Still Life With Soup Can

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Dedicated To Da Kitty

Sarah loves you. Even though you won't smile for the camera. I hope you didn't get wet in the flood. I expect you didn't, or you wouldn't be so fascinated by the toilet water.

... that I had been the one who yelled out "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney!" at a press conference. But since I was not, I was fortunately still able to relish the moment while viewing the Spike Lee documentary tonight. In fact, I think it was the highlight.

The rest I don't really want to talk about.

We got slammed today at lunch. I made more money than I made Saturday night, which is impressive. But I didn't see any celebrities, descending upon our fair city to tour the destruction. Oh well. I guess I will just have to settle for plain old local celebrities... city council members, certain people high up in the police who tip substandardly, Mannings, Landrieus. Yawn. ;-)

Really relieved this day is over.

Monday, August 28, 2006

You Can't Stop the Signal

After the previous post, a simple Google search revealed that my experience of being unexpectedly attacked by this song in my car was NOT isolated. Someone else was, too! And they made this video, which I am posting because I think every American should look at these photos, should spend a couple of minutes thinking about this tomorrow. You think you're sick of hearing about it? You think it's not your responsibility as a voting member of a democracy? You will be bombarded. There are many other New Orleans bloggers who do a much better job of this than I do. I feel admittedly guilty about this sometimes, but I'm much better with the levity. Last month I was driving through Plaquemines Parish with another volunteer, someone who's been through an incredibly tough couple of months, and we went by this particular destroyed house. There's nothing there but a foundation with two toilets sitting on it.

I said, "I know it's horrible and wrong, but I kind of smile every time I see those toilets."

He said, "I think sometimes you have to laugh." And we laughed at the toilets.

Anyway, TV bombards you, but most of the time they seem to get the message wrong. The stuff that's out there on the net from local sources, that's the stuff that will blow your mind. I would like to thank them for it today, them and news outlets like the Times Picayune, who have been on the ground in New Orleans since landfall. Have internet connection (well, most of the time, anyway-- thanks a lot, Cox), will write.

You can't stop the signal.

City of Ruins

It seems impossible that there might be people who live in a place, somewhere, where all the houses aren't marked with spray paint, the way I've marked my banner to commemorate the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I should probably explain it, though. All the houses in Orleans Parish were searched and marked with this spray painted X. The markings vary somewhat, depending on who made them, but usually the top is the date the house was searched, the left is the state that particular National Guard troop came from or the local agency that searched the house, and the right or the bottom is how many dead. The one on my old apartment said "9-9 LSP 0," for example, indicating that the Louisiana State Police didn't find any bodies. Most of them have a zero. But not all.

So strange, not to have seen one of those marks. I see them everywhere. I feel like I still have the dingy brown waterline stuck to me, in a place no one can see, just like it's stuck on the rows of houses, even though I never touched that water.

This week I have cried in my car numerous times. I am overwhelmed, and I am angry. I am angry at the Army Corps of Engineers for building substandard levees. I am angry whenever someone posts an ignorant rant on Craigslist about "you fucking stupid beggars stop whining i hope you die," because I was hurt by this too, and am not a beggar, nor am I a whiner. We are people, and this is where we live. I am angry because Bush doesn't deserve to show his face here tomorrow and talk about how much improvement has been made. I am angry at my cat's other people, for leaving him behind. Even though I know they couldn't have known, I am still angry. I am angry that we spend billions of dollars bringing the greatness of America to other countries. I am angry because people were left in squalor to die for the crime of being poor or old. I am angry at people who won't do something to help themselves. I am angry at people who won't do, in general.

I see furniture on curbs. I see dusty cars parked under the overpass. I see leaning, collapsed wooden houses. I see spray paint on the porch. I see a skinny puppy nosing the trash by the projects at Freret and Louisiana. I see eerily dark traffic lights. I see a mattress in the branches of a tree. I see a concrete slab where a house used to be. Tomorrow it will be one year, but I still see these things. I see them every day, every week, every drive.

This is not over. This will never be over.

"Without your sweet kiss, my soul's lost, my friend
Tell me how do I begin again
My city's in ruins"

Sunday, August 27, 2006

The View From the Other Side of the Levee

The first federal failure: the vanishing wetlands of Plaquemines Parish, New Orleans' natural line of defense.

