Jack in repose

Kitty number five in meditative mode atop the front couch.

I am reminded by other members of the household that we do have, in fact, four other cats who would like to be represented on the blog. Just because they have both eyes and aren’t FIV+ like Jaaaack, they say, doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of cat blogging.

Expect more evenhanded treatment of the felines in future.

Under scrutiny

Venice up top; Jack below.

As the newcomer in an established feline household, Jack is under constant scrutiny by the other cats. To their chagrin, Jack often doesn’t seem to notice.

Parts and service

Several days ago, I was obliged to lose a couple of hours in the limbo of our auto dealership’s service department. Just an oil change and tire rotation; I had a coupon that rendered the oil change free of charge, so the appointment was one that would go easy on the household budget. Bring unable to cruise the Web on my laptop (no WiFi), I resorted to the time-worn (and endangered, according to some) tradition of reading a book to while away the hours.

Eventually, a service rep emerged to tell me that the work was done, and to give me the findings of their point-by-point inspection. This is standard practice at auto shops, designed to inform the customer of service that the vehicle desperately needs, usually immediately.

“You’re gonna want to buy all new tires by mid-summer,” warned the rep. “And you need a new air filter. We can put that in right now.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And your top radiator hose is cracked and corroded and needs to be replaced right away. We can do that for you right now for a hundred and nineteen dollars.”

A hundred and nineteen dollars. To my credit, I merely smiled rather than guffawed. “Go ahead and change the filter, please,” I replied. “I’ll hold off on the radiator hose for now.”

A hundred and nineteen dollars. I looked over the inspection report later to make sure I hadn’t misheard the figure. “Good Christ,” I said aloud. Even a car repair neophyte like myself knew better than to bite at that. And it was the upper hose, presumably a part that was readily accessible. Unless this hose was only available via airmail from France, the price made no sense at all.

I told M about it when I got home, figuring that she’d laugh heartily. She did not laugh. “Well, how bad is the hose?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “I haven’t looked at it yet. But it can’t be a hundred and nineteen dollars worth of bad.”

I scouted around online that night for hoses that fit our make and model and came up with prices ranging from seven to twelve dollars. Well, I thought, if the car doesn’t blow up tomorrow, we can save a hundred dollars.

I looked at the engine the next day and saw a hose that did not appear to be cracked or corroded at all. The clamps seemed tight at both ends, and the connections were not loose. I did see caked-on residue that looked to be dried antifreeze at the engine end of the hose, but could see no obvious tear or rupture where the fluid could have escaped. That weekend I drove to an AutoZone a few miles away to get a new hose. The clerk actually did a little happy dance when the computer system said it was an item they usually carried, but gaiety gave way to sadness as the computer told her that they were out of stock.

Doubling back on my way to yet another AutoZone, I found myself passing an O’Reilly’s Auto Parts to which I had never really paid much attention before. Since it was right there on my right and much closer to my house that other parts stores, I ducked inside and found just what I was looking for. Price of the hose and two clamps: about twelve bucks. Cha-ching.

After coffee yesterday morning, I went out and scraped away the caked-on stuff. I then removed the hose (which looked just fine) and replaced it with the new part. I wound up reusing the old clamps because they worked just fine. I topped off the coolant in the radiator and the overflow tank. And…

…everything is just fine, thanks. As I see it, we’re a hundred-odd dollars richer.

When I related this story to my brother last night, his response was: “It’s a wonder that more mechanics don’t get shot.” He was joking, I trust. He theorizes that repair shops throw out wild prices like this in the hopes that busy people with disposable income will just swallow them. Well, I’m busy enough but gee wilikers, I’d just as soon dispose of my income in some other fashion.

Most people reading this will have a “no duh” reaction to the concept of a dealer shop pumping up the price of a repair job. It’s just really stunning to see it in practice, however.

Sorry, Roxy

The past couple of weeks have difficult ones for Roxy, our fourth cat of five and the youngest of the two tortoiseshells. Normally a sprightly little thing with a decent appetite and a love affair with the little box, she had gone noticeably off her feed a few weeks ago and had become somewhat lethargic. She had started having a tough time urinating in the box. She would go - or try to go - three or four times in half an hour or less and manage no more than to dot the litter with a couple of moist spots. Additionally and perhaps most disturbingly, she was drinking much less water than before.

M suspected cystitis, and rightly so. Our trusted vet at Kingsbury Animal Hospital prescribed an antibiotic that we were mostly diligent in administering. We were less effective in getting required urine samples for the vet to analyze; Roxy wasn’t exactly Niagara Falls. Despite our failings, the cat seemed to get better for a while, but then relapsed. We became so concerned that I took her in to Kingsbury without an appointment on the Monday before last (relative to this writing, of course).

Tough day for little Roxy, but she was very brave and a good patient. The moment of truth came when the doc manually expressed urine from the poor dear (with me holding onto Roxy by scruff and tail), but the kitty did me proud.

Our homework assignments involved more antibiotics, syringes of painkiller medication, and a bag of saline solution with accompanying large and sharp needles. She would need infusions of the solution over the next four days. The very considerate nurse was willing to give Roxy a couple of hundred milliliters of solution to get her started, but I said that I wanted to do it. M had had lots of practice at this during her time with her beloved Boonie, who had suffered from kidney disease; I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t have to be the designated cat lancer. Roxy did not utter so much as a whimper of complaint when I inserted the (apologies) big fucking needle into a fold of the skin between her shoulder blades.

