Dramatic conflict

Hanging out with Cris in the morning while she makes a cheesecake to take to a dinner she's invited to. She was talking about her aunt, who lives in the city and whom we used to take to Golden Gate Park every Sunday to feed the feral cats. (I was thinking about that period of our lives the other day. The period of taking Aunt Dora to the park lasted several years, and while it was going on it seemed as if it would never end. But it did end, when the feral cat population dropped below that which required a Sunday evening visit [though Dora still went in the mornings], and now I can't even remember when it ended -- at least two years ago.)

Cris began talking about the other cat ladies who also went to the park to feed the feral population. The cat ladies of the park don't form as close an alliance as you'd think. It takes a certain kind of person to be so invested in the welfare of feral cats that they go every day to the park and into the bushes to the protected places, behind fallen logs and such, where the cats like to be fed. Such a person is likely to be more comfortable around cats than people, and each has her own ideas about what each cat wants or needs, whether it is a candidate for adoption, and so on. Thus the relationship between the cat ladies is more like a détente than a friendship. They help each other sometimes, but other times have a beef with one another over territorial or tactical issues. One woman, whom I'll call Penny, befriended Dora for several years, but now they're on the outs.

Cris went on to tell me that Penny had a husband who hated cats. "Not allergic to cats, or indifferent to them, but someone who thinks that cats are a curse, are vermin. How could someone who loves cats marry someone like that?"

I said it was an interesting dramatic conflict, to marry someone who hates what you love. Is there some condition, I said, where music actually causes physical pain -- like something Oliver Sacks might write about. What if that person were to fall in love with a musician? That could make an interesting story.

Unless you're Patricia Highsmith, who published a whole book of short stories centering around pets (which sounds horrible unless you know that Highsmith never wrote sentimentally). Then you would definitely make it about cats.

Update: Just found an article from this spring about one of the people who feed feral cats in Golden Gate Park.

Milagrito, the last day

Our cat Milagrito will be put to sleep today. For the past six months he has been suffering from a fast-growing tumor. In the last several days he has become weak, and eats almost nothing, so it's time for him to go.

I'm finding myself a little speechless when I attempt to pay him tribute or commemorate him somehow; he's so important to us, but in ways that are little different from the ways all cats are wonderful. So I'll just say what we did this morning. I took him downstairs to the garden, where in the dawn light he walked around and sniffed a little. He's always gone down to the garden in the mornings to smell what he can smell of the night's visitors; this morning his tour was desultory.

I brought him back upstairs, and he drank a ton of water, as he's been doing for the last few months of his illness -- I guess it's all he can think to do to ease whatever he perceives is happening inside him. Then he ate a little fresh red tuna, his favorite, which we've been giving him as much as he wants. He's also been eating a lot of soft-boiled egg yolk in the last month or two, giving him calories and strength, but he's stopped wanting the eggs.

Then I carried him in my arms around the house, and he purred. I'm glad he can still purr -- one of his talents. His fearsomely loud rumble has diminished, but it's still there, and as long as I walked with him back and forth, he gave out with it, until he fell asleep on my shoulder.

Milagrito's page on Catster and "his blog"
Pictures on Flickr (Corrected link)

Elegy for Sirenita

On Sunday we brought Sirenita to the garden for the last time; she walked around and sat in the clover.

Sirenita -- Little Siren --
sometimes Squirrel or Little Miss --
born in Oakland, tamed from feral,
dies today. Receive our kiss,
shadow in a chair or corner,
nemesis of hummingbirds and fish,
queen of blooming springtime clover,
drinker deep from spring or dish,
acrobat whose avid leap
brought down ball and shining light.
Lend your black to deeper darkness,
under cover of the earth,
like a blanket you dove under
like your bed, a sleeping berth.
Loudest meower, softest purrer,
take your rest in garden deep,
speak your piece and go to sleep.
Give your substance to these flowers
planted in our garden green,
watered by today's May showers:
thus may death a phantom seem.

Sirenita to end struggle with diabetes; Milagrito faces cancer

Sirenita, 2009

For almost twelve years we've cared for two cats from the same litter, a brother and sister, which we named Milagrito and Sirenita. Born feral in Oakland, they were passed to us by Cris's sister, who was taking care of their mother. Cris tamed them and has largely raised them. They've had a good life in our house and garden, a hundred times better than the short, difficult lives they faced as ferals.

