Category: Uncategorized

The Tale of Two Cats

I have two cats, Tucker and Quinn. Each choose our house. Quinn came half a dozen years plus ago. I was out a cold winter December midnight, calling my cats, the late memorable Scheckter, and Lady. Quinn rushed over. He clearly belonged to someone. We put up posters, they came, claimed him, and took him home. He came back to us. Again, and again. The charade ended after a few months. We were his. They since moved away without him.

Tucker showed up sick and injured a few years ago. He’s black and white, and was dirty, with infections. I fed him, providing him water, shelter, a place to sleep, checking on him. Once trust was established, he entered the house. I searched for his people. He wasn’t chipped and nobody was looking for him. Posters brought no seekers. We took him to the vet and treated his issues. He was neutered, has gained weight and is now a handsome boy.

Cat number three…came to us last fall. I called him Stubby. A black beauty with a white chest triangle, he had no tail, just a stump. He’s clearly been abused by his reactions to feet and hands. My wife renamed him Boo Radley. I searched for Boo’s owners. No one hunted him but he was clearly a house cat, and expected us to serve him. We fed him, ensured he had water and a place to sleep. Then winter hit…. You’ve seen this movie. You know the plot.

Fourth is Meep. Meep is the Orange Prince, a little blade of a cat, and so sweet. Meep belongs to the people who live behind us. Here are the points about Meep.

  1. Boo is out to dominate Meep. Meep doesn’t want to be dominated. Fights ensure.
  2. Tucker is a fierce fighter. One mighty fur and fury battle arose one night. Tucker intimidates Boo, who watches him carefully and makes great warning noises. Meep becomes the orange bolt when he sees Tucker. He’s off and gone, trailing Roadrunner smoke. Meep, Boo and Tucker are kept separated from one another. It’s like a chess game on my part as I move and segregate cats, loving on them and feeding them. (Fortunately, Quinn is accepted by all three of them.)
  3. But Meep likes our house.
  4. He’s not permitted in his people’s house, apparently not under any conditions. So he’s always at our house. I bring Meep into the house to feed him twice a day (after locking up Boo and Tucker in separate rooms), and provide him sanctuary against fireworks, storms and cold temps, putting him in the guest room with food, water and a litter box. He scratches on the door when he wants out.

Meep has mites. He has terrible mites. Glances into his ears confirmed it, and they gave him huge issues. Raw scratches around and behind the ears ensued. Naturally, we had to clean his ears and start him on miticide. Our treatment of his situation changed his treatment of us. He used to bound into our house, tail up, raging with purrs and meows. Now he became wary. Cautious.

He even avoided coming into the house.

Despite losing his trust, we persevered. It wasn’t fun, becoming a perceived threat, but it was better for him that it be done. We cleaned his ears and treated him for three days, and then stopped to assess, continuing to clean, when we could get him to let us. That became tougher as he kept his distance.

Last evening, as always, he was sleeping in an unused grow box in our back yard. It was time for his feeding so I opened the back door and called. He arose, crossed the patio and stopped. Sitting down ten feet away, he watched me with sad golden eyes.

I lowered myself onto the ground at the door and put out a hand. I usually call him by the name we’ve given him, Meep, but last night, I blinked my eyes at him and called, “Here, kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty.” Softly, softly, again, and again, and again.

He rose. Stretched. Looked around. Raised his tail. Sauntered over. Paused on the threshold. Looked around again. Stepped in. Pressed himself against my arms and sides. Released a squeaky purr. I closed the door. He escorted me to his guest room, and I fed him.

He returned this morning, came in and ate, and promptly came in this evening. We resumed his treatment this evening. This time, he accepted it with little complaint and didn’t race away. His tail was straight up until it curved into a question at the end.

We feel he’s recognized that whatever we were doing made him feel better, and so he’s forgiven us, and trust us once again. I appreciate that he trusts us, since he’s not our cat.

Tucker and Quinn were on the desk asleep beside me as I typed this. Then Meep and Boo got into it in the back yard. T & Q rose up to investigate and I went out to separate and placate.

Cats have always liked me. My wife calls me the cat whisperer. Cats love to visit me, quickly making themselves comfortable on my desk, my lap, my chairs, my patio. There was Grace, Alexander, Scratchy and Blur. All belonged to neighbors but could be readily found at my house all hours of the day and night.

I could tell you about Pepper, who sleeps on our porch and cries for food (which I give her), but she’s not our cat, belonging to the person next store. I could mention Buddy, the small black who visits me when I check the mail or do yard work. He lives across the street. Sketch, a gray and white neighborhood newcomer, could be mentioned, as his people have discovered that he likes it around my yard. I try not to get too friendly or familiar with Pepper, Sketch and Buddy.