As it turned out, Roxy didn’t complain then because she was petrified at being at the vet. Back at home, she was much more aware when M and I got her into position for the prescribed needling, and it hurt her each time I inserted the needle, and she let me know that it hurt.

But she was still very brave, all the same.

It was just three days of administering solution, three sessions with the big needle, and it was all for Roxy’s benefit, of course. But I felt terrible about it just the same, and have apologized for it - to the cat - every day since. Every so often she comes over, walking across the counter of the table where she has no business being, and bonks me in the forehead with her hard little skull, and lets me know that it’s all okay.

Yeah. I really am (apologies) fucking sappy that way.

Three headlamps

Jack and Roxy, yesterday.

Ethics 201: Solicited

And not the fun kind of solicitation, but the soul-deep irritation of the doorbell at a quarter ’til eight on a goddamned Saturday evening, too late to pretend you’re out or asleep or dead because the front window is open and he can see your ass, so it’s out the door and onto the porch, face-to-face with some salesdroid peddling whatever the hell, doesn’t matter what really, and he’s at once into his spiel, the script he’s been trained to recite and from which he must not deviate an inch, and while he’s droning on and on you’re wondering what’s the right thing to do here, what’s the best course of action given the situation and how pissed you are even though you kinda pity him because he’s had doors slammed in his face all day, the ethical thing to do when you already know you have no intention of buying whatever the fuck this guy is selling, do you let him go on, let him keep stealing minutes of your life that you can’t possibly get back just to be polite, or do you cut him dead, stop him cold, mid-spiel, tell him save it for the rubes, pal, I’m not -

Oh.

Too late. He’s done. Awaiting your response. Your chance for manly self-assertion is gone.

But at least you won’t buy anything.

Hello, kitty

You may remember that around a month ago, M and I took in a stray cat of long acquaintance, a one-eyed little guy whom we named Jack. The vet told us that he was likely eight-to-ten years old, that his bad eye was collapsed due to a puncture and loss of vitreous fluid, and that he had tested positive for the inevitably fatal feline immunodeficiency virus. Putting the cat down would have been a more responsible act than releasing him back into the wild, but we chose the more humane option of adopting him for our own. Actually, we didn’t have much of a choice: we had become terribly fond of Jack during his years in the wild.

We made this decision without consulting Venice, Baxter, Scooter, and Roxy - the four cats already part of the Waveflux pride - but we could easily guess what they would have said about it. Read more

Jack

One morning over three years ago, my wife M took notice of a little black cat in our back yard. M being who she is, she went outside to get a better look at him. The cat greeted her with a plaintive cry - miaooww - followed immediately by a warning - hisssss - and crouched under our decrepit patio furniture and stared balefully at M. Inside the house, our four kitties - Venice, Baxter, Scooter and Roxy - scowled with disapproval at the interloper.

We called him Jack because he had one eye - or one good eye, at any rate. His right eye was not missing but was disturbingly recessed as though it had been cruelly shoved in. Most days the recess glowed red; sometimes it wept a sickly greenish gunk, a sure sign of infection. Jack had two large patches on the back of his head where his black fur had been torn away, leaving mottled gray skin. It was easy to imagine all these injuries having been caused by the jaws of some ferocious dog. He was a scrawny little guy with gray hairs scattered here and there among the back. It was impossible to guess his age. He had a patch of white on his chest. Between that coloration, the eerie eye, and the scolding voice, he put you very much in mind of Poe’s titular feline. Read more

Rabbitproof fence

“Oh,” said M.

It was some time ago, early morning, as gray as one normally feels on a workday, and M said “oh” as she looked out the window. Actually, what she said was “ohhh…”, trailing and sad. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Something got our bunny,” she replied.

We don’t own a bunny. We don’t even own the four cats who live in our house; rather, we are fairly owned by them. We do feel a kind of attachment to the wildlife that makes regular appearances in our backyard, though, and so have come to think of Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal, the squirrels Spike and Frosty, the feral cats Jack and Missy Calico and Nameless Black Kitty and the like as “ours.” We thought of the gray rabbit in the same way, having watched it grow from a tiny thing the size of your fist to a gangly vegetable-stealing teenager of a bunny.

I joined M at the side window and saw what she was talking about: A mangled heap of gray fur and red flesh, not in our yard but that of our neighbors to the east, just on the other side of the fence.

“Oh,” I echoed. No more vegetables for Thumper. Read more

In daydreams begin responsibilities

A recent exchange at home, prompted by images of Ford Mustangs and Pontiac Trans Ams on the teevee:

M: The cool kids all had Trans Ams when I was growing up.

Me: I wanted one really badly. I wound up getting a Ford Pinto instead.

M: And I got a Bobcat.

M: I guess I’ll have to work until I’m eighty to get a Mustang. (laughs)

M: Not one of those wimpy fake ones. It’d have to be a real ’60s Mustang.

Me: Which car would you rather have if you could afford it - a vintage Mustang or a Honda Element?

M: Hmm…I want to know what kind of mileage the Mustang gets…

Me: Mileage? (Laughs) Sweetie, it’s a fantasy! You’re worried about mileage?

M: (Laughs) I know, I know!

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