New Cast Introductions (and Goodbyes) Part 3

D.J. Kitty, ostensibly the runt, has turned out to be the more intelligent of the two kittens. He’s definitely the more demanding one when it comes to his food supply and is given to meowing loudly from just out of reach at 4 a.m. when he decides it’s time for breakfast. He is also known for clawing the shit out of you if you don’t prepare his morning bowl of canned food as quickly as he desires. (This has led to many a morning when he only receives dry food and is lucky it isn’t thrown at him.) When not clawing us, his other favorite tactic is to locate the most fragile and/or valuable thing one of us (*cough*cough*cough*THEWIFE*COUGH*) has unwisely left on the table where we feed them, say a cell phone or stethoscope, and knocking it off to the hard floor below. We’ve therefore had to adjust our habits of where we put things upon coming home. When D.J.’s not being an absolute bitch, though, he’s a very loving cat. And he adores Moose, to the point that we sometimes catch them napping together.

Emmett, on the other hand, is the Matthew McConaughey of cats, meaning he looks very pretty and very stoned most of the time. He’s not terribly intelligent, but probably only has a dusting of the “re re,” so he’s not a total lost cause in the brains department. He’s much more prone to just quietly taking life as it comes. And while he's definitely interested in food—in fact, we had to switch to weight control cat food cause he was becoming quite the fatty for a while there— he's not so interested that he’d cause anyone physical harm to get hold of some, or even meow. In fact, I can't recall the last time I heard him meow.

It took us a while to bond with the cats, probably because they drove us nuts most of the time. With the brief exception of Milo Soulpatch, we've only had female cats and the ones we've had weren't known for just tearing the hell out of our house like these two ass clowns. Though they've settled down a bit now, there were a couple months there when they just flew through the house knocking shit over at all hours of the day and night. There was some mutual training that had to be done in this. They trained us to notice that whenever they were tearing through the house, knocking shit over or clawing at the flatscreen, it was there way of getting our attention because they WANTED to go out. And we had to train them that when they knock a bedside lamp onto our head in the middle of the night, we are apt to try and strangle them, or at least hurl a pillow at them. (And by "we" I mean me, as the wife never seems to be on the receiving end of their antics.) D.J. now limits his sleep interruptions to meowing in the night in the hope of being let out or being fed. (The little shit does not suffer for lack of food, by the way, he’s just a complete bitch.)

We recently returned from another family trip to Florida. We rented the same house from last year and met up with most of the same crew of the wife’s family from last year as well as a niece and nephew who weren’t able to come before. This year, we included my sister and my parents, since the house was plenty big enough for all of us. We took our dogs with us on the journey, but left the cats behind at the “kitty spa,” which is what we call vet-boarding. A great time was had by all.

We returned on a Sunday, so we knew we would have to wait until the following morning before we could pick the kitties up from the vet. It was kind of sobering to return home knowing the new cats were safe and sound at the “spa” and that we would still have Avie in our lives now if we’d only decided to board her last year.

As the wife and I settled into bed on the night of our return, we were startled by the sound of a cat meowing from outside. It sounded as though it was very near our bedroom window. Both of us had the exact same thought at the same time and rushed to the back door, silently hoping that our cat had chosen an ironic or at least very synchronous time to return. What a tremendous story that would be that Avie returned to us nearly a year to the day from her disappearance. We both called her name repeatedly, but she didn’t appear and we never saw the cat that made the sound. Probably just one of the neighborhood cats.

We still wonder about Avie and her whereabouts. And whenever we’re in Ruby's neighborhood, we always keep our eyes peeled just in case we see her. We like to think that she was adopted by a nice old lady and that at any given moment Avie is napping peacefully on her lap. It breaks our heart whenever we see any sort of stray cat, for fear that Avie is among their number now.

Today I stopped by the animal shelter to have a look around, for old times sake. No Avie to be found. Not even a cat that looked remotely like her. The shelter has long since taken down her wanted poster, though to their credit they left it up for many months longer than any of the other posters, probably due to my near daily presence.

I guess maybe it's time we officially said goodbye to her and stopped hoping for her return. I doubt either of us could manage to do it, though.

New Cast Introductions (and Goodbyes) Part 1

One of the most tragic aspects of the disappearance of our cat Avie, just over one year ago, is that so much effort was put into getting her into our house in the first place. From her original rescue from the negligent assholes who had her, to the weeks she spent in the care of my mother-in-law in North Carolina as she underwent the necessary vaccinations in order to even set foot in our potentially panleukopenia-infected house, a lot of calories were burned getting her here. For nearly two years she was part of our family and we loved her dearly despite, and sometimes because of, her occasional quirks.

When we went to Florida last year, we left her in the care of some friends across town, Ruby and Turk. This was Avie's first time to be cat-sat, and I'd intended to buy her a collar with a name tag. After all, our friends had three boys and there was no guaranteeing that any of them would be as diligent in policing open doors at their house as we might be. Unfortunately, I forgot to, remembering my intention only after we'd dropped Avie off. Ruby said she'd put her cat's collar on Avie, just so there was some contact info to be had should she escape, but she forgot to as well. Phone text reports of Avie's status sounded good. But when Ruby came home on the Friday night of our vacation, she found her back door wide open and no cat to be seen.

We spent a fruitless month searching for her, and another two months after that of almost daily visits to the local animal shelter to check if she'd been turned in. Despite seeing plenty of nice looking cats there, we decided it was probably best to just stick with dogs for a while and not try and find a replacement kitty. It had been so much work to get Avie into the house in the first place, and we couldn't bring a stray in without weeks of vaccinations first. We'd been warned that the panleukopenia spores can live in the house for years and we couldn't risk having another kitten die as horribly as the kitten before Avie, Milo Soulpatch had.

