Pippin and I don’t play “Fetch,” we play “Catch.”
Hope at least some of our readers have spring weather to enjoy. We’re certainly enjoying ours!
A Smile for your Friday
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Category Archives: Critters
Spring Daze
There’s one terribly inconvenient and sort of disgusting thing about daylight savings time… well, aside from the bit about setting the clocks ahead one hour. The additional daylight in the evening is nice, very nice. Nicer when I was working until 5 at various corporate hellholes, and usually arrived home after dark throughout the winter months; very pleasant, all the way around to arrive home with an hour or two of daylight remaining, and sit out on the back porch and go through the mail, while the birds squabbled around the feeder. But it puts the dark at the other end of the day now, and when I set out at sevenish for Spike and the Lesser Weevil to drag me around several blocks at the end of their leashes, it is still quite defiantly dark. Dark when we head out the door, dark when we jog up the street, with the Weevil leaping and pirouetting like gazelle on amphetamines. And dark when we get to the corner and run along Creekway street… where, with luck one or both of them will want to poop.
Good god, do you know how hard it is to see dog poop in the dark, let alone be sure of getting all of it into the plastic bag? Even with a flashlight, it’s no picnic. A couple of lines of dog poop blending in with un-raked leaves and uncut grass, especially when everything is wet… definately no picnic, I assure you. There are means of training dogs to use a king-sized litter-box or pan of something or other, so I have been told. By summer, I might very well consider that.
Lesser Weevil’s socialization continues apace. She will sit and hold her bearing, when commanded in a sufficiently masterful voice, while other dogs trot by… all but the bad-tempered little black and white rat-terrier from up the street. His name is Peanut, since he is hardly larger than one. He barks to beat the band, whenever he sees us. Spike goes into hysterics of barking – noisy but relatively harmless. Lesser Weevil seriously wants a piece out of Peanut, and stalks onward, turning her head towards Peanut and growling in a fairly menacing way. One of these days, she seems to be saying. One of these days, you piebald little rat.
On the other hand, Weevil is perfectly amiable to the pretty young Weimaraner female, who lives along one of the side streets and comes to the iron gate to be courteous, whenever we pass. She got out one Sunday and followed after us, which is how we came to know her. The family who owned her had just moved in, and discovered only too late that she could squeeze through a gap in the iron fence. They tell us that they had another dog, an older one who died about eight months ago, and that she misses the company. So, when we walk together, Blondie takes Weevil up to their gate so they can pass a few minutes together; rather odd because Weimaraners are supposed to be rather standoffish about dogs they haven’t been carefully socialized with
Then there is Horatio, the cat who is more dog than he is cat. Horatio is black and looks rather like my own Morgy and Little Arthur, is extremely sociable and doesn’t seem to mind dogs. He lives mostly in the garage of a house up the road, where the garage door is very considerately left six inches open to facilitate Horatio’s social life. When we pass by the house, we usually stop and call him, and he trots out to say hello. Blondie likes him very much, saying that he is such a cool cat and she doesn’t think his people appreciate him nearly as much as they ought. If she didn’t already have two cats of her own, she would have taken him home already.
It rained, rained buckets yesterday, accompanied by amazing quantities of thunder and lightening; no way of knowing if this spring and summer will be as rainy as last year – which was so rainy —
—-how rainy was it???—-
That the spring wildflowers lasted all summer, and some of them were still going strong in the fall. And instead of turning light brown and crispy by mid-summer, fields and brush remained pretty green all year. Kind of nice, seeing Mother Nature do all our lawn-watering for us, but I just don’t think we’re going to be that lucky. Whatever weather we have in Texas… there’s always too damn much of it.
