It took me several minutes to figure out how to turn the damned thing off - the vehicle, that is, not the radio. It simultaneously felt too big and too small. My first impression was that it looked like an oversized VW Golf, but driving it felt like I was navigating a yacht.

I only had the BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle® for two full a few days before I was able to take it back to swap it for a less expensive vehicle, a stripped-down Chevrolet Aveo that made my old Tercel seem spacious by comparison. But during that brief time together, I managed to have one preposterous adventure.

The day after we were hit, June 1, a new paving project began on the street in front of our house, the street where I usually park the car. There was a chronically empty spot in front of the house across the street facing the front of our house (the one that recently lost the shingle that came through our front window.) I parked the BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle® there, which meant that I could view this extremely expensive rental vehicle from the front door of our house.

Now, please understand: I am a stranger to many technological innovations in cars. In part this is because I do not trust them - or, rather, I do expect many of the electronic features on the car to cease functioning within the reasonable life expectancy of a car. Why have an electronic control for a window when a crank works just as well? Why have a pushbutton start for the ignition when a key works just fine and is more secure? Why use a key fob to unlock the doors remotely, and sometimes inadvertently?

After a few days of driving the BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle®, I was starting to get used to it. I had to make some peace with it, because I had tried to swap it for something smaller that day and could not. At the end of the day that day I parked the car across the street, dramatically used the key fob to lock it up as I was walking away, and then locked it again, just to be sure.

The next morning after I got up I looked out at the car. It was still there. It sure was a good-looking thing: glossy black paint job that was both dark and bright at the same time. Windows so clear they looked like they weren't even there. Why, I could see straight through the windows on the driver's side and the windows on the passenger's side like I was looking through plain air.

I didn't start work until a few hours later. Much of that time was spent tending to Bowie, giving her her medicine and syringes of food and water. About fifteen minutes before I had to be in work - it's a ten minute drive on a good day - I stepped out of the house, lunch bag and key fob in one hand, coffee thermos and jug of iced tea in the other. I had clapped my hat on my head before I walked out, but I left my coat in the house. It hadn't rained in days, and wasn't supposed to any time soon.

As I walked to the car, I was awfully glad it hadn't rained overnight. All of the windows were rolled down, and the sunroof was open.

How the hell did that happen? I thought. I don't have time for this crap. I started the car and rolled up the windows, and then began to fumble around looking for the controls for the sunroof as I drove. Nothing was intuitively obvious. A bunch of cryptic buttons were along the top edge of the windshield, the most obvious place for a sunroof control. This one didn't do anything, and this one didn't do anything, and this one...

Uh-oh. That one was marked "OnStar."

Within a few seconds I started to experience the consequences of my random button pushing. The headlights began to flash intermittently. The horn began to beep. An alarm screeched as I drove to work. 

"This is OnStar, how can I help you?" a voice asked from somewhere.

I explained, as frantically and pathetically as I could, what was going on, explaining that this was a rental vehicle and I had no idea how all the windows had gotten rolled down or how the sunroof had opened up or how to stop the alarms and I was just trying to get to work. The OnStar person had to put me on mute at least once, probably to let out screams of laughter at my predicament. Eventually they were able to explain how to close the sunroof. They also explained what had happened: I must have held the "lock" button on the key fob for an extended period, either when I was double-locking the car the evening before or possibly by pressing the button while it was in my pocket. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to create this functionality? Who would think that pressing and holding "lock" should cause all the windows to roll down and the sunroof to open?

The next day Eventually I was able to swap out the BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle® for a much less expensive, spacious, and and technologically sophisticated Chevrolet Aveo, with roll-up windows and a key for the doors and the ignition and no sunroof. It was quite a step down, but closer to what I was used to.

A few days later, on June 17, 2018, the repairs to my mom's car were complete - the same day Bowie died.

Bowie, April 2009 - June 17, 2017

Bowie, April 2009 - June 17, 2017

It seemed for a while my blog was just a series of obituaries for my animal friends. Hershey. Scooter. Nikki. Baby Boy. I wrote each one as quickly as I could.

Not this one. It has taken more than two and a half months to write Bowie's story.

Bowie came to us in May of 2009. As a young kitten, perhaps six weeks old, she crawled into our house through a hole torn in the screen of a basement window. The first time she did this, my mom was able to retrieve her and return her to her cat-mommy, who seemed indignant that we let such a thing happen. A week later she crawled in again. I heard  her meeping cries from another room. As I entered the room with the window, I saw her holding onto the screen for dear life. She let out a scream as she let go and fell nearly six feet to the concrete floor behind an old stove. I was able to retrieve her using a toy robot arm grabber from Cracker Barrel. We decided that since she was so determined to be in our house, we would keep her. We named her Bowie, since she was The Cat Who Fell to Earth.

Soon we took in Bowie's brothers BlueBear and Thor, and then assorted cousins, nieces, and nephews. Bowie was the first of the "new" cats, but she never really asserted her position in the pecking order. She was tiny and shy and preferred to spend her days hiding (she was an excellent hider), or alone in the upstairs bathroom, or with my mother. She was one of the "Superfriends" - Bowie, Homer, and Scooter - three tabbies who would sleep in the upstairs bathroom, which my mom would keep closed at night. This was mainly to keep Scooter in a known spot overnight. He was never a totally well cat, and we were always worried about something happening to him while no one was around. If Bowie happened to get locked out, she would scratch at my mother's door in the middle of the night until she got up and let her into the bathroom.

Clockwise from lower left: Bowie, BlueBear, Thor

And that was the situation for several years.

Last year Scooter died, and it was no longer really necessary for Homer and Bowie to sleep in the bathroom. But they had come to prefer it, so my mom kept them there at night. They were both very happy with the arrangement. They would both be there to greet my mom in the morning, and she liked that.

