BlogOfParadox

Archive for the ‘love’ Category

RIP Zorro Zeta

I’ve been trying to write about this since I got the news on Monday, but it’s been too hard.

Wee, sweet Zeta was sickly last week; stopped nursing, and had to be bottle-fed by her tireless foster family. They thought she’d gotten past the worst of it, but she was just too tiny and sickly. She died over the weekend. Zeta was a beautiful, sweet-natured kittenface, who was content to snuggle against your chest and sleep, preferably with a sibling or two nestled around her.

Pragmatically speaking, it’s a small miracle the other wallkitties are flourishing at all, after their hard start. Personally, though, they were ALL MY Wallkitties in a way; and I’m angry and heartbroken she had such a short life. I’m just glad it was filled with love from all over the place, even the Internet.

Thank you.

Both of these kids’ll come home with us on my birthday, officially Best Caturday in History.

For those of you who only read my blog, I owe you a story. Until then, allow me to sum up: a crazy feral  mamacat climbed 10′ UP along our HVAC duct to bear kittens in our attic. The space would’ve been ideal kittennest, save for the steep drop-off that allowed tiny kittens to fall down into the loadbearing walls in our house. All five were rescued; four on Sunday, one on Wednesday. Our walls are tewtally ghetto-fabulous right now, but what matters most is this story has a happy ending. All these kittens are thriving with a surrogate mama, and all but one (a wee loudmouth dilute tortie/calico, who will come back to her original home) will be available for adoption.

Someone’s already called dibs on the wee Siamese one with a raccoon tail, but there’s a wee tortie/calico (who sucks her/his foot to go to sleep), a grey tabby (first out of the wall, brave explorer) and a brown tabby (so handsome!!) They’re all ridiculously cute.

LeeAnn (who works with In Defense of Animals’ Mississippi program PROJECT HOPE) says that if you choose to adopt a Wallcat, Junior (the black and white) or Hemi (mamacat) via IDA, your donation covers your cat’s spay/neuter, their first round of shots, AND helps needy animals in Mississippi. That’s a crazy deal

Adoption fees via IDA are

• $75 for one beloved cutiepie
• $100 for two (don’t you want two? You know you want two!!)

You can contact me at wallcats@birdofparadox.com for more information.

You can check out Project Hope’s blog to see what they do, but warning: there are some really sad cases.

Wallcats from Matthew Glover on Vimeo.

Jack came home with me in the summer of 1992. I fell in love with the little guy when my aunt showed us her cat’s new kittens. He was stubbular, round-eyed and looked like his belly might burst from glutting himself on milk. Even as a kitten, his paws were ENORMOUS. He looked like he was wearing fuzzy slippers. I smuggled him home tucked inside my sports bra, thinking it was far better to ask forgiveness than permission.

Jack would follow you like a dog all over the house, but was afraid of strangers. As soon as the doorbell rang, he would hide under my parents’ bed until the coast was clear, sometimes staying for hours after guests had left. My grandmother never laid eyes on Jack except for pictures.

Jack lived to bite string and wire. He also enjoyed asparagus and fresh herbs. He was a mean drunk when it came to catnip. He liked escaping the house and going on adventures, much to my chagrin. Jack loved being petted: he’d demand attention by body-checking your shins and love-biting any dangling or convenient part of your body. Until his older years, he particularly liked being pet like a dog. He’d dig his claws into the back of the couch for stability, and purr with his mouth open as you aggressively raked your hands from the scruff of his neck to his tail. When Matthew and I got married, we marveled at how similar Jack’s body language was to that of the great cats we saw in Vegas. He was just as regal, slinky, playful and tough as any tiger.

When Mom died, Jack came to live with me full time. He spent two months under the bed, eating and using the litterbox only when I brought them to him. One day, he emerged from his hiding place to rejoin the world, and has been an incredibly personable, even boisterously friendly cat.  He soon discovered he loved crowds, and especially women. He particularly liked it when women would drape his cookie-sized paws over their shoulder and allow him to stand on their cleavage. I like to think that was his favorite way to ride around because that’s how he came into my life.

Jack had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. From the time he woke up in the morning until he settled into the crow’s nest on the cat tree, he was treated like a prince. He dined on turkey, asparagus, cheese, fresh cream and tuna. We bustled through the kitchen more carefully, allowing him to ankleshark as we worked. I even “dropped” a few morsels for him to greedily “steal,” so he would feel like his careful plots to trip us worked to his advantage.