Villa Junque
‘Villa Junque’ (pronounced in Spanish as Hoon-kay’) – sounds so much better than ‘garage full of junk’, which is what mine has descended to, what with Blondie enthusiastically collecting ‘stuff’ for her eventual first apartment/house/place of her own. A couple of years ago, I saw a tee-shirt/sweat shirt with “It isn’t an empty nest until all of their stuff is out of the garage” and truer words were never printed across the parental chest. All of her accumulated stuff from two hitches in the Marines came home with her – the large TV, the stereo system, a lot of Target and Walmart bought kitchenware, a microwave, and several boxes of shoes and bedding. And a strangely comfortable metal-framed armchair and footstool which was apparently the prize of the Cherry Point single barracks, as it gravitated from room to room until my daughter inherited it from a friend and shipped it home with her stuff. She pleaded with me to re-upholster it, which I did… and to give it houseroom in the den… which I also did. As I said, it is strangely comfortable. Her TV and stereo also were allowed in, with some reluctance on my part. They were newer than mine by about a quarter-century, so a bit more complicated… but worked a little better. The classical station still receives badly, but that’s an eccentricity of their transmitter.
Her dog and her two cats were also folded into the household, and it generally works out, although three of my cats hate the dogs and prefer Blondie’s end of the house to mine. It’s all her other stuff which has made my house into the Villa Junque, although I do admit that some of the stuff I moved into the garage was specifically dedicated for her first place – the dining table that was too big for the dining area, some bookshelves superfluous to my needs once I put up hanging shelves and some other small stuff. Really, it wasn’t a patch on what I notice in other people’s garages. I could actually get my car into it, still. (Well, I could until Blondie moved in her stuff.)
Besides being drawn to the 70%-off shelves at fine retail establishments (where we have snapped up plenty of Christmas ornaments and wrapping paper for next year) Blondie is also a dedicated yard-sale shopper. Walking the dogs early on Saturday morning is nothing more than a disguise. She is actually reconnoitering for yard sales. With luck and walking the dogs, we can beat the roving pros, descending with their battered step-vans and pickup trucks and snapping up the good stuff. I don’t know where these people go with their oddly assorted gleanings; they are usually Hispanic and go for the furniture and the used appliances, but do not distain the clothes, bedding and toys. Blondie now has a nice collection of glass and silver-plate knick-knacks, garden lanterns and ornaments, chairs and crockery. She hopes that some of it may be Antiques Road Show-worthy some day.
I think our neighborhood is moving up, socio-economically; there is a better grade of stuff at yard-sales than formerly. Even the stuff put out for the trash – especially when someone is moving and is sick to death of making decisions about stuff – is a better grade. We struck a bonanza this year with pots and plants, but the absolute prize was spotted Sunday afternoon by our equally bargain-fanatic neighbor Judy. She saw a love-seat placed by the curb with a lot of other trash and made a special visit to our house to tell us where.
It turned out to be upholstered in leather, only a little worn on the seat cushions and two tears in places, and so heavy that it probably is a good grade of furniture. Well and I know that because of the chore it was for the two of us to load it in the back of the Montero and then carry it into the house. Whatever it will be to reupholster a solid hunk o’ small sofa like that is still less than it will cost to buy new. And it is amazing the difference that some cleaning solution, and some carefully placed throws and pillows will accomplish.
The Weevil loves it, since it is large enough for her to sprawl in comfort; Spike and the cats love it because the back and arms are broad enough for them to stretch out in equal comfort and all of them together. And I have to admit – it is a very comfortable place for humans to lounge as well.
But – we are swearing to everyone that we actually scored it at a yard sale for $20.
Random Thoughts on Interstate Highway Travel
Topmost on my list of such thoughts is – oh, god, it’s good to be home! It’s good to be able to sleep in ones own bed, to stretch out and not have cold feet, cold hands, cold-whatever-body-part-winds up pressed against the side panel of the Montero and is just a thin sheet of metal and some miscellaneous plastic bits removed from the frigid, wind-whipped New Mexico or West Texas weather.
Oh, yes, it was bloody cold out there; there was no snow to show for all that cold, but some nice patches of blowing dust and sand. The winds kicked up the day before we left Mom and Dads and made such a racket we couldn’t sleep that night anyway – and followed us all the way across three states. Nothing says “I want to go home” quite so much as vacating the area at 2 AM.
The best thing about departing in the wee hours on New Years Day – no traffic, once you finish dodging the drunks. There was one suspiciously careful driver, weaving gently down the Valley Center grade, which Blondie felt obliged to try and call 911 about – but all we got was it ringing about twenty times and then an answering machine. On 911; I guess they had their hands full. And the driver we were worried about didn’t look to be the reckless sort of drunk driver.