A couple of months passed and during them Ruby and Turk's marriage fell apart. This had nothing to do with Avie, but was something we'd been sensing might be on the horizon for a while, but had hoped would not. Not long after they separated, Ruby announced that she'd picked up a couple of kittens from the pound--a brother and sister. I don't know if the kittens were intended to be a distraction for her kids from the problems around them, or what, but it seemed maybe not the wisest idea from my perspective. Then, a couple weeks later, Ruby announced that the kittens were not working out. It seemed that despite their litter box training, the kittens had sniffed out a place in an inaccessible corner, way behind her sofa, where a previous neighborhood cat had once taken a crap. And it was in this spot that the kittens insisted on crapping exclusively. Nothing could persuade them to stop, including relocating their litter box atop it. Ruby asked if we would like to take them off her hands, at least for a little while, until they matured enough to cut it out, if not longer. I did not want them and said so to the wife, but I also knew Ruby was under enough stress as it was and I thought it would be better to take them rather than have the kittens returned to the pound. However, I insisted that we couldn't take them until their vaccinations were complete. Ruby said they had and within a couple of days brought them over to the house.

The bigger of the two was a female with almost lilac point Siamese coloration but with no real Siamese features. Her name was Emma. The smaller male was a gray tabby named Deja Vu, because he looked a lot like a cat they'd had before. We liked the name Emma for a cat, but decided that Deja Vu would be shortened to D.J. Kitty. We played with them a bit, let the kids say goodbye to them and then we put them in the hall bathroom overnight, because introducing them to the dogs would be a gradual process.

The following morning, we put the dogs outside and let the kittens have the run of the place. We then went to breakfast. It was over a plate of Egg Beaters and turkey sausage that some math issues that had been tickling in the back of my mind floated to the front.

"How long has Ruby had the cats?" I asked the wife.

"Two weeks. Maybe three."

My heart sank. I realized the kittens could not have had their full set of three vaccinations against panleukopenia. They'd probably had one set at the pound, but it takes 21 days between each set. They might have had two, but I didn't think it was very likely. A quick call to Ruby revealed the truth. We practically screamed at her over the phone in the middle of Bob Evans. "Ruby! We can't take these cats! They have to have ALL of their shots before we can have them." Ruby swore she thought they'd had the full amount, but hadn't done the math herself. She felt horrible and said we could drop them off at her place again and she'd just keep them in her bathroom for the remaining time. This didn't really help our anxiety, though, as we'd left them with full run of our house, including all the rooms Milo Soulpatch had been in before he died.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

We've Got Letters (a.k.a. "Where the EFF have you been, Juice?")

A reader named Chris has sent in an email inquiry. Chris writes...

I see we are past the 5 month mark on the last time you posted. Aside from some new home improvement project I can only think of 2 things that would keep a long time blogger away from their blog.

1. You have had a new baby.

2. You have discovered the joys of World of Warcraft.

If it's # 1 congratulations, if it's #2 tell me what server you play on so we can meet up sometime. lol

Seriously though where have you been? I miss your blog and I still check once a week to see if anything new has been posted.

Thank you for the letter, Chris. It made my day and gave me the kick in the butt to finally post something. Believe me, I'm well aware that it's been five months and it's really been bothering me. I've taught blogging workshops on two occasions and one of the major things I tried to impart to future potential bloggers was never EVER to abandon their blogs. I told them "If you want to stop blogging, be a man and say `I'm taking a break and maybe won't come back.' Don't just leave folks hanging." But that's precisely what I've done and which has been the guilty weight hanging over me for months now.

First things first: I'm not abandoning the blog and as of now will begin posting far more often. I have some material built up and it's time to get it out, not to mention several pretty major events in my life over the past couple of months.

To answer your specific questions: 1) Yes, we do have a baby. In fact, we have two. However, they're not human, so that's not a reason for failure to blog. And, 2), no, I've not yet joined WOW. I've avoided all the MMORPGs and video games in general precisely because I dearly love that sort of thing but it eats huge chunks of time. I used to be a big MUDder back in the early 90s, but eventually gave that up not only because the MUDs I played kept dying, but also because it was just killing my schoolwork. (Any DeathMud or HeroMud folks out there still? Lizard? Thundrcheez? Anyone?) However, the wife recently became addicted to OBLIVION IV for the PC, so barring a home gaming system purchase, it's not inconceivable that we could make the leap to WOW down the line.

As to where the EFF I've been... eh, mostly here. I've been doing more fiction and dramatic writing, which has led to an anthology publication as well as a couple of produced plays in 2010.

I think, though, that my blogging absence boils down to one major thing: the continuing MIA status of our cat Avie. When she first vanished in April, I was certain that we would find her soon enough. Either we'd find her during our searches of the neighborhood in which she vanished, or she'd get captured and taken to the pound where I was a daily visitor, or she would exhibit that pet-homing sense you hear about on occasion and her little kitty radar would guide her back home. And when she returned, I'd be able to post about it here and all would be right with the world. But, she never turned up and every time I thought to write a blog post the lingering question of Avie's status just depressed the hell out of me and sapped all energy for writing anything light, potentially funny or of importance to our lives. Her absence was just a dark hole and I didn't want to publicly get near the edge. This is not to say I've not written anything bloggy in the five months of down time. I've actually penned drafts of a few entries, but could never find my way to post them because of the kitty malaise. Which has been a shame, because the past few months have been pretty full of life-altering events, even beyond the two non-human babies we adopted. We've had health scares, health crises, automobile scares and crises, ongoing pet breed mysteries, and other stuff I'm sure I'll remember. Hell, I never got to tell the tale of our vacation in Florida, which is where we were when Avie escaped her cat-sitters. (I probably still won't tell that one, cause other than the ending that you already know, the trip was spectacular, nearly without incident, and therefore not all that dramatic.)

So, in addition to the ongoing current events of Borderland (including an impending home renovation project that I promise not to drag out as long as the last one), I've got five months of Lost Tales to mine. Which, I guess, means my new year's resolution is to spend more time blogging.