Cris chronicled their doings in dozens of blog entries which she authored in the voice of the male cat, Milagrito. High points: "Pets or Food?"; "The Eye of the Monster"; and perhaps her masterpiece "Sports Magic," in which Cris talked about the issue of performance-enhancing drugs in sports and the reputation of Barry Bonds through the allegory of Sirenita's ball-playing mania.

Last year we noticed that Sirenita was drinking copious amounts of water. The veterinarian diagnosed feline diabetes. Deciding against an expensive course of treatment that would necessitate frequent injections and much emotional upset for the critter, we vowed we would simply keep her comfortable and monitor her condition. That was in the fall, and all through the winter I dreaded the prospect of Sirenita suddenly declining and dying while Cris was laid up at home recovering from spinal surgery.

Thankfully, the cat held on through the winter, and a month ago even showed increased appetite and energy. But now, with Cris having largely recovered, Sirenita has taken a turn for the worse. She stopped eating about ten days ago, and has stopped drinking water almost completely. Though still responsive and not in obvious pain, she is now skin and bones, and I expect her to die today or tomorrow. We already have on speed-dial a vet who will come to the house to administer a lethal injection once Cris judges that Sirenita's quality of life is at an end.

Meanwhile, we were blindsided this week by another blow. Feeling a mass in Milagrito's abdomen, we brought him to the vet on Thursday. She said he has cancer, probably bone cancer. His condition is inoperable, and the decision not to treat the problem was even easier than with Sirenita. There's not much that can be done and he's not in pain. Depending on the speed and type of the tumor, he probably has only weeks or months left.

I'm much closer to Milagrito and found this news profoundly dismaying. The cats are sometimes demanding and often inconvenient -- I'm allergic to them, and we have a complicated protocol where the bedroom must remain fur-free, necessitating showers before getting into bed, which really cuts down on spontaneous naps or sex -- but they've been ornaments to the home and real emotional companions. Many's the time that Cris and I, after an argument with each other, have cradled one of the cats for emotional comfort. Not to mention their entertainment value; they've cracked us up more times than I could count. It'll be really different around here without them.

There's nothing else to say, except that it's sad when pets die, but their companionship is worthwhile, and I'm glad they accompanied us here.

Hubris repaid

A Canadian man who won a lengthy legal battle for the right to keep "exotic" pets was mauled to death by his pet Siberian tiger yesterday.

Previously:

• Michael Jackson's tigers telepathically informed of his death
  
  
• SF Zoo tiger attack nearly a classic SF story

Morte d'un chat

Several years ago I described an apocalyptic cat disaster that occurred when our cat Milagrito tangled with a cat we took care of for a year or so, Six -- also known as the Six-Toed Monster:

Six went to live with a friend in Oakland after his sojourn with us, thus solving the divided house we ran where we had to keep him and Milagrito separated like matter and anti-matter.

This winter the little fella, who had a good five years or so with his new owner as her one and only, got sick. Cris and her euthanized him today and Cris buried him in our garden. Here Cris eulogizes him.

technorati: cats

Hotter than a match head

It's the third day of a heat wave, the day when people start to crack. By this afternoon I expect to be lying on my back on the floor of the house, along with the cats, with a cold washcloth on my forehead.

Yesterday Cris wanted to go to a furniture clearance sale because the advertisement showed some dining room chairs like the ones she's been stalking for years. We drove out to the Bayview district, to a neighborhood of warehouses, and turned onto the street shown in the advertisement. It was choked with u-hauls and pickup trucks. Evidently people in the cheap furniture trade had shown up ready, as Cris said, to acquire mass quantities. We almost immediately got sandwiched in between two large pickup trucks trying to squeeze their way along the choked street. As it was 95 degrees outside, we would have had to park two blocks away, and Cris is using a cane, we simply fled without even getting out of the car. I don't even want to think about what it was like inside the warehouse.

In the evening I went over to Berkeley, which was slightly cooler than the city, and when I came home the house was just as hot as it was during the daytime, judging by the thermometer on the thermostat. It cools off fine when there's a breeze, but there wasn't any breeze. We slept all night with nothing but a sheet, that's how warm it was.

