My Bud

This past winter was pretty bad by all accounts.  It was one of those weather events that take place every decade.  You know where you have a shit ton of ice and snow for three months of the year and then the next 10, hardly any?   Yeah. That was what this past winter was like.  It reminded me of the last big winter we had.  That was back in 2003.    We got a lot of snow dumped on us.  So much in fact, most of my town pretty much shut down and I was able to walk up the middle of a major roadway to the grocery store in the early evening without encountering a vehicle.

It was February 2003 and also President’s Day Weekend.   I was living in a townhouse with a small patch of yard off my back stoop that ended in a chain link fence.  Beyond the fence was brush.  And In that brush there lived a rabbit, which we named Russell.  I don’t know if it was a boy or girl, but we were pretty sure the same rabbit kept coming to my back door.

We had been feeding Russell for a while and, at one point, were able to feed him/her directly from our hands.  And when the snow hit, we felt bad because we had sort of screwed Russell by feeding him/her.

(I’m going to just keep calling it a him for the sake of this story.  Any objections?  Good.)

So, because Russell had sort of become accustomed to us feeding him, he might have had trouble foraging for himself.   I got a box and some alfalfa hay and set up a little shelter on my back stoop.  I had hoped I would look outside my dining room door and see Russell asleep in the box, snuggled and warm.  But that Friday, when I looked out, I saw something else, a threat.

Instead of Russell, I saw this black and white cat sitting next to the box where some food had been placed for Russell.  Fearing this stray cat would attack Russell, I leaned out the door and tried to shoo it away.   The lanky cat looked up at me and mewed this long mew that seemed rather pathetic.  But I wasn’t about to doom Russell, so I continued to shoo away the cat and eventually, it left.  I went about my day and when my girlfriend came over that night, she looked out the back to see the cat had returned.

“There’s a cat out there!”

“Again?  Dammit, I shooed that thing away this morning.  I don’t want it eating Russell.”

“YOU DID WHAT?!?!?!”

“I shooed it away.”

“Oh my God!  What is wrong with you?  There’s like a foot of snow out there.  The poor thing!”

“Just leave it be, it will go back to its home.”

“I don’t think it has one.  I’m going to go get it.”

“Don’t do that!”

This was the normal routine.  She would see some animal outside roaming around, go get it and then we’d be stuck with a big ass dog or something… actually I would be stuck with it, while we located the owner.  I should mention that I am allergic to cats, by the way.   My eyes puff out, get itchy and watery, and I sneeze.  It’s not fun.  Also, my lease forbid cats unless I paid an extra fee, probably for cleaning.

But off she went, anyways.  I’d hear this exchange of her calling it and it mewing at her go back and forth for a few minutes.   Eventually, she got it to come to the door.  She opened the sliding glass door and waited.  Within a few minutes, the cat just slinked right into my dining room, snow up to its hips.

“Well, now what the hell am I going to do with it?”

“Name him.”

“You do realize I am allergic?  And that I am not allowed to have a cat?”

“So?”

That was it.  That was her argument.  She excused herself and went to the store.  

“I’m just going to get a cheap litter box and some food.  We’ll figure out where he belongs in the morning.”

February 2003

She came back with a litter box, a mini cat tree, food, and treats.   I was livid.   But he looked pathetic.  He appeared to be emaciated and had been in a fight because he had fur missing and some scratches on his neck.   My girlfriend gave him some milk.  We determined it was a him, while Russell was just assumed to be one.  And we gave him some food.  And against better judgment I let the cat stay in my bedroom with the litter box next to my bed.   During the night, I heard him use the litter box and the stench was almost as bad as the sound.  It was like a scene out of Dumb and Dumber.  I could literally see his face in excruciating pain.  He looked like he was actually sweating from the duress. 

In the morning, we took him to the vet.  He was suffering from malnutrition, some cuts, a touch of frostbite, and he was riddled with worms.  Apparently, he had been on his own for a while.  He had now become my responsibility.    It helped that I had an extra day off from work to deal with this, but I still wasn’t happy about it.  I didn’t exactly have a say in the matter.  Still, the bastard was cute and had a lot of personality.  So, I kept him.  Now, I just needed a name.  Drake, Ash, Shadow.  All rejected.  Baxter?  No, too commercial.  I’m an actor and this was a tuxedo cat, so Oscar seemed to be the most appropriate.   

I spent the evenings with him sitting next to me on the couch and when I would go to bed, I would usually close my door.  Thankfully, I moved the litter box to another bedroom, but still, he wanted to be with me.  So, I’d leave the door open and he’d come in and get on the bed.  Then, he’d promptly, walk around my pillow, stepping on me and getting in my face.  He was a real pain in the ass.  Eventually, I figured out that if I sat with him on the couch long enough, he would fall asleep, and then I could sneak upstairs as long as I left the TV on with a timer set.   That way I could get a night’s sleep without his interruptions.   Some days, he figured out my plan and raced me to the steps.

He had some pretty interesting habits.  He would walk up to a toy and promptly stomp on it with his back paw.  He loved sitting on the tile at the bottom of my steps, where it was cool.  He would sit in the window and just chitter at the birds.  He also liked sitting on the arms of my couch with one leg dangling to the side.   He had these huge back legs that were white and resembled those socks you wore up to your knees in the 70s.    We also developed a bit of a rapport with each other.  I would see him in the morning before I’d go to work and would head boop him on my way out the door.  We even came up with a voice with him that was sort of a caricature of a friend’s.   It wasn’t until he came face to face with a dog at the back window that he made this noise that sounded like “Water, Water, Water, Water,” that made me realize that the voice I did was actually spot on as his own.

But he was also ornery.  And my then girlfriend now, at that moment, fiancée made the determination that he needed a playmate.  I needed to get another cat.  So, I adopted another tuxedo cat named Emmy.  Get it.  Oscar and Emmy.  He was never a huge eater but he was a big cat.  I want to say he was part Maine Coon except he was a short hair.   We had to keep Emmy separate from him because she would woof down her dinner and then go after his. 