Silence Falls On New Orleans

[This is what I posted on another Sunday afternoon at 12:52 PM nearly one year ago today. We evacuated late, having prepared to ride it out. By the time we were on I-10 heading East, it had already begun to rain. We still have the videos we rented in preparation to wait out Katrina, because the store has not reopened today.]

This morning we woke up to sun shining through the slats of the blinds. The palms and magnolias on my street are swaying with the strengthening breeze. The heat bakes the slate roof tiles on the house next door. I look out over roofs that have been there for a hundred years. The cars are parked on the neutral ground. The streets are ominously empty.

We meant to ride it out, but...

Mandatory evacuation of Orleans Parish. It's a Category 5 storm with winds of 175 miles per hour. The officials are saying there's no longer a question that the levees will be overcome by the water. It's so strange, really. It just seems like a pretty Sunday. Last year they said Ivan was going to be The One, and it wasn't. They said the city would full up like a giant fish bowl. They said this was the price of living in the past.

I don't know. I know I don't want to leave, because, no matter how I want to deny it, there is a very real possibility that it won't be here when I get back. I suppose at a moment like this what you feel is admiration and wonder: at the persistence of the people who settled here, who braved malaria and ungodly heat, who watched the river swallow their homes and then improbably built again in a swamp, at the women of two hundred years ago who did it all in floor length skirts. At least that's what I think about. Goodbye to my green streetcars. Goodbye to the sweet still air that smells like flowers. Goodbye to my newly redone little garret upstairs that I was going to write in. Goodbye to the grand old ladies of St. Charles Avenue, with their iron lace and graceful tall shuttered windows and delicate porches, to whom my heart belongs. If this is your end, I am glad I won't see it. Stubborn old city. It's funny, somehow I see it making it... It's very quite outside now. I've taken the pictures down from the walls. We're evacuating north to Nashville.

Goodbye, city. Good luck.

Friday, August 25, 2006

Action at the Rue

I admit to being a devotee of Craigslist. My especial favorite section is the Missed Connections, aka "I Saw You's," which usually run something like, "You were at Whole Foods in a gray tank top and khaki shorts. I stood behind you in line. You looked at me over your stack of produce & feminine hygiene products and I felt something pass between us. Please email me." They are alternately creepy and hilarious. I secretly hope to someday be a Missed Connection. Not because I need another boyfriend, but because it would be SO FUNNY.

Anyway, any proper NOLA Craigslister has probably been following the series of ubiquitous Rue posts. If not, you should be, because today's batch is kind of awesome. Apparently the Rue de la Course on Magazine is a veritable Missed Connections mecca. A sampling of the fun:

"There are plenty of hot girls in the coffee shop today (my friend and I being two of them), however, there are definitively no hot guys here, or young guys at all for that matter, or rather there was one hot guy in a pink shirt sitting in the corner on his Mac, but he is now gone. We came here specificially to scope out the craig's list scene (seeing as the number of missed connections that happen here), but are sorely dissapointed."

"what about the other rue (S. Carrollton) Does anyone go there? I don't. Are the Rue's like hunting grounds for the erudite, non-alcoholic single (or whatever) dudes and dudettes lookin' around, or is just MagRue?"

"I am the aformentioned friend that was at the Rue earlier.. We specifically went to that Rue because it's apparently a craigslist hotbed and we wanted to see if anyone cute actually went there, and from what we understand, my creepy old criminal law professor frequents the one on carrollton."

"Your creepy crim law professor? Rault? He's scared me away from the Rue on Oak as well. I wonder how many other people have fled that Rue because of him. (HAHAHAHAHA.) He's probably single handedly cut their business in half with his brand of extreme pervy creepiness. We should set up a hot people hour at the Rue on magazine in which we all sit around looking hot and pretending to do work while actually checking each other out and posting missed connections without talking to each other."

"all hot people at rue...gather tomorrow at 4pm - m4w - 27"

Laughing my ass off. I never knew how much I missed by going to the CC's instead of the Rue! Oh my god, right now, as we speak, I am missing the hot people gathering at the Rue! Hahahaha... But CC's has two important points which solidify it as my coffee house of choice, namely that two baristas there loved my "THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE" t-shirt the other day and asked where they could get one online, which makes them cool chicas, and also, it is close to my house.

Blaaahhhh...

