A Band of Brothers

[It was chilly last night, and Charlie Company decided to enjoy some of my body heat while I was watching teevee.]


Libby took the kittens to the vet on Monday, where we discovered that we have three brothers. Charlie Company. There's the nervous squeaky one, black coat just like his mom, very quick, very very curious. He's already climbed over the barrier to our loft bedroom, and will no doubt be balancing on the ledge over the stone floor below within the next week, unless we decide to cardboard ourselves completely into our bedroom (which sucks). This one is "Wuzzy." Perhaps they're all going to end up with different names eventually, in fact it's likely. I've been calling him Wuzzy here. Wuzzy got me up this morning by, um, being there. The cat alarm system is an effective alternative to a radio that brings only bad country music or horrible news, and requires no connection to the grid.

Fuzzy is going to be much bigger than Wuzzy. He's got much softer fur and big feet. He's shy, has a caution about arms reaching for him, yet quickly snuggles up and even purrs now and then, and will go to sleep almost without exception when being petted, unless something very exciting is happening across the room. He has a quiet interest in the world. Last evening I was playing a game of wii tennis and Fuzzy sat and watched atop a scratching post, until the other two attacked him from behind and got him involved in their ongoing tussle. Fuzzy looks at you from under his brow, not exactly straight on.

The most striking of the boys is of course "Bruiser" as I first called him, although now I'm lobbying for "Chessie" and Libby's come up with a different name-a-day. He's the most self-contained, with the softest fur imaginable. He'll snuggle up and purr on his schedule, but doesn't much like to be just picked up at our whim. He likes to rough house with Wuzzy, and we've noticed that when they're all bedding down, he tends to try to nurse one or the other of his brothers. We're not sure about that. Libby's known kittens who grew to cats who never got over nursing inappropriately. "He'll nurse the dots off a chenille bedspread" is something we've heard said. It doesn't sound good. On the other hand, we don't want to be prudes.

I hear that when we get these guys neutered, we'll have to separate them for a week to keep the surgeries safe. That's going to be one tall order. Maybe we can space it out. It's coming up, this next step. Next weekend they'll be "sat" for the first time, as Libby and I have to go play some music out of town. One nice thing is, they keep each other company. I'm not sure if, in the end, we're going to keep all three. It's a major handful. Already we're living in a house with cardboard walls, and while we've never been one for a highly structured, orderly home life (Libby once put a sticker up on the fridge which said, "My only domestic quality is that I live in a house"--I took that to be a significant marriage principle and have tried to take it into consideration at all times, as the years of bliss have rushed by like autumn leaves in a hurricane)--still, having to program the microwave from over a cardboard wall isn't the easiest thing to accomplish.

Meanwhile, the larger world which has come to us continues. Momma is probably pregnant. We're frantically researching trapping methods before some new brood arrives. This week I put out a second plate of food for her as she was acting like she wanted more (in her complex method of signalling me--by showing herself, then hiding, then showing again). I was washing dishes by the door where she eats, and glanced over. There was a new cat there--a gray tabby with an amazing fur ball at the end of his tail, almost like a lion has. Never seen this guy before. Sheesh, now there's three around. I tapped on the window and he flew off the porch and out through the woods. He knew he was trespassing--on my turf. But I'm thinking that we have what in the parlance is known as a "colony." There's certainly plenty of woods out there. We've sighted the momma of course, and the big yellow cat who acts as though he owns the place. Now this third one. Maybe a former kitten from an earlier brood?

If you want to watch lots of videos about catching feral cats, they're certainly there, on youtube. Google "trapping cats" and you're on your way to a morning of delight. There's one I particularly enjoyed involving catching a whole colony with one big trap. The trick there is getting each one into a smaller carrier. It looked easy enough. On the video I mean. Driving a race car looks easy on the video too. Meanwhile, I watch the little waves of responsibility expand, ever wider, out of that moment, so long ago now yet only yesterday, when I saw a mysterious black cat insinuate herself into a distant storage shed. Little did I know.

Anyways, as I was starting to say--the Monday vet trip gave us Charlie Company, a round of worming meds, and a start to the shots they'll all need to be, um, domesticated. Which may in the end mean something akin to Libby's fridge bumper sticker of long ago. The boys do seem to like to use a litter box. I sure didn't teach them that, so there's at least something domesticated about 'em.