I outgrew the townhouse and moved into a house with my fiancée and two cats, followed by two more, twins Willow and Lucy. Oscar was a bit of a puss and hid immediately, while Emmy explored.    He was burdened with being the only male cat in the house and even though he asserted his dominance, Emmy never submitted to him.  She was taken from her mother and litter mates too soon and developed an OCD about things like eating.  In fact, at one point, she tried and succeeded in nursing off of Oscar, though he never produced anything except self-shame over the matter.  I always said I had three cats, Emmy, Willow, and Oscar, and Oscar had a cat, Lucy.   Lucy seemed to follow him wherever he went.  If he lied on the couch, she snuggled up on top of him, almost.  If it was dinner time, he’d take his time coming to the kitchen and even wander through, but Lucy would cut him off or go round him up vocally and physically.   When we slept, he would lay on a pillow between us, and then of course, Lucy would come up and get in his face.  He put up with a lot.  For almost ten years he and I just shook our heads at each other over how we lost control of things.   Then again, I never wanted him in the first place.  

 Snuggle buds

After my daughter was born, Oscar started to become a lap cat.  He loved having his ears stroked as he sat on your lap.  He loved it.  He’d purr like an engine then he would shake his head out when you stopped.    Among his growing number of idiosyncrasies, he added busting down the unsecured bathroom door while you were in there, hopping up on the edge of the tub to watch the water droplets roll down the side, and not really eating the shreds or chunks of wet food, but eating the gravy.   He’d even get on the floor and roll on his back, enticing me to join him, only to move just out of reach when I would get down on the floor with him.  Still, every morning when I would go to work, I’d call him up on the piano bench and head boop him as I left.

Waiting for the head boop

Then, in 2012 and 2013, we were beset by fleas thanks to the strays in the neighborhood.  They somehow found their way onto our clothing and then onto our indoor only cats.   We wasted a lot of money on sprays and collars and eventually kicked the cats out of our bedroom at night because we were finding fleas in our bed.

After a while I noticed Oscar was losing weight.  He had always been big, somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-14 lbs.   Now, I could feel his breastbone under his neck.  We took him to the vet and learned he had lost considerable weight.  I thought it was due to the stress of the fleas.  Turns out, it wasn’t.   One day, we noticed a pile of cat shit on the carpet.  We didn’t know who to blame, one of the drawbacks of having four cats.    Then, again, another pile.    Soon, we realized it was Oscar.  We also realized there was blood in the stool.   Another trip to the vet solidified my fears.  He had a mass in his stomach and he had lost more weight.

We treated him with metronidazole thinking it was simply a bacterial infection or parasite.  That and steroids should have done the trick, though it was hard to give him the metronidazole because he would instantly drool everywhere.  Two rounds and no change in his condition started to scare me.  They did a sonogram to confirm the mass and did a biopsy that showed no cancer, so the determination was Feline Inflammatory Bowel Disease or IBD.  He would go, straining to do so, and then vomit from the effort.   He was now 7 lbs.  This once magnificent animal was half the cat he was a year ago.

There isn’t a cure and eventually it will cause him greater discomfort and more weight loss as the tissue builds up preventing the cat from getting nutrients.   Nausea sets in and he even refuses to eat.  This is what I had to look forward to.

So, I kept him on Prednisolone and he would get IV fluids to combat dehydration.   His urine was becoming dark and more pungent from the lack of water in his system.  Some days he would be just fine, playing and ornery. Others, he’d sit, uncomfortably, not laying on his side, like he was prone to do, curled up with his belly out, enticing me to just rub the shit out of it, showing me the shaved patch from his sonogram, a reminder of what was happening.

Last month, I went away for the weekend and I was informed that he simply refused to eat.  When I got him, he looked haggard, his fur not as silky as it used to be and there were cracks in his fur where I could see his skin between it.  Petting him, I could feel his skeleton under the skin.  This once beefy boy was not fragile and clumsy.  He didn’t slink around anymore.  He slipped around the floor with no weight to keep him grounded and solid.

My little girl went to the beach last week, and during our nightly calls, she asked if Oscar was still alive.  I said yes, he was right there next to me, but he was barely there.  He wouldn’t show interest in water or food, only responding to treats with very little success in chewing.  He wasn’t going to the bathroom that I could tell, but I would find brownish red splotches around the floor in the morning.  I was convinced that I wasn’t going to let him starve, so I grabbed a dropper and would take as many teaspoons of wet food gravy and water as I could get in him.   By Wednesday, he was scaring me.   I took him to the vet with the full expectation that I was going to put him down.  I cried most of the way there, cursing all the times I didn’t want him on my lap because I was busy or didn’t want to deal with the allergies.  Per usual, he waited until I was five minutes away to decide to shit in the car, mostly liquid.   

I arrived at the vet’s and took him inside.  He sat next to me, reeking of cat shit, which was now stuck to his tail.  I cleaned him up as best I could, but it was pretty bad.  Then, he started sniffing the air.   On the counter above us was a canister of treats.   I grabbed some and he began woofing them down, two, then three, then four more he ate.  I took him into the room.  5.58 pounds.  But now he was acting like there was nothing wrong with him.   There I was ready to make the toughest decision I’ve ever had to make and he rebounded on me.  It was like he simple needed to go.  I begin to think I should just drive him around every day before feeding him.  They gave him an IV of fluids, a vitamin B and anti-nausea shot.   He showed more life than he had all week. So, we went home. 

I had a night off from tech rehearsal but I was still exhausted.  I would wake up at 5:15am, give him his steroid pill, get a shower, go to work and leave at 4pm.  I would then go directly to my father-in-law’s to take care of his cats because he was also at the beach.   After feeding them, changing their water, and cleaning their litter, I’d go home, change, give Oscar his second pill, make myself a sandwich for dinner and then eat it on my way to the theater.   At 9:45pm, I’d return home, feed my cats, sit for a moment, and then take Oscar into the bathroom with the remaining dish of mostly gravy.  I would struggle to get that and water into him and then clean him up as best I could.  Then I would collapse and sleep for about five hours, ready to do it all again in the morning.

