Transition Time for Klyaksa

Sometimes I wonder if I've become the crazy cat man but then I think about how this dying cat on my lap has been with me for over twenty years. Twenty Years. More than one-third of my life on this earth and in terms of relationships she has been one of the few constants. Sure, I've had friends for longer than that, but none who were there in my life every day, and none from whom I've learned so much about love. Taking care of someone you care about who is dying, now that's an education.

She peed on me twice tonight, in her sleep. She couldn't really stand up to drink water earlier tonight. She hasn't eaten more than a couple of bites of food a day for the last week and a half. To put it bluntly, she's done.

She was purring this morning. I got her off her nicely-appointed kitty condo, with the veterinary heating pad and towel, walk-in litter box and Rubbermaid tubs for stairs, and put her on top of the comforter while I read morning emails. She napped and purred. After yesterday I thought today might be a better day. I'd gotten her to drink more water, from the gallon milk jug in the bathroom that she'd drunk from most of her life, but which she'd forgotten about since her big crash in August. I swear yesterday she drank for two minutes straight, and today I timed her. Four minutes plus. She needed it.

Hyperthyroidism
Chronic renal failure
Malignant abdominal tumor
Being twenty

The odds are not good for any of us, and I knew the deck-stacking had happened. I've been saying goodbye to her for over three months now, but I'm still not ready to let go, fully knowing that this afternoon or tomorrow she will be.

And I will be amazed and crushed by how empty my house will be, with just six pounds gone.

Cat Hospice

Well it's been about a month since Klyaksa crashed. My 20 year old kitteh is failing. She was in pretty deep trouble as I finished a film last month and when I came home she was sleeping on my bed, in front of the air-conditioner, in a gigantic pile of fur. She never slept on my bed in the summer, never slept in front of the AC and this shedding was alarming. She was not very responsive nor inclined to eat. She was burning up. There had been a cock-up with her thyroid medication and it may have led to this, at least the shedding and heat pouring off her. I immediately started dosing her with her meds +20% and I knew I was going to have to break out The Nuclear Option.
Maple smoked turkey.
Lucky for me she went for it. I had to hand feed her for a couple of days but she slowly bounced back, food-wise.

The really weird thing to me was that she abandoned all her "spots." You know, the kitty condo, the back of the couch, the towel-covered radiator by the window. No. She took up camp on a chair in the kitchen and had no interest in leaving.

She's been there ever since, with short stints on the condo or couch at my suggestion, and she's getting a lot of lap time from me.

A couple of weeks ago she scared me again, not eating. I made an appointment with the vet for Friday and like clockwork, on Thursday night she ate like a middle linebacker. Everything I put in front of her disappeared; cooked chicken, raw "beef grind" from Primal, sardine grind, and a complete raw beef formula too. Dr Zanotti is a really good vet; maybe a great one. When I first took her to him in March after they helped me with Jasper he spent probably 45 minutes with me and the Little One, going over her entire big-picture health trajectory. He told me she had chronic renal failure (thanks for nothing, Arlington Animal Clinic) as well as hyperthyroidism, which was being addressed. This time we talked about maybe getting creatinine levels and maybe checking thyroid levels again to see if we could figure out anything new. Then he found it. A mass in her abdomen. He did an ultrasound to confirm it didn't belong there, and that obviated any blood or urine tests.

Cancer in animals is often pretty rapidly-advancing stuff. I once had a dog once with some lumps under her skin. We took her to the vet who biopsied them and sent them to the local university for cytology. The report came back saying something like "This animal has certainly died from this disease since we got the biopsy sample but here's what it had," and old Cookie was still alive.

At any rate, she's on the kitchen table now, and her chair, and a box under the table now and then. I'm just glad she's near linoleum, as hitting the litter box has become something of a problem. She sleeps with her head in the corner of the windowsill, and I take her outside every day, which she loves to no end. Yesterday she barely ate any solid food but has been eating a raw egg throughout the day. Today I'm going to get some whipped cream in a can, because she loves that, she'll eat it, and what the fuck. It's not like I'm going to make her diabetic.