When you are hungover and have only been asleep since 5:00 AM, the most excruciating way to be woken up is to have a large Himalayan cat land on your head and meow directly in your ear. Believe me. It hurts. And then to have him flop next to your face, seemingly unaware that his fur is now obstructing your breathing passages.

Tired, but I need to run some errands before I succumb to vegging on the couch and watching our Star Trek: Enterprise disc from Netflix while pretending to write. And I've realized I need to answer a TON of emails. If you've emailed me in the last couple of weeks, I'm sorry. I've been crazy busy. I've certainly worked many extra shifts, and driven cat food to many feeding stations. In fact, if you've called me this week, I need to call you back, too. I am a horrible correspondent on a good day, but I feel like stuff has escalated out of control. So... seriously, I will get back to you. Perhaps even today.

"Do you want to--?" "No."

So the Charlie's Angels movie is sort of fluffy and fun, if you're into a non-challenging evening of movie watching. But even fluffy movies can have their moments. To wit: there is a moment in this movie that absolutely epitomizes my average going out experience. I was reminded of it tonight.

It's the scene where they go undercover at a swanky party. The Lucy Liu character is standing by herself, when a guy approaches her.

He says, "Do you want to--"
She cuts him off, "No."
"We could--"
"No."
Bu--"
"No."

And throughout the whole exchange, she's standing there, nonchalant and almost bored, with a completely straight face. This is exactly what happens to me when I go out. Yeah, all right, I know both sides of the coin, if you will pardon the crappy cliched metaphor because it is 4:49 AM. I was the ugly unpopular girl in high school. However, it gets really old when, now that I'm the pretty girl, guys assume that just because I'm there and I have makeup on and I'm in a cute outfit, I automatically want to talk to them.

Just--

"No."

Someone asked me tonight if I was a sophomore, too. I didn't know what to say. "I wish"? I was a sophomore once. I was a sophomore in 2000. Impossible that that was six years ago. I want it back. I want to have it all back.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Thirteen Reasons I Am Stressing Today

1. There is NO INTERNET at my house. NO INTERNET.

2. I am at CC's on Magazine and I have not washed my face. Which puts me in a bad mood because I feel gross.

3. I am in the middle of trying to save a cat who's going to be put to sleep tomorrow AM at a kill shelter an hour away.

4. If I go to pull the cat, and the place we have lined up for her falls through, Mike will kill me because no matter how much I cry and beg, we can't have another cat at our house.

5. But she looks just like my Janie who died last summer, and I can't leave her there. So I'm about to get in the car.

6. But I need to be back before 5:00 because I have to work.

7. The class I went to last night is going to majorly suck, and they're requiring me to buy a $100 calculator that's crappier than the TI-85 $100 calculator I currently have yet inexplicably am not allowed to use.

8. I cried last night about this cat. Even though I know cats are put to sleep every day and I can't save them all.

9. This black coffee is helping. I refuse to order my coffees tall or grande or whatever. I think it is pretentious and dumb, especially because tall is a small. I take the cue from one of my old boyfriends, who told me he boycotts the Starbucksization of our culture by walking in and pointedly ordering a LARGE BLACK COFFEE. This is what I did today.

10. I waste more gas with this animal rescue stuff. Oh well.

11. I missed a meeting I wanted to go to last night.

12. My Thursday Thirteen banner won't load because Blogger hates me. Again.

13. I forgot I have to pay $700 for health insurance, and I can't afford it this week. So it will have to wait. Luckily, I think it retroactively applies. And anyway, why would you send me a letter on Aug 23 telling me my insurance needed to be renewed by the 19th. Like, thanks guys. Way to be on the ball.

EDITED 1:20 PM TO ADD: Found out someone just pulled the 2 adult cats, so I didn't have to go get them. Yay whoever saved them!

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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Really, He's Not Fat

It's just fur. No, seriously, there is more fur there than cat. A couple weeks ago we took the sheets off the bed to do laundry, and there was a CLUMP OF FUR clinging to the foot-end of the sheet. Like it had just worked its way down there and was hiding under the covers waiting for us. Even I had to admit it was gross. Jolee has never even GONE under the covers. And yet there is fur.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Indecisive and Flighty

My short story got rejected from Andromeda Spaceways, after spending ages in their third round. Sigh. And I worked THE ENTIRE weekend. Granted, I made over $520, but you know that feeling you get the day after you run a long distance, like 5+ miles? My legs feel like that. I was at work for 12 hours yesterday. My body hates me. And my first class of the semester is tonight.