A Dark Day in North Carolina

[illustration by Maurice Sendak from "Where the Wild Things Are"]

Go over to the NPR site and listen to the wonderful interviews Terry Gross replayed last night with the late Maurice Sendak.

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/08/152248901/fresh-air-remembers-author-maurice-sendak

You might have to click around to hear all the interviews. It's worth it. Indeed, I'd rather you just listen to them than even come back and read this, but if you do...

Mr. Sendak was by any measure a person who wonderfully fulfilled his gift of life. He was a beloved and renowned children's author, who wrote books that children loved, but with great depth and truth, which adults also perceived and appreciated. He was a person of rare generosity and kindness. He embodied towering empathy, particularly for children. At one point in one of the interviews he talks about how children frequently did not understand why he was asked to autograph their books, and found the experience upsetting. Either he was stranger taking away their favorite book, and or (worse still), someone who was going to write in their book--something they had always been told not to do. He recounted a particular case of a "brave boy" who shouted, during the experience, "hey, don't mess up my book!" Sendak had to take the father aside and praise the boy--show the dad that what his kid did was actually seeing the world aright--reasonable, connected to reality--not something that was embarrassing to the dad.

Well along in life, and when the attitude towards gay and lesbian people in the United States had softened to some degree, Mr. Sendak "came out." During these interviews he talks about his partner of 50 years, a psychoanalyst who died four years ago. He talks about grief, about losing so many friends as he grew older (a fate anyone who lives a long time will endure). Even with his partner dying, and himself in very ill health, Mr. Sendak undertook a new book. He said that he had many younger friends who came and helped him, and who seemed to think he was wise. He laughed at that. As well as empathy, and a huge heart full of love, he had humility.

And yesterday North Carolina stuck a knife in the heart of love, empathy, and humility. We voted to make only a "marriage" between a man and a woman legal--indeed, "constitutional," in North Carolina. My guess (based on some legal opinions I've read and heard on the air) is that this constitutional amendment will actually injure thousands of families, including thousands of children, since there are of course many relationships of "marriage" which do not involve just one man and one women--and many of them involve children.

This is nothing particularly new in North Carolina or in the country. According to Rachel Maddow, this kind of referendum has occurred 33 times before yesterday, and lost all but once. The prejudice and bigotry America holds to its bosom towards gays and lesbians has never been seriously addressed. Precious few teachers and leaders have actually tried to lead ordinary Americans to the light on this, no matter what they themselves actually believed. And of course far too many teachers and leaders simply share the hate and bigotry. In a Fayetteville NC church just last week--leading up to the vote yesterday--a minister told his congregation to "smite the limp wrist if it appears in your family." When there was something of a media uproar about his sermon, his congregation responded with justifications--"he's being taken out of context," they said.

Mr. Sendak talked at length about his childhood, and about how his parents were desperate for a quiet, well-behaved little boy. He said his brother Jack saved him--Jack became an ally in an otherwise oppressive life. And so Mr. Sendak managed to blossom--to start writing and drawing his wonderful books. They made him famous and reasonably well off. They made us happy, and better people. But this gift did not stop North Carolinians from giving Mr. Sendak one last passing kick, because he was in the end of it nothing more than another faggot.

What a sad, sad day for North Carolina. One can only hope that, upon reflection, North Carolina voters will realize which party stood with the brutes and bigots. Mr. Biden just this past week said he had "no problem" with two people of whatever sex having a marriage. I believe he's a Democrat.

Update: Digby has a very good piece on the amendment posted today:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/problem-with-states-rights-part-745.html

Be sure to listen to the interview with the NC legislator. Rust indeed never sleeps.

While They Sleep

A return to the larger matters. Start with Charles Pierce:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/obama-campaign-2012-8583284

I read on a lot of liberal blogs that Obama is so far superior to Mr. Romney that there's no way he can lose. If one is a rational, grounded citizen, particularly with a memory longer than, say, 1994, it simply seems inconceivable that yet another Republican Administration could be allowed into office. Romney is George W. Bush cubed. It's simply amazing. He's the same guy, the same arrogant, rich, know-it-all we saw in Bush, the same utter belief in money. Plus, Romney has always believed in himself, in his own judgment. The dog-on-roof story is important mostly because he still stands by it. "He was having fun up there."