Now at 8:30 it's already 78 inside the house, and it'll be another hot day; I'm not so sure about the forecast fog coming in. In the sky is a strange sight: a clear blue sky with little smog and white fluffy clouds, as if this were Illinois.

technorati: San Francisco, heat wave

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- Munchausen Syndrome By Internet edition

You may have heard of the mental disorders Munchausen Syndrome, and the even more nauseating Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy. In the former, a personality disordered person deliberately injures themselves to gain attention and sympathy; in the latter, they injure a loved one, usually their child, so that they can appear to everyone as a loving and selfless caretaker of their poor hurt little darling. The phenomenon experienced by the writer Armistead Maupin, in which an insane woman built up a phone relationship with him based on a supposedly seriously ill but actually non-existent child, was written up by him in the novel "The Night Listener." The J.T. LeRoy hoax, which was carried out primarily on the telephone by a manipulative former phone sex worker, also had a whiff of this.

With the internet, we have a new version of this illness. There are two websites called Dogster and Catster -- run by the same company -- which are social networking sites for pet owners. The conceit of these sites is that the pet owners don't post as themselves, but in the personas of their pets. My wife Cris has been a member of Catster for several months in the persona of our cat Milagrito. She is essentially writing tongue-in-cheek blog entries about current events; right now Milagrito is running for president.

Of course, pets do get sick and die. When this happens, the other users in their network -- their cat's "friends" -- naturally post sympathetic messages and condolences. One of the users, I mean cats, makes little "angel wings" graphics to bestow on the departed kitty.

By now you may be able to see where this is going. According to a post from the wing-bestowing user, someone is going to elaborate lengths to create fake users, complete with pictures taken from cat adoption websites; after their cat has acquired several "friends," it begins to suffer a series of illnesses and accidents and eventually "dies," all accompanied by an outpouring of sympathy from their "friends." The wing-building user realized this was going on when she sensed something strange about a request for wings for a newly dead cat. I'll let this user, Krishna, take it from here:

A couple months ago I was contacted by a member of our community with a request for wings. The person asking for wings had recently lost their cat to a degenerative health problem that they did not name on their profile.

Something about the request set the hairs on the back of my neck up. As I read the pmail and looked at the picture I had a sense of deja vu. I had seen the writing style before and had seen the same picture on the profile somewhere else on the internet.

After spending about an hour or so searching google images using countless search strings I came across the picture of the departed kitty same cat same picture of a garden in the background same everything. The cat was alive and up for adoption on petfinder. The petfinder entry was a new one too. I was infuriated! I started searching for pictures of the persons other cats and dogs and found them on google. Some were stolen from kittenwar some from petfinder and some from independent breeder sites.

I was so angry I confronted the person. They first tried telling me that they travelled extensively and picked up animals from all over the world. I asked them for the pets pre-adopted names, they couldn't. They told me to go to hell and stop being so nosy. That I was cruel for doubting them and their pain. Then they dissappeared off of dogster and catster completely. I breathed a sigh of relief.

But a day later I was asked to make wings for a new member. After reading the profile outlining their rapidly declining health and final death; my suspicions arose again. I went to google and again found the profile pictures mocking me. Mocking the pain I felt at the death of my beloved pets. I couldn't understand it at all. Why would someone fake a death? Is it the attention, is it the rosettes [virtual presents given from one user to another -- ed.], is it the wings, or something else?

Honestly I couldn't figure it out. Anyway as the weeks passed I started noticing more and more profiles using the same writing style, same flash toys on the pages, same backgrounds from the same site, and the same types of dramatic deaths. It was amazing to see the unbelievable events that lead to the deaths of these pet profiles.

It has prevented me from enjoying this site. Following the new profiles that come on, the insurgence of users that only join for the free giveaways, it's overwhelming. Understanding the freebees was easy. The fakes sickness and deaths is dumbfounding.

So, that's pretty pathetic, faking the death of a pet to get people's attention and sympathy. I suppose it's better than actually hurting yourself or, worse, a child or pet, but really, how gross.

technorati: Munchausen Syndrome, pets, catster, internet

End of the old garages

Since we moved into our house in 1995, there were some ramshackle garages on Harrison St., on the other side of the block. It was an ancient wooden building with a corrugated metal roof on which the feral cats of the block used to sun themselves.

Several months ago we got a notice from the Planning Dept. that someone was going to tear them down and put up a condo building. I almost forgot about it, but this morning I noticed a big claw machine tearing into the garages. I took a couple pictures from our back window, and more from Harrison St. in front of the site.

 

Contraction

With her unable to work due to illness, Cris and I have decided we have to pull in our spending, so one of the things to go will be my writing office at a friend's house. That's $400 a month we'll be spending on groceries -- cheaper groceries -- instead.