His breathing became rapid Thursday night, which meant fluid was building up around his heart, hindering his breathing. When I woke up to check on him early Friday morning, his breathing was so shallow, we knew the time had come. I’d hoped to avoid the vet, but he had to take one last car trip. He didn’t flirt with the vet techs, which is a big sign of how poorly he was feeling.  When we were ready, I draped Jack over my shoulder and let him stand on my cleavage for the last time.

Jack was such a “big” cat, personality-wise. The whole house feels colder and a little empty without him. It’s likely I’ll never have another asparagus-eating, ass-biting, dog-chasing cat. It’s a certainty there’ll never be another cat quite like Jack. He was a fierce defender, a sexy beast, an adept nad-stomper, a gracious host, a devoted omnivore, a jewelry thief, and a mildly sadistic lover of humans. Jack taught me that you get what you give out of a relationship with an animal, and how earning a cat’s trust and respect is a humbling and prideful matter.

Writing this makes me even more aware that I haven’t written about Mau. It’s still difficult to talk about, but I need to do it. Royalty deserve good eulogies.

I’m beat, so I’m going to link over to Matthew’s post.

June 15, 2008
Shortest Hobby Ever
Filed under: parkour — mglover @ 6:52 pm

Yesterday morning a bunch of us planned to get together and make our first real foray into parkour training.  While sitting around waiting for the others to show up, I jokingly posted to twitter: Waiting around for the other wannabe traceurs. On the menu: rolls, speed vaults, turn vaults, kongs, precision jumps, and emergency rooms.

Let me tell you, as I lay in the emergency room, the bone in my shin exposed to open air, that joke was hilarious.

I’m fine.  It was a stupid fluke accident.  I encountered a wall about waist high, put my hands on it, vaulted over it, and as I landed on the other side, the top tier of concrete blocks came free and landed on my left shin and foot.  It looked and felt really, really bad.  Luckily I was running with Billy.  He sprinted back to where we’d left the cars, rushed me to the emergency room, saw to it that I got admitted right away, and called everybody who needed calling.  He also waited throughout the day to make sure I was okay, then gave Deirdra a ride to get the things we needed for an overnight hospital stay.  He was a real hero.

It turned out that it badly lacerated the flesh of my shin, did some minor damage to a tendon, but no harm to the bone.  At the hospital they gave me a tetanus shot, antibiotics, painkillers, x-rays, and eventually put me under so they could clean out the wound and piece me back together.  I spent the night and got released this morning with a keen pair of crutches and a nifty mug.  I go back in a week so the doc can see how I’m healing and what needs doing next.  It looks like I’ll be okay, in time.  The doctors were very reassuring.  I’ll probably be taking a few days off work to recuperate, but I’ll be online here and there.

I wanna thank Billy, Marg, John, Ashley, Michael, Sifu, Katie, and all the countless people who called, wrote, and offered to help.  You guys are awesome.  Most of all, I want to thank my wife.  She made sure the doctors and nurses did their jobs, went to get me food when I was starving, sat up with me when I couldn’t sleep and needed painkillers, and generally made herself sick with worry and caregiving.  She puts up with my stubbornness and without her, I’d be…well, I’d really rather not contemplate it.  She hasn’t yet beat me up for getting myself hurt.  I think that says it all.

My wish for each and every one of you: May you never have to see the bones of someone you love.

“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

I wrote this more than two months before it was “due,” but it required some editing after this weekend.

It’s been three years since we were married, and about six since we started dating, or whatever it was we thought we were doing.  I have a husband who is often quite introspective, and often distractedly hyper-focused, but loves hugely. I am so full-heartedly grateful to have this wonderful partner, who grows with me and respects the things that nourish me.  I am so glad to have this man who keeps my crazy at bay with all of his reason, sensibility and compassion. I am so darned lucky to have someone who can make me laugh embarrassingly loudly at semi-inappropriate times; because one day when I am ancient and do not care at all what people think, I will still be laughing. I am so lucky to have a partner who has wholeheartedly embraced the furry clan I brought into our marriage, and doubly lucky to have married someone willing to medicate such a fearsome, toothsome beast as old man Jack (The Anniversary Miracle!)

You’re an inspiring, brilliant, thoughtful and loving man, and you make me strive to be a better person.

Happy Anniversary, one day late.