I have two cats.

I don’t need more.

2

Writing’s Adrenalin

Lethargy rolls a slow fog over my mind . Do I hafta write today, a plaintive voice demands. I don’t wanna. 

Last night’s sleep won’t go into the book of the best. Mimosas with friends this morning contributes something to the singular sense that I don’t want to write, and put it off, playing games, reading a book, reading blogs. Timing is off, energy off.

Oh, push, damn it, push. Push. Just think of a word that you want to write, the beginning of a chapter, a scene, a sentence. With explosive suddenness, words pour into me from three scenes, two books. Hurry, hurry, my laggard mind is suddenly urging. Write like crazy and get it down now. Okay, okay, okay, let’s get these things down. Which to start with…? Pick one.

One is picked, pursued. Words are collected, ordered, re-arranged, deleted, added, ordered again. More scene arrives. Moments expand, expand, expand.

Writing’s adrenalin kicks in. I can’t write fast enough, head down, fingers dancing with ballerina lightness, going until I’m drained. The quad shot mocha remains, waiting to be drunk, now iced with a fine skim from being cold.

I drink, suddenly weary again, but satisfied. Started with nothing. Found a word and managed twenty-eight hundred. Feels good but I feel tired.

I’d really like

0

New Fav Expression

I came in to order my coffee. It wasn’t necessary, as all the baristas know my drink. Meghan had been serving me over a year. “You give me deja vu everyday,” she said, laughing. “You know that, don’t you? You give me deja vu everyday.”

“What a cool statement,” I said. “You give me deja vu everyday.” It’s my new favorite statement. I think there’s a story in it, but then, I see and hear stories everywhere. Somewhere, maybe in another dimension, or a dream world (or is this the dream world?), or a future past or past future, I’m writing those other stories. If you want to get Far Out, maybe I’m writing your story. I am the writing god, writing the stories of our existence, unaware that it’s going on, because someone else is writing my story.

0

Just Write

Just write, I told myself. The aliens hadn’t yet arrived in my head, but I can’t wait for the aliens. I need to write. If you’re not writing, you’re standing still, (with the caveats, naturally, that if you’re editing, polishing, rewriting, etc., you are still engaged in the writing process, so you’re technically still writing).

These aren’t things I say out loud. Friends and relatives probably don’t know that my increased quiet is because I’m dreaming about aliens, trying to entice them out of the air and into my head (kind of like the old Billy Ocean song, “Get out of my dreams, and into my car.” I had asked my wife and others what aliens they like in books, films and games, or who were their favorite aliens. Great conversation fodder. The baristas, twenty year old women, were into it, and the barista today created an alien on my mocha. She then brought the alien topic up for her co-worker, who didn’t work yesterday when I asked, re-invigorating the conversation.

I derived beautiful thoughts from all these words. Yet the aliens remained nebulous, refusing to get into my car. Just write, I told myself, and they will come. Okay, so what will I write? I was picking up the scenes already created. They’re wonderful stepping stones, and although I wasn’t quite to the scene that arose to be written today, I shrugged. Okay, that’s what I’ll write, and then I’ll write the bridge to it from where I’m at later. No Big Deal. I write like this all the time, seeing what is to be and writing it because I want to, and then returning to bridge the pieces together.

So what happens in the novel today? This happens, and then that happens, and then, boom, there it is, writing stuff about aliens and plot exploding into me, firing off flares and tracers that illuminated what is to be.

Beautiful. Yeah, here I go, just write like crazy, one more time. Let the rest worry itself.

0

Figuring Out Aliens

A novel in progress features aliens, but I can’t see them. I know who they are, why they’re there and what they want, but beyond that, they’re not coming into my head.

I thought about all the aliens I know from movies and books. Superman is an alien but that’s not the sort of alien wanted. Didn’t want ET, and the creatures from Alien and Predator didn’t work. Nor did the man and robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still. MIB , the Star Trek franchise, Doctor Who, and Babylon 5 have many varieties of aliens but nothing that fits my requirements. Larry Niven’s aliens are interesting and intriguing but didn’t turn me toward what I think my book needs. Independence Day, Mars Attacks, The Body Snatchers, Dark City (I’m not really sure the strangers are aliens) were considered and rejected, as were the War of the Worlds invaders, and the creatures from Species and V. So was The Thing. I always liked Orson Scott Card’s alien in The Speaker for the Dead and Ender’s Game but they don’t work for my application.

The closest thing to my thoughts were from Clark’s The Puppet Masters. They don’t quite work, neither.

Gotta walk and think about it more. It’ll come to me.

3

The Shoes

My wife announced her birthday desire: let’s clean the house and simplify, giving away or selling things we no longer use.