It seems to me like we're down to days now, and this dying process has been harder for me probably than for her. If she gets to the point where she won't eat for 3 or 4 days, or won't drink water, seems to be in pain or is otherwise on her way out, she knows I'll be there to help her out of this world and release her energy back into the universe.

But it ain't easy.

Furry Death

Well it has come. This morning I had to put down my beautiflul 18-year-old "American Shorthair," Jasper. His mother (at 20) sits next to me meowing as I type. I don't have an answer she could comprehend.

Jasper was the nicest, sweetest cat I have ever owned, bar none. He was a scaredy-boy, running from the doorbell and strangers. A coiled steel spring of black panther in miniature, playful and very loving with those he knew.

He won our hearts as a kitten and really became part of my family, even teaching me that he knew how to fetch, by bringing me stuff and dropping it at my feet. He'd go get whatever little thing I threw and bring it back until I got tired. In recent years it's been him, his mother Klyaksa and I, and I really appreciated them being around.

 Jasper was a fantastic kitty,
18 years old, born right here in this apartment. When my landlord told me he wanted to sell the house my first panic was that I didn't know if Jasper would be able to weather the move. In the last 6 months he lost a
lot of body mass and when they weighed him this morning at 5.045 pounds I was stunned. He had been 8 pounds most of his life. Chronic renal failure is a pretty common cause of death in cats, and they don't know why. I know they know that hyperthyroidism in cats is because of federally-mandated flame retardants in TV sets. Yes, the federal government commands TV makers to put toxic shit in their TVs that gasses out with heat. So it's not just the programming that is bad for you. Anyway, he crashed a couple of days ago, I fed him mostly by hand yesterday and he didn't stay on my bed last night again, a very rare occurrence. He did start out sleeping on my hand, which he did on and off for years. He would put his head in my hand and fall asleep. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning with a kitty head in the palm of my hand. Last night I was under the blankets and slid my hand underneath him. He was in the middle of the living room floor this morning, not a usual "spot" for him at all. I had made the vet appointment yesterday and knew it was likely that he was
done. I told the vet there was no need for heroics, he was 18 and has CRF and I know the trajectory. I just wasn't sure how close he was to the runway, so to speak. I went to a different vet than my usual one, because
my regular vets are strictly allopathic, and I don't think they have the compassion I was looking for in his care. I was recommended another vet in Winchester, who took care of some aging Bichons that my friend Leslie had, who was just great. We talked it over and agreed that he was done, his kidneys were really shriveled up, he was dehydrated and with all is muscle loss, pretty wobbly. It just broke my heart to have to put him down but he was on my lap the whole time and I know he didn't suffer. When the IV phenobarbitol hit, his breathing stopped right away. He was a very important part of my life for 18 years and I will miss him for a long
time. Good night Sweet Prince.

+

Sometimes I called him Mr Big Nose, because his mother has a triangular face, and he has a nose and bigger ears. 

 

 Here he's at his owliest. He wasn't upset or anything as far as I can tell, but he sure was owly. 

He would lie on my leg while I watched the Red Sox and ate dinner. He was not food aggressive at all like his mom, but would eat little bits if I offered them.




















He was a great lap-lander, and would lie half on me and half on my desk , purring and sleeping.


















I often thought about how Thais depict cats in art, and he certainly had some Siamese in him.





















 I love this picture of him on my lap; he looks like he might eat your soul, but he was just playing.





















Thanks Baby. I loved you. And you loved us.

GodDAMMIT so much, or Happy Birthday Baby


The internet is a wonderful thing. It's the library and movies and magazines and newspapers and wads of paper scattered on the floor all at once.

And for the second time in six months, it has become a sledgehammer, whanging away at my sternum and all that lies beneath.