I'm back.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

*sniff*

Still no kitty.

We've only had one call about her since the last post I made and that was a second call from someone working at the nursing home that called about the cat that looked nothing like Avie two weeks ago. This was evidently someone other than the two ladies we met and talked to there before. They called to say they thought they might have our cat there, only they hadn't seen him in a little while and he actually looked a bit different than the cat in the picture. Yep. They said all that. I assured them that he wasn't our cat, but neglected to mention that I thought I'd seen him at the pound.

Speaking of orange cats, the other night before bed I went into the garage to close the garage doors and otherwise secure the house. Before doing so, I thought back to the number of times that Avie had gotten herself trapped in the garage by sneaking in there before I shut the doors for the evening and then not coming out of hiding and making herself known before I managed to get back in the house. We'd find her in there the following morning, no worse for wear but certainly annoyed that she had no soft place to sleep. She did this with such frequency that we just started keeping a litter box out there. So, as I went to enter the garage, I thought to myself how wonderful it would be if I opened the garage door and found Avie waiting on the top step. She wasn't there when I opened the door, but when I triggered one of the garage doors to close, I saw another cat come flying from around my car and flee the garage through my car's bay door. It was another orange one. That was last week.

Last night, I was awakened at 3 a.m. by the sound of a meowing cat from outside. I was instantly awake and my first thought was that it was Avie, come home to us and crying in the rainy night. Then I realized the cries were coming from the direction of our next door neighbor's house, or perhaps further down the hill, and not from our back door. Still, I got up and went out on the back deck to make sure. I listened for a while, but didn't call out to the cat for fear of waking the wife and causing her to freak out that Avie might be home if I was up calling to her in the night. As I returned to the inside of the house, though, I saw the wife come down the hall.

"Did you hear the cat?" she said.

"Yep. I don't think it was Avie," I said.

"It sounded like her," she said.

So, wife already awake, I went back on the deck and called out to her for a few minutes. No kitty turned up, though. I imagine it was the orange one.

The other day, while driving near the area where Avie disappeared, we had the depressing realization that even if she was trying to get home, we have a small river running through our town which she would have to ford. The mental image of the cat running up and down the western bank, looking for a way to cross, but finding none, brought tears to our eyes.

Meanwhile, more serious drama has been afoot Our friends who were keeping Avie for us are now splitting up. Not over Avie, of course, but due to unrelated, ongoing troubles. It's very sad. I've had a handful of friends divorce before, but this is probably the first ongoing, active, friends in the same town you live in divorce I'll probably be a witness to.

In fantastic news, though, my brother-in-law has returned safely from Afghanistan. We'd been trying to time our trip to Key Largo to coincide with his return, but he assured us that any plans we made to that effect would nehehehever come to pass, cause that's just how the Army works. And, indeed, his return wound up being a week later than originally scheduled, though that was due mostly to the Icelandic volcano. We're headed down this weekend to do a mother's day/brother-in-law's day combo celebration, with many biscuits and much chipped beef gravy scheduled to be consumed by all.

Kitty Search, the Disappointment Continues

Yesterday afternoon, I was preparing dinner when the phone rang. The caller mentioned that her neighbor had told her that I was looking for a calico cat and a female calico had been hanging around their house for the past week or so.

"Where do you live?" I asked.

Turned out they lived next door to the very first person I had given a flier to when I began distributing them April 12. This was a location only a block away from our friends' house, from which Avie had disappeared. Instantly, I knew it had to be her.

"Can you catch her?" I asked.

"Well... she's on the back porch right now."

"Can I come over right now?" I asked. They said sure.

I immediately tried calling the wife, but she didn't answer.

On my way across town, I was elated. At last our search for Avie "Kissy" Kitty was finished. There was no doubt in my mind that this wasn't our cat. I envisioned bringing her home, feeding her and then allowing the wife to come home to find Avie curled up on the back of the chair where she likes to sleep and just watching the wife's face when she saw her. That would be magic! Crap! Did we even have cat food in the house? We'd left Avie's bag with our friend. Maybe I could pop by and pick it up from her and give her the good news too.

My surprise was ruined then when, a few blocks from the house, the wife called to tell me she was done with work. I told her of my mission. Excited, she said she'd meet me at a nearby grocery store and then we drove over together, still in separate cars.

I pulled into the driveway of the house to find the neighbor lady I'd given the flier to there as well as the man whose wife had phoned me earlier. He was crouched by the bushes surrounding his house, trying to coax a cat from within them. And then my eyes fell upon the cat's face and I knew it wasn't Avie. There was nearly black fur on top of its head. I put the car in park and got out.

"Aww, no," I said.

"It's not her?" the neighbor lady said.

"Nope."

We chatted until the wife could park. She had pretty much the same reaction as I did upon seeing the cat.

Once again, the home owner tried to convince us that we should take this cat off their hands, as it was very nice. And, as tempting as that has been, we just cant' do it. After watching our kitten Milo Soulpatch die from panleukopenia, we can't risk bringing another cat into the house unless it is vaccinated in advance--and that's an 8 week process. The only reason we were able to bring in Avie is because my mother-in-law kept her in North Carolina for those 8 weeks.

The neighbor lady said she hoped we eventually found Avie and noted that sometimes pets do find their way home. The house owner also said that he thought there were two calicos that had been visiting and hoped the other turned out to be Avie. We do too.

Kitty Search: One Week Later

The search/wait continues, sans kitty.

I went by the local humane society every day last week, except for Thursday, but Avie wasn't there. By Wednesday the staff all knew me and just waved me on back to the cat room whenever I walked through the door. And when I emerged from the room, hopes dashed, they told me how sorry they were and encouraged me to keep looking. When I went in Friday afternoon, a staff member I hadn't met yet was at the front desk. After I'd explained my cat search to her, she asked what kind of cat Avie is.