Bowie never really warmed to me. She never wanted me to pick her up. If I scratched her or petted her, she would make a querulous two-note cry that sounded like "Really?" (to which I would respond "Yes, really") and then run away just out of arm's reach. But then she would wait there, and allow me to approach her and scratch her again - on her terms.

She started to throw up everything she ate in mid-May.

Maybe not everything. She held down some stuff, sometimes. My mom was convinced she was dying. I thought she was overreacting, being overly dramatic. I figured she just had a hairball, maybe just an upset stomach.

After nearly two weeks of her eating sporadically and throwing up daily, I was convinced. We decided to take her in to the vet on my next day off, which happened to be May 31.


I drove. My mom sat in the back seat with Bowie. Bowie was in a pet carrier, padded by a blanket. My mom rode with her arm inside the carrier, petting Bowie. Bowie was extremely calm.

About a quarter of a mile from the vet's, we were rear-ended at a flashing crosswalk as we stopped to let a woman pushing a baby stroller cross.

The car was still drivable. We were both wearing seatbelts, unlike the idiot who crashed into us. I was OK, I guess. Bowie was fine. My mom's arm was bruised and cut from being pushed against the opening of the carrier. (The story of the car and its repair and the various cars I rented while it was in the shop will be the topic of another post, maybe.)

We got to the vet's about a half-hour late. He took Bowie right in, performed an examination. Told us she had a large mass in her abdomen. A tumor. He offered to put he down on the spot.

We refused. She was still being a cat. We would not kill her just because she might become inconvenient in the coming weeks. And, given her size and the size of the tumor, it seemed likely that she wouldn't live more than a few weeks.

The vet gave her emergency hydration. He gave us an appetite stimulant and some special cat food. The food could be mixed with water to make a paste which could be administered with a syringe.

For the next seventeen days I administered a daily regimen of pills, food, water, Pet Tinic - anything to keep her going. She gradually got weaker and thinner. She would sit with my mother, or lay on the floor, or sit by herself on a chair. Her spine became bonier and more prominent - one of the sure signs of failing health in a cat - but, paradoxically, her belly seemed soft and full. Maybe that was the tumor. Maybe that was where all the food and water I was giving her with the syringes was going.

A few days before she died, I may have done the thing that killed her.

She never liked the syringes. But she wasn't taking anything on her own. The alternative was to just sit back and watch her die, or take her for a trip to the vet to have her put down. A friend who used to be a respiratory therapist always warned me about administering anything by mouth with a syringe. One wrong move could result in aspiration of the food or water, which could lead to pneumonia and death.

She would struggle against the food and the water. To her, it was the worst thing in the world. She would fight me, and then run away after I was done. As long as she could fight and run, I knew she had some fight left in her.

Five days before she died, as she was growing weaker and weaker, she reacted differently to the syringe. As I shot the quarter-teaspoon of liquefied food paste into her mouth, she snapped back and looked at me with a shocked expression, her mouth agape. A dribble of paste came out of her nostril.

I cleaned her up, as I always did after a syringe of paste, and worried about the paste in the nose. Had I just gotten it into her sinuses? Her lungs? I didn't know. I still don't.

Over the next few days I still gave her water and nourishment. Every morning I woke to expect to find her dead. But she was still alive. Each day my mom suggested that this was the day I should take her to be put to sleep before I went to work. But she would rouse, and run around, and jump on chairs, and fight me as I tried to give her food and water. As long as she could decide for herself where she wanted to be, what she wanted to be doing, I didn't want to have her put to sleep.

June 16 was my last day of work before a week's vacation. My shift ran 11:00 AM to 7:30 PM. I called my mom throughout the day to check on Bowie. During my first break, when I called, she was sitting on my mom's lap. When I called, she jumped off. Perhaps that action dislodged something or did something to her fragile system. Whatever the case, she lay down after that, and never regained consciousness.

From my Facebook post the next morning:

Bowie died at 4:49 AM on June 17 while I held her.

She had been lucid and mobile until yesterday afternoon. Around 1:30 she jumped off my mom's lap, ran over to one of her favorite spots on the floor, next to my old Travelocity gnome, and curled up there. She never got up again. My mom picked her up and held her until I got home from work around 8:00, too late to take her to be euthanized. Her breathing was shallow and rapid, her heart was racing, her eyes open and fixed, and her pupils dilated and unresponsive. Her limbs were outstretched and her paws cold. I changed into nightclothes and took my mom's spot. I held Bowie all night long. After 4:30 AM she began to show changes, stretching her arms and neck to a new position, and I called my mom. Around 4:45 her breathing changed. Her heart stopped beating, and she took a few more spasmodic breaths, then curled herself into a more comfortable position and died.

We will take her up to be cremated this morning.

Coincidentally, our car, which was rear-ended as we took Bowie to the vet's for her diagnosis on May 31, is ready for pickup this morning at the body shop a block from the vet's.

And that was that. I picked up her ashes on June 22, after I recorded a bunch of episodes of the NEPA Blogs Blog of the Week at WBRE. Her little box is now stored with the boxes for all of her cat friends, and Hershey, and cats and dogs she had never met.

I miss her so much, even though I interacted with her so little. It hurts me to look at pictures of her pretty little face. She was so young. I thought we were going to have many more years together. But now I have written this, so that is one step taken in the process.

I love you, little Bowie.

Bowie is missing

UPDATE, 6/23/12: Bowie reappeared overnight. She must have been hiding somewhere downstairs. She wasn't making any sounds down there or showing herself at all. I left the basement door open and in the middle of the night she showed up in front of the closed upstairs bathroom where she usually spends the night - without her collar. This morning I found her collar in an obvious spot on the kitchen floor, complete with bell. So either it was sitting there all this while and she was without it, or she was wearing it all this while and pulled it over her head when she came upstairs.