First it was Janne, my first real girlfriend, a sweet, quirky, somewhat shy, sexy young thing that I'd lost touch with twenty five years ago. Things did not end badly between us, I transferred out of town to a different university and she went on to practice being a hermit, of sorts.  Her father had died a few years before that, and her mother a few years later, and looking her up, you know, to see how her life turned out, was not going to be easy.
Google wasn't any help. Being something of a luddite she probably didn't care a whit about computers or email or any of the interwebs, and while this may surprise you, many people get along just fine without any of that. But google her, I did.
Zip.
Nada.
Nothing.
But several months would go by and I'd see if I could find one of her brothers or a way to find her.
Then one day I got a hit. A post office box in New Mexico! I knew it was her, she has an unique name. I thought "That's great!" She'd moved out of the cornfields of Indiana finally, to a place of stunning natural beauty and a part of the world that is dear to my heart, having lived in the vicinity for several years myself.
So I copied her address and thought, "Ok, I'll send her a note."
Heartened by this appearance on the intertubial horizon I promptly did not write her a note, but the information gave me a sense of contact, grounding, comfort.
Six or eight months went by and I realized I hadn't done anything yet, so I decided to write that note. Just beforehand though, I figured I'd see if there was any more news from Google.
And yeah, there was.
Her obituary.

Goddammit so much.

So today, idiot that I am, I was performing this same iteration on my former wife, a brilliant, fun, incredible woman whose persona melted down and took our marriage and a big chunk of my family with it over twenty years ago. It took me a decade to discover one of the triggers that made that circuit breaker snap in her head, and another decade to stumble onto the other. She was a "human development" scholar in the vein of Carol Gilligan, Larry Kohlberg, Jim Fowler, Bernard Lonergan. In retrospect I might have seen it coming, or at least recognized the danger lurking. I was at a party and chatting with one of the strangers I'd met there and somehow Gilligan or Human Development came up. I mentioned that my former wife was involved in that field. What the stranger said  was the next sledgehammer blow: "When did she melt down?" "WHAT?" "Oh yes, they all melt down, Human Development is littered with them." And immediately I remembered: Larry Kohlberg had committed suicide within a year of  Pat's starting her master's in HD. Holy christ.

At any rate, when she melted, and we divorced, she shipped my stepkids back to their dad 1400 miles away and between trying to right my own life and figure out what the fuck just happend and who knows, maybe lies or shame or molten-personality weirdness she may have transmitted to the kids, I lost touch with them. I didn't know what to say to them, didn't know what they felt about all this, and in my own grief I missed opportunities to find out. Time passed and I guess my own psychological immune system didn't want me bringing that pain back to the surface, and decades later I realize how much of my life was destroyed back in 1986. And I hadn't really grieved it, but shoved the pain asunder. After all, I was just a step-dad, I must have felt I had no right to miss the kids I'd been helping to raise, and all of the raising that was denied me through those events.
Now since probably 1987 as far as I knew nobody who knew her when I did had any idea if she was dead or alive. A former boss had mentioned he thought she was in New Orleans.
Now I'm the kind of person who generally loves the people I love and have loved. There are very few people who I write off or just never want to hear from again if the relationship didn't work out. We shared love, and there was a reason for that, and maybe I'm an old softie or perhaps just a retard to be grateful for that sharing and the ones I've shared it with. But there you have it. 
And so being the curious bastard that I am, and knife in my heart or not, wanting to know who this person was today or what the hell was going on, I did it again: Google.