"She's a low calico," I said, parroting what I'd been told earlier in the week was likely to be Avie's specific breed. "She's white with gray and orange blotches."

The woman paused. "Long tail or short tail?" she asked.

"Long."

I saw something perk up behind her eyes. "You should go on back there," she said.

Suddenly my heart was thumping with hope. Her manner suggested that a cat matching Avie's description was back there. In the cat room, I turned to the first of the stacked cage units lining the left hand wall and felt immediately disheartened. Inside the middle cage was a male cat with Avie's coloration. This was one I'd seen on Monday and knew was male due to his size, but by Tuesday was willing to give him a second look just in case and had gone so far as to poke my finger in the cage to jostle the litterbox and make the guy up so he would look at me. Nope. Giant, male cat head with the wrong color pattern to begin with. This was probably the cat the lady was thinking of.

As I made my way down, though, there was another cat with Avie's color scheme, if not exact pattern. Then, in the last column of cages, there was a tiny kitten who looked very similar to Avie, nursing at its orange mother.

Hope brimming, I turned to the opposite wall to find two more cats with Avie's coloration, one of which was actually female and had her back to the cage door so that I had to call "Kissy kitty?" until she turned around to reveal a mostly dark face. No Avie.

The lady at the desk looked at me with raised eyebrows of anticipation as I exited. I shook my head, but did note for her the five kitties with similar color scheme. She encouraged me to continue coming back, as they got new kitties in every day.

On Sunday we a lady from a local nursing home phoned to say she had seen my MISSING CAT poster in Kroger and thought she might have found Avie. We were overjoyed and began taking down the address so we could rush right over.

"It's a beautiful cat," she said. "He's just very, very friendly."

"Um... `he?'" I said.

"Yes."

"You're sure he's male?"

"He's, uh... Yes, I'm pretty sure he's male," she said.

"It's probably not our cat. She's female."

"Oh," she said. We decided to go over anyway, though, on the off chance that the woman was somehow unable to properly identify if a cat had junk or not. What we found when we arrived was an orange and white cat that resembled Avie not in the slightest, particularly in the fact that his junk was large and prominent. He was indeed very friendly and had, we were told, been hanging around outside the place for the past month. If they'd told us that part, we probably wouldn't have come at all. Since we had come, though, they tried to get us to take him off their hands and kept emphasizing how nice and friendly he was. We declined. We're just not ready to take in strange kitties when we still have hope that ours will return to us.

Today, I returned to the humane society. Avie still wasn't there, but I believe I recognized our friendly, junk-equipped cat friend from Sunday afternoon.

Dammit. Now I feel guilty for two cats.

Kitty Crisis Day Two

The fliers we distributed had some response, but still no kitty has manifested.

Mostly people called to suggest to us that we check the humane society, as there is an infamous, though still semi-anonymous person in the area known for capturing stray cats in a live trap and taking them there. He's also been known to trap non stray cats as well, though, as evidenced by the number of neighbors who are pissed off at him for having to go get their cats out of hock. We'd already heard this rumor, though, and had actually gone right to the house of the alleged cat-trapper the night we found out about Avie being missing to ask if they might have her. The man's wife denied that they trapped cats at all and suggested that the large, wire-frame cage in their side yard was for carrying their beagles around. Some of the people who called asked us to phone them back if we are able to determine the identity of the trapper because they want to go over and have words with them. We don't know for sure that the people we talked to are the trappers, but other neighbors have confirmed that theirs is the house the trapping is getting done at. I don't really care about the trapping, so long as it nets my cat in the process and she gets returned to me, but there are quite a few people upset with them.

The major leads we had came from a person I met on the street while distributing fliers, who said she had seen a cat matching the description following a mother and child as they walked. Someone had asked the mother if it was her cat and she said no. This behavior at least matches Avie's to some degree, as she has been known to follow me and the dogs when we go on walks and once followed the whole family as we went walking around the neighborhood. Later, a man phoned to say he'd seen a similar sight and that the cat was last seen headed north on his street. At this news, I returned to his street and knocked on every door, passing out fliers to everyone and leaving them behind for those not at home.

When I returned home, there was another message from a lady who said she'd spotted the cat just down the street from our friend's house, lingering in a yard there. So the wife and I piled back in the car and drove across town to check this out. No cat--or, at least, not ours. This was, however, the same area in which I'd earlier met a lady I'd determined was probably crazy, but who had at least given me a sighting tip. I'd seen her on her porch, smoking a cigarette, and had walked up to give her a flier. She'd barely taken a look at it when she said, "Oh, yes. I saw this cat across the road the other day. She was running and playing and running and playing." The sing-song nature of her voice when saying "running and playing" made me certain she had never seen my cat. Not that Avie doesn't play, but she doesn't play to any degree that would fall under such a sing-song description.

No calls so far today.

As one of the comments for yesterday's post stated, it's not uncommon for cats to find their way home. As kids, my sister's cat (my former cat Winston's mother) used to disappear for months at a time only to show up at our door pregnant. She'd hang around us until she'd had her kittens. Once they were gone, she'd be off into the world again, no doubt with another family in another neighborhood. Then, months later, she'd turn up pregnant again. After the second litter, we got her fixed, after which we never saw her again. We always wondered if her other family ever tried to take her in to get her fixed only to be told the job had already been done.

One of that cat's kittens, my sister's cat Cleo, decided she didn't like my sister's new apartment and walked home. Granted, my parents lived less than a mile away as the cat walks, but the homing instinct was still not to be scoffed at.

And then, in college, one of my roommates brought one of his family cats from home into the house we were renting. The cat was miserable with us and was constantly trying to escape. He frequently escaped through a dryer vent hole in the laundry room floor, which we took to covering with heavier and heavier items, because he was very strong. Finally, he muscled his way around two full 24 can flats of Cokes and a tuba case and was gone for good. A week or so later, he turned up back at the roommate's parents' house across town.