Meanwhile, there is a states-rights counterrevolution grinding on in many key presidential election states. Just look at Wisconsin, or Michigan, or Tennessee, or Virginia, or Florida, or Ohio. Laws are being passed which will limit access to the polls by voters who tend to vote Democratic. Here in North Carolina, the likelihood of Obama winning again is not high. (An interesting bell-weather will be Tuesday's upcoming primary, where a nasty "whack the queers" constitutional amendment embellishes the ballot like the star on the Xmas tree. So-called "gay marriage" is already illegal in NC. Now we're asked if we want to make it unconstitutional. A small ray of hope: in my little town there are some signs in yards saying "Another Family Against the Amendment," and "The Amendment is Bad for Children." Maybe that means this horrible idea will lose. Maybe that will mean there's more tolerance and good will left in the North Carolina electorate than one might think--surely a good thing for Mr. Obama, who represents those values in far greater degree than Mr. Romney.

The fact remains. America is an either/or democracy. One of the poles of that dichotomy now believes in destroying the country as we know it--destroying the compassion that Roosevelt and the various Democratic Administrations (and even in some ways the Nixon Administration) built into the on-going history we all are living. To have one of the two parties so radicalized, so destructive, so... well, lost. That is a very dangerous thing for all of us in an already dangerous world.

I hear rustling in the kennel. The Houdahenians awake. They know nothing of these matters, but we're down to the last can of cat food around here, and it's 8 miles to town.

[You can get the calendar and lots of other good stuff at chessieshop.com]

Houdahenianland, Chapter 2: They Sign the Lease

A few days back, Libby decided it was too frustrating to keep watch on the three critters while they searched for kitty-crevices in our cardboard box living room boundary fence. The living room is a log-walled room, which means no convenient flat edges for a panel of cardboard to line up with at more or less 90 degrees. There will always be a serrated line made up of the logs and the intervening chinking area--which is recessed. The logs themselves, being hand-hewn oak logs, are by no means plumb. The hewing happened back in 1867, and originally the interior was paneled with some kind of beaded board. How many cats have lived in this house since it enclosed thin air? A question for Saint Anselm perhaps. As I moved it piece by piece in 1979, shall we count only the kitties who've been in my care?

Anyways, Libby kitty-proofed the kitchen during one late night this past week, and now they have a room which we can safely leave them in, for a good while, when we have something else to do (such as write, watch tv, do the books, etc. Cooking we might need to move 'em to still another room--Libby's putting up card board panels even as we speak. Then we'll have two rooms out of five for the critters to simply live in. As thought they were, um... cats.

They're all eating, drinking, pooping, sleeping, playing. It worries us how fiercely they play, but so far we've seen no actual blood drawn. You could put out an eye with those whip-fast claws, I tell the gray one (he's now Gracie, and might be a she). Stop biting your sister I tell Fuzzy. Stop biting your brother I tell Wuzzy. Here's a ball to play with, stop trying to find out how to get behind the stove, I tell Wuzzy and Gracie. They go back to attacking each other's tails and ears, like I just warned them about. When Fuzzy climbs atop the kitty condo to just sit back from the action and observe, it annoys both Wuzzy and Gracie greatly--and they both attack him from opposite sides. Eventually, they all go to sleep for a while, the two black ones wrapped around each other, Gracie adjacent, on three straight-backed chairs with cushions sporting wonderfully dangling ties which have previously been of great interest to all.

It's Saturday. Laundry day. Some gardening perhaps. A summer meal, as it's 90 already. This morning Libby set up their first vet appointment for Monday morning. They'll get checked out, blood-tested, etc. Gracie had a bit of a cough last night--but we think it was some lint rather than something terrible--judging by her/his spirit and appetite today. Gawd knows we have some lint here and there for them to find. Like children, everything is interesting to taste.

Libby took the pictures. You'll of course note that as I'm wearing a Kyle Busch tee, we are using Lowes Building Supplies boxes to barricade the portions of the room(s) we'd rather our charges remain innocent of. We figure such product placement will succor JJ and might even produce a victory tomorrow at "Dega" for the big Four-Eight. We'll all be watching--all 5 of us! Gracie auditions for the role of the Chessie Cat, certainly the best American Railroad logo there ever was. Gracie is even the right color as the original model, although I have seen the logo with a black cat. Might be the moment for a name change.