And speaking of writing, I finally heard back from the publisher for whom I wrote How They Scored. They want a major rewrite. How will I accomplish this without an office to write in? I guess I'll have to go into my dayjob and work there. The good part about that is that after a year of working there, I moved to a much nicer cube by the window. Not only is it full of light, with a view of the mountain right across the freeway, it's much larger than the other cube. There is not, however, quite enough room for the chaise longue I bought for my office. And there's no room at home for it, either. I guess I'll have to sell it. If you're interested, click here to see a picture of it. $350.

The other good part about working at my dayjob office is that the cats don't compete for my attention. And I can't surf the internet -- if you do it too much, an automatic warning pops up, like you're a little kid. Well, so much the better to focus. I've got to get that rewrite done. I need the money.

Warm San Francisco night

It was hot in the city yesterday and today -- 85 degrees!! Even 88?!? WTF!?

Yesterday was pure bliss. I met with Shannon to talk about comix, then went to the ballgame with Anna. I held back from drinking beer because I knew it would make me feel tired and blah, and there was still plenty to do in the evening. After the game we went to my new favorite restaurant, Bar Bambino where, as Anna posted, the portions are just perfect.

Today also warm. I went by Cleis Press to talk to them about a new project. They have an opening for a web marketing person, so if you're all about the intarwebs and want to get into publishing, it could be a fun job.

Came home from work; it was still hot. When it's warm in the evening, the main thing to do at home is try to cool off the bedroom -- which is closed off during the day to keep the cats out. For the last hour I've been sitting on a chair in front of the open bedroom door to guard it from the cats while we air it out.

Tomorrow it'll be cooler along the coast. Tonight, it could be iffy.

Cat in the garden

Just for the heck of it, here's the cat in our garden a few days ago. The flowers had just started to appear the week before.

Our happy home

Milagrito and Cris in the bedroom. The cats aren't allowed in the bedroom so he's mighty curious about what's in there.

We're spending a quiet day around the house, might go out for a walk later. Just Cris and me -- not the cat.

Social networking -- still hot, or suddenly passé?

Media marketing honchos in New York were told that social networking sites like MySpace are where the action is; at the same time, the SF Chronicle posted a piece that suggests they may already have peaked. The Chroncile's piece includes this telling remark, which it used as a pull quote on the front page:

Caro kept an online cat diary for six months and hooked up her cats with about 50 friends each. "At that point, I thought, 'Who cares?'" she said. "Who cares if my cats have friends?"

They're talking about Catster (a companion site to Dogster, which is the actual company) where, at last count, there were 92,997 cats registered, most with one or more pictures, and many with blogs. Even my cat has a blog on Catster.

I am a member of a single social networking site, tribe.net, and I hardly ever visit that. To tell you the truth, most of the people I know don't need a site like tribe or MySpace to post their pictures and journal -- they just have their own websites, and most of them have their own domains. That's what I look at.

Update: Milagrito responds:

Daddy, I always knew you were jealous because my blog is better than yours, but I can't believe you gave space in your column to that absurd woman who thinks her cats don't need friends. Cats not only need friends, they need a venue for their art-- photographic, cinematic or literary. Ok, so it's only cat art, you elitist. At least it's clean.

Another virtue of Catster is that you have a ready-made, believable avatar. I mean, you can go on some networking site and pretend to be a foot taller, twenty pounds lighter, rich, trendy and an insatiable slut, or you can log onto Catster as, well, me. I tell the story of my blossoming internet identity in my entry Love Song, which incidentally details the love affair with my sister (for those of Daddy's readers who like the smutty stuff).

catster, blogging, social networking, tribe

Good kisser

Joining that post from Badger I blogged earlier today, another great blog post: Violet Blue on relationships and boundaries. Just in case you wondered if she has anything left to say after all the other stuff she does. Man.

I just got home from the Miranda July appearance at Theater Artaud, a show which repeats tomorrow night. July made that film last year Me, You, and Everyone We Know; she's an enormously appealling actress and seems to be something of a darling of the artsy set, since even the New Yorker is printing her short stories. Her piece, which is a mixture of live and taped performance, has to do with relationships and heartbreak. It was cute but pathos-ridden and a little manipulative and frankly I just didn't need a story about a lost little kitty. I walked out and came home and hugged my cats and my own lover.