We're hoping that Avie will have a similar homing instinct and will turn up at the back door in a week or so. She's got a good walk ahead of her, though, if she does, cause she disappeared clear across town and there's some pretty major traffic, including an Interstate between there and here.

Meanwhile, I have visited the humane society twice. They had posted the picture of my cat in their cat-housing room, so their staff can check it, but they took me back further into the building to show me a calico that had come in from this morning. I hoped and prayed all the way back that it would be mine, as one of the rumors I'd heard yesterday was that the cat-trapper had caught him another one and was planning to take it in today. It wasn't Avie, though. The humane society lady--who looks like she's worn to about a frazzle--told me I was welcome to look through the cats in their cat room to double check that Avie wasn't there. She wasn't but the plaintive meows from the cats who were there were enough to break your heart.

After leaving there, I spent an hour driving around in the neighborhood she disappeared in, calling her name. Not that the little beast has ever been seen to be active in daylight before, or anything, but she didn't come out of hiding if she was around at all.

Life in flux

No, I haven't died.

No, I haven't forgotten that there's a part remaining of the anniversary adventure from two months back. It was threatening to get longer than was wieldy, so I truncated it and posted it retroactively. Nyah.

In the meantime, however, things have become very busy for us around Chez Juice. After many months of planning and scheduling and rescheduling, we finally managed to take a family vacation to Key Largo, Florida, which is where the wife and I went for our very first vacation together in October of 2000. We loved snorkeling there so much then that we swore we'd return with family at some point, and this we did. We even did it in spite of the fact that the house we'd first rented, which we'd been given a confirmation number for but were never sent a contract, got rented out from under us and we had to scramble for a new place two weeks before the event. Got one and it was even better than the first. We also took this vacation road trip with our dogs, which proved much easier than it could have.

At the moment, though, I don't have the energy or time to detail any of it in writing because we now have a new crisis on our hands. We left our kitty Avie at the home of some friends here in Borderlands who had offered to cat sit. Unfortunately, Avie is an escape artist and managed to get away from their house while we were gone and has not returned. So now we're fluctuating between blind panic that we'll never see her again, conjuring all sorts of awful fates that might have befallen her, and trying to remain calm, remembering that she's a tough and resourceful kitty in daily life so she's probably all right and will hopefully wander up at any given point. We're also being proactive about finding her. I spent the morning canvassing the area, distributing 102 fliers to the surrounding streets. I've just printed some more to head back for another round. We've also contacted local vets and the humane society to alert them and will continue checking back.

If you're of a praying mind, though, we could sure use some here. We've seen the power of it when it comes to our animals in the past (not to mention some humans).

Our New Family Member, the Third

A wise man once said: when a puppy piddles on the carpet, whose fault is it, the puppy's or its owner's? Answer: the owner's, because he's the one not paying attention to his puppy. That's paraphrasing, but we read something very similar on a puppy potty-training website, back when we were first trying to train Sadie. It's as irritating a statement as you're likely to find, but it's also true. Potty training a dog to "go" exclusively outside is a long and uric-acid soaked process that can drive you nigh onto insanity. Complicating the process further is that we refused to go the half-step route of first training to "go" on paper or floor diaper, opting for the whole hog "yer goin' outside or ye'd better get used to holdin' it" avenue.

It's the same process we used on Sadie, starting a year and a half back. We must have done a good job of it, too, because Sadie is completely awesome when it comes to whizzing exclusively outside. Point of fact, she's a pretty awesome dog all around, which we can see now that we have Moose (or Piddles McGillicuddy, as he's come to be known) as contrast. Whenever Sadie has to go "potty," she literally asks to go out; she comes and finds us wherever we are, and gives us an urgent-toned series of grunts and growls. That's our cue to say, "You need to go potty?" at which point she steps up the urgency of the growls. In the early days of this, we used to also have episodes of what we called "potty lying" in which the dog really just wanted to go outside to sniff or investigate the possibility of deer lurking in the yard and would use pottying as her ticket to be let out. This was annoying because at the time we didn't have our nifty wifi shock collar system in place and would have to accompany her into the cold using a leash to prevent her from tearing off into the night after said lurking deer. These days, though, she's so well-trained by her shock collar that she doesn't even have to wear the collar anymore and we completely trust her to stay in the yard and let her out whenever the mood strikes her.

As well trained as Sadie now is, we can't for the life of us remember what exactly we did to reach that level of perfection with her. How was it, for instance, that we were able to get her to verbalize her potty needs? We'd really like to know, because it seems silly to punish Moose for piddling in the house and yell at him to only go outside when he seemingly doesn't have any recourse for letting us know that he needs to go outside. So for the past few weeks, we've tried to remain vigilant for any signs that he needs to go and immediately let him out. Trouble is, he's a stealth-pisser and covert-crapper, capable of squeezing out some waste in seconds, usually choosing to do so in a room other than the one we're in and dashing back before we know he was even gone. Until about three days ago, we had not had even one single day without an accident in all the weeks he's been here. And I'm not convinced he even achieved that record feat, because I found and cold, old link in the guest bedroom two days ago, and who knows when he deposited that?

Fortunately, I think we're finally seeing the light at the end of Poop & Piddle Tunnel. While we have had some excretory indiscretions in recent days, they've all been of a solid variety, so he's either getting the message that the yard is where he needs to wee, or he's developing better bladder control. Maybe both. He's even begun to go to the back door when he needs to go, which makes us extremely happy. Now if we can only work on his verbalizing, we'll be good. As shiny and perfect as Sadie appears in this regard, in actuality it took her several months to achieve this state.

Meanwhile, Moose has been easier to train in other regards. He's actually sitting and waiting on command--at least most of the time--and is already shaking hands with enough regularity that it's nearing on-command level, too. He also fetches far better than Sadie, (who is perfectly willing to go get any item you throw, but will then only play keepaway with it); Moose actually brings things back, provided you don't tell him he's a good dog until he returns with them, otherwise he drops whatever it is and runs to be praised.