His marked improvement from the vet’s lasted all of 12 hours.  By Friday evening he was back to not eating anything.  In fact, he fought me more with the dropper.   I was worried more about him than ever.  So, I brought basket where he’d been sleeping most of the day into the bedroom and put him on the bed with a towel.  It was hard to get over that smell but I didn’t care.  I could reach out and rub his ears.   At one point, I even saw him cleaning himself.  Maybe, he was coming back from it.  I was at the point where I couldn’t take time off to deal with him in an extreme case.   I was screwed if he needed to go back to the vet, because I had a show on Saturday and Sunday afternoon.   All I wanted, at this point, was for him to make it until Sunday night, when my little girl got home.  I was determined to make sure he was fed and as comfortable as possible until her return.  A week ago, I almost prayed he went in his sleep.  That I could take care of it before she got home and spare her the pain of being here when it happened, but by Friday, I felt as if I wanted a return on my investment in him.  It was selfish, to be sure, but I already felt like I wasn’t giving him all I could and wanted him to hold out a little longer.

I was supposed to go out Saturday night but decided to stay in and look after him.  After all, I didn’t exactly have the energy or money to go out, so a nice quiet evening with him on my lap was in order.    I did my routine and took him to bed, again.  His breathing was raspier, now, and looked to take more effort to do so.  Around 3am, I heard this thump.  I shot up and looked around.  Hopefully, he just wanted a drink and decided to jump down and get one from the dish next to the bed.  I looked under the bed and he was just sitting there, like he normally did.  He acknowledged my presence and I kind of asked if he was OK, not really expecting an answer, but still looking for one.   He appeared to be fine, so I went back to bed. 

About 10 minutes later I heard this awful howl and cry.  I woke up again, and looked around.  I called out to him and then came around the other side and looked under the bed.  He was lying on his side, facing away from me, not moving.   He hadn’t been on his side in months.  I started to panic.  There was a small puddle of barf next to him.  I reached under and grabbed him and never acknowledged my presence.  I picked him up and lay him on the towel.   He was limp.  His eyes were blank.   I screamed out in shock but couldn’t understand why I wasn’t crying.   I just looked at him, calling his name in an empty house.   I leaned my ear to his chest and there was a release.    I’m by no means religious, but it was like I just heard his life leaving his body.   Then, there was nothing.  No beat, no movement, nothing.  He was gone.    

Then I wailed.  I screamed like a child.  I didn’t care.  I just looked at him, there on the bed, gone. 

I gathered him up and swaddled him in the towel, placing him gingerly in the basket.  I couldn’t leave him in here with me.  I wouldn’t be able to sleep.  So, I took him downstairs and placed him in the bathroom that nobody but myself actually uses.   He laid there with his face down into the basket, covered up.  His ears still poking out of the towel.  Those ears, that  I would I rub for hours, were the only thing left that I could look at.   It’s juvenile and silly, but I would bite them gently, at times, tugging just enough to get a purr out of him.  Now, that was gone, too.   All I could do was sleep.  It was the only thing I could do at 3:30am on a Sunday.

At 10:00am I called the vet’s and explained what happened.  They would be open until 12:00.  I still had a show to do.   So, I made that last drive, rubbing his still visible ear the whole way.  I wanted two things back from them.  The basket he slept in and his remains.  ONLY HIS REMAINS.  The towel and pad from inside the basket could be destroyed as far as I was concerned.    In about 7-10 days I’ll get a small oak box.  That’s all there will be. 

In the end, he made the decision I couldn’t.   I don’t know anything about awareness in animals but maybe he didn’t want me to struggle, thinking I made a mistake.  Maybe he didn’t want Bailey to see him go.    Truth is, he was gone a long time ago.  That big beefy boy that would rear up like a bronco against your leg stopped being Oscar at the end of April.    I leave in the morning, still expecting to see him on the bench.  I get a shower every morning, still expecting him to bust down the door.  I still sit there at night, expecting a visitor on my lap, or next to me, curled up like a cute little sonofabitch.

He went from my life, like he came in, all tail and ears.  He was emaciated then and he was at the time he called it for me.   He was an asshole that I loved like a child.  My sidekick, my Chewbacca, my friend, my Oscar.    I didn’t mind the allergies so much the last few years, but I know I didn’t pay him half the attention he deserved.  Life simply got in my way, like he would, walking through the kitchen.  And the others.   Bailey found out after she got home and cried terribly.   On Monday, Lucy, his cat, was wandering around looking for him downstairs, crying out.  At dinner time, she stood outside the kitchen, looking for him to show up.  I even forgot as I got down four bowls and realized what I had done.   Every drive home and every quiet moment is another reminder that he’s gone.  His favorite toys sit on the floor, no longer being stomped or batted around.    I miss him so much.  And he was the perfect cat.  No two ways about.  He was a social creature, always entertaining.  He was magnificent in his look and posture.  He was the height of too muchness.    

And I didn’t even want him.

Oscar
2002-2014

Help Support Captain Feline on Kickstarter

I posted this over on the Store Blog and I am putting here in order to get the word out. 

Indie shirt companies are what’s going right with the world.   It’s not a big corporation sucking the life out of its employees and not rewarding their hard work.   It’s not a huge conspiracy to mask some political gain.   The pureness of the indie brands is that it’s a person or a handful of people committed to something they love to do, regardless of failure or success.     They care about their work and they care about their fans and customers.   They also care about their peers.  

A few years back I was a struggling entrepreneur and blogger.  Let’s face it,   I still am.   I started putting some designs up on some Print On Demand sites just to see if they’d sell.   They did… a little.    Then, the community of shirt designers stepped in and noticed.     And, we’re not talking a friend of a friend of a brother’s former roommate.   We’re talking folks from Spain, England, and Australia.    I started seeing some tweets and shares, of my stuff, around the net.   Their kindness and welcoming attitude paid off in brand awareness.   Soon, I was getting mentioned in Podcasts and on their sites.   

Eventually, I was being asked to participate in giveaways.    I felt like part of something great.    That’s what being a part of the shirt design community is.   It’s being a part of something great and exciting and stimulating.   Nothing smells so sweet as the blood, sweat, and tears on your hard work.   Looking at that finished project and just sort of smirking, as if to say, “FUCK YEAH!”   Pardon the expression, but “FUCK YEAH!”

