Part Warning, Part Memory

This is Kitten, also known as: Nimbus (his “official” name), B/G/Moose, Toosie, Goose Goose, Hoose Hoose, Professor Hoose’n'Toose, Butter Bunny, Puddin’ Pants and The White Monkey of Doom. He died on Friday the 28th, after his health declined sharply due to vomiting, loss of body-temperature, dehydration and aspiration pneumonia, associated with still unexplained problems with his kidneys, liver and a possible bowel obstruction.

The most gratingly painful dimension to his passing are the ambiguous traces of a cause to his death (and in that culpability in it) that lure both Kristen and I to an impossible task of reconciling his otherwise young, unmitigated vitality with an assortment of factors ranging from his diet, insufficient concern on the part of his vets, insufficient advocacy on the part of his owners, and a blur of genetic factors probably never knowable. In the end, he is dead.

While not truly knowing what set the particularly irreversible chain reaction that killed him, it seems that it resided more in his body as such (i.e. his genetics or the failure of certain organs to perform their functions), rather than an immediate factor in his environment (i.e. a bowel obstruction or potentially hazardous turkey juices [my first thoughts early in this crisis]). In this regard, Kristen and I feel we fell short of our jobs as responsible pet-owners for not heeding the warnings from many of our vets of the dangers of commercial pet-food. I won’t unleash it all here, since you can find more elsewhere online, but the problems with his kidneys and his bowels seem consistent with dietary complications associated with the unnatural composition of most, if not all dry commercial cat-food. To say the least, they contain a quantity of grains not consistent with natural cat diets, but also chemicals inserted to maintain “freshness,” flavor of the ostensibly meaty ingredients, and sometimes things like ostensibly digestible plastics that serve as fillers.

For the sake of your cats, I urge you to consider exactly how irresponsible and dangerous it is to feed them a diet that, with all the appropriate translations, we would not feed a human. Some people advocate raw-meat, while others do not, and still others advocate preparing meals at home, where the ingredients can be controlled for variety and quality. I am not here to settle those debates, but to suggest that they are worthwhile. To those of limited income or unlimited miserliness, this will seem like a ridiculous luxury that only “pet-freaks” lavish on what are in the end “just” animals. Humans are “just” animals too, mind you, and a similar epidemic in our diets has at least some media and medical attention. Not many question the common knowledge of how bad too much of anything in a human diet can be, to say nothing of decades of subsisting on Purina Human Chow. Why, then, do we not sulk a little when we turn this all-too-common knowledge to the world of the animals that live with us, that are in so many ways too much like us for us to admit?

None of this will bring Nimbus back though, nor really fill his absence. Kristen and I loved him perhaps more than we loved each other, though now that is all we have. He was our little boy (not even 3 years old), and a complex, beautiful and magnificently intelligent creature. Do not under estimate the love and attention that the animals, human and otherwise, in your lives need for a full, happy and healthy life.

 

I’ve Made A Decision

I’m going to keep writing. That doesn’t mean I’m going to keep writing the amazingly sharp and witty commentary and criticism you’re all used to by now. No, I’m just going to keep writing, and come what may. I’m going to put something on the screen, or the page as the case may be. Classes starts this next week, and I ought to have a hell of a lot more to talk about and, ironically, alot more time to go about the business of talking about it.

That’s if the GREs and grad-school applications don’t swallow me, vagina dentata style.

 

A Man is Worked To Death; so, Why Don’t We Do It In the Road?

It may seem a bit indulgent, but I feel like if I don’t say something my readership will learn to gloss over rather than listen for me. I’ve been working extra intensely for the past 2-3 weeks, and have not seemed to find any time to read or write, much less get a satifactory balance of sleep and food. I am painting houses this summer, for those of you who don’t know, and regularly put in 10 or more hours a day 4-5 days a week. I will be on my last house this next week, which should be relatively relaxing considering it’s a 5-minute walk from my apartment. In that time I hope to get back on track. This weekend even, being extra long due to the Labour Day holiday, I might write an entry.

Thank you to those keeping a look out for me.

———

As a side-note, when I was riding downtown to drop off a library book the other night, there was something of a demonstration on the Hawthorne Bridge. By this I mean that a crowd of 2-300 people blocked my way on the otherwise large and bike-friendly path that takes me across the Willamette River. They were holding up signs demanding that the war end, and smiled with disgustingly smug satisfaction.

They were making a difference.

I was struck by a number of things. The first was the predominantly white, obviously middle to upper-middle class constituency of the group. I saw at least three people with sweaters wrapped around their shoulders like Hawvawd prep-jerks. There was music being played and children running around. People beamed with stupid grins as they held up their signs and got honks; they were really enjoying preaching to the choir. A song started to run in my head by the middle of the way through the crowd, a Beatles’ song: Why Don’t We Do it In the Road.

The song is—apparently—not so obviously about having sex in the road. Purportedly, McCartney was inspired by a monkey hit and run copulation he witnessed in India. I began to wonder to myself though, why aren’t they in the road? They’re on a frickin’ bridge, nicely staying out of the way of the cars, who honk almost as mindlessly, and yet they’re purportedly expressing their frustration with the war. I quickly turned the observation back on myself, who clearly could be in the road as well, especially for being so aware that it was much provocative a gesture than sign-masturbating. I don’t really have an excuse, but I like to think I had to get to the library before it closed. It was late, and I was already tired from working like a dog and riding all over town to retrieve said book for its return.

However, as I cleared the crowd, to my delighted surprise, a lady screeched, “Someone’s in the road!” I rode on thinking through the possibilities. When I came back though, the crowd was largely cleared. It was time to go home and go to bed, because there was work to do in the morning. The drums keep pounding rhythm into the brain.