As much as we've hated having to be back in cleanup mode again, we're really digging Moose as a pup. He's a far less high-maintenance dog than Sadie was at that age and it's been a fun guessing game as to what sort of dog he really is. We keep telling him he'd better not be a damn little chow chow, but we'll probably survive okay, even if he is.

He and Sadie are great friends--except before she's had her coffee in the morning, when she tends to growl at him. Same goes for Avie kitty, who has wisely chosen to make friends with him while he's still tiny. They have lots of fun chasing one another around the house, with Avie running only until Moose gives up the chase, at which point she turns and slinks back in his vicinity to get his attention and start the game anew.

The other thing I'm trying to do with him is to take more pictures. We took lots of Sadie as a puppy, then a few more as an adolescent dog, but very few in between those stages and then adult. Got to get more in the bank before he loses his puppy cuteness. Everyone who sees him falls in love with him, even down to our vet. I've taken him in three times now for initial checkup and shots and each time the vet and her staff have trouble giving him back to me. This past visit, they even apologized that I had to wait around the waiting room for so long, because they didn't want to let him go. He's a charmer.

Small Deaths #7: Scavenger Caught!

(An ongoing pictorial series chronicling the poor, small, stuffed animals my dog Sadie has murdered during the course of her life. Not for the faint of heart.)

Often times scavengers take advantage of a recent kill for a quick meal.

(Which is only fitting, in this case, as it was Avie's toy to begin with.)

Note its irritation at being captured on film.

The scavenger hides, blending seamlessly into its surroundings, awaiting the moment when it can return to the carcass.

Avie: Portrait of a Serial Killer

When I was a kid, I rode shotgun on a lot of car trips with my dad. The vast majority of these were weekend jaunts from where we lived in north Mississippi to Wayne County, three hours south, where my grandparents lived and where my little sister lived for the first four years of her life. This being the case, the trips were frequent, almost every weekend, sometimes every other.

One of my least favorite memories of trips like this were the occasional animal strikes. It's the law of averages, I guess, that when you're on the road so often you have more opportunity to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, just as an animal--a possum, armadillo, rabbit, dog or cat--dashes out into the rural two lane highway far too soon to be avoided and is struck. Only, sometimes, the hit wasn't a direct one where you know the animal died, but instead an ambiguous graze--one you know will eventually lead to death, but not for a while. My father was not a man to have animals suffer needlessly and on those occasions he would invariably stop and back up until he found the animal, ascertain its status and, usually, deliver the "endgame" by running over the animal again. As a kid it was a terrible thing to have to experience, sitting there in the passenger seat, fingers in ears trying to stave off the inevitable crunch. Dad always tried to explain his reasoning afterward. I understood where he was coming from, but I always hated it and wished he could just forget about it and move on.

"Can't you just let them die in peace?" I once said, after I'd grown old enough to attempt to challenge my status quo a bit more. Dad considered this, but ultimately went back to his own method on the rare occasion animals strayed terminally into our path.

I tell that story to tell this one...

Now that she's nearly full grown, Avie kitty has begun to fancy herself quite the hunter. During all hours she's not asleep, she wants to be outside looking for mice or bugs or other woodland creatures to stalk and torment. Now, I realize that this is what cats naturally do and they're very good at it. And I'd be happy for Avie to do this, provided she actually killed and ate the things she caught. Instead, she usually torments them to death, batting them around until she eventually wounds them mortally, and when they stop trying to get away, she loses interest and wanders off. She might come back to kick their mousy corpses around, later, but I've never observed her to actually eat one.

A couple weeks back, I found one of her victims. It was a small mouse, broken but still breathing. And suddenly, there it was, my dad's outlook on mercy-killing sliding right into place in my head. If the cat wasn't going to kill it, I had to. I didn't fret much about killing a mouse because I've killed plenty in traps before. But I didn't like that I had to do it.

Last weekend, it got worse.

While the wife and I were enjoying some lunch on the back deck, we noticed Avie marching up the back of our hill with something big in her mouth. She dropped it before I could get a look at it, but we kept watching to see what she might come up with. Instead, she stayed just over the hill, romping and playing with something we couldn't see. Curious, we arose to go see what it was and found the cat crouched beside a tiny rabbit. It wasn't as small as the ones I nearly killed with the mower when we first moved here, but was possibly not too far out of the nest. At first, it seemed lifeless, and I hoped in my heart that it was already dead. But then I saw its sides moving with its breathing. I chased the cat away from it and stooped down to have a look.

It was definitely unconscious. Other than a tear in it's ear, the little rabbit didn't have any immediately noticeable signs of damage. I wondered if maybe it was only stunned, but thought it more likely that it had internal or spinal injuries. The wife came over to examine it and found there was a gash in the rabbit's other side and another deeper wound on its back leg that showed some muscle tearing. We knew then that this little guy was pretty much a goner. Those kind of injuries wouldn't heal on their own in the wild and it would likely be a $1000 vet bill to try and save it otherwise. As the wife pointed out, if left untreated, the wounds would become infected and if the rabbit didn't die before that, it would die a long and painful death.

The wife, who'd been examining the rabbit, leaned over to put it back on the ground, but as she did it woke up and screamed. And as it screamed, it kicked all of its legs, which scared my wife, causing her to drop the rabbit into the leaves. Rabbits aren't generally known for their noise, but they can make some when they need to. Once on the ground, the rabbit continued to yelp, drawing Avie's attention.

"Maybe Avie will kill it," the wife said in a fearfully hopeful tone.

"She won't kill it," I said. "She'll just torment it more."

We were going to need to do the job.

I picked the rabbit up, being careful to keep him covered by my hands so he couldn't kick his way out of my grip. Spinal injury didn't seem to be an issue with him. Fortunately, he went unconscious again. We took him around behind our woodpile, where I lay him down on the flat half of a split log. The wife brought me my ax.