The “Starbuckifaction” of the coffee-drinking element has spread it’s what some would claim is an insidious influence far and wide, yea my brethren even to the truck plazas and gas stations along the interstate highway system. The Flying J/Pilot stores provide a surprisingly excellent selection of coffee… and have half-and-half on tap. Not just exclusively that ghastly powdered chalk non-dairy “cream” muck, thankyouverymuch. Extremely drinkable and for about a third of the cost of an equivalent at a Starbucks. No demerara sugar, though, but I expect that to appear by the next time I do a long, long road trip.
Oh, and speaking of coffee in the wee hours, I must pour scorn and derision upon the Carls Junior, just off the 1-8 in the eastern suburb of San Diego where we attempted to purchase some handy breakfast comestables and coffee at 4 AM. Yes, I know it was 4AM on New Years Day and the single unfortunate young person running the place was so junior as to make drawing fuzzy end of the lollipop and working that shift inevitable… but still; no breakfast items? We were told that only lunch items were available… oh, and sorry, the coffee brewer wasn’t fired up. And payment could only be made in cash. Yeah, so he wasn’t senior enough to have the keys to the debit-credit card processor or the coffee urns, but lunch items at 4 AM? Jesus jumping key-rist on a pogo stick, the whole damn reason for 24 hour fast food places is to dispense coffee!
Gas prices – not to shabby once outside California, and Blondie’s Montero got very good mileage on the highway. We filled to the top four times and came in well under budget, having allowed for gas at $3.25 a gallon when we planned the trip. Most gas stations along the interstate in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona had it within a nickel of $2.90, either way.
What to call the road-kill count – Bambi Bits? Bambicide? Whatever it is, the deer population takes a hell of a beating; that stretch of 1-10 through the Hill Country is a veritable holocaust for them. As a stratagem to keep ourselves awake and amused after coffee ceased having the required effect, we counted road kill from Mile 300 to Mile 511 in the median, on the roadway and off on the shoulder. Not counting various nasty looking smears and blots on the paving, our grand total was 49 deer, 8 raccoons or opossum, 3 skunks, 3 large birds (turkey or guinea-fowl of some sort) and 23 U-L-O-M, which is our acronym for “Unidentified Lumps ‘o Meat”. At that, we probably missed about a third as many, off-sight on the opposite side of the highway.
So – we’re home – and when I get home, the first thing I find is that Eric at Classical Values posted a lovely review of “To Truckee’s Trail” and Da Blogfaddah linked to it. With a resulting uptick in sales through Amazon. Maybe I should go away more often. Oh, never mind – provision of good bloggy ice cream will commence as soon as I finish going through my email in-box.
Greetings from Sunny Valley Center
OK, so we arrived after an epic drive of about 20 hours, and three stops to cat-nap uncomfortably in a car full of dogs, Christmas gifts and luggage – variously in Lordsburg, someplace about two hours farther west than that, and a rest-stop in the mountains above Tucson. Look, when it’s too cold to sleep, and the air mattress has developed a slow leak and the dog and your child are bogarting most of the available space anyway… well, you may as well drive. Dunno about what rush hour traffic is like in Tucson these days, what with all the new construction, but it’s a breeze at 2AM!
We haven’t killed any Californians yet, we had a nice Christmas and will return with less stuff than we came with, the dogs haven’t fought too much with my parents’ dogs, they think the Weevil is a charmer (except for her chronic tail injury opening up and her painting blood all over the place… thank god for the invention of liquid bandage and lots of paper towels and spray cleaner….) and Spike is as cute and fluffy as ever.
Blondie is spending a couple of days in Pasadena with Pippy and her family, and my youngest brother, I am holding the fort at Mom and Dads – where they still refuse to move into the last quarter of the previous century and venture into the wild uncharted waters of the internet. But they do have a functioning computer, and I am pounding out a couple of reviews and another two or three chapters of the Adelsverein Trilogy, or Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms.
Yes, we’re alive, nothing has blown up in our absence, and I just emptied 3,000 spam comments out of the queue – about par, considering.
Merry Christmas, to everyone but whoever is running the spam comment generator. (You should be tossed out naked in a field of poison ivy and fire ants.)