Bowie has gone missing.

We're not sure when. This has been a chaotic week. My sister has been up, my mom was in the hospital, and I'm working a 3:45-to-12:15 shift. I haven't actually kept track of all the cats amid the running around. My sister says she saw Bowie yesterday morning or the night before.

Now, there's a good chance Bowie is hiding in the house. She's good at that sort of thing. But she also has had some opportunities to slip out of the house, not that she's ever shown any inclination to do so. Possibly when my mom was coming back home from the hospital yesterday, or possibly when I was getting some help bringing in groceries - the door to the garage was inadvertently left open, and at least one cat found his way in there, and it's possible that the inner door may have been left open at the same time that the garage door was open. So she may have slipped out then, or may be hiding in the garage, or may be hiding anywhere else.

If anyone reading this is in the Nanticoke area, she might be in the area of Kosciuszko street. She's a female brown tabby with irregular stripes, wearing a purple collar with a bell. If you spot her, contact me at databoy142 at hotmail dot com.

An older picture showing her stripe pattern

Note the unique back pattern

Homer

Today after I got home from work I watered my tomatoes, moved some heavy terra cotta pots, and slept. Then I woke up, ran the weed whacker, and hauled out the garbage.

More than half of our garbage, by volume, is cat litter. We recently acquired our twelfth cat. I had decided that we were done with cats, but this one had extenuating circumstances.

For the past few months I believe the resident feral population has hovered at five: two from the same litter as Bowie, Thor, and BlueBear, and three from the same litter as Amber and Spooky. We have managed to catch two of those ferals for neutering and re-release, one of the older males and one of the younger females. The other younger female became pregnant at some point and had kittens a few weeks ago at the height of the heat wave. (It appears her kittens have all died - I found and buried two of them last week, and I have seen none anywhere near her today.)

The other older cat has not been around lately. Maybe he's dead, maybe he's just moved on to establish his own territory.

And then there's Homer.

These cats are really just semi-feral. They know that humans on the porch mean that there may be food available, so any time they hear the back door open they will come up the steps and through the propped-open door to see if we have anything for them. Mostly they will keep their distance, dashing back off the porch at the slightest provocation. Except for one of the younger cats.

For weeks, months maybe, one of the three younger cats kept trying to come into the house. Not sneakily, not by stealth: it's just that whenever we opened the back door to go back into the house, he assumed we were inviting him to stroll in, too. Several times he nearly made it, and was caught in mid-stride. He didn't put up a fight when we turned him back, but he would always try again.

Our personal trap-neuter-release program, as you may recall, started with a disaster. While I was able to trap one cat, a young female, almost immediately, she got loose while I was trying to transfer her to another carrier. She bit the hell out of my hands each of the several times I was able to grab her as she raced around the house looking for an exit, and then she spent most of the next three days (Thursday morning through Saturday night) hiding in our house until we successfully re-trapped her. (That first Friday my sister was able to trap an older male that we then had neutered.) We had to hold onto her until the following Friday, when the mobile low-cost spay/neuter clinic came back to town. She spent that week in two oversized pet carriers, being transferred from each when it became too soiled to let her remain.

After that adventure was over and she had healed from her surgery and been released, I took the carriers outside, disassembled them, hosed them down , cleaned them off, and then filled them with a bleach-water mixture to soak for a while. Then I went to work for the night.

That night I was haunted by visions of feral cats drinking the bleach-water mixture from the carriers. My God, what have I done? Have I killed the cats we were trying to save?

The next morning when I got home from work I went straight out and dumped out the remaining bleach-water and hosed out the carriers.

One of the cats was on our porch, sniffing at the food. He yowled a bit, stepped off the porch, jumped off the steps behind a rhododendron, and yowled some more.

Over the next few days I kept an eye out for him. He was suddenly very skinny, as though he weren't eating at all. Had I burned his esophagus and stomach and the rest of his digestive system with bleach-water?

The other cats stopped coming around, though we saw them once in a while. We suspected that they resented what had been done to them, and did not appreciate being made our unwilling guests. And I figured the pregnant one had gone off to find a place to have her babies. The temperature began to soar.

But the skinny cat kept coming around. He would plant himself directly in front of the back storm door, which opens out. Several times I had to pick him up and relocate him so I could open the door all the way. He didn't put up a fight.

Finally it was time for me to go back to work. On that day, my mom decided she had had enough of watching this cat getting skinnier and skinnier, dying by inches. She was going to take him to the vet to see if there was anything that could be done with him.

I told her that she was probably just investing a lot of money in having a cat put to sleep. If he hadn't been accidentally poisoned by me, or intentionally poisoned by someone else, he was probably being eaten alive by parasites and full of diseases. But she decided to take him and that was that.

As I got ready to leave for work, they were finally taking her into a room. As I left for work, she called me with the verdict.

He wasn't dying, not irreversibly. He hadn't been poisoned, intentionally or accidentally. He didn't have rabies, or Feline AIDS, or Feline Leukemia. What he had was a severe respiratory infection that was compromising his ability to eat or drink. The vet gave him I.V. hydration, a massive dose of antibiotics, and prescribed some appetite stimulants. We decided that we would hold onto him for at least two weeks, if possible, and try to get him back to fighting weight.

It became clear very quickly that this was the cat who had always been trying to get into the house. He didn't fight us, not like his feral sister had when we captured her for spaying a few weeks ago, in fact not at all. And I don't think this was just because of his weakened state. He actually seemed to be - well, not just friendly, but actually grateful. Happy to be starting a life as a domestic cat. (This sort of odd behavior in a nearly year-old feral had me wondering about rabies, but the vet says he's clean.)