Now it's noon, and I've been up for three hours and still can't figure out what to do with my day. Going through one of those "my writing sucks" phases. Well, not exactly. It's more like a "I need to start over completely because everything I've written so far sucks." Part of me thinks what I need is a good round of blowing up Sith in The Game (see "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic"). But that would be far from productive, albeit full of fun scifi goodness.

Considering going to a coffee shop with the laptop, just to get out of the house. I get in a rut when I just sit here all day, hardly bothering to get dressed. Except that John Scalzi, whose blog I greatly admire and respect (his political opinions always seem to mirror mine, and his snark is so intelligent), makes fun of people who write in coffee shops. Ever since I read that, I feel sort of guilty for liking it.

But J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter in a coffee shop.

I like Harry Potter, maybe I'll re-read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Do I have ADD? Seriously?

This is the last straw. I am going to CC's on Magazine, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. And while I am there I will DISABLE WIRELESS. So there.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

It's A Mystery

I am unwinding and having dinner (yes, at 1:00 AM) after my night at work. Tonight started off very crappy and went on that way until 8:30, but mysteriously pulled together in the last hour or so to allow me to come home with $140, which wasn't ideal but was quite respectable. It was a fun night, though. I think you have to have a certain appreciation of chaos to work in a restaurant.

It reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from Shakespeare In Love, when Henslowe, the theatre owner, is attempting to explain to his producer, Mr. Fennyman, how the theatre works.

Henslowe says, "Allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster."
Fennyman asks, "So what do we do?"
To which Henslowe replies, "Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well."
"How?"
"I don't know. It's a mystery."

I am thoroughly convinced that this is the natural condition under which the restaurant business operates as well. This is exactly how it is. But strangely, it does turn out well!

Friday, August 18, 2006

Welcome, Creationists!

I now present this week's weird ass search term:

"life came from god not soup"

Oh. Sorry, creationists. I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for on this blog. Particularly because you are the sort of people whose crackpot websites I peruse when I'm in need of a good chuckle. No, you will not find proof of intelligent design on this blog. I apologize for the disappointment.

For the record, Still Life With Soup Can wishes life came from soup. Life would be m'mm good!

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Thirteen Reasons I Am Not Doing Thursday Thirteen Today

1. I want to work on my short story-- as yet untitled, but I'm trying out SF with a chick lit voice and a slightly "off" heroine. Think Stephanie Plum mysteries except with spaceships. It is too much fun.

2. Blogger hates me today.

3. Still want to get that new website sorted out.

4. But I can't make up my mind on a header graphic, and therefore cannot make a color scheme, and therefore cannot make a website.

5. If I move my blog there, maybe Technorati will FREAKIN' PING ME for the first time in 46 days. It is driving me up the wall.

6. Got to run some errands, hopefully pick up some cat food.

7. Got to call some people.

8. Don't feel like being clever. Except in my story.

9. Got some important emails to send, to cat contacts and to friends/relatives.

10. There is no coffee made this morning. NO COFFEE! And I am too lazy to make it, so I am drinking English Breakfast instead. And it takes more English Breakfast to wake me up than coffee, therefore I am probably in the bathroom peeing and cannot make a TT.

11. I dreamed about summer camp last night, and you KNOW how much I love summer camp, so now I'm in the mood to lay out in the sun and go sailing, which I won't do because I don't have a boat... but I might go outside.

12. Crap, and I don't know what days my classes start and it might be next week.

13. And I need to renew my domain name or else there will be no new site and no new blog and everything I've done on that will just be a moot point. Oy!

Monday, August 14, 2006

Running With It

I'm supposed to be finishing my novel. I know this. Everyone I know knows this. I don't think it's that bad a book, for a first attempt. I'm not sick of the characters or the story, necessarily...

But.

Today this character just popped herself into my head, and I'm going to run with the idea and see if puts itself together into a somewhat reputable short story. It just feels so refreshing to be excited about something new.

In other news, I just reopened the cut on my right thumb again, and I'm so annoyed. I cut it at work yesterday afternoon, slammed my hand right down on the blade of the lemon slicer. I KNEW THERE WAS A REASON THAT THING TERRIFIES ME AND I CUT MY LEMONS BY HAND. I hit my thumb on it pretty hard, so the problem is the cut is quite deep, though thin enough that it closed right up... only to reopen twice in the intervening 24 hours because I need my thumb to do things like open the blinds and do the dishes.