So, because that community was so inviting and supportive to me, I pledged to help a Kickstarter project for one of those businesses that I’ve benefitted from over the years.  I am paying back a fraction of the rewards I’ve reaped from being part of their world.   And I’m not even part of their world, really.    These folks do so much more than my lazy, cheap ass, hack of a shirt designer.     There is some pure talent and creativity in this work and I am giggling at the work because it is pretty awesome.

Take a look at their work over at Captain Feline.  

Here’s the gist.   Amanda and Dave of GritFx shirts have taken the leap of launching a full indie brand line of shirts.   It mixes iconic characters or scenes from pop culture with cats.    

Imagine the following visages as anthropomorphic cats; Frank N. Furter, The MIBs, Gandalf, Ripley and Newt, The Usual Suspects, The Bride from Kill Bill, and even Easy Rider…. CATS ON MOTORCYCLES.

They are in the hopes of raising the funds needed to launch, maintain, and improve the brand through Kickstarter, and you even get some awesome swag if you pledge.I’m getting a shirt, some postcards, and some comfort in knowing I helped make this awesome idea a reality. 

Better hurry, their deadline is around the last week of August, so GET TO DA KICKSTARTA! GO NOWWWW!

WUMF: November Edition

Turkey Day is done and now we turn the corner into December and the downhill avalanche of the holiday season hill, which will inevitably lead to a crash at the bottom on January 2nd. How about another edition of WUMF (What’s Up My Friends)?

It’s Never Pleurisy
I started off this WUMF post with an update about my health, but it blew up into a larger story, so I shelved it for a separate post. Stay tuned. Needless to say, it’s not Pleurisy, though it feels like it.

Movember
I haven't shaved my mustache and goat this whole month and I'm sooo looking forward to tomorrow.   OK, so I'm not officially registered anywhere and I do have a goatee, but my face is hideous enough without the facial hair let alone with only a mustache.  The goat gives it some saving grace.   In any case, I did it, just to do it.

Now, back in 1994, I did a play at Pitt where I couldn't shave at all and had a full beard.  Nothing Kiesel worthy or even Dan Haggerty but it served its purpose.  I was so happy to shave it, then, too.

On the back nine of my 30s, my facial hair bears the brunt of my gray hair, more so than on top.  I like to keep it stubbly as much as possible.

Flea Bag Hotel
In addition to being sick, one of my cats has an upper respiratory infection so we took her to the vet. Turns out, not only did she have a URI, she has fleas as do the other three cats. So, on my day off yesterday which should have had me trying to recuperate from being sick, I was running around all over the house spraying Knockout E.S. and doing laundry and trying to just rid ourselves of the issue without resorting to napalming the house. My chest is killing me and after bending over and picking up stuff and moving around I was at the point where I couldn’t breathe or move last night.

My wife, God love her, is an animal lover and hates to see the strays from our neighborhood, mostly a product of our neighbor’s doing, go hungry. She buys, [read: I buy] the cheap Value Time cat food and puts it out. Well, apparently, they are all flea ridden and hitched a ride into our house. Our cats do not step foot outside, are all fixed, and are basically fat and lazy, much like their owner.

Radio Traffic Reports
Someone needs to get these folks some real time traffic, or at least a bookmark to Google traffic cams on their computer. Every day, I used to getting stuck in traffic around the Wilkinsburg exit on 376 East, heading into Pittsburgh. Every day, coming home I get stuck around the Forbes Oakland exit on 376 East heading out of Pittsburgh. Every once in awhile, if there is talk of huge accidents, I will take an alternate route. Although, a slight bump in the backend of a vehicle sets off a world of fail chain reaction causing air traffic over Pittsburgh to grind to a halt so the pilots can rubberneck.

However, when I hear the traffic report say that traffic is building normally and I immediately have to slam on the breaks because they neglect to mention that an accident in the Sq, Hill Tunnel has caused a backup of cars all the way to the ramp before Churchill, I feel a little stabby.

Pittsburgh DJs and traffic correspondents on WDVE and 93.7 The Fan, before you go onto to do your update, pull up a Google cam of the Parkways and just take a look at the various cameras to see where traffic is really jammed at. That way, us Walking Dead Club commuters won’t be late for work. Or at least, answer the phone when I call to bitch about your incompetence, instead of fast tracking a some Italian guy who calls in to say that he loves, “Felize Navidad” because he’s Italian. WTF?!?!

12 Days of Christmas Part 2
Last year, I participated in a giveaway hosted by some of my design friends. They gave away 12 shirts and 12 stocking stuffer items to 12 folks. Well, this year they are at it again and it starts tomorrow with 48 brands involved as well as other fantastic prizes. Click the link above to go see the official announcement. I have a post up on my Store blog and will do some tweeting to promote it. Follow me at @AngryMongo to keep up with the fun.

D-bag of the Year Awards
I haven’t put the final list together but really there is no question who should win. I won’t give it away but unless something happens in the next two weeks to change things, it should be a landslide. However, I’ll still bore you with the details over a couple of posts coming in December.

That’s it. Rub dirt in it and take a lap folks.

Honestly, It's Not My Bag, Baby!

Last Fall, I had an unfortunate infestation of ants in my home. They poured out of the wall, underneath the baseboards and marched across the hardwood floors of my living and made a condo out of my laptop bag. I immediately took said bag and tossed it on our enclosed back porch. Then, I attended to the source of the problem, setting traps and spraying the gap between the baseboard and floor. Unfortunately, since I am a lazy f**k, I never got around to fumigating my bag, which had now become a retirement community for stinkbugs as well.

In the meantime I had begun taking my wife’s laptop bag to work. She never used it for anything, but it wasn’t exactly the most manly thing in the world. It was a Vera Bradley, solid color, quilted laptop bag. I didn’t have a lot of options. I knew my work was not going to replace my bag and I didn’t feel like buying a new one for a work laptop. I simply just kept using my wife’s and stowed it out of sight for the duration of my stay with my former employer.

Flash forward to this week. I get up and proceed to get for work at my current job, which is an hour drive away. I go out into our living room and see that one of my cats has knocked over my new, company issued laptop bag, possibly to lay on it, as they always do. Then, I realized the horror. One of my other cats has decided to piss all over it, leaving a puddle of urine laying there.

