8 posts tagged “cats”
Masa got this big old heavy-duty bottle and turned it into an aquarium. It looks really cool but the cat LOVES it. It's too heavy for him to move and the mouth is too small for him to reach far inside. So he just sits next to it, staring into it all day long. Last night, in fact, I got up at like 4am, and he was sitting on the dining room floor, staring intently at them fishies.
Hahahaha....
Such a sweet story:
A bear and a cat at a German zoo have become best friends. For eight years, they've spent day and night together, and when they were separated so that the zoo could refurbish the bear's living area, both cat and bear pined after each other. The cat sat outside of the bear's pen for so long, that finally they just let her in; the two cuddled up in greeting and have been happy since.
We keep dry vet-recommended food out for our cat, Pete. All the time. He can eat it any time he wants. I think it's so interesting that he'll eat and eat until his food starts getting low. Then he starts conserving. He'll eat it until there is about 1/4 left and after that he starts into his ass-kissing campaign. If we're awake, he'll come up to me (or Masa, but usually me since although he loves Masa more than he loves me, he knows that I'm the one who usually doles out the food). He rubs his face against my legs, gets really friendly, purrs and acts as sweet as he can be until I give him more food.
If it's the middle of the night and his food gets low, he will jump up onto the bed and just stand on top of my chest and stare at me. Because his voicebox is damaged, he can't make any sound, so he'll just stand perfectly still on top of my chest, his face about 5 inches from my face, his eyes staring until I wake up, get up and give him more food. If I push him off onto the floor, he'll just hop right back up again until I give in. He's relentless and it's kind of a creepy way to get woken up. This morning at like 5am he decided he needed food and we went round and round for 40 minutes (I pushed him off the bed, he went around to Masa's side, hopped back up, tried it again, I pushed him off again, etc.) until finally I gave up, got up in a sleepy daze and poured him some food. FINALLY he left me alone!
What interests me is how he can "reason" (if, indeed, that's what it is) NOT to eat all of it. I've never seen his bowl empty. He always saves a little bit before he starts getting super friendly to get more. It's as if he knows he has to start conserving when it gets low and decides that he has to WORK to get more. And I never have to go and check if he needs food because he always comes and lets me know.
And that's just the dry food. A few times a week we give him some canned wet food which he loves. I won't even go into how crazy he gets to try and score some of that food!
People are very interested in cats on leashes. We often bring Petey to the park and we always put him on a leash because there are big dogs running around and lots of cars whizzing by on two streets surrounding. But people are so fascinated with it and they always come and talk to us, saying it's the first time they've ever seen a cat on a leash. Petey doesn't love it, but he likes being outside.
The Pepe Carvalho detective novel series is my new favorite. The detective creation by the late Spanish writer Manuel Velasquez Montalban, is a really interesting gumshoe who wrestles with intellectual and philosophical quandries. In Buenos Aires Quintet, Cavalho is in Argentina investigating the disappearance of Raul who has some shady relationship with the Argentine government of the late 90s. His stories have a real "Kafka-esque" feel to them (doesn't everyone say that about writers who leave out practical mundane details?) in that you have such a limited view point and sense that most of the action takes place off-stage.
Chili needs cumin. I've been making chili for years, but last month we were at Dougie's and tasted some of his chili. It was different than mine and when we compared recipes, I realized that I never used cumin. After the park yesterday, I came home and made a big batch of chili and cornbread and added cumin this time: SO GOOD!
Taking a day off is a necessity. Since I freelance, I tend to just work all the time but lately Masa's been putting his foot down (in his own way), insisting I take Sundays off and do no work. It really does help getting away from this computer for a day and on Mondays I am more than ready to get back to work! I wonder if I will ever have enough work stability to be able to take two days off?!
We have strange TV habits. We only watch about five tv shows with any regularity and the only networks we watch are TLC, A&E, and PBS. I love "The First 48" and "Cold Case Files." (Oh, and "Intervention.") Masa loves "Flip This House" and "What Not to Wear." I often watch "Nova" or "American Experience" or "American Masters" if the topic is interesting to me. But that's it! Those are about the only shows we ever watch on tv and almost never watch the US networks. I wonder why...and we never plan on watching anything. It's just that we keep the tv on if those shows come on. I hear that certain shows are worth watching ("The Wire," "Entourage") but I have no idea when they are even on. Oh, and we don't have HBO.