So yeah. Stupid lemon spider.

What are YOUR Minutes Worth?

Apparently, according to Forbes Magazine, J.K. Rowling makes $145 a minute. What do you say to that? "Um, I make that in the average 7 hour shift"? That is a lot of money. Just think about it. For instance, I have only been up for about 45 minutes (it's my day off), and I have spent 1 minute staring morosely at the mess that is the kitchen, knowing that Mike put a suit on this morning and went to work for the First Day of the Rest of His Life As An Attorney and will expect me to have it cleaned up by the time he gets home, even though it is mostly his, because I need to contribute to the cleanliness of the household etc. etc. ($145). I have spent four minutes petting Jolee ($580). I have spent probably the next 30 checking my e-mail and reading my various daily blogs ($4,350).

Well, I probably have $4,350 in my entire bank account, does that count? $145 a minute. I want to be that kind of author... Just kidding, I'll settle for being published, period.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Moment of Terror

Well, that was briefly frightening. I went to open DCDS, and the program couldn't locate it. !!!???! My entire novel, 70,000 words of work, 300 some pages, vanished into the misty dark spaces of my laptop's memory. It just wasn't in my fiction folder where it always is. After I took a moment to breathe, I realized that last week when the IBM guy came to fix my laptop, I had copied the novel into my shared documents so Mike could grab it and it would be backed up. (I was afraid the fan would go completely and my hard drive would melt or, I don't know, whatever computers do when their fans die and they overheat.) Turns out instead of copying the folder, I moved the whole thing by accident, so all my shortcuts were broken. But here it is, "Dangerous City, Dark Skyway, 2nd Draft," so all is resolved without tears.

Whew!!!

My Cat Is Funnier Than TV

I was just sitting at the computer writing, when I heard a series of thuds. I looked up, thinking Mike had gotten out of bed and was coming in. There is freakin' Jolee, standing straight up on his hind legs in the doorway, clapping his paws together in the air at nothing. He must have been hunting a fly or something... anyway, then he leaped sideways, fell headfirst, and bounced off the wall.

Oh, cat.

Wednesday, August 9, 2006

Thirteen Theories About Harry Potter

***!!! Spoilers for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince... and I suppose all the other Harry Potter books, if you're one of the three people who hasn't read them yet.

1. I don't believe Harry Potter is going to be killed off.

2. Ron might not be safe, however. The funny red-haired sidekick is always the one to go. (See Firefly & Serenity.)

3. R.A.B. has got to be Regulus Black, Sirius' little brother who was a Death Eater. He's the only R.A.B. we know of, he's been previously mentioned, and it fits the plot. Alternatively, he's a red herring, but since he's hardly gotten a paragraph so far, he's not a very good red herring, is he? Seems more like a casual hint to me.

4. Plus, there's a locket found at Grimmauld Place in a throwaway moment in Book 5 when they're cleaning out the house.

5. And! In another throwaway subplot, Mundungus Fletcher is caught selling off stuff from Grimmauld Place. I remember thinking that subplot seemed sort of random on the first read-through. Anyone want to bet he's accidentally sold the Horcrux and part of Book 7 is Harry tracking it down?

6. I think Snape is still good. My whole basis for this is a conversation overheard in Book 6 where he's arguing with Dumbledore about how he "doesn't want to do it anymore," and Dumbledore says, "well, you promised," or something to that effect. This leads me to believe the "thing" Snape promised to do was kill him if it came to that, though the reason remains unknown.

7. Ginny's not going to let Harry dump her. We haven't seen the last of them.

8. I get the feeling Dumbledore's pet phoenix is important.

9. Ron and Hermione will end up together (if he doesn't die).

10. Draco will either be redeemed, because he can't bring himself to be a true Death Eater and follow in his father's footsteps, or be revealed as the wimp that he is underneath his bravado. We were heading in this direction in the end of Book 6. What we don't know yet is whether he is actually good, or just doesn't have the balls for a life of evil.

11. I also think it goes well with the theme we've had so far: isn't it something Sirius says, about how the world isn't divided up into good people and Death Eaters, because it doesn't work that way? Like how Snape hates Harry's father but protects Harry, even though he hates him by association. Draco and Harry will never like each other, but they might end up on the same side. Just feels like a theme.