It looked to me like Pat had been in LA and New Orleans, but that was about all I found. And that was enough, really. I knew she was alive anyway, and hadn't autodefinistrated. Unless, of course, Katrina got her.
Then I realized maybe some of the kids were findable, all being adults by now. And sure enough, I found one of the girls on Facebook. I wrote her to ask if we could start a conversation, and apologizing that it had been far too long.
Zip
Nada
Bupkis.
I think I did this six or seven months later with equally enthusiastic response. Which was pretty hard to take, since she was the one with extraordinary emotional intelligence at a young age.
I tried looking for her brother and even found someone with his name living not far from the town their dad lived in, so I sent him an email. Who knows if he was the same guy, I never found out.
I contemplated posting letters to them all individually, care of their dad. He'd probably give them the envelopes, I never had any beef with the guy. From time to time flashes of brilliance would occur, I'd know just what I needed to say, how to explain my feelings, how to invite them to begin again with a guy who was now for all practical purposes a stranger at the very least. But the letters never got finished. Ongoing psychological immune system war, I suppose.
So fighting this battle I went into the theater of war again today, yearning to reach out to shards of a life killed, scattered and abandoned by the one I loved.

That's right. I googled again.

And there it was.
Her obituary.

Oh look. A sledgehammer.

Now I'm feeling death with Treble Damages.

First the death of my family in 1986.

Now the death of Pat, and knowing I will never hear what happened to make her corkscrew into the ground like JFK junior on a hazy afternoon, and if she ever righted herself.

And seeing that she died last December 15th, the pain that nobody would be bothered to tell me she had died, or even that she was sick.

Tomorrow would be Pat's birthday.

Happy Birthday Baby.

GodDAMMITsomuch.

#30

The rarest of photos, Pat and Janne together. 

Well it's over, and Big Government Scott Brown beat Big Government Martha Coakley.

The thing I find most curious is that the fine liberal people of MA (and some from NH and NY too) who were taught Tolerance and Diversity and presumably Civics are editorializing on their loss. Which is understandable, really. Nobody wants their candidate to lose. And one thing humans want more than food is to be right.
Now there are 59 Democrats in the senate instead of 60. Still a majority, just like yesterday. And from Brown's history I don't expect much more than a ripple in the Potomac. Hardly the glacier-melting sea change the locals are wailing about.

But statistically we have something that every fan of democracy has to support:
Balance.
Unless you don't really like playing fair, and all that spew about Democracy and Tolerance and Fairness and such is just convenient lies.

I can live with balance. It forces both sides to make their case. Or pay someone off. And that's how they make the sausage, it seems.
But still, the election's over, yet the bitching continues. And it's only based on...well...nothing really.

When the new boy gets installed in DC and does something, then people will have legitimate opinions.

But for now, an anonymous sample from Facebook of what apparently typical Massachusetts voters are saying:



*

is ashamed to be from Massachusetts.

I am sad that Mass. Voters did not show more courage. Only cowards run to the status quo when the water gets choppy. Uncle Teddy is rolling in his grave. Shame on Massachusetts voters for being afraid of what needs to happen. That being "burn the f'n village" to the ground to fix all that the Rep's have f'd up over that previous decade.

scott brown is a windbag. blowhard. cosmo centerfold. male bimbo. sycophant. next year's has been.

fuckin' hominids... hope they die out and get replaced by reptiles

I never new I had this many republican friends. I mean, I know alot of my friends in NY lean republican, but I didn't realize this many in Mass. I am a confused person right now. Ugh.

Is so pissed he can't even think of anything clever or condescending to say.

Massacheusettes continues its proud tradition of doing everything wrong.

Ugh . . . I'm ashamed to be a resident. Like the bad driving rep wasn't enough!!

Jeez. Did all of the liberals like me move out of MA? Teddy is rolling in his grave.

Massachusetts has just made us an international laughingstock. Good job, guys.

Canada sounds like a good idea.

I hope that Massachusetts is happy becoming a red state. I disown you.

Ohhhhhh Massachusetts..........say it ain't so!!!!! please tell me this is only a nightmare...please, please, please.

WHO ARE THESE ASSHOLES? MY NEIGHBORS? PEOPLE I WORK WITH? ANY OF YOU VOTED FOR THAT SHITHEAD REPUBLICAN, FESS UP RIGHT NOW! RIGHT HERE ON FACEBOOK! REMEMBER BUSH? NO? YOU FORGOT ALREADY? BRAINS OF A CHIMP???