I love Montreal when it's not winter. All winter long, I am daydreaming about leaving, hating being stuck inside all the time. People tend to be anti-social (ourselves included) so since I work at home it's easy to feel isolated. But lately with the great weather, we are loving this city and don't want to go anywhere else. Meeting up with friends, hanging out in the park, just walking down Laurier or Mont-Royal on a sunny Saturday is a thrill, bustling with people and animals and snippets of conversation. But in January, this town SUCKS.
*as i write this, two people are sitting in a mini-van outside my living room window (high enough that they can't really see me but i can see them easily) arguing in sign-language. fiercely. the woman in the passenger seat keeps getting in and out of the car, slamming the door, then the man honks the horn (he's enormously fat and i can't imagine it's easy to climb out of his seat). she then gets back in and the fighting continues. signing in anger amazes me: their hands are moving so fast!
*cats stink. we have a smallish place and his litterbox is in the pantry. but it has to be cleaned at least twice a day because i HATE HATE any trace of cat smell. we bought clumping expensive cat litter. doesn't help (i wonder, actually, if it's not the litter that i actually think i smell). a closing litterbox with a filter on top? doesn't help. charcoal in the litterbox? doesn't help. or maybe it does help and it could be worse. but i swear i just get a "whif" of cat sometimes. yuk!!!!!! i wonder if toilet training a cat is really as easy as you read it is...
*i am trying consciously to avoid writing about US politics. what can i possibly add that hasn't been said 100 times by 100 people smarter than i? but this whole "inappropriate relationship" that mccain is supposed to have (or to have had?) is so STUPID. i'm not a republican. i'm not going to vote for mccain. but who. fucking. cares? if mccain is having orgies with squirrels and llamas and three women named eunice, what does that have to do with his abilities as a leader? SO idiotic. i didn't care when clinton (allegedly) did it. i don't care that mccain (allegedly) did it. shut up and get to what's IMPORTANT.
*my editor invited me to new york in april. there's a conference and since so many people will be in town, they are having a big "cocktail party" (her words, she's SO new york!) for all freelance writers. and a big breakfast on a friday morning. mmm. of course, i have to PAY to get there (as all freelancers do) but it's tempting. i don't really WANT to go. i mean i love new york and all, but it's money i don't want to spend. we're trying to save! and i'll have to go out and buy an expensive suit because that's what those new yorkers want (plus you wanna look good at a "cocktail party on 5th avenue" with bigwigs in the publishing industry). sigh. it's one of those things: i don't HAVE to go by any means, but it would be good for my career. anyway, masa is in tokyo that week. mmmmm. considering...i should try and learn to be more ambitious!
damn, this cat business ain't cheap. we dropped about $80 on "goods" the other day: litterbox, food, blankets for his bed, etc. then today at the vet: $180! yow! he had to have this test and that test (he's got worms -- ewwwwww) and those TWO little pills cost $40 alone. shee. yot. and that didn't even include him getting the snippy-snip, or another checkup he needs in a month. that's gonna be another $250 on top of what we've already spent. sigh. oh well. not complaining -- masa is so happy to have someone to chase around and talk to and take care of. he's such a dork.
we named him pete. i don't know why, it just seems to suit him. masa calls him "petey" because when he tries to say pete, his japanese throat can't make that glottal stop (if i remember the term correctly: it's been years since i took phonology), so it comes out "pee." we didn't want a cat named "junkie" (masa told me today that he's glad now i vetoed that name, we would have come across like strung out loser crack-heads at the vet), but we also don't want a cat named after urine. so petey or pete.
crazy busy day! but i managed to work seven hours, go to the gym, take the cat to the vet, attend a class i've been going to, go shopping, take a one hour bath, and read for an hour after that. whew. now gonna work until 2 or so...and tomorrow even busier.