I cleaned it off best I could, using Lysol wipes and hot water. I simply did not have time to tear apart the entire house, waking my wife and daughter at 6:00 AM in order to find a replacement. Besides, after I used the wipes on the bag, it seemed to be OK. That was, until I was driving home and the smell really hit me. I couldn’t take it back to work in that condition.

That night, my wife suggested taking her bag to work, like I had before. I was a little leery. When you’ve worked at the same company for nearly ten years and you do something like bringing a purse to work. They kind of give you the benefit of the doubt if you’ve never done it before. When you’ve been at a company for only six months and do something like that, your coworkers don’t understand your life the same way. Everyone at my old job knew the tale of my cat causing us to have to replace the floor in our basement so this was simply par for the course. At the new job, they don’t know this and will generate their own opinions.

Needless to say, I took my wife’s bag. I knew it was probably a bad move and I should have really considered, putting it in my desk drawer, out of sight. Unfortunately, I had an all day meeting and simply did not have the opportunity to do this.

About ten minutes into the meeting, of which I am sharing my laptop screen on the projector, I receive an IM.

“Where did you get the pretty laptop bag?”

Fortunately, I had moved all of my email and IM screens to my laptop and only extended my windows desktop to the projector. This message was only visible to me. Well, me and the three other people with which my coworker decided to share. Suddenly, the incident took on a life of its own as more people, including my boss and my boss’ boss, were chiming in about my lovely bag.

During a break, I was able to come out and try some damage control, to no avail. People were laughing. I wasn’t sure why. Then I found out. We have nine large flat screen monitors hanging throughout the cube farm which displays stats and various other bits of information for the department. The slide show rotates through different screens and eventually, I noticed what everyone was laughing about. Tucked in between two of the slides was a picture of two or my coworkers modeling the bag in rather funny poses with the title of “The Companion Bag” above the words “MyLastName & CO.”, essentially making this an advertisement.

I couldn’t help but laugh because while it was making fun of me for bringing my wife’s bag, it also put their manhood on the line to have been photographed modeling it. Needless to say, it was all in good fun and if I can’t laugh at myself, I shouldn’t laugh at others. I gave them a “Well Played” and then went back into my meeting. Of course, I had to share and explain the incident, reiterating that my cat caused the situation.

I made sure that I found a suitable replacement for the next day, while I wait until my regular bad dries after being washed. It just goes to show that if I had ever expressed doubts about coming here, they made me feel welcome, even at my own expense.

Bravo, crew.
Now, I must disown my cat.

I Was Scooping Up Cat Poop

Everyone wants to have that philosophical, frozen in time debate about where they were when something happened.

“Where were you when…”

Our parents had the ‘When Kennedy was shot’ for their generational question.   Mine was, ‘When the Challenger blew up’.   The tail end of that generational question will be, ‘When 9/11 occurred.’  The new generation will have a tossup.   Will it be, ‘When Michael Jackson died’ or ‘When Osama Bin Laden was killed’?

Given that the average teenager has limited experience with Jackson’s music, apart from Akon working with him in his final years, I’m thinking that Bin Laden’s death will rule out.   Just saying.

In any case, we have way too many ‘moments in time’ for us to keep remembering every little detail.  However, I have the feeling that when anyone ever asks me where I was when I heard Osama was killed, I will be able to recall exactly what I was doing.

I was scooping out cat poop from the litter box.

My wife yelled down to say, “They got him.  They killed O[inaudible].”

I said, “What?”

She yells down again, “They killed Obama[inaudible].”

I dropped the scooper into the litter box.  My heart jumped into my throat.  Someone just assassinated the President?!?!?

“Pause that, shit!  I’ll be right up.”

Turns out the first time she yelled down she said, ‘Osama Bin Laden’.   When I asked her to repeat it, she flubbed it and said, ‘Obama Bin Laden’.

Regardless of malapropisms, I stayed up an extra hour to watch all the coverage and nearly slept through the alarm this morning.   My thoughts swayed between relief that they had finally gotten the man responsible for planning the 9/11 attacks to fear that retaliation would commence while we celebrated.  After all, there is a need for Al Qaeda to establish relevance in the wake of this news and that scares me.

Then I heard the news that they buried the body at sea.  That’s just flipping wonderful isn’t it?  We just endured the onslaught of Donald Trump crying, “Show us your papers, Obama” for the last few weeks, now we’ll have continuous cries of “Show us the body.”   The naysayers will probably do the following.

1. It’s election time.  Obama is using this to boost numbers.
2. The body was conveniently buried to cover up that he has been dead or is still alive.
3. This is to take focus away from the birthing issue.

Has it really come to this?   Are we really that divided of a nation that we look at every little thing that goes on as a conspiracy?  Can’t we just take a little comfort in the fact that a terrible person has come to justice, one way or the other.  I’m not going to go out and dance in the streets but I’m glad that those affected by the attacks in 2001 are one more step towards closure.

I’m also glad I wasn’t doing anything embarrassing when I heard the news.   “Where was I when Osama was killed?  Oh, I was in the bathroom, having an intestinal issue.  It was taco night.”




As a footnote I would to extend my sincerest support for those who have fought and died to protect us from harm.  I also commend SEAL Team Six for pulling off this operation with as little loss of life as necessary.



Ready to Lead, Ready to Follow, Never Quit

Merry Christmas To My Cat And My Car

The tree is at the curb and the decorations are back in the attic. All signs of the holidays are gone except for one, the credit card bills.

Previously, I’ve given insight into why Holidays make me nervous. I’ve also gone on at length about my car issues. But when those two concepts collide with my pets’ health and well being (1),(2), wackiness ensues.

I’ve been making small attempts at reducing my debt. I’ve been using bonuses to pay off credit cards and trying to get expenses under control to better weather the rough economy. However, Christmas always becomes a deal breaker. Presents are plentiful and utilities are utilized to their fullest. My wife grew up in a home where Christmas was a special time of year, so the house is always decorated above and beyond the norm and the tri-state area is subject to brown outs a la The Griswold Family Christmas. All night shopping trips result in the killing of small forests in order to produce enough wrapping paper to cover all the purchases and of course, the credit card bears the brunt of the weight. In essence, everything I’ve worked for towards reducing debt over the year reemerges come January first of the next one.