"You're going to have to do this in one swing," the wife said. I nodded. But as accurate as I usually am with an ax, I didn't trust myself to get it right. Better to place the ax where we wanted to cut and hit the back of it with a rock. After shedding some tears at having to take this life, I did the deed.

Needless to say, the cat immediately found a place at the top of my shit list.

Later in the afternoon, the wife called from the living room saying, "You should come see your kitty. She's awfully cute."

"I don't want to see that cat," I said. I knew the cat was snoozing on a pillow on a chair in the front window.

"No, you should really come see."

So I did. Sure enough, she was terribly cute as she slept. So cute, in fact, that I had to take a picture.

And after I'd taken it, I slapped the pillow beside her and yelled "Start over!"

Kitty Update

Avie went in for her "female troubles" surgery this past Tuesday. Everything ultimately went all right, except that even though she had stopped with the constant loud screaming four days previous, she turned out to still be in heat. Cost an extra $24, but well worth it to get this taken care of finally. At five weeks in heat, there might not have been an end in sight.

We brought her home and kept her warm and mildly fed, as per instructions. She was still pretty loopy from her medicine and wandered around in a drunken state, frequently falling over with no provocation, which I found both sad and hilarious. For the first couple of days we kept her separated from Sadie, because the dog plays rough and likes to chase the cat. The cat likes to be chased, too, and is usually the instigator, but we can't risk an accidental pounce from the dog popping stitches or worse. So we kept Avie secure in the hall bedroom for the first couple of days and have now started to introduce her back into the general population, always with an eye in Sadie's direction to prevent trouble. Thus far, it's working quite well and Avie is her usual self once again with no real sign of pain or discomfort.

Impending Plan to Kick Glen Frey in his Junk.

Lordy mercy.

The vet wasn't kidding when he said Avie might take three weeks to come out of heat. If anything, he was underestimating the situation. In the past four weeks, this cat has gone into heat THREE TIMES--that's three, count `em, three separate four day sessions of the loudest, most painful-sounding caterwauling you'd ever love to avoid hearing, broken up by three days of relative silence in between. I don't remember Winston EVER being this bad.

After the second heat-session began, the wife asked if I'd made the appointment yet to get her fixed.

"No, not yet," I said, then noting that the vet had suggested we wait the full three weeks before doing so.

"Make. The. Appointment."

So I did. In fact, the appointment was scheduled to have taken place this morning at 8:30, but because the cat went into heat again five days ago and has not yet come out of it we've had to reschedule. Actually, let me rephrase that, because the conversation that actually took place when I phoned the vet's office yesterday to ask them what we needed to do went something like this...

ME-- Hey, my cat is scheduled to be spayed tomorrow morning, but she's gone back into heat. What do we need to do?

VET PHONE ANSWERING PERSON-- Oh, that's okay. They can spay her even if she's in heat, it just costs a little more.

What? WHAT? WHAT?!!! They could have spayed her even if she's in heat all this time and this is the first I'm hearing about it?!! We're talking four weeks of frequent, spine-wrenching, sleep-piercing--nay, sleep IMPALING--squalls, not to mention occasional heat-spawned urinary errors in judgment (the most recent of which occurred ON MY EFFING ELECTRIC BLANKET!!!!) and that all could have been negated 28 days ago? EFF!!!

Turns out what the vet person meant is that the surgery can still occur even if a cat is in heat, it's just more complicated to do. For one thing, they won't be able to tell if the cat is in heat until they "get in there" and see the uterus for themselves. After that, it's just a matter of it being a more complicated surgery, I guess due to the attending inflamation, which would cost an additional $17 to $39 to accomplish. The vet person assured me, though, that it would not be more complicated for the cat herself, a point I wasn't sure if I entirely bought.

Rather than subject the cat to any potential complication, I opted to just reschedule the surgery for next week--a decision I lived to regret after she kept us up half the night with her loud and electric-blanket-soiling antics, not to mention a spot of cat piss I found in the living room that had been soaking in for who knows how long.

So we've another week to wait this out. Hopefully the heat session she's in now is the last one and hopefully we're on the final day of it.

Obedience/Customer Service Lessons Needed NOW (PART I)

On our way out of town for Christmas with the in-laws, we stopped to buy a stove and nearly had to kill our dog.

Let me back up.

We've been in the market for a new stove since nearly the day we moved into the house. It's not that our existing stove is horrendous, but it is very ugly and about 20 years old and has burners that are a bit cockeyed. Oh, and the oven itself only about half works and pretty much ruined our wildly expensive cheesecake. This, and a very cheap deal we found on a new GE at Sears, while shopping for my chainsaw, prompted us to finally commit to a new stove as a family Christmas gift to ourselves.

The particular stove we found was a floor model that had been marked down $300 for closeout before we arrived, but which a floor manager told us was actually $300 cheaper than the listed cheap price because it was overdue to be marked down yet again. We wanted to measure our existing space to make sure we could use it, so the manager gave us a markdown guarantee slip, said he wouldn't make the markdown until Friday and told us they would open again at 7 a.m. on that day. The wife, who worked for years as a retail manager, asked if he would get a commission. He said he was salaried, but recommended we see one of his sales people called Pam, who he said would be there on Friday. Super.

On Friday morning at 7 a.m., we left the house with a car packed for our road trip to the in-laws, including Sadie and Avie. Our plan was to hit the mall, buy the stove, arrange for delivery the following week, hit Biscuit World and then hit the road. We parked in the lot outside of Sears. Before I had even unfastened my seatbelt, the wife opened her door and started to get out when I saw Sadie barrel between the front bucket seats from the back of the car and make a break for the semi-blocked door.