Our distinguished gentleman, Mister Jack, is in bad shape.

To make a long story short, I noticed his breathing was rapid and shallow and erratic, and we took him to the vet immediately, which was a very good thing. They immediately put him on oxygen, drew a shitload of fluid from his lungs, and generally are trying to stabilize him.

It could be congestive heart failure. It could be fluid buildup from lymphoma or something at least as terrible. They had him in the swanky brushed steel and glass oxygen suite, so we couldn’t even pet him goodnight. That might’ve been a good thing, though, because he was surly and stink-eyed despite all infirmity.

All in all, it’s 90% pretty awful, and there’s not a great deal of hope of doing anything more than making him comfortable for long enough for him to forgive us.

He’s been with me since 1992, when I smuggled him out of my relatives’ house in my cleavage. He transformed from a fraidy-cat to a pimpin’ party-cat when he came to permanently live with me. He follows people like a dog, eats asparagus and wheatgrass and loves to bitebitebite string. He sometimes likes to walk on the dogs like they’re furniture, just to show them who’s boss. He’s a milk stealing, love/hate-biting, nad-stomping, hairball-horking, skirt-snagging, food-begging, cabinet-ruining, dog-tormenting very stylish babooshka hat prancing pony Houdini Cat, and he’s been with me the entirety of my adult life. I can’t contemplate a world without my Jack.

We go to see him at 8 a.m.

I know he’s sixteen and grumpy, and really miserable right now. I hope he has more good times left in him, but if he doesn’t make it, I hope he knows how many people love him, even though he’s a cantankerous, eight-toothed, quack-meowing, cookie-pawed coot.

Good Stuff

• Anusara Immersion: Bhagavad Gita studies, plus Tattvas next time around.
• Square Foot Garden: commence! I have 21 plots of forthcoming tastiness, including lots of basil, tomatoes, and chili peppers. Basils, tomatoes and chili peppers rule my summery world. I recently purchased some lovely heirloom tomatoes for eating, and I hoarded the seeds. Since I don’t know the varieties, I named them for fun: Rhumba Panties! Tangerine Coinpurse! Sneaky Stoplight!! I have crazy happy Rainbow Lights Chard, spicy Mesclun mix and wintry squash seeds for later. Loving husband wandered endlessly around stores at my whim, and then braved the sun while using power tools. Yay, loving husband!!
• Friday was fixed on, er, Friday. She has been extraordinarily sweet-natured to us since.
• Teaching Yoga: I taught my first studio class in a million years last Thursday. I’ve been meaning to post about it thoroughly, but I’m facing the sudden and pressing reality that I am teaching THREE classes in the first week of June. If you were coming to my class, what would you want to do?
• My sister’s tenth birthday is in a week. We’re trying to make it pretty special for her. She’ll be spending the summer in Florida, and I hope it’ll be completely awesome.

Bad Stuff

• Steroid shot for crazy flare. Steroid + weekly immune suppressants = double suck.
• The dogs fought last Saturday, and Matthew and I were caught in the crossfire. M. got bitten once, and I got two nasty puncture wounds. We went ballistic and tried to cleanse the wounds of the contagion. Matthew’s was great!
• My left hand swelled up like a balloon. No, seriously. It was so bad that when I was sitting in the doctor’s office, I was quietly chanting Don’t pop… Don’t pop… Don’t pop…
• Antibiotics that make me delirious and sweaty + Antibiotic Shot + steroid shot + weekly immune suppressants = Ridiculous crazy quadruple suck.
• Friday has Evil Tail Syndrome.  Seriously.  I wish I was kidding, but for the last few months, at least daily, she freaks out, attacks her tail viciously, screams in pain and does it again.  It’s very disturbing. Anyone else out there with a completely neurotic animal who thinks its tail is out to do them harm?
• Yoga really sucks when you are having to hold awesome ever-improving alignment without using the two outer left ball mounts/fingers.

Sleep now.

I loathe this holiday, mostly because people don’t get the difference between righteous pranking and behaving like a childish asshole.  My mother (smartmouthed trickster she was) ascribed to the former school, and chose to die on April Fool’s Day eleven years ago.  It was an appallingly perfect sunny day. Today, it’s a dreary, miserable day, which means it’s perfect tattooing weather.  I’m making an appointment for a tattoo that will serve as a constant reminder of her, and all the things and people in my life that keep me strong.