That was nearly two weeks ago. He is doing well. He has put on weight, thanks to a liquid diet of kitten milk which is now transitioning into a diet of solid food in liquids. Where once his spine was the widest part of his body other than his head, he now has a little belly and a somewhat less-bony spine. He is still showing signs of intense gratitude, nuzzling us when we pick him up and wrapping around our legs when we enter the bathroom-turned-isolation chamber where he is being kept. He still tries to stroll out a door - but now it is the bathroom door, so he can meet with his fellow cats. Several times a day I will carry him around the house so he can see (but not closely interact with) the other cats of the house, especially Nicky the Senior Cat and his sister Amber and brother Spooky.

We were stumped as to what to name him. Finally I decided on a name that reflected his life story: All that he wanted to be was a house cat. All that he wanted was a home.

So now we have our twelfth cat: Homer.


The order of cats:
Nicky, born August 1998 1999 (Based on the date of REM playing at Merriweather Post on September 10, 1999, which is the concert I went to see with my sister the weekend I came down to pick up Nicky.) Abandoned by his mother when she relocated the rest of her litter. Rescued by my sister, then transferred as an infant to us. Senior Cat.
Joey, found in mid-2000 wandering around by my brother's house, looking to get in. Probably several months old at the time..
Babusz, born September 2006.
Scooter, born July 2007.

Bowie, born Spring 2009. Fell into basement twice. The second time, we kept her, May 18, 2009.
Thor, littermate of Bowie, caught barehanded by my mom June 4, 2009.
BlueBear, littermate of Bowie and Thor, trapped (using bird netting as a lure) June 2009.

Ray Chelle, formerly Rachel, littermate of Gretchen (deceased), child of Socks (deceased). Captured (along with his sibling) June 30, 2009.
Peaches, daughter of Tortoise (deceased), caught barehanded by my mom, July 2009.

Amber, born Autumn 2009. Captured October 2009.
Spooky, littermate of Amber. Snatched in his sleep January 1, 2010. (Spooky was fairly old when we caught him, and had a very hard time adapting to life in a house. I decided that he was at the maximum age for taking in a feral.)
Homer, littermate of Amber and Spooky. Came to us, sick and apparently dying, July 2010 - nearly a year old.

Baby Boy, inherited from a neighbor

Romeo, inherited from a neighbor

Bojangles

(Squeaky)

Mama Cat

Spumoni

Wiped out

Wow, am I tired. I've been staying up late, later than I should, because my body still thinks it's on night shift. But now it's just after 8:00 at night and I'm falling asleep...and I start back on four days of night shift tomorrow night.

I've been doing a lot of yard work these last three days. All the leaves from the yard here are either serving as mulch or are bagged and stacked in wire compost bins to start the process of decaying into leaf mold.

Across town I pulled out my garden, put away the tomato stakes, began pruning the grapevines, and mowed the lawn one last time. I then put away the lawnmower and all the garden tools for the winter.

I also decorated the house over there for Christmas. Noting fancy.

Took Bowie to the vet today to get her spaying sutures removed. No problems there, but I nearly vomited when I heard the insipid glurge of "The Christmas Shoes."

Still haven't started on the cookies. Dammit. I'm gonna be doing a lot of baking next week.

Some fun stuff courtesy of Gwyd the Unusual , who I saw perform at the Sideshow Gathering and am now friends with on Facebook: "Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods", a guidebook to strange and mostly unknown creatures said to haunt the woodlands of America. Published in 1910!
I still have to finish my Sideshow Gathering posts...and my Stained Glass Window Project posts...and my Christmas Shopping...and my bills...

Layoff interrupted

Well, I'm not technically on layoff today. I was laid off Saturday and Sunday, and expect to be on Friday...and maybe Saturday as well. My days off this week are Monday through Thursday. But today I'm going in on overtime. So my guaranteed pay this week will be one day of overtime (paid at straight time, since I'm currently at zero hours for the week) and one day of holiday pay. I need to reopen my claim with the unemployment office.

Had to get up early to go and pick up Bowie. She's doing fine after being spayed yesterday. She's happy to see the other cats, and they're all happy to see her.

Now I need to go back to sleep for a few hours. Tomorrow I have a blood donation scheduled. I wonder if my iron levels will be high enough? I've been making a conscious effort to eat more red meat lately. We'll see how it goes.

Spent

I spent enormous amounts of money today. But what do you expect when you get three cats neutered* in one day? On top of that I ordered two wire compost bins from Ace Hardware, and took my mom to an eye appointment and then to Walmart, where we spent some money on cat items and gifts for my nephews - and then went back and spent way more money on a very cool Lego set for my nephew's birthday.

Credit card debt, I have said, is an expression of faith in the future.

I'm tired. I think I'm stuck in night-shift mode, so when I'm up during the day I have a few slumps in the afternoon. I had to get up early this morning. My alarms went off at 6:00** and 6:01, but I stayed in bed until 6:30. I had to get the kitties up to the vet's by 8:30

Thor and BlueBear are fine. Bowie, as had been planned all along, is being kept overnight because of the more traumatic nature of her surgical procedure. But I may be scheduled to work tomorrow - I'm on the list for overtime. I won't know for sure until 8:00 tomorrow morning. Whether I'm working or not, I must pick up Bowie tomorrow. If I am working, it will make for an interesting sleep schedule.


*As my friend Melinda pointed out, "spaying" is also neutering. The male form of neutering is more correctly referred to as "castration."