Sgt. Mom
The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth
…or at least that portion of it encompassed by the inside of a small tract house in a north-side San Antonio tract house. Yes, the Meek-cat, whom Cpl/Sgt Blondie brought home from her workplace is adjusting to being a sheltered and protected indoors cat. His fur already seems to be thicker and plusher, thanks to a diet of premium cat kibble. He talks – that is, he is one of those cats who is responsive to remarks addressed to him, answering up with a variously pitched “meow”. I think of him as “Chatty-Catty”. Blondie calls him “Meow-mix”. He frequently curls up adjacent to Percival, and indulges in some mutual-ear washing, but is still a little wary of the dogs. Not total feline-claws-and-hissing-spazz-out whenever he happens to encounter Spike and Weevil in the very same room, more of a delicate unspoken negotiation not to try and occupy the same spot on the same chair at the same time. He is perfectly amiable about occupying different parts of the same chair at the same time, though. Usually when we are all watching TV of an evening: he and Sammy are lounging on the back of the sofa, Spike on my lap, Percy on the arm, and Weevil wedging herself onto the cushion next to me… TV watching in our house sometimes bears a close likeness to the stateroom scene in “A Night at the Opera”.
Yes, we have a lot of animals. Those people who see it as their life mission to find the perfect home for a dog and cat would doubtless look at us and curl their lips contemptuously. That is, if we would ever be demented enough to go to one of those oh-so-select shelters like the infamous Moms and Mutts and pay out a wad of money for the privilege of being condescended to, and having a couple of snoopy busy-bodies dictate the terms of pet-maintenance to us. Five cats, two dogs, erratic income and working hours… really, who do these people think they are?
A number of years ago, through no fault of my own, (other than not being able to afford the $500 vet bill that it would cost to neuter a female cat on the Spanish economy, or the long drive from Zaragoza to Torrejon to have Patchie neutered by the American vet there) I occasionally had litters of kittens to place with a suitable family. Since Patchie allowed Blondie and I to handle her kittens practically upon birth, they were always beautifully socialized as well as being very attractive kittens. (Damn that handsome orange tom!) Our home then was in Torre San Lamberto, just outside urban Zaragoza. It was a development of townhouses and four-unit garden apartments that were popular as summer rentals. Popular in a less savory way was the summer renter’s habit of abandoning their pets when they returned to their city apartment in the fall. There were always cats and dogs who had been abandoned by summer people, thrown upon the charity of those of us who were susceptible to appeals of our dumb chums; every one of them pathetically grateful to be taken to live indoors again, and fed properly.
So on this particular occasion, I had an ad on “swap shop” for two of the extraneous cats – one of Patchies’ get, and one of the strays. A listener called me at work and said she would take both the cats: her husband was going TDY to Germany, and by the time he returned she wanted to present him with a fiat accompli. “Cats – oh, those cats! I’ve had them for ages, darling – why do you ask?!” Could I bring the two of them to the base, and she would meet me at the station and take them home.
“B-b-b-but don’t you want to see them first?” I asked, somewhat boggled by how she had made up her mind already.
“No, I’ll just take them,” she answered, and explained that in her experience the cats which she had spent a great deal of time over choosing had never seemed to work out well. In fact, the cats which had been the most satisfactory were those who she had accepted on the spur of the moment, or which had just walked in and made themselves at home. Her husband had left the very day that she heard my swap shop ad for the cats; as far as she could see the timing was perfect. Those were the cats she was supposed to have. She showed up at the station with two carriers and took them away without any fuss at all. The powers that dictate such things had already ruled, and she had been chosen.
We do not choose our pets – they choose us. I just hope that there is no other cat out there, walking down the street, casting a businesslike eye on my house and deciding that yes, it would do very nicely. There isn’t much room left on the sofa….
Sucker for Our Dumb Chums
There may be a chance – albeit hopefully a distant one – that at some point in the future either Blondie or myself will be taken away by kindly attendants in white coats while horrified animal control authorities remove a zoo of cats and dogs from an unspeakable house as neighbors gape in horrified disbelief and the news cameras roll. Unless there has been a mega-spectacular crackup in rush-hour traffic or Teddy Kennedy has been found in bed with a live boy or a dead woman, the resulting story will be about third or fourth down in the evening newscast.