Brains of a goldfish. MORONS!!!!!

it's ok. we've lost before. we can take it. comes from not being part of the privileged class.

Teddy should be rolling over is his grave and saying "what the fuck"

Guess I better keep working if I want health insurance.

is not looking forward to seeing Scott Brown's shit eating grin for the next few years

WHOA! NOW WHAT!? I KNOW...MOVING TO EUROPE! SEE YA....

Crap.

I'm so embarrassed. I'm sorry, America

I guess that's better than the time I will be spending helping my parents with their healthcare coverage.

It looks like the republican fucks have cheated again.

we're screwed

What have you done people...what have you done. ...

just doesn't get it.

I'm done trying to have conversations with brainless republicans.

-----------------------------------

'What?'
'I said', said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, 'have you got any gin?'
'I'll look. Tell me about the lizards.'
Ford shrugged again.
'Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them', he said. 'They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it.'
'But that's terrible', said Arthur.
'Listen, bud', said Ford, 'if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say "That's terrible" I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin."
— Douglas Adams (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish)

Yup, it's election day in the Bay State, and the special senate election to replace the one person who did not die in a car in Chappaquidick has proven to be a frothy one. The Ds and Rs are both claiming their major party opposition is lying and evil (when in fact both are lying and evil) and the one choice available that would actually help the republic is derided (You're just throwing your vote away!); Joe Kennedy.

Fact is, Both Coakley and Brown are big-government expansionists. Coakley wants you to think Brown will eat your unborn babies if you vote for him, but he is in favor of Cap-and-trade, backed Romney (Hillary) Care, and in 11 years of elected office never once introduced legislation to rein in government spending. He came out against Question 1, the ballot initiative to end the state income tax, for instance. He voted against the Democrats to raise taxes last summer but earlier he voted for

• the income tax penalty imposed by RomneyCare
• appx. $700M in new tax-fees every year.

and probably voted with Romney for

• "closing loopholes" to increase taxes
• enabling business property tax increases

A Romney clone, if you will.

Coakley says "As Attorney General, I took on drug companies and health insurers, rooting out fraud and abuse that drives up costs for families and seniors and achieved record recoveries in Medicaid fraud cases."

She sure did all right. Here are the pharma contributors to her campaign:
Thomas Boggs, Patton Boggs: Bristol-Myers Squibb Chuck Brain, Capitol Hill Strategies: Amgen, BIO, Merck, PhRMA Susan Brophy, Glover Park Group: Blue Cross, Pfizer Steven Champlin, Duberstein Group: AHIP, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis Licy Do Canto, Raben Group: Amgen Gerald Cassidy, Cassidy & Associates: U. Mass Memorial Health Care David Castagnetti, Mehlman, Vogel, Castagnetti: Abbot Labs, AHIP, Astra-Zenaca, General Electric, Humana, Merck, PhRMA. Steven Elmendorf, Elmendorf Strategies: Medicines Company, PhRMA, United Health Shannon Finley, Capitol Counsel: Amgen, Astra-Zeneca, Blue Cross, GE, PhRMA, Sanofi-Aventis. Heather Podesta, Heather Podesta & Partners: Cigna, Eli Lilly, HealthSouth Tony Podesta, Podesta Group: Amgen, GE, Merck, Novartis. Robert Raben, Raben Group: Amgen, GE.

She took them on, all right. Where I come from, that's called "pulling a train."

But of course her history is even more storied. She was on the team with Luther Scott Harshbarger, state attorney general at the time, who helped trump up the fraudulent prosecution of the Fells Acres Daycare case. The kids' "testimonies," proven later to have been completely fabricated and induced by the "therapists" who "interviewed" them, destroyed the lives of the Amirault family. Two rotted in prison for decades while their mother was spared the lengthy sentence by death in prison. She went on to prosecute others on made-up testimony and built her career by standing on the faces of these innocents.