This year was supposed to be different. I was heading into Christmas with a small cushion. My wife took a second job, which used to be her first job years ago, to make some extra money. I was forgoing a lot of extra luxuries to keep my costs down. The result would be to give our daughter her first real big Christmas. In order to make this happen, we knew we had better start by getting the house decorated, ASAP.

One of my biggest pet peeves with decorating for Christmas is having to move furniture, especially my love seat. I’ve been having issues with my love seat since 2002. Every year because of the way my floor plan is laid out, I have to sacrifice seating in order to have the tree up and lit. For two years in my townhouse, the love seat resided in the dining room against the sliding glass doors that led to my patio. When we bought our current house, we had to move it to a spare bedroom. This also presents a problem because the hallway and spare bedroom door are too narrow for the love seat in its usual state. The solution to this problem is to remove the feet from the love seat and the door from the hinges of the bedroom doorway. You can see why I love decorating.

Two weeks after Thanksgiving when the Christmas shopping hits its full swing and decorating is usually completed we hit our first major road bump. My wife and I are attempting to do the majority of the work while our daughter was present. She’s free to roam around the room, within reason, and we didn’t have a babysitter to keep her out of the house. So, as she continually gets underfoot I get continually frustrated. Finally, about 10:00 pm we were ready to move the love seat to the bedroom. Because of my daughter’s age and her affinity for cat tails, some of our cats tend to hide out of reach. I had made mention to my wife that we were likely to move a couch and find a cat underneath, along with various toys and dust bunnies the size of the Cloverfield monster.

Truer words were never spoken, yet hardly followed as I prepared to move said love seat. I figured that by flipping it onto its end, I could remove all the feet and have it ready to slide without having to readjust it. Unfortunately, when I tipped it up on to its end, a cat that had been hiding and attempted to make a break for it in the direction of the movement. I looked down to see the hind quarters pressed towards the floor, legs flailing about the floor. I immediately grabbed the couch and lifted it off the ground freeing the poor cat. My wife did what any animal lover would do and freaked out. She went to console the cat while my daughter, noticing the drama of the trauma, began to cry. After a quick exam of the feline, she appeared to be no worse for wear and we moved her to our bed to take it easy.

We continued to finish moving the love seat and proceeded to put the baby down and relax with the evening news. My wife went to our bedroom to grab some pillows for us to lounge on and noticed the cat sitting next to a pink puddle. She did what any animal lover would do at the sight of their own pet’s blood and freaked out. She grabbed the cat and tried to determine if she was bleeding externally but from the shade of the stain, I concluded that she must have passed it in urine. In any case, something was definitely wrong and we sprang into action.

We called the vet but due to the late hour they could not accommodate us since we probably would require scans. They suggested a 24 hour animal hospital nearby. We woke the baby up and took her to my in-laws and then made our way to the hospital. Did I mention that it had been snowing all evening? The mild temperatures we were used to this time of year in the past were just that, the past. A front had moved in, icing over the roads and laying down a layer of snow on top, disguising the danger. I had just put snow tires on the car, against my usual argument that we get more ice than snow negating the benefits, and was sorry to have been right. We slid and spun most of the way to the hospital. Then, my wife told me to take an alternate route that put us right on path with a big hill that we had to first, descend. All the while, she worried that the cat was not going to make it to the hospital, while I worried that we all would not make it to the hospital.

We arrived at our destination and subsequently surgically removed my wife’s fingernails from the dashboard. After explaining the situation and filling out paperwork, they took the cat in for an exam. An hour later, they called us back to give us no news whatsoever. In fact they pretty much challenged us that this was the cat that bled on the bed. “Um, I’m pretty sure.” I emphatically stated. “How do you know for sure?” The doctor retorted. “Because, I dropped a couch on her.” I yelled.

The doctor reassured us that she saw this kind of thing all the time in healthy animals. I then asked how many of those had recently had a piece of furniture sitting on their major organs. Not wanting to admit that I knew this was the cat, we consented to getting x-rays done to verify if any internal damage was done. We then went back out to the waiting room and sat for another two hours, learning all the benefits of the Shamwow.

Just before I was ready to place an order for Mighty Putty, the staff called us back to go over the results of our pet’s scans. The first thing the doctor did was tell us that they managed to collect a sample of urine and did notice blood in it. Not exactly a vindication, but I’ll take it. The doctor then proceeded to show us the x-rays, but never actually said if anything was wrong. Slide upon slide came up on the screen and without knowing cat anatomy, I had no clue if she was giving us bad news. Finally, she said she could find no obvious damage or rupture to the bladder. Of course, never once telling us one way or another if the cat was going to be fine, she gave us options. We could take the cat home and follow up with our vet or we could leave the cat there overnight for observation to see if any changes occurred.

I asked if something were to be wrong, would we know it before it was too late. She would not answer that question and said that if we were really concerned that we should leave the cat there. Again, I asked her if it was possible that the cat just experienced some bruising and would be otherwise fine. Again, she would not answer that question and said that if we were really concerned that we should leave the cat there. Again, my wife did what any animal lover would do, she freaked out…on the inside. We decided to take the cat home and follow up with our vet when weather permitted. I think the poor thing suffered enough just from the trip and the treatment. Total bill for the evening, $400.

Two days later, our vet did an exam and found no evidence of trauma. The cat was still passing blood but we were told that this is common in a bruise of this kind and could last for a few days. Everything soon returned to normal and the house eventually got decorated for Christmas.

The week before Christmas I decided to use up my last few vacation days left in order to finish up my shopping…actually, that’s a lie. I hadn’t even started shopping yet. Regardless, I knew that car I had been driving, a Pontiac Sunfire, was due for inspection. The car is paid for and is depreciating faster than most businesses traded on Wall Street. I was fully prepared to spend at least $200 on tires, inspection, and emissions. Again, I went against better judgment and asked for winter tires. When I got the call from the garage I did what any normal car owner would do at Christmas, I clutched my chest and groaned. Turns out the car need a new brake line. The existing one was rusted out. It also needed new rear brake drums, new hoses, and a few other items that were rusted.