Sigh.
Which is by way of saying that my daughter has brought home another animal! To add to the menagerie! In a very small house! And like a sucker, I said yes! Like a sucker I tried to insist that this one MUST go to the no-kill shelter eventually! Like a sucker, I know that it probably won’t! As soon as it has finished a period of quarantine in the garage, it will join the rest of the happy clan, shredding the furniture, shedding drifts of hair all over the house, fast asleep on anything soft, and it will remain until it pops off of old age!
Or Blondie takes it with her, when she finishes veterinary school and has a place of her own. Jay-sus, she had better qualify as a vet, it’s the only way we’ll ever afford to keep all the furry freeloaders in the manner to which they would like to become accustomed.
This one is named “Meek”. He is a cat, a neutered male, white with a brindle saddle and ears, about three years old. He’s been hanging out at the place in Selma where Blondie works part-time, one of the herd of tame and semi-ferals which she has fed off and on for the last year or so. He’s one of the tamest and the most slavishly devoted to her; she has always thought he was dumped by his previous owner. One of the other tame ones was run over and killed by a car a couple of months ago, and this morning when she left the office to run an errand, Meek ran after her and followed her car almost to the highway. Evidently, he has decided that if he can’t live with Blondie, he doesn’t want to live at all.
Not good survival instincts for an outdoor cat, living adjacent to a highway. The veterinarian pegs him to be about three years old, a real sweetie… and it appears that he has already survived a traumatic event that broke one of his legs and ribs. Hard to say if he was dumped first and then injured… or more horrible to imagine, injured and then dumped.
Sigh. There is a kind of symmetry to it, though. Two dogs, two gimp cats, two grey and two black. I swear on a stack of bibles, though; Weevil, Sam and Meek are Blondie’s critters. And there won’t be any more. Really….
Pet Detective, Inc.
There must be something in the water, or a phase of the moon. One of my neighbors blames it all on the comparatively wet summer – another sign of global warming or cooling or whatever. A co-worker from the radio station blames it all on that old devil, the sex drive. Whatever the rationale, it seems to Blondie and I that a very high number of our neighborhood dogs have suddenly developed a serious wanderlust and Houdiniesque escape skills.
Since we have two dogs, whose high point of the day involves towing me at a brisk pace around a long circuit through the neighborhood, we’ve encountered most of the other resident dogs. Mostly they are towing their owners around a similar course, or leaping up and down behind a window or a fence in a frenzy of barking. Most of them we know well enough to know their real names, others only have a nick: Einstein, the not-very-bright young boxer who always goes nuts when we walk by, Goliath the enormous Papillion, Daisy-May the golden lab who likes jumping up on people, Fluffy the little white something or other who looks like an animated fuzzy bedroom slipper bouncing around on four little legs… you get the idea. Weevil and Spike usually have a lovely time barking back at them. It all reminds Blondie of the ‘midnight barking’ in 101 Dalmatians; for all we know, the dogs may be passing on messages.
It’s the other dogs that make our hearts sink right down to our running shoes – the ones who are out and about, unconstrained by a leash, an owner or a fence. Last week it was an elderly German shepherd whom Blondie named “O’Malley”. He lives two streets up and has perfected the technique of slipping between the fence bars. He’s been getting out all summer. By now, everyone recognizes O’Malley and knows where he belongs, but I don’t think his owners have a clue. I’ve walked him back to his house a couple of times, and he hops back through the fence obediently and trots around to the back with the air of a hard-working dog having done his duty for the day. The week before that, it was a fluffy little Shi-Tzu who followed me all the way along Creekway, barking like mad, and dashing out into the street. I thought sure the little wretch would be run over about four times. I tried to catch him; not with any success, being encumbered by my own two, who were going nuts. And I am still pretty damned annoyed at one of the neighbors, who primly refused to let the little dog stay in her yard, tied to a tree for safety and visibility. She had called the pound, though, since the dog had been hanging around for a day or so. I finally turned around and dragged Weevil and Spike towards home, with the stray following after, figuring that I could at least catch it, once I had put the two of them inside. Luckily, a pair of kids walking to school overtook us before I got very far: the stray Shi-Tzu was theirs.