reading clare messud's the emperor's children, a book i've had on my list since bangkok. i'm enjoying it, though all the self-absorbed navel-gazing (is that redundant?) is starting to irk me. does every single decision, no matter how trivial, need to be analyzed to death (two pages of one character deciding why she doesn't want to call her best friend and gossip about her day)? i sense what she's doing: setting up a kind of ironical portrayal of new york life leading up to 9/11. fine. but if these people were my friends, i'd tell them to get something REAL to worry about. geez. i hear ron howard is making a film of the book, that'll be interesting. ron howard is an uneven film-maker in my assessment (and that's being charitable), so i do wonder how he will translate all the internal debates into something worth watching.
anyway, messud makes a sort of cryptic allusion to eva cassidy, this singer who died 15 years back at age 30 or something. what a great singer! i should try and find her version of sting's "fields of gold" which is phenomenal and haunting, really austere and powerful. yeah, i'm going on an iTunes hunt now...then: back to work!
i have always liked pets. growing up, i can hardly remember a time when we didn't have a dog (though we never had a cat, for some reason). yet, our family treated the dog like a dog: we took care of it, of course, but it was never really "a part of the family" and we didn't spend hours laying around talking about the dog or laughing at its doggish antics.
all of this made me into the kind of pet person i am: i like pets, i think animals add a lot to one's life and i am glad that we can have a chance to have pets now. but it struck me that MY relationship with animals is very different than other people's.
masa and marie are hardcore pet people: they talk about pets almost as if they are people. they are frequently found doing nothing more than sitting in the dining room "playing" with one of the cats. more strikingly, the cats adore them both: oyster will literally follow masa from room to room, romeo following marie in the same way. if everyone is home, 95% of the time, oyster is laying next to masa and romeo is laying next to marie, no matter what they are doing or what room they are in. both pets tolerate me, but i'm the one who yells at them (oyster is constantly knocking things off my nighstand and breaking them). i'm the one who gets annoyed at them. i'm the one likely to move them out of the way with my feet when they are blocking my way. they both like me, but i don't have that special kind of connection with them that masa and marie do.
another thing that strikes me about having pets is how culturally-bound the experience is. many chinese people (older than, say, around 30) are actually terrified of animals, particularly urban chinese. it is just something that people didn't do for many years and the thought of keeping an animal in one's home is appalling to these people. it's quite different for younger people, of course, and having a dog in shanghai is not that unusual nowadays (though the government, run by old men as most countries' governments are, don't make it very easy to do so) so it's becoming less of an issue. but i remember having a canadian friend in shanghai and dogsitting her little corky spaniel while she was gone once. when i took it for a walk, people would actually cross the street just to avoid walking close to it!
the japanese are very fond of pets and most people have them. plus japan has a very fascinating relationship with cats. so many artists are into cats: miyazaki, murakami, tanizaki, etc. and cats are used frequently in advertising or marketing campaigns (little cartoon cats with high squeaky voices).
(the chinese have a particular dislike for cats generally, i guess they think they represent evil or something...).
then you have people (here or anywhere) who just don't like animals. i don't really know any people like this, or i can't recall any as i sit here, but they must exist. is this a kind of pathology? would we as a culture think there is something wrong with a person who hates all cats and dogs and would never have a pet?
i'd say i'm somewhere in the middle between not being a pet person and being a hardcore pet person. i like animals, i like having pets (as i said earlier), but i also don't feel particularly attached to either of our cats. if something happened to one, i'd feel terrible for marie and masa, but i wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
but maybe the problem isn't me: maybe we just have asshole cats...
everyone thinks theirs is the cutest...
we got a short one and put it on the dining room table. masa is thrilled because he's never put one up before, but he has such japanese sensibilities towards the whole affair: i had to talk him out of a "theme" (how annoying!). then he decided that only ONE color would do. uuhhhh. no.
finally, we got it up and he was so happy about it! it's a collection of many types of ornaments but some things i can't stand about trees (which i inherited from my mom) are lacking:
- flashing lights.
- those cheap plastic-y icicle thingies.
- plastic anything
- tinsel garland
the only issue now is how we are going to keep the cats away from it. oyster ("the baby" as marie calls him) loves playing and, man, it took him about 10 minutes to figure out that batting those crystal-drop icicles is FUN! he is scared to death of me anyway because i'm the "bad" one who always disciplines him (i.e., yells at him and sprays his face with the water bottle). he adores masa because masa just plays with him all day. romeo (the black cat) ignores both of us and only pays attention to marie.
some other pics from a party the other night around the corner...