"Watchoutwatchoutwatchoutwatchout!" I screamed. The wife, not realizing which side of her Sadie was coming from, turned the wrong way and the dog slipped behind her. I lunged to grab at a dog leg, but my seatbelt caught me and she was out the door and free. This was one of my worst nightmares as far as the dog was concerned. If she gets loose at the house, it's no big deal. We're out in the woods, what's she really gonna hurt? In an open parking lot, with plenty of space to run away from us and other vehicles driving around, it's another matter.

We tried to stay calm, in the hope we could get her back in the car with little fuss. Sadie knew better, though, and was off to the races in her usual game of keepaway from us. Sadie dashed through the parking lot, gleefully smiling as we chased her to and fro. The wife had the idea of busting out the Pupperonis in an effort to lure her back, but this had mixed results. We tore off bits of Pupperoni and dropped them on the ground to lure her into grabbing range, but she was far faster than we were and snatched them up and vanished before we could even lunge. Making matters worse, the weather--which, back at the house, had been a little cool but nothing a hoody couldn't handle--suddenly turned misty, rainy and very cold.

After a close call when we nearly were able to grab her tail, I said, "Toss one in between us," hoping this would let at least one of us have a chance to get her. The coconut *KLONK* sound our heads made as they collided was no doubt comical. Even we had to laugh, through the pain.

All further attempts at Pupperoni luring were futile. She didn't care and, furthermore, decided to run very far away from us to head off temptation.

"Dammit, Sadie, you get back here!" I screamed.

"She'd not going to come to you screaming," the wife hissed at me.

Then some other early morning shoppers had arrived, some of whom saw us bonk heads. Sadie noticed them and rushed toward them, barking furiously.

"No, Sadie, NO! You stop that RIGHT NOW!" the wife screamed.

Mostly the arriving customers ignored her. One little old man, however, asked, "Is it going to bite me?" as Sadie followed him toward the mall, practically snarling.

"No, she's harmless. Just loud," we shouted.

Sadie continued this behavior, thwarting us at every turn until at last we were able to lure her closer to the mall itself. We almost had her cornered in some shrubbery, but she zipped between us and was gone again. The shrubs were near one of Sears' lesser entrances, however, and this gave the wife an idea. As with most mall store exterior entrances, Sears had double doors. So the wife opened the outer set and gestured for Sadie to go in. The dog started to, then refused.

"Come on," I said, stepping through the doors myself. The wife followed and, no doubt fearing we were about to leave her, Sadie followed and was trapped. I pulled the leash from my pocket, managed to keep from strangling the dog with it and we returned her to the car and went back in for our oven.

Our adventure of annoyance, however, was only just beginning.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard at My House (a.k.a. "Glen Frey songs you REALLY don't want to hear")

*DIALING*

*RING*
*RING*
*RING*

VET-- Borderland Veterinary Center.

ME-- Yes. My wife and I have a cat that has gone into heat and we were hoping never to have to go through this ever again. Can you help?

VET-- (Laughs) I'd say we need to get her fixed.

ME-- Indeedy. When can the spaying commence?

VET-- Well, let's give her some time to completely come out of heat, so, say... three weeks?

*SLUSHING SOUND AS ALL HOPE DRAINS FROM MY PERSON AND OUT OF MY SHOES*

Needless to say, it's kind of noisy around chez Juice with Avie Kitty officially in her very first and hopefully last session of heat. I'd really hoped to have more time before this went down, but I drug ass getting her fixed so now we have to live with it `til it subsides. While it's Avie's first heat, it's not the first time I've gone through this with another cat. In fact, I went through this several times with my old kitty, Winston, circa 1992-93.

Winston, as a young kitty, was already known for being "bad," so much so that her full given name had become Winston Churchill: The Infinitely Bad Kitty. At the time, she lived with me in my first non-parentally owned home, which I shared with three to four roommates, known as Da Crib (a name chosen for its irony, as we were all very very white). While given to genuinely inappropriate kitty behavior already (such as unauthorized trips atop the kitchen counter and strewing stole-from-the-garbage corn cobs behind the hall toilet), part of her reputation was no doubt spawned by the machinations of nature during the three heat cycles she experienced while in the house.

The first of these occurred four or five months into my residency there, and sent her into the traditional spine-shattering, sleep-rending cat-howls and repeated attempts to escape the house common to being in heat. This behavior, in turn, caused tension and loud arguments between me and my roommates, none of whom appreciated having their precious sleep disturbed by the wails of a horny cat. At the same time, I didn't want any more kitties in my life and resented the lack of care exhibited by my roommates who repeatedly let the cat out during their comings and goings. I bore even more resentment, though, to the roommates who not only let the cat out, but then didn't even make a cursory attempt to go and get her and return her to the house, in my absence. These conflicts often developed into a third category of problem, which was the loss of sleep by some of my roommates caused by the screaming argument I was having with other roommates over the above issue of resentment.

After the first "heat exchange" I resolved to get the cat fixed for the sake of keeping the peace. However, for a poor college student such as I was at the time, such kitty-cooter operations were kind of pricey and I wound up dragging heels on getting it done for a few months. Then, before I knew it, the damned cat was in heat again and all the problems and conflicts resumed. More months pass and more good intentions fall away and we repeat.

Following the third such heat session, my roommates staged an intervention and basically told me it was my ass if I didn't get her fixed, and quick. My dad, fortunately, found a two for one deal on kitty fixings, and we got Winston and her sibling (who is my sibling's cat) Cleo done at the same time. The funny thing is that during her heat sessions, Winston had been very subservient to all the other cats in the house. If she was eating from the common cat-food bowl and another roommate's cat happened along, Winston would get out of the way and let them eat. Following her surgery, though, she was much less understanding and beat the hell out of the first cat who crossed her during mealtime. You've never seen a more surprised expression on the face of a cat.

As for Avie, the way I count it, we're now on day four of the heat. Every time I think she's coming down from it, she opens up with an even louder howl that we've heard before. My memory is that Winston's sessions only lasted about a week. The vet's notation of three weeks seems like a looooong time.