A couple of Saturdays ago, we retrieved another German shepherd – this one a well-mannered female whom Blondie called ‘Lady’ for the lack of a better name. We found her at the bottom of the neighborhood, and Blondie put her on a leash and walked her around the neighborhood all that afternoon, until she found where Lady belonged. And it turned out her name really was ‘Lady’ but her owner was so unenthused about getting her back, it was really no wonder she went wandering in the first place.
We had an easier time yesterday, but still – two loose and lost dogs in a single day. The Chihuahua who lives in the house with all the sculptures got out and went skittering across the road, chasing after us. In all the excitement, Weevil slipped her leash and the Chihuahua, aka Mr. Teeth bit Blondie’s hand… didn’t break the skin, fortunately, and we managed to return Mr. Teeth to his owner. Didn’t latch the gate after himself, and didn’t notice when Mr. Teeth headed straight across the road to pick a fight with two larger dogs and a Marine. Forty minutes later, when we came back down the road what do we find at practically the same corner? A sad little min-pin, a miniature Doberman slightly larger than Spike, with no collar… and as it turned out, no chip, either. But he let me pick him up, and we went through the whole routine, walking down the street asking people if they recognized him. No one did, although he was very obviously a pet and well-cared for. We took him home, where he got on amazingly well with Spike and Weevil. We planned to do the whole sweep of the neighborhood this weekend, but fortunately Blondie spotted the posters that his frantic owners were plastering on the neighborhood mailboxes. They were very glad to get him back, since he had been missing for two days.
And I thought yesterday was the far frozen limit, but I just now came back from being towed around the block and it happened again! There was another Chihuahua-type doggie, innocent of collar running along the creek-bed that I couldn’t catch, and which snapped and snarled at me anyway… and a pretty and affectionate Weimaraner female who came running after us. At least the Weimaraner had a collar with her name on it, a telephone number, a rabies tag and one of those electric-fence restraint thingies. Which is no advertising for that system and the telephone number turned out to be disconnected! But at least today, one of the neighbors helped me catch her and has promised they will keep her safe tonight and call the veterinary clinic tomorrow… if no one comes around looking for her before then (as I am sure they will.)
Really, this is getting past a joke; being a magnet for every sort of lost and loose dog in the ‘hood. I’m really almost afraid to go out tomorrow; at this rate there will be a lineup of the lost and pathetic, waiting for me at the bottom of the driveway. Perhaps we should begin asking for a reward; through repetition, we’re getting pretty good at it..
Dogs and Cats Sleeping Together
Such an occurrence is popularly said to be a sign of the impending apocalypse, or global wamening (or coolerizing or whatever the current cause for hysteria is) or even just something like another Michael Bay movie.
Wait, there is another Michael Bay movie out? No S#*t?! Well, just goes to show you, there might be something to it.
Because it’s happened, and if I had thought of it and Blondie were quicker with her cellphone camera, we’d have the evidence that the Lesser Weevil and the Percival-Cat are more than just a large, rawboned boxer-pit mix of a dog, and a small, timid grey cat who happen to share the same house and a mutual affection for the same set of humans. They are indeed, the best of friends.
Or they just might share a freakish interest in soft furniture and mutual body-warmth. You can never tell, I suppose. The two of them are a bit of an odd couple, in more ways than just the species difference.
I wouldn’t have expected Percy to have become the boldest of the resident cats, when it came to establishing a rapprochement with the dogs. When I first began to tame him, he was so timid that I thought he was a feral. It was the careful and gradual work of months for him to become so accustomed to me that I could even touch him. Once translated into an indoors cat, he spent the first three or four months huddled miserably in various hidy-holes, fleeing all human approaches besides my own, and having any friendly feline overtures cruelly spurned by the senior cats, Henry VIII, Morgie and Little Arthur.
Over time, though, he adjusted… especially when Blondie’s three-legged flame-point Siamese, Sammy joined the household. Sammy and Percy buddied up together, in the manner of two nerdy kids spurned by the middle-school in-crowd becoming friends… even though they both have since reached some kind of grudging acceptance with the senior cats.