Okay, we do have some clutter and items we don’t use. But we don’t actually sell stuff. We talk about it but we never get around to it. Witness the two leather bar stools in the garage. We purchased them online, used them for a few months and realized they weren’t us and replaced them. To the garage they went to await their next life.

That was about six years ago.

Agreement was reached that we weren’t going to sell stuff. We would donate items, except, we would trade books in. We had six piles of books ready to go elsewhere.

Bags of books were prepared. One was established for the Book Wagon. He took them all, and gave us a $50 credit. I don’t think we’ll ever run out of credit there, which is great, since we love browsing and buying used books from the Book Wagon.

More bags were prepared for the Book Exchange but we’ve yet to go there. Whatever they don’t take for trade in credit will be added to other bags for the Goodwill.

For the Goodwill, we filled three bags of clothing. Jeans that have shrunk. Shirts that are worn out, sweaters and sports coats.

I ached over releasing one shirt. I bought it at Nordstrom in 1998. Blue plaid, cotton, long sleeved with a button down collar, my wife selected it for me. It looked great, brought out my eye color, and I loved it. But now…the collar and cuffs are frayed. There are small pin holes and a rip a cat made with her claws. Sigh.

Into the bag it went.

Once I got over that, I turned to the shoes. I love walking, and have a life long habit of getting the max from my shoes. Finding good shoes and breaking them in is challenging. Keens and Merrills, Clarke’s, Nikes and New Balance, I don’t like giving them up. Okay, so the soles are holed from wear, or flapping lose, and the stitching has come undone and the uppers are separating, and the tongue is hanging on by a few threads. They can still be worn.

No, I don’t wear them any longer, I recognized. All those limitations prevent them from being useful, and they’ve been replaced. But, really, give them to the Good Will? Shouldn’t I just toss them? No, my wife assured me, the Good Will will find a good use for them and they’ll be recycled or re-utilized. She’s a person who  pays attention to these matters, so I accepted her verdict. They were taken to the Goodwill.

Last were the bar stools and a few crystal items. We have a ton of crystal – bowls, tumblers, tea, water and wine glasses, decanters – and we don’t use it. Actually it’s all boxed to protect it and stored in a cabinet. Our local AAUW is doing a rummage sale to support their efforts to empower women. We donated these items to them.

We’ve made a little progress. There’s China. More crystal. More chairs. More books. More shoes. Several televisions. Printers….

And maybe a few computers….

4

The Roomba

“Get out of that corner,” my wife yelled at the Roomba as it circulated the office this morning. “Why do you keep going back to that corner?”

Responding to that rhetoric, the Roomba sang, “I need to go where I want to go, do what I want to do.”

Wouldn’t it be neat, I thought, if the Roomba was rigged to play music as it went through its noisy cleaning processes? Better, why haven’t they developed a Roomba that kids can ride, one that the kids could steer? Then Mom or Dad could say, “Kids, why don’t you get on the Roomba and vacuum the house?” Riding the Roomba around and vacuuming could be part of their daily chores, for which they receive an allowance.

I’ve seen videos online of cats, children and dogs riding Roombas. I’ve shown these to my cats. Quinn wants nothing to do with it, fleeing the house as soon as the Roomba stirs into action. Tucker watches it, moving out of its way. Boo, likewise, takes to high ground to observe the mechanical creature. None of them display interest in mounting the machine.

Perhaps, to improve the cost/benefit ratio of owning and using a Roomba, we could have modifying kits. For example, a kit that attaches a four foot tall pole to the Roomba. Atop the pole is affixed a circular tray. Drinks and snacks could be put on the tray and the Roomba can go around, offering drinks and food to people, while it sweeps the house.

I don’t know. My imagination is too limited to come up with good ideas, but there must be something they can do. Maybe someone with more creativity can solve this conundrum  of what else to do with the Roomba.

At least we could put flowers on it and dress it up, or come up with mobile art designs.

There must be something.

0

Double Gulp

Besides personality issues and issues with politics, money issues, and environmental issues, I’ve been dealing with computer issues. My HP Envy turns two in 55 days. I’m returning it for repairs next week.

After all the problems I’ve had with video drivers failing, wireless connectivity, and browsers failing, and searching for answers and running updates, I discovered HD1 has failed. There’s a code and everything.

Naturally, I was a touch upset.

I went to the HP support site. It identified my computer and told me it was under warranty. So I then clicked on contact support. Doing that caused HP’s support site to tell me that they couldn’t verify I was under warranty. Did I want to dispute this?

Why, yes, I did. Their website just told me the opposite.

I sent that info off to them with a screen shot of their website page that showed they the computer was under warranty. No, sorry, that won’t work. For these technological geniuses, a receipt was required.