Which makes me wonder what the hell kind of people can cast a vote for her knowing this alone. The Blue Kool-Aid is strong here.

Both major party candidates talk about all the great stuff they're going to do for us in Washington. Create jobs, something-something-something healthcare.... Uh, you dimwits have been in Massachusetts for decades. Why didn't you do any of this while you were in office here? Oh yeah, I forgot; Brown backed Romney Care, a program that was declared so "successful" that they bankrupted it in 3 months. That's right, OUT of money in 3 months. My bad.

Then we have Mr Kennedy. Saying the stupidest shit you've ever heard:

We need to cut spending.

On foreign-policy, I believe we must promote free trade and peace.

Our military has become over extended with troop deployments around the world that do not make us safer.

Today, health care is significantly more expensive largely due to government regulation and liability insurance required to be held by our physicians.

The system needs to be changed so that every person entering the country must be accounted for and must contribute.

I view marriage as a religious matter and not something that government should be allowed to define as our religious freedoms are protected.

Anything less than equal treatment under the law is not acceptable. This standard goes for Race, Gender, Physical Characteristics, Gender Preference or any other item that could be the root of discrimination.

It's crazy talk, I tell.......hey, wait a minute.

I know who I'm voting for. I've had enough!


'On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.'
'Odd', said Arthur, 'I thought you said it was a democracy.'
'I did', said Ford. 'It is.'
'So', said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, 'why don't people get rid of the lizards?'
'It honestly doesn't occur to them', said Ford. 'They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.'
'You mean they actually vote for the lizards?'
'Oh yes', said Ford with a shrug, 'of course.'
'But', said Arthur, going for the big one again, 'why?'
'Because if they didn't vote for a lizard', said Ford, 'the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?'

— Douglas Adams (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish)

11/9/06
Here's a story posted by WCBS that smelled from the git, and finally struck me as utter horseshit, and me calling the author on it.

"New Fears Of Onboard Explosives Center On Food Services" (pops)

Dear Mr. Weinberger,

I had my doubts about your story from the first sentence: "Airplanes remain the terrorist weapon of choice." By what measure can you claim this? I haven't seen any flaming aircraft coming out of the sky lately, but devout militants have been certainly blowing themselves, and anything else nearby, into smithereens on a daily basis around the world. Are you saying they'd really -like- to turn airplanes into fuel-air bombs? Again, what would be your basis for this? There is a subtle but meaningful difference between wanting something and having it.

The real objection I take is with the idea that the food prep area must be secure from outsiders. How about the bakeries, the meat processing plants, the slaughterhouses, the farms? That seems silly, doesn't it? You never mention in your story what happens to the food service vehicles once they leave the plant and get on airport property, which makes the premise for your entire story silly. Actually, failing to follow the materials to their destination where they are supposed to be explosive-free lets the reader assume that you are merely spinning alarmist crap the likes of which one could find debunked on Snopes.com.

I suspect that if you were really concerned with the security of food transport at airports you would have finished the job; as it stands it appears that someone at Sky Chefs has pissed you off. Is it any wonder the bloggers are gaining credibility and Big News is losing?


Boston

Fark.com is where I get almost all the news I get. Actually, I'm a subscriber to totalfark.com, where I can read the entire submission queue, which is around 2500 articles a day. No, I don't read them all, silly, but there's a lot more there than the 40 or so on the main page, and the sources are great. I find FARK scoops the big city newspapers by a couple of days on a regular basis.

OMG I'm like blogging!!!11111one

I never thought I would be another signal in the noisy blogosphere, but sitting with my friend Donna, whom I'm helping with her blog, it just happened. Almsot by accident. I typed in "rockinthestream" into the little blog window thingy and poof! I had my very own blog. Good god, what to do? I just kept it as a placemarker for some reason and later I found there were things that ought to be on a blog, at least according to my own egocentric view of the world ;-p