Pictures of my cats

Last week I dug out my old 35mm camera to take pictures of my cats and my apartment. I found a whole roll of film in the camera, fully exposed and rewound. I had no idea how long it had been in there or what was on the roll. So I set it aside and popped in a new roll of film. When I filled up a roll with snaps of cats and bookcases, I took both rolls down to Walgreen's for the one-hour photo treatment. I even paid a little extra to get a copy of the film on CD. Here are some cropped, levels-adjusted highlights.

At top, Sinead nestles in her nest between two bookcases in my bedroom.

Second from the top is a candid shot of Tyrone and Sinead exploring my unmade bed. (The fact that I use all those pillows shows what 2 years of sleeping on a 30-year-old twin bed, followed by 8 months on a futon, cost me. I never used to need more than one pillow.)

The picture at the bottom is an example of how cats can make the most vulgar things look dainty - butt-sniffing at its most balletic. Somewhere I have a snap of Lionel and Tyrone in a similar pose. Sigh...

The other roll of film turned out to be somewhat of a gruesome surprise. It was filled with pictures documenting a craft sale at my second parish, where I resigned as pastor at the end of January 2004. So I'm guessing those pictures have been there since late 2003. Almost four years! And what am I supposed to do with them now?

Kitten Progress

I am still dividing my nights between the torture of sleeping on the couch and the separate, but equal, torture of sharing the bed with a kitten named Sinead. She is an unstoppable force of destruction, and sometimes I think she intends to torture me to death, one pin-prick clawmark at a time. The last time I slept so poorly was when I had a cold and needed a prescription decongestant to enable me to breathe and sleep at the same time.

This is not to say we haven't made progress. Abandoning hope of acquainting Tyrone and Sinead with each other with the safety of a closed kennel door between them, I finally just threw the door open and let him come in for lightly supervised visits, and let her go out to explore the apartment a bit. Kittens explore areas within a gradually increasing radius of their nest. So Sinead has been slowly desensitizing herself to the apartment in a manner similar to the "graduated exposure therapy" that behaviorists use to treat phobias. She has thoroughly explored the bathroom now (I found her in the bathtub this morning). And she has visited parts of the living room (where I found a kleenex shredded in a distinctly kittenesque manner).

And the two cats have been exploring each other (read: sniffing each other's butts). There have been some tense moments when I considered separating them, but mostly they seem to get along all right without restraint. She follows him, he follows her. She makes submissive gestures when he's facing her, and takes swipes at his tail as soon as he's facing the other way. I can even see territorial lines being established; for example, when Tyrone sniffs around the edge of Sinead's litterbox, and then she jumps right into it and faces him down.

A little playing and exercise will do Tyrone good, I think. I just don't know how long he can keep up with Sinead at their respective ages. She definitely has more stamina than he does. When I'm trying to read she doesn't give me a moment of peace, but is either trying to come between me and the book or, worse, attack it. When I'm trying to sleep she does the same thing - comes between me and sleep, or in moments of desperation, frontally attacks sleep by poking me with her claws, etc.

For a while yet, Sinead's nest will still be in my room. She is still an irritable little thing who jumps at unexpected sounds and movements - even when she causes them. She did an amazing vertical jump this morning when a piece of paper she was swatting around surprised her by materializing between her feet. This is why they call animals "dumb." But she is also tiny, vulnerable, and occasionally sweet - as when she purrs loudly and lets me tickle her all over. She even submitted to being combed and brushed today, though I could never get close to the one little bit of matted fur I had noticed, under her chin.

For the time being, she will have to spend at least some time closed up in my bedroom, so I can feed her kitten food. I can't put her food down when Tyrone is around because adult cats aren't supposed to have that stuff, but they go for it like gangbusters. So the food goes up on a high shelf when the bedroom door is open, and comes down again when the door is closed. And that's life with a 5-year-old cat and a 3-month-old kitten.

Martian Child

In this week's big movie, Martian Child - a fictionalized account of real events written by sci-fi author David Gerrold - John Cusack plays a sci-fi author named David (hmmm....) who, two years after the death of his wife, finally decides to go through with adopting a child as he and his late wife had planned. But he doesn't exactly ease himself into single parenting. He picks a boy so deeply troubled that he thinks he is from Mars - a delusion so powerful that at times, Cusack is tempted to believe it himself.