**To the song "45" by Lauren Malone, who (currently) blogs here. Here is the video, because I just spent a hell of a lot of time searching through the archives of Lauren's many, many blogs to find it. (It's #85 on this list.) NOTE: YouTube videos posted to my blog won't show up on Facebook, so go here to view it. But, seriously, you know you want to be reading my blog, Another Monkey, and not just the reposted posts on Facebook! Besides, Facebook appears to be broken once again today...

Neutered in the morning

Tomorrow morning I am taking Bowie, Thor, and BlueBear to the vet's to be spayed (Bowie) and neutered (Thor and BlueBear.)

While I'm there I will make an appointment for "Rachel", who is about a month younger than these three. We've taken to calling "her" Rachel/Ray, after this pretty little girl developed some clearly male characteristics (such as testicles that I would swear were not there before.) And while my skill at determining a cat's sex is admittedly limited, I'm still pretty sure "she" has some of the characteristics of a girl cat. Either we were very wrong about her sex for the first few months of her life, or she has changed sex completely since she was a kitten, or she is a genuine hermaphroditic cat. So, there may be a double charge for her, as she may need to get spayed and neutered.

In the zoo

The story so far: In this house we have the cats Nicky (or Nikki), Joey, Scooter, and Babusz. We then had Bowie fall into our cellar through a basement window that had had a hole torn in the screen. We caught her brother Thor a week or two later, and caught BlueBear using a Havahart trap. I used the same trap to capture Rachel and her late sister Gretchen, the two survivors of their litter, a few days after their Mother Socks disappeared. My mom caught Peaches, the sole survivor of Tortoise's litter, a week later.

The idea was that we would sort-of "foster" the kittens here, and then as they reached young adulthood I would transfer Bowie, Thor, BlueBear, Rachel, and Gretchen to my house across town. Peaches would stay here. So my mom and I would each have five cats in our respective houses.

Then Gretchen died.

Now Rachel and Peaches have become fast friends, and it seems wrong to split them up. So they both will be staying here.

My brother's dog Trixie is also staying here while he and his family are at the shore for the next few days. You can imagine how that is going.

And now Bowie has gone missing. I saw her yesterday morning, but neither of us have seen her since before I left for work yesterday. She's probably hiding downstairs.

I hope.

UPDATE, 3:30: Found Bowie hiding downstairs, safe and sound, right before I went to bed. She's currently hanging out with Rachel.

And then there were six

Bowie, Thor, and BlueBear had a sleepover at my house last night. They all did very well. They used the litterbox I provided for them, which I stocked with the same type of pine pellets used at my mom's house. They played extensively throughout the bedroom where we all spent the night, but did not manage to break anything. They seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves. Which is good - because at some point in the future, that's where they'll be living, along with Gretchen and Rachel.

One cat who will not be moving there is our latest addition, Peaches. Peaches is the sole survivor of a litter born at the end of May to Tortoise the Tortoiseshell, who was herself born just last September or so, and is the last free-roaming kitten out there. (I no longer count Bowie, Thor, and BlueBear's two siblings as kittens - they are both larger than their domesticated brothers and sister, and have become juveniles / young adults at less than four months.) Not that she will necessarily be the last cat we capture - we would like to trap the remaining adults and have them spayed or neutered. No more kittens.

Peaches is sickly. Her tests for FIV (the feline version of HIV) and Feline Leukemia came back negative, and she has had her first round of shots. But she has an eye infection in both eyes, as well as an upper respiratory infection. We have drops and pills and a liquid medicine we have to give her twice a day.

But this sixth feral kitten is not for me. My mom will keep her, the fifth cat in her group, so we will have five and five. All spayed, all neutered. And as for the outdoor cats...I don't mind a few to keep down the mouse and vole and rabbit populations, but having them breed without constraint is unacceptable, even if the kittens have an incredibly high mortality rate. We will take steps to avoid any future litters.

Kittens, yard work, comic books, and Palin resigning?

This morning I took Bowie for her one-month visit to the vet. She's fine, though she has a mild infection in one eye, and I have to give her drops 2-3 times a day.

I planned to mow the lawn today, but just as soon as I got changed into clothes that I didn't mind getting covered with grass it began to rain. Hard. One of the pop-up storms we'd been expecting. Fine, switch to plan B: head out to comic book store to pick up whatever had arrived for me. (Yes, I've become a regular.) On the way there I drove through two or three more mini-storms, and ditto on the way back. In between storms the sun came out and dried everything off.

I confirmed it was raining at home and meandered a bit on my way back. I stopped at Taco Bell for the first time in about twelve years and ordered two chicken burritos and a Piña Colada slushie. Then I stopped at Kmart to try to get a replacement for my telephone headset, which has come apart in the past week. (Couldn't find a good one.)

After a few more stops I came home and began mowing the lawn. I got the whole front done before another pop-up storm rolled through. These tend to be brief but intense - even now I'm hearing police scanner reports of wires down and storm sewer covers blown off. (There's a lot of that going around.) As the first drops began to fall I dumped my last load of grass clippings around the base of a blueberry bush and hustled the lawnmower back into the garage.

Coming up the steps I could hear the TV chattering away about some woman in politics who felt she had been treated unfairly by the media. Who? Nancy Pelosi? Hillary Clinton? The cuckolded wife of the governor of South Carolina? How would this be considered newsworthy?

As I looked at the TV I saw a familiar face, and the words PALIN STEPPING DOWN AS ALASKA GOV. across the bottom of the screen.

What? I had just been reading some analysis that reiterated that the smartest things Sarah Palin could have done, post election, would be to hunker down, drop out of sight, focus on being governor of Alaska, and bone up on foreign and domestic policy for the next few years, preparing herself for another run in 2012. Instead she has managed to stay in the media spotlight, most recently by either developing a very thin skin (especially for a politician, especially especially for a politician as ruthless and cutthroat as Palin is said to be) or strategically picking fights in the media by taking very public umbrage at selected offenses. A strategy for portraying herself as the persecuted populist hero, perhaps.