12. There has to be a reason Dumbledore trusted Snape. His trust seems so lame and undeserved in the end of Book 6, but there may be something he's not saying. He was a smarter wizard than that.

13. The book better be out next summer! OK, this isn't a theory, but we usually get them every other summer, and the last one was 2005. Plus I will spontaneously combust if it doesn't come out.

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

You Know Your Lawn Is Atrocious When...

... you arrive home from work to discover that the team of Hispanic landscapers who were working next door this morning appear to have GONE RIGHT AHEAD AND DONE YOUR LAWN TOO. (Please reference this shot from April to understand the atrociousness of said lawn.)

Who knows? Perhaps they thought the ugliness of our two dead hedges, tree-like weeds, and foot-high grass would detract from the beauty of their fine work next door. Or, it was a mistake. Either way, thanks guys! Ice cold cervezas on me next time.

Monday, August 7, 2006

What, Doesn't Everyone Stalk Their Neighbors??

So on August 1st a moving truck showed up next door. New neighbors? It appears to be! My reasoning is that if it was the same loud undergrads who used to live there, they would have just come back whenever. The fact that the moving-in coincided with the first of the month suggests a new lease has been signed. Also, college students do not tend to move in large U-Hauls with teams of hired Hispanic men and all their belongings taped neatly into a uniform collection of brown boxes.

I'm sort of shameless. I freely admit to spying on the people next door. I wonder who they are. I wonder if they are maybe (there is not a high probability of this, but this moment, these few days, analyzing the neighbors' belongings without actually seeing the neighbors in the flesh-- this is the time for dreaming) a couple our age, who will have barbecues and hang out and let us use their pool. OK, you got me, what I'm really after is the pool.

Here's what we have so far. They have patio furniture. It arrived in a box a couple of days ago, and it has now been put together beside the pool and is quite nice. They also have a small forest of potted plants and flowers. They have rather nice furniture, judging from the stuff that spent a day on the porch. And! New development last night! They have dogs! I was sitting at my desk last night, and I heard dogs and voices from nearby, and I peeked out the window to see a guy swimming in the pool and two small dogs on the patio! (Jolee was alarmed by the dogs.)

But then I felt sketchy because they could see my head in the backlit window, so I ducked back into the office. I am kicking myself today for missing out on this chance at getting a glimpse of the mystery neighbors, because what I really should have done was close the blinds and then peer through them. I feel like such an amateur.

Saturday, August 5, 2006

Adventures of Jolee Bindo & the Cat Pedicure

So apparently someday I am going to be the type of parent who freaks out over minor disasters and runs up huge medical bills, if my cat is any indication. I was sitting at the computer yesterday morning, when I heard a strange sort of low meow. It didn't sound like Jolee's voice, so I thought it was a cat in the alley. Come to find out Jolee is limping around, holding one paw up off the floor. I have no idea what he did to hurt his paw, and he swats me with the other paw when I try to look at it. So I resolved to wait until Mike got home from the gym and see if he was still limping.

He was, so I thought I'd better take him to the vet in case he hurt himself, though lord knows how he contrived to injure his foot when he is an indoor cat. I didn't want to be this horrible person who hears their pet injure himself and then have the vet be closed the next day because it was Sunday and then go in on Monday and have the vet think I am a horrible pet owner because my cat obviously has broken his foot in some bizarre and unexpected way and I let him suffer for two days... So. The instant I put the cat carrier down on the floor, Jolee freaks out and morphs into this flying ball of claws. He raked both of our hands, and clumps of white fur were drifting on the air. Finally I managed to scoop him up in a towel and drop him into the cardboard box he came in back in February (advantage of the cardboard box being that it is top-loading and the carrier is not). He proceeded to yowl in an unearthly fashion as we drove to the vet.

The vet lifts him out of the box and puts him on the table. Jolee's eyes at this point are the size of round blue saucers. He refused to limp. The vet let him jump off the table to observe how he landed. The damn cat is fine. He takes a look at his paws and says it looks like he stepped in something sticky at some point. Also, the claws on his extra Hemingway toes were way too long and turned in toward his other toes. I knew this, but I hadn't really figured out how I was going to attempt to hold him down and clip his toenails. I have never had a cat who required special toe grooming. They told us to wait while they took him in the back to cut his nails and shave the clumps of fur from between his pads. We heard the hum of various grooming tools, but fortunately no sounds indicating a cat attack. They brought him back into the room, where he proceeded to knock over a row of veterinary supplies on his way onto the windowsill. There he sat regarding us suspiciously and contrarily.