Young Dennis (played by Bobby Coleman) is a strange kid, and no mistake. Loathing sunlight, he only emerges from the shelter of a cardboard box when Cusack gives him SPF-40 sunscreen and a pair of RayBans. He wears a weight belt fashioned from D-sized batteries and duct tape because he is afraid the earth's gravity will not hold him down. He obsessively shoots Polaroids to document the way humans live, so when his mission is completed and he returns to Mars, he can explain everything. He talks to animals, tastes colors, rattles off sentences in an unknown language, and can make wishes that come true. And he's a bit of a kleptomaniac, too. So it's never 100% clear whether Cusack should be concerned about the disintegrator-ray thing the boy does with his fingers. It helps that Dennis has an otherworldly look and sound about him.

It's a quirky and touching movie, co-starring Amanda Peet, Richard Schiff, Anjelica Huston, Sophie Okonedo, and - in a daring bit of stunt casting - Joan Cusack as the sister of John Cusack's character! I could give away loads more than I have already done, but the one bit that really got to me was where the little boy finally reached out to hold Cusack's hand, but at just that moment Cusack stuck his hand in his coat pocket. It wasn't an intentional slight - just a missed opportunity that could serve as an emblem for so many tragic failures of communication between people who care about each other. But if you want to know whether the main burden of the movie is tragic or uplifting - or whether the spaceship finally does come for the kid - you'll have to check out Martian Child for yourself.

Kitchens of India

I've been trying some Indian food that I found in the foreign foods section at my friendly neighborhood Schnuck's. The name of the brand is "Kitchens of India," and the attractive packaging claims that each variety is "a gourmet ready to eat signature dish created by the Master Chefs of ITC Hotels" and "authentic Indian cuisine - made in India." That's all very nice, but what I like about it is:

1. It tastes good - if you're into curry, that is. I am.

2. It comes in several varieties, including Rajma Masala (red kidney beans in a mild tomato-and-onion curry), Pav Bhaji (mashed vegetable saute in a zesty sauce), Pindi Chana (chickpeas in tomato curry), Dal Bukhara (black lentils ditto), and Palak Paneer (cottage cheese cubes in a spinach puree).

3. All you have to do to prepare it is heat the contents of a sealed pouch in the microwave or in a frying pan, or simply place the pouch in boiling water for a few minutes, cut it open, and pour it over flatbread, rice, or (my heterodox approach) cooked ramen noodles.

It's a lot of interesting flavor for very little trouble, and it doesn't cost a whole lot either.

Hiss!

I promise this won't continue to be a diary of cat husbandry indefinitely. I still have lots of music, books, food, and stupidity to talk about. But lately, in my private life, I have been preoccupied with cats - for understandable reasons.

Tyrone and Sinead continue to hiss at each other. Tyrone is clearly the instigator. At least once a day I have rounded up Sinead in the plastic Pet Taxi, with the steel grille on the door, and introduced Tyrone to her. The meeting has invariably gone like this: 1. A few seconds of curious sniffing. 2. Tyrone hisses. 3. Sinead hisses. 4. I throw Tyrone out of the room and close the door. 5. As soon as she is freed from the Pet Taxi, Sinead runs for cover under one of the bookcases.

Tonight, I had to get my laundry together for a trip to the laundromat. So I put Sinead in the Pet Taxi and gave Tyrone free run of the room while I stripped the bed, sorted the dirty clothes, etc. It seemed promising. Sinead watched everything curiously, including Tyrone's antics (he always strives to be "helpful" when it comes to dressing and undressing the bed). But he didn't respond well to being placed right in front of her, and he avoided close contact with the Pet Taxi.

After getting home from the laundromat, I tried a different tactic. I put Tyrone in the kitty jail and coaxed Sinead into visiting him. For once she seemed fearless and dauntless in her curiosity, walking all the way around the Pet Taxi, as well as over the top of it. When he hissed and spat at her she acted startled, but didn't run away. She gave back as good as she got. But no amount of smooth-talking could get Tyrone to take it easy on her. He made a remarkable range of unfriendly noises, including ones that would probably signal serious danger if he hadn't been cooped up. So I finally dumped him outside the room again.