Resigning as governor of Alaska is certainly a WTF?* moment.

What made it worse is the fact that the sound was on, and I was assailed by the nonsensical, rambling word salad of her resignation announcement. I will try to get my hands on an unredacted copy. It will be interesting to try to diagram some of her sentences.



So. Now we get to wonder what the hell Sarah Palin has planned next. Meanwhile, I suppose I should have gotten a board and sleeve for the Barack the Barbarian comic I picked up. It was the one with the alternate cover. I think it may have just increased in value!


*"What the frig?" See here for more information.

Kittens, Dinosaurs, and Uggs

(OK, that title is technically incorrect: the footwear linked below are NOT Uggs. My mistake. But since the word "uggs" is part of the link name, I will leave it as-is, in accordance of my "don't screw with the URL" policy. )

Please remember to click on the links in the Silence Is The Enemy post every day in June. It costs you nothing, and it generates revenue for an important cause.


My posting may become irregular over the next few days, as work and a visit from my sister overlap. If I'm not around for a while, I'll leave you with this:

Big and little: Scooter hovering over Bowie.


Three siblings: BlueBear at top, Bowie at bottom left, Thor at bottom right. Note the different patterns on Bowie and Thor. In this picture, Bowie appears to have an "angry face", while Thor appears to have a "happy face".

"We found your camera cable!" The gap between keyboard and monitor is guarded by two dinosaurs. Actually, the Elasmosaurus on the right is technically not a dinosaur. And the Styracosaurus on the left bears a stamp indicating that he is actually a "Styrarus."


I received this e-mail the other day and was immediately inclined to ignore it. But the links checked out, and it looked legitimate. I figured I would ask around to see if anyone else received it:

Hi

I just stumbled upon your site anothermonkey.blogspot.com and I’m not sure if you’re interested but we created a gift card for your readers which gives them $30 to spend at our store.

Sorry if I’ve wasted any of your time!

Feel free to shoot me any questions or ideas if your keen...

All your readers need to do is visit our website http://www.whooga.com/ and enter the code ANOTHERMON into the cart. We ship to all countries and there are no conditions.

Kind Regards,
Alicia

www.whooga.com

(NOTE: These shoes are NOT Uggs, despite what I wrote in the title.)

Turns our Dr. Isis received a similar (though not identical) letter. She also believes it is legitimate. Now, these aren't exactly the sort of shoes I would wear, and I'm not getting anything out of this offer, but I figured there is no loss (and some benefit) to the Cosmic All by passing this offer along. I mean, if you're inclined to want this sort of thing, you'll probably know whether the prices being offered at the store (less a $30 coupon) are decent. If anyone knows of any scammy aspect of this offer, please let me know.

Well, so much for me! Better start getting ready for work.

Kittens and yard work

Kittens and yard work are rapidly consuming all of my time. Everything else is suffering as a result.

I'm not putting as much into blogging, not writing the posts I want to because I just don't have the energy. (I have, however, made major revisions and additions to NEPA Blogs, and I may incorporate some of those changes into Another Monkey.)

I'm gardening in reverse: I started out with three tomato plants set out and now have one. Stupid birds. Next year I'll use Wall-O-Waters, which also protect the young plants from birds. Actually, it's not too late to use them this year...I'll see if I can find any in my shed. I still have a dozen tomato plants in reserve, but I'm reluctant to have them all get eaten. Maybe by next week they'll be taller.

I have about half a dozen people I need to get in touch with. Some of them contacted me several weeks ago and I'm just being unspeakably rude by not getting back to them.

I've found out via Facebook that two unconnected friends have ended their respective relationships. That makes me sad.

I'm also sad that the cute girl who lived across the street from my house across town has moved. I last saw her the night my mom and I were retrieving Bowie from my house - wow, three and a half weeks ago! - and something seemed amiss. She was dressed differently than usual, though usually when I see her she is dressed up for wherever she works. But she was loading stuff into her car. I glanced at her as I got into my car and asked myself Is she moving out? I wanted to ask her, but something stopped me. Maybe I was just tired. Next time I was over thataway, there was a different car in front of her house. It looked like her car, but was a different color. Did she just get a new car? No. Now there's a FOR RENT sign in the window of her apartment. Oh, well. I guess I should have said goodbye when I had the chance.

My twenty-year class reunion from the University of Scranton is this weekend. I'm not going. A lot of people I know aren't going. But some are. Maybe if my job situation were different - like, say, if I weren't working twelve hours each night of the reunion in a factory production job that has nothing to do with my double-major in Physics and Philosophy, a job where every day I get further and further from any possibility of ever again holding a job that does have anything to do with my degree, or indeed any job that requires skills more advanced than the ones involved in doing factory production work - I would consider going. But for now, no. Maybe next time.

Bowie had her initial vet's visit on May 26, so her follow-up will need to be sometime between June 24 and 26, or July 2 or 3, or July 10 or 13 - by which point Thor and BlueBear will be ready for their follow-ups. And I'm sure the grass will need to be mowed, again, during each of those groups of days off.

Kittens and yard work. That's what my life has come to.

Daily cat post

Please remember to click on the links in the Silence Is The Enemy post every day in June. It costs you nothing, and it generates revenue for an important cause.


Haha, I meant to do this as a supplementary post for Tuesday, but I got wrapped up in another post on NEPA Blogs and by the time I looked up, it was already Wednesday! So does this count as my Wednesday post? You'll just have to stay tuned to see!