The advent of Lesser Weevil and Spike made for a drastic re-grouping of the territory. Instead of the cats having the run of the house all day and night, and sleeping wherever they wish, the dogs now pretty much have my room, the den and the living room during the day, and the cats have the other half; Blondie’s room, the hallway and the closet where the washer and dryer live. Only at night, with Spike sleeping in my room, and Weevil in her crate, do the cats have undisputed reign over the entire house. The senior cats, that is.
Sammy and Percy don’t seem to care in the least about the dogs. Sammy was raised by some people who kept a large herd of Chihuahuas, so that was no surprise, but for Percy to be similarly casual… playful, even! That’s one for the books. Over the last couple of months, he would romp with Spike, and allow her to nip at him, responding with a bat of his front paws, only fleeing to a windowsill when the play got too rough. He wouldn’t do that with Weevil; she is an enormous lump of dog, compared to his dainty grey self. But when he was curled up on the seat of a chair, Weevil would park her nose and head next to him, and he would set to work washing her ears and licking the top of her head. Very amusing to see; this is why we took to calling Percy our little gay hairdresser of a cat.
Last night, we were watching television in the den, and Weevil came and curled up on the sofa next to me… yes, we let the dogs onto the furniture. I mean, the cats are allowed onto the chairs, and so is Spike who is hardly any larger than the cats, so why not the Weevil? How can we make the distinction? That would be size-ist, or something… and really, she curls up into a very small shape, quite compact for such a large dog. (Look, I hold on to some standards, ‘kay? I don’t let any of them onto the kitchen counters!!) And after fifteen minutes or so, Percy hopped down from the back of the sofa, and curled up next to and half on top of her. They slept so for the best part of “Eureka”.
If I had a big enough den, I swear I would buy another sofa… with the dogs and cats and all sleeping on it, there is barely enough room for me, these days.
Weekly Update
Ok, so this is one of those sort of weeks… although I did get a dividend check from the auto insurance company; a paltry sum but actually very welcome nonetheless, and another agent sent the usual SASE reply saying she is intrigued and can I send her the Whole Entire Manuscript, Please…getting a print of all 336 pages and mailing it will still happen in something less than toot-suite time, and probably cost the whole of the dividend check! Well, things happen for a purpose, I guess.
William is here, a week before I was really expecting and ready for him, missing his flight last night… which I only found out about after I had been waiting at the airport for an hour, this after putting in three hours putting together some brochures for the current occasional employer, the worlds tallest ADHD child. So, out of bed at four AM, doing four circuits of the airport pick-up area; honestly, if I weren’t so fond of him and if it hadn’t been so long since he was here last, I would have just told him to get his ass into a taxi at the airport and I’d have breakfast ready by the time he got to the house.
And I have to re-write the Hot Wells article, it just didn’t suit the editor… but I think I have racked up bonus points for being agreeable about re-writing I was complimented on being completely professional about the criticism… which inclines me to think that a lot of the other writers must be… I don’t know; high maintenance? Prima Donna? Temperamental, even? Eh… if you are paying me enough for bespoke word-smithing, temperament is something I can’t afford to indulge in.
I was worried about Spike the Shi-tzu, AKA the Poop Factory for a couple of days, too. Plenty of input… no observable output. Given that every disgusting thing she comes across goes straight into her mouth, I was afraid it was only a matter of time until she ingested something that would expensively obstruct the old alimentary canal. Not to worry, though. The evidence of normal digestive function was fresh on the doormat last night. The smell of it would have gagged a buzzard, though. (What does that little wretch eat? And do I really want to know?)
I am sure that Spike was the one who dragged Williams boxer-shorts out into the living room around mid morning and left them on the sofa. Blondie to me; “Jeeze, Mom, can you consider that I live here too?” She only rolled her eyes when I said Spike must have dragged them in. From the pile of laundry that William carelessly left on the floor.
Wrote up a book review, over at BNN… is anyone reading me at all this week, or is it just my imagination?
The Writer’s Life Waltz: Accelerando
Blogging at a minimum this week due to a confluence of other literary demands, and just no enthusiasm for writing about something suitable for here. The WOT is the same old mouthful of well-chewed gristle, ditto for the prelim-presidential-campaign… jeeze, if I feel that way about it now, I’m going to be hiding in a bunker by next year. People, can we give it a rest? Ditto for American Idol (who?) And as regards Paris Hilton; this may be the only time I shall ever mention her.