Sinead is taking it in stride. This is a good sign. All the same, I would prefer that the two cats got along. When I adopted Lionel, things were simpler - Tyrone only had a few ounces on him, so I could simply leave them to it and let them settle their own differences. But Tyrone has 5 years and probably 11 pounds on Sinead...and she has a full set of claws, front and back. He seems more afraid of her than she of him, but I wouldn't count on her coming off best if it came to blows.

Worst comes to worst, I suppose I can live with two cats who live separate lives on opposite sides of my bedroom door. But I dread the thought. After two nights of being tortured by Sinead's prickly claws and insatiable instinct for play, and after the first four nights in years without Tyrone sharing my bed for at least part of the night, I am beginning to regret designating my bedroom as the Kitten Decompression Chamber. I may be stuck with this sleeping arrangement for the next 20 years.

I can only hope the cats will adjust to each other - and Sinead to the apartment - sometime before she reaches the Age of Responsibility for declawing and spaying. Otherwise, I'll be the next member of the household who starts sleeping in the living room.

Cuddling with cats 2

Speaking of cats hopping on you, one of the special things about my relationship with the late Lionel was his way of climbing up on my chest for a good snuggle. Wearing a shirt and/or a sheet was an important pre-requisite for this type of man-cat bonding. The reason for this might surprise you. Since Lionel was declawed, it wasn't the risk of getting poked and scratched - though having him stand on me could be a little trying, even without claws. I definitely felt better once he lay down, distributing his weight more comfortably. Actually, for some reason Lionel didn't like being in contact with my bare chest. He would only "hop on Pop" when I had a shirt or sheet on. Pulling a sheet over my chest was a way of inviting him aboard; pulling it off was definitely a deterrent.

I gather this is true for cats in general, because Tyrone has recently begun crawling onto my chest more often - but never my bare chest. He never did this at all until about a year ago. Even since then, he rarely climbed onto my chest - until Lionel died. Now he seems determined to climb up into my arms every time I sit down in the living room. It's very surprising, very nice - and very inconsistent with the Tyrone I have known all these years. It's like he's been saving all these cuddlies up until Lionel was out of the way. Like he saw Lionel doing it and thought it looked great, but held back because it was Lionel's turf. Until now.

I have made another surprising observation since Lionel went. Until recently, whenever I scooped the two litter boxes, I found them about equally full of cat dirt. I had always assumed both cats used both litter boxes about equally. Over the past several weeks or months, I noticed that one of the litter boxes tended to be more heavily soiled than the other. Since Lionel died, I have left both litter boxes where they were for Tyrone to use, and set up a third one in the bedroom for Sinead. But when I scoop the boxes in the kitchen, I consistently find that only one of them has been used - always the same one.

What this tells me is that Lionel and Tyrone probably never shared the same litter box. The one that has been used since Lionel died has always been Tyrone's personal toilet; the one that stands unused was for Lionel's use only. I never realized how territorial they were, even over two identical boxes of clay that have stood side-by-side for five years. Even now, days after Lionel stopped being around, Tyrone respects the boundary.

It also tells me things were failing inside Lionel's body long before I noticed that lump on his side. Since his litter box was getting less custom for some time, apparently something wasn't working right in the pee and/or poop department of his body. The poor mite was very unwell!

Cuddling with cats

Last night, Sinead visited me in bed while I was trying to sleep. I didn't move or make a sound because I appreciated her effort to reach out to me. On the other hand, it was a little painful.

One of the simplest ways to have fun with a cat is to play the "hand under the bedsheet" game. Your hand moves around under the sheet, the cat swats it with with its paws & attacks it with gentle, painless bites. The cat plays at stalking and pouncing, and only rarely does it get out of hand (no pun intended), resulting in a hard chomp or a scratch. Even when that happens, the correct response is (A) not to flinch or scream, because this scares the cat and may cause it to sink its claws in further; and (B) to scold the cat firmly, and forgive it quickly. Cats interpret corporal punishment as playing rough, and hence as permission to play equally rough in return. If you want them to play gentle, you have to be gentle to them.

So I bit my tongue as Sinead sank her claws into my skin in order to balance safely on my feet, and as she nibbled on my toes - once or twice giving them a bite that I really felt, though without breaking skin. This was a rudimentary form of the "hand under the sheet" game, and she obviously hasn't grasped the technique yet. It will come in time. I just hope I still have skin when that time comes.