The two latest additions to our feral kitten collection went to the vet today and got a clean bill of health. Everyone at the vet's office is telling me how I need to capture the rest of the litter, and the mother, and the other two litters and mothers in our neighborhood, and all the other stray cats in Nanticoke, and bring them in to get checked, and spayed, and neutered. As I handed out $114 per kitten for the initial checkup, which included Feline AIDS and Feline Leukemia tests, de-wormer, and an initial distemper shot, as well as a physical exam - a bargain, since I was expecting something more like $150 per cat - I could only smile, nod, and try to figure out how many days of overtime I will have to work to support these cats, when and if overtime becomes available again.

Bowie was glad to finally get to play with Thor and BlueBear. BlueBear seems to be more traumatized than the other kittens - while Thor and Bowie rolled around and ambushed each other, BlueBear preferred to sleep against my heart while curled up under my shirt for well over an hour, something Bowie outgrew several weeks ago.

Tomorrow I think I will be going over to my house across town to mow the lawn, possibly after mowing the lawn here. I may be taking all three kittens with me, to start getting them used to their future home!

BlueBear

Please remember to click on the links in the Silence Is The Enemy post every day in June. It costs you nothing, and it generates revenue for an important cause.




BlueBear is a very shy (or frightened) kitten. While Thor has fully adapted to being around humans, and will play with any toys we give him and will even cry when we leave his presence, BlueBear will always hide when we come onto the porch.

BlueBear's name commemorates another black cat who was born to the same mother several years ago. He had no fear of humans whatsoever. Whenever the other kittens from that litter would see us they would scatter, but one would hold his ground and stare at you as you approached. When you were almost close enough to touch him, he would calmly walk away. We called him "Spooky", but one day a nephew caught a glimpse of him and thought he was a bear - and from then on he was named "SpookyBear." It has been several months since I saw SpookyBear, and the last time I saw him he looked bedraggled and weak, and was behaving deferentially towards the younger cats, the ones who were born last October. I presume he has since died, before reaching his third birthday. I think only one cat from his litter is still alive. Feral cats do not have long life expectancies in the wild.

(The name also commemorates the fact that he had beautiful blue eyes about four or five weeks ago, when I was able to pick him up and get a good look at him. The blue is now gone. Bowie also had bluish eyes when we first got her, two weeks ago, but her eyes are now a yellowish-hazel-gray.)

Thor and BlueBear are both about 50% larger than Bowie. I don't know if this is because they are both males, or because they have been eating a different diet than their sister for the last few weeks, or because being outside forces a kitten to grow up faster. Whatever the case, I expect that tomorrow's visit to the vet will not be as much fun as Bowie's visit was two weeks ago.

Three

Please remember to click on the links in the Silence Is The Enemy post every day in June. It costs you nothing, and it generates revenue for an important cause.


And now we have three feral kittens. Well, two ferals plus Bowie.

I had a plan half-made up on the way home today: The kittens love the nets, right? They play in them all the time, in a way that the older cats cannot. So if I were to stuff the opening of the Havahart trap with nets, maybe the kittens would manage to get through. Maybe...

As I pulled up at the house I saw three cats playing in the nets at the bottom of the back porch. Two young adults from the litter from last October, and the black kitten.

I especially wanted to grab the black kitten. Not just for the sake of having her. Not even for the sake of getting her out of the breeding population. No, see, whether you want to believe it or not, there are people out there who get their kicks torturing and killing cats.

There's a group of kids in the local inbred haven of Shickshinny (about ten miles from here) who have been recording themselves doing just that and then posting the videos to YouTube. Prosecutors say there's nothing they can do about it, since the videos could have been altered once they were posted. So these kids are free to do as they please.

Black cats are a particular target for this sort of thing.

The cats scattered as I got out of the car. I checked under the overturned cart, but there were no cats hiding there.

I walked onto the porch, and there was the trap, already loaded with cat food. The adult cat we caught yesterday, who tried to exit our porch via a high-speed leap through the screen, apparently didn't manage to eat very much.

I thought what the hell and placed the trap at the bottom of the steps. I stuffed the entrance with nets - not enough to block the door from closing, just enough to intrigue a kitten. I then went into the house to get Bowie and Thor, who were sleeping in two separate - and separated - pet carriers. We would sit on the porch together and wait to see if anyone took the bait.

As soon as I stepped onto the porch, I heard the SLAM of the trap door closing.

Several cats were gathered around the trap, looking at the black kitten inside.

So now we have Bowie, Thor, and the black kitten I had planned to call BlueBear. Back when his or her eyes were blue. They may still be blue, I don't know. I didn't get a good look at him (or her) as he (or she) ran out of the trap and into hiding somewhere on the porch.

I'm glad we have this kitten. It will mean company for Thor, since he isn't allowed to play with the other cats (including his sister Bowie) until he gets checked out by a vet. But he and the black kitten can play as much as they want to.

For the first day we had him Thor cried for his mommy, for his brothers and sisters, for his lost freedom of the wilds of the back yard. Now he cries for one of us to come out onto the porch to keep him company. I want him to draw out the black kitten, to show it the food bowls, and the kitten milk bowl, and the comfy bed where they can snuggle together. But I also tossed a toy out to him, a clever and simple spinner ball. He is having a great time with it on the porch. Hopefully, before too long the black kitten will come out of hiding and decide to play, too.

By popular request

Bowie gets a lightsaber.

http://cheezburger.com/view.aspx?ciid=4357527

Tomatoes, Blueberries, Roses, Cats, Dogwoods, and Toilets

Please remember to click on the links in the Silence Is The Enemy post every day in June. It costs you nothing, and it generates revenue for an important cause.