Over the last month, we have had a very demented bird, a female cardinal who has taken to perching on a branch of the almond verbena, just outside the window to the living room, and flying repeatedly into the glass window. She will do this for fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch; regularly thumping against the window, as if she is either fighting another female cardinal reflected there, or trying to land on a non-existent branch. We have named her after the stupidest celebrity we know: Paris Hilton.
The pictures of Hot Wells came out very much as I hoped, so finish polishing the article to a high glossy shine, and edit the pictures suitably. I have a thick book to read and a review to write for BNN, ditto a DVD to watch and review… and there is another book on the way. Just when I worked out how to lead into events around the election of 1860 and the secession crisis in Texas, as they affected the characters in part two of Adelsverein; or as a reader described it “Barsetshire with Cyprus Trees”. So I am getting ready to plunge into the operatic drama of the Civil War; murder, lynch mobs, treachery brother-against-brother and all that.
I did get a response from the agent who wanted a look at the first 100 pages; a regretful pass. The first four chapters just did not send her into the transports of enthusiasm necessary to take on representing it, and a paragraph of the usual blah blah blah saying that it was a terribly subjective business, wishing me luck in getting representation elsewhere blah blah blah.
I have sent out fifty query letters for “Adelsverein” including a SASE for response over the last two months, but only gotten back twenty or so letters which usually begin “Dear Author/Writer” and apologizing for the form response. Which leave me wondering where the other queries are, and if they are peeling off my stamps and using them for something else!
Back to work, on Chapter Three, Volume 2. (First chapter posted here)
Additional Rites of Spring
Wherever the globe is warming, it isn’t around here. Spring has been mild, and rainy. Some days the temperature climbs up into the eighties, but not for long, and the nights are cool. A storm-front went through this week, threatening high winds, and several hours of thunder-and-lightening starting around midnight that sounded like a WWI artillery barrage and kept the sky fairly continuously lit up. You’d have thought that would have made sleep impossible, but I must have managed it. Local newscasts that evening were breathless with anticipation, repeating the tornado watch warning all the evening beforehand. Blondie says there was a shelter-roof by one of the gates to Ft. Sam that looked like it was trashed, but otherwise we came through OK… no hail, at least. And lots of rain. The trees are well out in leaf, and so is everything else.
We added some plants: a friend had a roommate move out, leaving behind a lot of potted plants. We took a lot of them, as my friend has zilch interest in gardening, and so my place looks even more lush than usual at this time of year. The nice part about working at home is that Lesser Weevil does not get so destructively bored. It’s been almost a year since she killed any plants, or tried digging a tunnel back into the house via the perennial border. Blondie has hit some of the neighborhood yard sales. She returned yesterday with a pair of tall ornamental pillars and a replica of the Venus d’Milo, which will look better once they’ve been brushed with a concoction of watered-yoghurt. This is supposed to encourage moss and mildew and other natural things to grow on them, although I won’t go to the ornamental extreme of one of the neighbors, who has so many statues in their front yard that the place looks like a hobbit graveyard.
The two of us are watching way too much of the Home & Garden Channel…
Another rite of spring: Spike the toy shi-tzu had her summer clip. I’m sorry; life is just too short to maintain her in the style which apparently that breed has become accustomed, with twice-weekly baths and constant brushing of her long, long fur. Off to the groomers she went, for what Blondie described as a “shaved puppy”. (Which sounds uncommonly like some of the p0*n spam I empty out daily). Everything between the plume on her tail and the topknot on her head is clipped down to the skin. I think she feels cooler and more comfortable, especially on the daily morning walk.
Or as one of the neighbors calls it “the daily drag around the block”. The Weevil and Spike tear out ahead of me, lunging at the end of their leashes. I must have become more accustomed to this; it’s been ages since either one of them managed to trip me up or knock me down. The Weevil is especially exuberant during the first few blocks: she leaps clear of the ground, over and over again. “You can tell she’s had her Wheaties!” observed the same neighbor, upon observing this performance. There is also speculation afoot that she might be part jack-rabbit. Taking them both out is not just “walkies”, it’s an upper-body workout too.
Rites of spring, indeed.