Once I was able to breathe at a normal pace, gave in and said do the work. The inspection was up at the end of the month and I needed the car for shopping and holiday travel. My Mother-in-Law asked me for a Christmas list and I said, how about new tires. That at least saved me $140. That along with the rest of the charges brought the total cost to $527.

Everybody that had heard my tale said I should just get a new car. In fact, as if he were psychic, the salesman who helped us buy our family trickster, a Malibu Maxx Wagon, even called to try and pitch us on incentives for new cars. I wasn’t about to get involved with a loan right now and conceded that if I have to pay a little over $300 ($527 - $140(Tires are a given) - $40 (inspection & emissions)) a year to keep that car on the road then it is worth not having a monthly car payment.

So it came to be the 23rd of December and I had already spent close to $1000 without buying one present. I actually made out pretty good this year, despite all the expenditures. My boss presented me with $200 in prepaid credit cards, I managed to find $100 in gift cards that I had in a drawer from birthdays and last Christmas. My wallet contained another $100 in gift cards from returned items from birthdays and last Christmas. And, one of my Christmas purchases ended up being refunded due to a shipping error. All these savings probably amounted to almost all of the total car/cat. That puts it all into perspective. And, at least I don’t have to worry about my car and cat asking for the receipts for returns.

Can't You Smell That Smell?

I have four cats and to plagiarize Bill Cosby, "The reason I have four cats is because I do not want five." I love them dearly. Now only one of those four cats are actually there because I wanted them to be. The first one, Oscar, was a stray that my wife rescued outside the back door of my townhouse in 2003. Of course, he had to have a friend, so I agreed to adopt another cat. In November, I checked out the local shelters and adopted Emmy as a playmate. Instead of having a playmate to keep Oscar out of trouble, I now had two cats equally capable of mischief and no way to prove which one is guilty.

Then in 2004, I moved into my house, and my wife, again, rescued more animals. This time it was a set of twins from the farmers' market she worked. Enter in Willow and Lucy. Now, Oscar and I have resigned ourselves to the fact that we are the only men in the family since the addition of my daughter in 2007. We have that bond over the television and eating and generally any chance he can get to come get in my face.

Making up the rest of the clan, Emmy is considered the alpha female and dictates when breakfast and dinner is going to be served. Willow is the shy runt who could rip you a new asshole. She seems very timid, but we really don’t trust her. The last cat is Lucy, the sweet docile one who is in love with Oscar and loves to eat. Since Emmy is such a voracious eater, I have to wait until all the cats are present to put the bowls down or Emmy will be done and move onto everyone else’s bowl. Willow just lays on the floor waiting patiently while Lucy worries that Oscar isn't there yet. He's always the last one to the kitchen. The only reason he shows up is because Lucy goes and rounds him up. She’ll walk into a room and cry at him to come to the kitchen. It's hard to believe that her and Willow are sisters. They couldn’t be more opposite. Willow is quiet and calculating, Lucy is loud and sort of dim. I know all of this by observing them over the last four years. I'm like the Jane Goodall of domestic short hairs. Isn’t my life pathetic. Oh, did I mention I am allergic to cats?

That's right. I am allergic to cats. If I get cat hair near my eyes, they swell up to the point where I look like Benecio Del Toro. I treat with a nasal spray but sometimes the side effects are that my nose dries out and bleeds. Oh well. Still, they are family and I wouldn't get rid of them for the world. That is, until last month. I had recently been in Nashville and apart from a week of cat free breathing I never really noticed that I had cats. Sure, the litter boxes are out in the open, but the house never really smelled like cats lived there. Now, there would be those few occasions where Oscar would come down to the litter box carrying a newspaper under his paw and we knew what that meant. Sometimes, his timing couldn't be worse because my wife would be with someone in the next room and he would forget to cover his mess. Actually, I think he refuses. He's such a priss. Other than that, the house is pretty good. It wasn't until I came home from my trip that I noticed the smell.

I usually go through a brief bout with cold and allergies after a trip. Between travelling in an enclosed plane with that recycled air and being run down, my immune system is off guard. Couple that with being re-exposed to cats and I lose a week of good health as soon as I walk in the door. Usually, it clears up within days. Yet, even with the cold, my senses were in perfect working order. In fact, for some reason, I have an acute sense of smell. My wife thinks I’m nuts. I think I have a good chance at a guest shot on Heroes. I can be working around the house and come upstairs to the living room where my wife and my daughter are sitting and as soon as I top the steps, I catch the scent of a dirty diaper. My wife, who has been not more than a foot from the child is oblivious. I, on the other hand, am standing there with watery eyes.

Super Smell aside, I didn’t quite notice the stench that had taken up residence in my basement/family room/man cave. I didn’t really have time to. Before getting on the plane for home, my wife called me to inform me that they were taking her Mother to the hospital. I was pretty much on baby detail while my wife shuttled between work and the hospital. After she was discharged a week later, my wife was in a wedding and we spent all weekend driving all over creation to a rehearsal dinner on the other side of Pittsburgh, dropping the baby off at my folks, and going back to Pittsburgh for the wedding, and then repeating the whole process again. Since I am at work during the week, I miss out on being downstairs until the weekend. I had noticed the smell, but chalked it up to the litter boxes needing changed. After I did that, I still noticed the smell. I couldn’t figure it out. My wife thought I was crazy because she didn’t smell it. Even upstairs, I could smell the smell of cat urine. Dear God! I have cats!

Now, while I knew that there was a smell in the house, my wife didn't believe me until she found the evidence. She reached for a music book that was sitting on the floor up against a filing cabinet next to the piano. The bottom third of the book was warped, discolored, and wet. Besides that, the smell of ammonia nearly knocked her off the piano bench. We now had proof that a cat was peeing on the carpet. We just didn’t have a suspect. My wife immediately blamed the boy, Oscar. I told her I wasn’t convinced but in my house, if you have a Y chromosome, you are guilty until proven partially to blame. Short of making Oscar wear an outfit with yellow P on the front, my wife gave him the cold shoulder. Meanwhile, I spent the evening using our carpet scrubber to get the carpet cleaned in that spot. But anyone who has owned a cat will tell you, that will not fix the problem. As I said, I lost a whole weekend due to the wedding so, we missed the next two or three acts. We still had no real suspect, just my wife’s intuition. It wasn’t until my wife was standing downstairs, attending to some bills, after the hustle and bustle died down that she actually had her suspect nailed. She heard this sound like water hitting fabric and was knew she had her suspect. She had finally caught Oscar, or so she thought. There, underneath her piano with an earnest look on her face was Lucy, the most docile of all four cats, peeing on the carpet.