I planted my garden yesterday, sort of. Three Chadwick's Cherry tomatoes started from seed and six six store-bought marigolds. I have about a dozen more tomatoes almost big enough to plant. I'll probably only plant three or so more over at my house, plant some at my mom's, and give some to my brother and my cousin. These are semi-perennial (well, technically, "hardy annual") tomatoes, in that they will come up again next year from seeds in fruit that falls to the ground this year, unless they are sterilized by cross-pollinating with a potato-leaf tomato like Brandywine.* (Which is why I needed to finally buy some new seed, after over a decade of harvesting tomatoes that grew from fallen seed.)

My main focus now is protecting my blueberries from birds. After investigating a bunch of possibilities, I may just staple bird netting to stakes to make "cages" around the bushes that don't actually come in contact with the bushes. I'll drape more netting over the top as a lid. If that doesn't work, I'll switch to the chicken wire idea and hope that the birds don't just use it as a convenient perch.

More photoblogging. Here are some pictures of my Royal Highness as it appeared on Monday. I was thinking of this as resembling a bouquet of roses the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Then I realized it was closer in size to a Jeep. It's over six feet high, about ten feet along the east-west axis, and about eight feet along the north-south axis. And covered with roses.

Two of Bowie. First, here she is with one of her favorite toys - or maybe hoping to learn to fly:


And here she is in semi-transparent mode.


I met a friend in Tunkhannock today. We had plans for a hike, but the skies opened up shortly after we met. So we settled for shopping at a hardware store, eating a late lunch, and taking a short walk in the rain around town. While passing an abandoned building of unknown previous function, we spotted a flowering tree of some sort growing near it. My friend went over to investigate, and believes it is some sort of eight-petaled Dogwood. Dogwood flowers normally have four petals, I think, so this one is unusual. (But there are known varieties that do have eight or more petals, so maybe this is just one of those.) Perhaps the building was some sort of secret science facility, full of mutagenic radiation or chemicals?


And on the other side of the building...


...a great many discarded toilets.

I'm laid off tomorrow, and possibly the rest of the rotation. First time since I got bumped to night shift back in mid-March. I'll have to dust off the "how to file for unemployment" instructions. But I also have to call back after 9:00 tomorrow morning (and every morning for the next four) to see if I've been un-laid off for the day. What fun.

*This is really just a guess. But I had good luck with the Chadwick's Cherries reseeding themselves for over ten years, regardless of what other sorts of tomatoes we planted. Then one year I planted some Brandywine tomatoes, and from then on - pfft, no more Chadwick's Cherries.

Photoblog

I'm tempted to let these images stand without explanation, which is how I originally published them. But I want to give at least a little description to each image or group of images.


These first three shots are of the Royal Highness rosebush that I started at least ten years ago as a cheap little plant purchased at a now-defunct home improvement store, and planted (that is, "put in the ground" as opposed to "kept in a huge pot that I put in the shed during the winter") with my nephew back in 2001. This bush us now gigantic, with the first flush of roses appearing at the end of May. I honestly didn't expect these much before next week, but here we are. Keep in mind that there was a frost on the morning of Wednesday, May 20.





These next two shots are of an offspring rosebush - grown from a branch of the original that I clipped through partway, treated with root stimulating hormones, and planted in dirt while still attached to the main plant. This bush is only a few years old, perhaps since 2005.


And yes, that is dead grass all around it - grass clippings, as a matter of fact, which serve as a weed-suppressing, moisture-retaining mulch.





This is another offspring rosebush. Note how the offspring are as generously covered with roses as the parent.


Royal Highness isn't the only rose in bloom The Blaze bush on the south side of my mom's house already has some blossoms.


This bush and the two flanking the driveway are the last known descendants of a rosebush planted by my grandfather, ordered from Jackson & Perkins some fifty years ago. The originals died long ago, as did other daughter plants at cousins' houses. Someday I will create an offspring of one of our three Blaze bushes and reestablish it at my grandparents' old house - now my house.


Irises. Not quite done as of today, but almost.





Two of little Bowie's siblings huddle in the shade of the overturned garden cart that has served as their shelter since they were born. These kittens are about 25% larger than Bowie.


Bowie makes herself comfortable at my house across town yesterday. This is where she lounged while I mowed the lawn. I was so wiped out at the end of the day - I had mowed the lawns at both houses, and had run the string trimmer until the battery was dead - that I decided to spend the night there. I let Bowie sleep with me in my bed. She spent most of the night bouncing around the room, occasionally curling up on top of me to sleep for minutes at a time. Several times she curled up on the side of my head. At one point she leaped over me several times and then landed sprawled across my neck - and promptly fell asleep. I had to move her slightly because her heart was beating right in my ear, at what seemed like three hundred beats per minute. (Today during her checkup it was 136 beats per minute. She got a clean bill of health, and is now allowed to play with the other cats.)


It's not all Roses and Irises out in the garden. Strawberries are also in season, with the first fruits ripening and plenty more on the way.


Another palindromic milestone: My car hit 303,303 "official" miles today.


The sun looked a bit odd last Sunday, May 17. Interesting ray effect.


Finally, an illustration for Truck On Fire from last Thursday. This photo was taken from at least a mile before the actual fire. The smoke was visible from well over ten or fifteen miles away.

Back to work tomorrow...I think! Time to put little Bowie to bed and spiral in myself. Good night!

Kitten news

Little Bowie is eating, peeing, and pooping on her own, without assistance. Unfortunately I found out the second item yesterday while she was sitting on the table next to me as I was paying some bills, and the third thing while she perched on my shoulder this morning.

She loves the sound of the keys clicking on the keyboard, and is also fascinated by the techno/industrial music that plays whenever I open a friend's MySpace page. She also likes to climb on me. My hands, arms, and shoulders are covered with little scratches from her claws.

It looks like a beautiful day today. Too bad I have to be in bed in a little bit! After I throw my pooped-on shirt in the wash...