I will say that after his rather expensive pedicure (I spent $80 on a pedicure FOR MY CAT-- how depressing), he is very purry and willing to dispense love. Purr! Purr! Love! Love! I thought it would take him longer to get over being angry. But no. It appears he really thought I was putting him in a box to take him away. Once he got back home and realized I wasn't, it was love love love from there on out.

I suppose I will have to maintain his pedicure, because it seems he might have hurt himself by landing in a way that caused one of his extra nails to pinch him uncomfortably, and that was why he was limping. And the vet clearly thought his feet were unkempt. I do not want my cat to have icky feet, after all. Also, Jolee has been determined to be three or four, most likely.

Cannot believe the damn cat was limping pitifully around the apartment on one leg, though. Faker.

Wednesday, August 2, 2006

Thirteen Facts About Katrina Cats

1. An estimated 250,000 pets were left behind during Hurricane Katrina.

2. This means that many of the strays running wild and free on the streets of New Orleans today were once someone's pet. I see stray dogs and cats every time I get in my car. It is very sad to imagine that they probably stopped waiting for their people to come back for them a long time ago.

3. There are, or were, over 4,000 food and water stations in the New Orleans metro area and the surrounding parishes. Tomorrow I'll go to the West Bank to cover about 45 of those. I sometimes ponder whether it does any good... but I saw kittens last week. And if they get used to coming where the food is, maybe they can be trapped... and get to go live somewhere safe where a person will pet them and they won't get attacked by feral dogs and their quality of life is better. Not only that, but it kills me to think that a cat who was once loved by someone is now starving to death and wondering what they did to deserve this.

4. TNR stands for Trap Neuter Return. This is a program in which stray and feral cats are systematically trapped, spayed or neutered, and returned to the streets or to colonies where someone makes sure they are fed.

5. Usually the vet will clip the cat's ear so it is easy to tell which ones have already been spayed/neutered. My cat has a tipped ear but as you can see he is still very handsome!

6. An unaltered female cat can produce 420,000 kittens in seven years (well, not personally, but through the generations). Isn't that crazy? So spay your cat!

7. With so many animals left on the streets after Katrina, we are already seeing the second generation of kittens.

8. Spaying and neutering strays cuts down on the amount of noise and nuisance; ie: they are less likely to be fighting and yowling under your window because they will not be mating.

9. Cats can be trapped humanely.

10. Someone I know caught 30 cats last week that had been sighted around various food/water stations. Adult strays can be resocialized and adopted, kittens can be adopted, and ferals can be fixed so they will no longer reproduce.

11. If you live in a disaster-prone area, have an evacuation plan for your pet. (Mine involves having a bunch of food/water, a carrier, a car, and experience sneaking illegal things into hotel rooms disguised as other things.)

12. You can also get your pet microchipped. Once you register the chip online, any vet anywhere can scan your pet's chip and bring up your contact information. The chip goes right between the shoulder blades.

13. Please consider adopting a cat from a shelter! I know I say this all the time, but just look how pretty my shelter cat is! :-) Buying from pet stores and backyard breeders just encourages people to be irresponsible with their pets and not spay or neuter them. 30% of shelter pets are purebred. This means somebody thought it would be "fun" to breed them, and then adopted them to people who they didn't do a background check on and who later dumped the pets in a shelter when they weren't cute babies anymore. This makes Jolee Bindo mad, and you don't want to make him mad, because he bites!

(I guess I've had a glut of cat posts this week... well, before that it was a long dry spell with no cat posts, so we'll just think of it as making up for lost time. I read some article about how to be a popular blogger that said, "DO NOT BLOG ABOUT YOUR CAT." But it contradicted itself elsewhere in the article, so I took it with a grain of salt, because an English major would not do that. And English majors like cats. Because they are writers. And writers are cat people. Hemingway had many-toed cats. And I have a many-toed cat! Alas, that does not make me Hemingway.)

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Tuesday, August 1, 2006

Haiku

Oh broken laptop
A furry brown and white cat
And I weep for you.