Cats
It's not so tough, getting used to a cat. Mind you, there are a few idiosyncracies worth observing, doubtless familiar to any cat owner. Like being led on tours of the litter box and food dish, the mewing complaints that indicate the litter box is full, the dish is full of dry food, the water could be a bit cooler....
And there's the tribute. The other day, the front door open so the cat can let herself in and out, I step out of the office and discover a sparrow sitting quietly on the floor, without moving, the cat within a couple of feet, seemingly ignoring it while licking it's paws.
I'm a bit naive, I know that other cats bring their owners tributes of birds or mice, but I'd hoped mine would be a bit different. I sort of see it more as a partnership. So I speculate that the sparrow must have flown into the house of it's own accord and landed on the living room floor, the cat was merely taking the liberty of guarding it. I pick the sparrow up to return it to the great outdoors, cat watches me with some interest, there appears to be nothing wrong with the sparrow so I set it on a ledge, later it disappears.
Watching from the front porch I can see another sparrow bringing food to a little cleft behind a concrete block below the perch, the little sparrow comes out and allows herself to be fed, she's set up a ground level nest below my front porch.
I'm cautious about letting the cat out now. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't do anything so dastardly as hunt for her dinner, still it's better to be safe. But she slips out nonetheless, and alerted by a squawking din outside I find her slinking up the steps, the sparrow gingerly held in her mouth, and while I'd like to think she thinks it's hurt and is bringing it to me for repair there's a part of me that suspects her of ulterior motives.
I once again free the bird, who promptly flies off to find a new hiding spot, and sternly lecture the cat who pays attention with that indifferent nonchalance of which cats are the master.
Now I've had my cat, what, 2 weeks? So I'm a bit of an expert, and when my daughter goes to leave on her summer vacation with her mother I promise to look after her cat. I know her cat,"Pumpkin" it's aptly called, weighing in at slightly more than 20 lbs it's a giant, easygoing, loveable ball of fur that was neutered and declawed by it's previous owners. Very social, they're concerned that Pumpkin won't handle their absence so well, and so I take him in, and now have a pride of cats....
If that's what they're called.
Now Pumpkin is a special cat. By special I mean in the same way that some people are special. Not just because he's been neutered and declawed and he's clinically grotesquely obese, but there's something about him that suggests "simpleton". In perennially good humour, or perhaps I'm anthromorphizing, the way that we think that fat people must be jolly, but it seems Pumpkins main interests and pleasures in life are eating and being petted. He's a high maintenance cat. My cat, by which I really mean the cat that lives here, is pretty normal, only mewing when she wants me to look into things like the dry food/wet food situation. She will occasionally sit near me and allow herself to be petted, and attempt to trip me up if she thinks I've overlooked her feeding. But Pumpkin is another story, he'll mew, sprawl on the floor and roll with his legs splayed, lick you, head butt you, anything to get some attention. Pumpkin is a high maintenance cat.
And so Pumpkin and my cat (whom I call alternately "Cat" or "Bad Cat", depending on the situation. When the kids are around we call it
"Princess", but that's drab convention. She answers to cat, or as much as any cat answers to anybody...) have found themselves living together for the past few days, and are in a sort of "adjustment period". At first they hiss, spit and wail at one another, Pumpkin going into insane rages just looking at my cat, sitting there with eyes wide open and roaring. He looks insane. His short hair, perpetually matted in some places, like an orange oversized overcoat 6 sizes too big for him, small head, green eyes wide open, mouth gaping, hissing and screaming obscenities at my cat. This is a side of him I haven't seen before.
My cat, ears back, lying low, eyes narrowed, hisses and claws in return. My cat hasn't been declawed.
The first day they sit for hours watching one another, neither one of them moving, occasionally hissing, spitting, wailing....the can't seem to get closer than 10 feet. Pumpkin would have it that he's the master. If he pushes it he'll find he's in for a surprise.
It's been now 4 days. There are few signs they are getting on better together. The maximum distance they can tolerate one another is now about 4 feet. They've developed a few games they play with one another, Cat goes outside, Pumpkin guards the door so that Cat can't get back in. Cat guards food dish, Pumpkin has to wait until Cat goes outside. Pumpkin guards litter box, Cat doesn't care because she'd rather go outside. (Pumpkin, as you would imagine from his size, fills a litter box in a single squatting.) Pumpkin has staked the living room, but will explore the others when Cat is outside. Cat has staked the office and the kitchen. The kids room is so far unclaimed, my bedroom (at night) is claimed by Pumpkin (sneaking in, stealthily checking that Cat isn't around, before attempting to leap on the bed. Several attempts later he finally makes it up and tries, in true dog style, to cuddle up....).
By the time my daughter finishes her vacation they just might be getting along...
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- Category: Miscellany
The difference a cup of coffee makes...
It's been a long week. The rent, overdue, still not in the bank. The vanished neighbors with their outstanding utilities bill of almost $1000 have not been returning calls. And I ran out of coffee on Monday.