Miranda July, Violet Blue

Milagrito on the papal selection

Hey boss
im sending you this
from rome what a
clamor let me tell you
this has been
quite a week for cats
first the big fyoonreal
all those long skirts i had
a million places to hide
and the ropes swinging from
their vestaments made great toys

then a konklave but modern
i remember the way it usta be
all the cardnels flitting in an out
gabbing with reporters sekret
or no sekret
thats how we got j2p2
somebody sed well
lets run it up the pole and see
if anyone saloots
and we suffered the misunderstanding
for 25 years

no chance of that this time
the fix was in
i put my name forward
for a miracle oughtta have a chance
youd think but no
instead of a cat they
elected a rat
now i ask you
whats the use

im thinking of becoming a luthrun
luther had a cat i heard
and was known to drop a few
scraps of fish from the table
an luthruns dont have a pope
an if they did theyd pay no
attention

Some unrelated notes

All the coverage of the East Asian tsunami has made something clear to me that I hadn't really understood before: thousands of Westerners go to bitterly impoverished third world countries for fun. Not even to see what is unique or informative about those places, but simply to go to the beach. All the photographs have made it obvious that, in order to get to this beach -- and I'll take it on faith that it's a lovely beach, absolutely splendid -- one must walk past squalid shacks crammed with people living in poverty, poverty which is indirectly caused by those westerners' lavish livestyles. Aren't they embarrassed? Obviously not, since even now, tourists staying in unaffected hotels tramp right through devastated areas to sunbathe at those very same beaches -- and indeed, why stop now? For some people, embarassment is simply impossible. Those are the sort of people who become most successful in the world.

After the events and avalanche of news coverage of Sep. 11, 2001, I felt that things had been a little overdone. Remember the way people were bleating "Nothing will ever be the same!" Geez, I thought, it was pretty severe, but let's face it, what happened is some planes were hijacked and some buildings fell down; fewer than 3000 people died. The tsunami, now that's a real catastrophe. To its credit, CNN is using the same Day Six tactic of showing a montage of heart-rending photographs backed by self-conscious pseudo-classical music, the title of which must be First Came The Tragedy, Now Comes The Montage, And Finally The Healing.

At home, we have developed a system where Six gets the run of most of the house during the daylight hours, while the other two cats -- the ones who really live here -- get the run of the basement and the garden. Then in the evening, Six gets confined to the living room, and the other cats get the kitchen, the office, and the bathroom (where they like drinking from the faucet). Today Six made the most of his opportunity, getting maximum petting and playtime. As evening approached and I had to turn Milagrito away from the door to the house proper for the seventh time, I asked Cris if we could put Six away in the living room a little early because Milagrito was getting short shrift. She agreed, and we welcomed Milagrito into the kitchen. Half an hour later he fell asleep there for what is now a three-hour nap. Lot of fun he's having.

My sickness gave me the opportunity to do absolutely nothing -- to lie flat, without even feeling like I ought to read something; to fall asleep whenever I wanted, to ask to be brought ice cubes from the hotel's ice machine. It was awfully nice to do absolutely nothing, at least once I'd stopped throwing up every hour. Perhaps the time I was sick can be counted as part of my vacation after all.

After an hour of reading backlogged New Yorker magazines, I wanted nothing more than to go to New York to see some theater. Wait -- that's just what we did. But we always see Broadway. We'll have to be more adventurous.

I am so glad I don't have to go back to work tomorrow, that tomorrow is Sunday. In fact, I wish I had one more day after that. But back to work it shall be, after a morning spent at previously scheduled doctor and dentist appointments.

Cat strophe

We still have a fractionated house, with the supposedly temporary cat Six in front, and "our" two cats Milagrito and Sirenita in back. Every morning I let M. and S. out to the garden, where they roam around all day. This morning, before doing so, I visited a few minutes with Six, and I guess I retained a lot of his smell, because Milagrito acted very upset when I came downstairs to the garden door to let him out. He often takes a playful swipe at my shoes, just once, right before I let him out, but this morning he attacked the shoes much more aggressively, and then in the garden, continued to act like he was in a cat fight with my shoes. It's very unusual for him, and I was taken aback. I still feel sort of upset by it.

Today's the last day of the class I'm teaching at work, and everything's pretty much downhill from here to the beginning of next year. I ought to go through the docs one more time, and then we'll finally release. The weekend brings the beginning of several holiday events. Ding ding a ling, the xmas bells.