We couldn’t understand it. Why Lucy? Oscar was an immediate suspect because he is a male. While he is the only boy cat, he’s worse than a woman when it comes to litter box hygiene. He prefers to wait until I clean out the box to use it. He hates getting litter on his paws. Sometimes, it sounds like he’s building an addition in the litter box because of the noise of his paws scratching on the sides. He’ll do this for five minutes. He was also innocent of the accusation and my wife apologized profusely. Now, that we had our cat, we had to solve our problem. We had two spots identified where urine was soaked into the carpet. Soon, two became four as I found another spot right at the corner of our bar as well as a throw pillow upstairs in our living room. Until that point, I had been laying on it at night while we watched our usual 11 O'Clock News, Family Guy, and HGTV shows before bed. That was an easy fix. In the wash it went. The bigger problem was how to get that smell out of the carpet. However, we first needed to understand what was wrong with Lucy.

We took her to the vet and there was no obvious physical reason why she would be going on the carpet. We had to obtain a sample, but with four cats it’s hard to know exactly where and when she’ll go since we both work. The vet seemed to think that it was behavioral and that perhaps Lucy was being bullied and blocked from the litter box by one of the other cats. Immediately, I thought of Emmy. She is the alpha female and has been known to chase the other females and run them down in the hallway. Still, her and Lucy don’t have much beef towards each other. They are both big eaters and overtake Willow and Oscar’s dish when they leave. Here, I was now guilty of accusing a cat before all the evidence was in on the issue. We confined all the cats to the upstairs and kept a litter box within sight. So, we either have it smell like urine downstairs or worse upstairs. Let me tell you I am not happy at all about this situation. Anyway, we kept on eye on the cats habits and noticed that Lucy would still not want to go in the litter box. She seemed afraid. She ended up going right outside of it which gave us our sample. The results came back that there was no conclusive evidence that she had anything wrong with her. In order to deal with this fear we removed the lid to the litter box and she began to use it. At this time, we are now on day three of using the litter box exclusively. Unfortunately, since Oscar is prissy when it comes to the litter he manages to get litter everywhere when he scratches. Another thing I hate because I usually do not wear shoes around the house, socks most of the time, but even still I hate seeing it on the floor.

With Lucy on the road to rehabilitation, I began turning my attention to salvaging the downstairs. My wife has already begun teaching on the road at her students’ homes but we are still confining the cats to the upstairs. By now, a lot of the urine has dried which makes it ten times worse because the crystals are more pungent than the liquid form. I first moved the piano to the garage since it had soaked up some of the urine and now smelled. With that gone, I could concentrate of removing the smell from the carpet, if I could. I began using our carpet steamer in hopes that I could liquefy and suck up the offending particles. Unfortunately, all that did was soak the carpet and allow for mold. I have a dehumidifier running most of the time to help. Since the issue went into the padding and backing, I knew I had to figure out a way to dissolve the particles.

I bought some stuff called Simple Solution which has a money back guarantee. I poured a bunch on the spots and allowed it to soak for 10 minutes then sucked it up. The smell stuck. Then, I did the unmanly thing. I read the directions, fully. I had to allow the solution to soak into the carpet for ten minutes and then use a towel to suck up excess moisture. Then allow the solution to dry on its own. Within 12 hours, the carpet and the entire downstairs smelled ten times better. I thought the battle was won. However, after 24 more hours the smell returned and the spots that had smelled better were now just as bad as they were before. By now, I’ve used almost a gallon of the solution and at $21.99 a pop, I’m not buying more if it won’t work. I’m returning it for a refund.

We’ve both come to the conclusion that we need to replace the carpet. It was something that was always on our radar, but after four years, we never found the time or the extra money to start renovations of our downstairs. We also had originally planned to replace all of the carpet, but now, we’ve decided to put carpet on one side and tile on the other. The garage is our main entrance for us and company so we figured it would be better to have tile that can be cleaned easily if anyone tracks in water or dirt. That way they don’t track it into any new carpet. I also wanted to do a faux hard wood flooring but I’ve been told that moisture, especially cat urine, can destroy it. I just have to convince my wife to get something that is durable and will also be a final solution, meaning neutral in color. Yeah, it may not match the paneling or the rest of the carpet, but the walls are eventually going to be replaced with drywall and the rest of the carpet will be a burgundy color with some ceramic or slate tile in front of the wood burner at the other end of the basement where the carpet will remain.

It’s a lot of work, a lot of money, and a lot of head ache for two people who had hoped to slow down the pace of things after our daughter’s first birthday. With a wedding, a mother in the hospital, and now this right before the holiday season, I don’t see us slowing down anytime soon. Some people have said to me, “Just get rid of the cat.” I know we’re three cats short of the “Crazy Cat …” label but I’ve become attached to them. They are part of the family and I love them just as much as anyone else. I couldn’t bear to put them outside and wonder if they have a warm soft place to sleep or are they getting enough food and shelter, let alone are they safe from other animals or the busy street that runs past our house. Call me a Tree Hugging, Animal Loving, Hippie if you want but that’s how I roll. I slow down for animals on the road, flash the headlights at oncoming drivers, and occasionally honk in areas of deer crossing traffic. While, I do not condone what Lucy did, I can’t help but think that she really has a problem and it’s my job to try and fix it, not just get rid of her. She deserves the same rights as we do as long as she’s not infringing on others. It’s an inconvenience but it’s something that can be fixed, somehow. If anything, my wife isn’t unforgiving about her pissing on the carpet. She just wishes she would have pissed on the couches. She’s been after me for a couple years to get new ones and I haven’t pulled the trigger, yet.

How could you not love this face?

For those of you who love cats in general, go here. I Can Has Cheezburger: LOLCATS
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