I stewed on that. I purchased the machine through Costco.com. I had the order but not the receipt. Oh, boy.

Next steps were contemplated for a few days. Offer them the order doc? That didn’t inspire hope. Hunt down the receipt? Yes, I would need to open the files. It’s probably in there. Maybe.

But then, I tried the HP Utility Center. It’s installed on my machine.

The HP Utility Center had an icon for HP SmartFriend.

A smart friend! That’s just what I need. A one-on-one Helpdesk. Awesome, let me true it.

Turned out, they would be a friend for just $14.99 a month.

Back to the Utility Center. I clicked on the HP Assistant under the HP Utility Center. The HP Assistant is like the support center except it’s not. I initiated a chat and prepared for them to reject me. I stated my case. Provided my computer’s serial number, product code, and the hard drive failure code.

They approved a merchandise return to fix the machine. Great, but —

It’ll take seven to ten days.

Seven to ten days without my machine. Double gulp.

Did I really want it fix?

Yes, yes I did.

I could just replace the hard drive myself.

But HP OWES ME.

Seven to ten days without my computer.

Oh, boy.

I’m typing on it now. I spend hours each day on it, reading news, checking on cats, surfing the net, shopping, writing, playing games, reading novels, blogs and magazines. For God’s sake, I have habits.

I have, like, five other machines sitting around the house, not including my wife’s Macs. One is a Dell tower built in 1999. Although I updated its CPUs and chipsets about ten years ago, it runs on XP and is not wireless. Its age limits what it can do. It functions well for MS Office apps, but it can’t handle the latest plug-ins. Its hardware and architecture limits updates, and it’s a tower. I can’t take it to the coffee shop to write.

I also have my previous machine, a Lenovo Thinkpad. Ten years old, it slowly died on me. Maybe I can reformat that hard drive, update everything, and press it into use. There’s also a Dell that I stopped using in 2010, but its hard drive is password protected (like all my machines) and I can’t recall ITS password. I thought I knew it, but that one doesn’t work. There’s also a larger, older Dell, my first laptop, from, like 2002. Then I also have an iPad mini 4 that I can use, but its accessory keyboard is too small for my clumsy fingers. I do have a few USB enabled external keyboards. Maybe I can rig one of those to it.

So there are options. It’s just…well, these little separations are worrying. I’ll be without my computer for seven to ten days.

Double gulp.

UPDATE: The packaging to return the HP Envy is due to arrive on 7/19, and I remember the Dell laptop hard drive password and have it up and running.

The anxiety of withdrawal has eased…a little….

0

Beyond 3D

Ghostbusters 3D is in our local cinemas tomorrow, and we’re hitting it.

3D movies are normal and expected, so much of it being put into 3D. My first experience with it was Hugo. When the snow fell in the film’s beginning, I was astounded by how the snow flakes seem fall toward me from the scene. Beautiful and amazing, and now, like jets, cars, microwaves, computers, the Internet and a million more modern technologies, processes, and services, so common, it’s the new normal.

Virtual Reality movies may be the next iteration. Imagine, instead, of attending a movie, and while sitting in the theater, you experience the movie from within. With tiered ticketing, the opportunities to watch can be inter-active, so in one side, you can reside within one character, watching, hearing and generally experiencing the movie through them. In another scene, you can be a fly on the wall, turning your attention to whatever attracts you.

Such scenarios drive ideas about what can go wrong. Trapped in a movie, trapped as a character, launched into a new dimension through a movie, time traveling through movies, accidently becoming someone else during the movie – or reversals of these things. Discovering you thought you were born here when actually, you came through a movie. Now they’re hunting you.

Oh, the fun we can have with this.

0

Dueling Novels

Hard writing day. When the Dallas sniper struck, it sapped my interest/desire for writing about murder.

But I had to write, so I began writing a sequel to “Returnee”, “The Long Summer”. Yet, the me that is a writer knew that other novel, “Personal Lessons with Savanna”, remained in progress, and he still had some writing to do.

So I end up doing a chapter of TLS, and then a chapter of PLwS. I’ll be writing one and realize a line or change for the other. Both story arcs are growing and stretching out before me, beckoning as a calm sea on a summer day, but exhausting as I jump from one to the other and strive to grab the evolving threads of each and order them. Neither can be shut down. Each generates their own aha excitement, stirring enthusiasm. Writing like crazy is driving me crazy.

I’m achieving progress, but man, oh, man, that excitement is a burning fire, consuming my patience and energy as its fuel, leaving me a short-tempered, barely functioning shell.

More coffee. Quick, damn it, quick. Ah, now the battery is low.

Time to stop. For now.

0

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