"It's a good thing..." I tell myself, but I'm not convinced. In the mornings I drink green tea, but it's not the same. A headache develops, small but there, in the back of my head. It's there every day, getting worse as the day wears on. I'm without energy, the myths of caffeine in green tea have been grossly overstated.
"Still, it's a good thing", I tell myself. "Break the addiction...".
This morning some pocket change from a bill, not my bill, not my change, but the temptation is irresistable, only enough for a single cup, I break down and take the daughter on a walk to StarBucks.
And sipping it, bitter, the headache vanishing as it goes down, it's amazing, really, the difference a cup of coffee makes...
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- Category: Miscellany
Job in Iceland
I'm in an office, a technology company, Iceland. The view from the window is spectacular, Reykjavik, the city of small whitewashed buildings, the sea in the distance, blue, blue sky. They've offered me a job, a contract position, I'm not in a position to be fussy and I like it here, "It's only a year" I tell the children. The person interviewing me, dry but pleasant, Norwegian, very efficient, I've a small modern room where I will stay, I'm not sure how I feel about this, it's a different world...
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- Category: Dreams
Doubt
Sometimes I have my doubts.
Not about the serious things, like God and the universe and such, I have long ago worked those out. And if I hadn't there are countless others who have and will let you have the answers at a discount, although I think my reasoning is a little more economical (and, not that it matters, consistent and sane...). In any event the big issues aren't the ones that trouble me.
But there's other issues, loads of them, for which there aren't any clear answers.
Like 9-11. Sure, it's possible it was a carefully plotted terrorist attack. Why not, the terrorists, the Arabs, they all have good reason to loathe the United States. But to believe that is in a way to accept all the lies that followed, the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq, to ignore the many "expert" opinions that contradict the "Official" findings. To disbelieve the official story puts you in the camp of wing nuts who believe the government planted explosives and brought down the towers themselves.
Probably the truth is somewhere in between. The government knew but allowed the plot to go ahead so it could rally support and go to war. Even that, however, presupposes a level of intelligence that I find it hard to credit the Bush administration.
There are other things, too.
Like Flying Saucers. I have no doubt that there is intelligent life elsewhere in our Galaxy. I have no doubt that if we survive, and given enough time, one day we'll make contact. But I'm not so sure that they (the extraterrestrials) have visited Earth, and I'm damned sure they haven't abducted Whitley Streiber. Ever. Not even once.
The grey area is in the visit to earth. There are undoubtedly UFO's, by definition anything that is unidentified is a UFO. But are they beings from another planet? Or is there another explanation?
I don't have the answers. So I turn to the internet, in this case a dubious source, but the best available (short of being taken on a trip by them myself). On the internet there are any number of experts, people who've held positions at high levels of government who say that the aliens are here. And at first hearing it's easy to dismiss one or two of them as being plausible crackpots, deluded, off the deep end...but the more testimonials you come across, the more doubt is sown in your mind. They can't all be crazy, can they?
"Yes, there have been ET visitations. There have been crashed craft. There have been material and bodies recovered. There has been a certain amount of reverse engineering that has allowed some of these craft, or some components, to be duplicated. And there is some group of people that may or may not be associated with government at this point that have this knowledge. They have been attempting to conceal this knowledge. People in high level government have very little, if any, valid information about this. It has been the subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and create confusion so the truth doesn’t come out."
Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and sixth man on the moon
"I know other astronauts share my feelings... And we know the government is sitting on hard evidence of UFOs."
NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper, 1997
Those are just a couple of the more credible "witnesses". There are many more, anonymous names until you verify the positions they held and realize that, if anyone knew, they would know, that none were in a better position than themselves to know. And then there's Roswell, as preposterous as it seems that a flying saucer crashed in the desert, so much more ridiculous was the governments delayed reaction, the announcement that they'd captured a flying saucer, then the retraction....
It doesn't add up.
But the weight of intelligent opinions, of people of substance who claim to have seen or experienced something beyond the norm, is overwhelming. And even if half of them are hallucinating, lying, victims of false memories, mirages, ghosts on the radar, that still leaves a large number of cases without any easy answers or interpretations.
There are other things as well, the reputed Amero, the New World Order , Cabals of secret societies such as bankers who orchestrate the economy and our lives. I have no answers. It seems unlikely that bankers could so organize themselves to rule the world, especially in wake of the economic collapse, but even following the collapse they bore no repercussions. The rumours of internment camps throughout Montana , ChemTrails in the sky, some of it's nonsense, surely, and the facts misinterpreted, but a bit of research does confirm that the government has indeed considered and even experimented with many of these methodologies....
And while they undoubtedly wouldn't test these things on their own people - oops - ...
The big questions, the meaning of life, the universe and everything, I've got those figured out. The small questions, they plague me.
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- Category: Ideas & Questions
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