She's BEYOOTIFUL And She Knows It

Sometimes you just have to get yourself a little something special, to make life worth living. You know, like when you get all depressed and shit. Or, if you're really lucky, you have a wonderful partner who delivers the proverbial kick in the pants with a beautiful new 85-mm lens for the beautiful new Nikon D7000 he bought you.

At any rate, the Nikon was 2013's birthday present, and the lens was 2013's anniversary present, and it's a damn good ROI on 14 happy years together, so there.

And wut better way to celebrate one's favourite toy than by featuring one's favourite beasts through its ever-alert eye? Here's Madu:

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And Gojira.

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Who would ever believe they were brother and sister? Or, as I'm sure they put it, Bother & Satanspawn. Guess which is which.

Adorable.

Copyright ThePoliticalCat all rights reserved

Copyright ThePoliticalCat all rights reserved

We're totally pussy-whipped in this house. And not ashamed to admit it, either.

Copyright ThePoliticalCat all rights reserved

It's true that Boy doesn't get equal camera time. He's usually asleep, and when he's not, loud noises, sudden movement, or light will scare him into running out of the house in a snit. Whereas Miss Thang is convinced she is the most beautiful creature in the world and all the pandemonium is just her fans showing their appreciation.

Stumble It!

Caturday!

It's raining!

Ordinarily, we don't care for this pissy little thing that passes for rain in these dry damned parts. We like REAL rain. Like thunderstorms, with pelting water from the sky that hits your head hard enough to hurt, and lightning flashing in sheets and bolts, sizzling near one's feet as one runs screaming through the wet dark streets on a warm tropical night to the sound of rolling thunder. THAT'S rain.

Not this endless minge of gray fog and gray damp drizzly skies and gray-brown hills all sere from the long, dry summer, and gray wet roads and gray wet buildings looming grayly out of the gray swathe of city streets and byways.

But it's been dry. How dry? Dry enough that people are vaguely starting to resemble some sort of lizardoid alien. Cracked lips and wrinkly dry shiny skins. Talking about reducing showers and graywater systems and single-rinse laundry cycles kinda dry. And the trees were dying from the dry, leaves drooping and dull, twigs wrinkled at their tender ends instead of plump babyish fists of leaves. It was so fucking dry I thought I'd lost my WISTERIA, for Christ's sake, and that thing has survived nearly 30 years of my lazy-assed failure to feed, water, or otherwise care for in any way; yearly hot Santa Ana winds; a fire that took down 2,000 houses in the vicinity; earthquakes; temporary use as a gravesite for murdered squirrels (looking at YOU, Ramon Rivera of the Rainbow Bridge) and god only knows what-all else kinda disasters and shenanigans.

So this rain's a welcome addition, right now. A surprise, but welcome nonetheless.

We're supposed to get all kinds stuff fixed around the old homestead, stuff I haven't been able to take care of for a decade because I was so badly disabled. Yes, yes, we're using the D-word now, admitting to a whole fuckin' lotta suffering and shit. The house is almost literally falling down around our ears. The fabled thousand-step stairs need replacing with some solid construction-type construction. The retaining walls are collapsing. The deck supports need shoring up, and replacement in parts. Bleh. Lotsa work.

And you can't work in this rain.

Oh, fuck it, it's Caturday. Have a wonderful one, y'awl.

Stumble It!

Goodbye, dear Gustav

Gustav is gone.

After 13 years of living with us, he has taken his earsplitting yowls and his chrysanthemum bud of a tail to the other side of the Rainbow Bridge, there to await us with a cynical expression and a complaint, no doubt.

He was not the easiest of cats, but the poor little guy had a very hard life before we got him. Abuse, neglect, abandonment, kicks, and beatings were his lot from birth, pretty much. He was rescued, with his mother and siblings, from a drain in which he was born. Some cruel person had dumped the pregnant mama cat in there and poured liquid on her. Ants were biting her and the babies. You could say his hard life began at birth.

He survived a few years of being passed around -- nobody wanted him, because he was not a 'pretty' animal. He was lean and rangy and the suspicious look got worse, I imagine, after a few different people rejected him with kicks and blows. When he came to us, we had a houseful of cats. We took him in because his alternative was death. We will never regret saving his life. He was not an affectionate cat, and it took him years to learn how to play with toys, or interact with us. The first time he ever played with a toy, after he'd lived with us for two years, he sneaked downstairs in the wee hours of the morning. We were awakened by odd, scrabbling noises in the living room. When we turned on the light, there was Gustav, lying on his back, batting at a ball -- looking embarrassed as hell.

He never liked people. He was not the kind of cat to approach people looking for petting. He shrank away from them and yowled loudly, convinced they meant him no good. He came to us with his mother, Greta, to whom he was greatly attached. He would attack any cat who came near her. He never attacked people, to his credit. But he did not like sharing Greta with anyone. Greta was a sweet, affectionate kitty, and it was difficult to interact with her, with Gustav getting anxious and yowly when she would approach us for pets or treats. Unfortunately for us all, she died shortly after her arrival. She threw a blood clot. A terrible death. Gustav was never the same after, although Bandicoot, the best of all kitties in the world, took him under a mighty fraternal paw. The Coot was easily three times Gustav's size, weighing in at an impressive 20 lbs in his fattitude, whereas Gustav never got much beyond 7, maybe 8 at the most. And the Coot was very fluffy, and he would let Gustav curl up in his enormous furry coat to sleep. So Gustav was somewhat consoled by the Coot, although he got on everyone's nerves with his unending complaints, and occasionally, the Coot would bite him about the ears. Which just made him complain louder.

After the Coot passed on, Gustav started deteriorating pretty quickly, poor guy. His legs got weaker and weaker, and eventually he couldn't get up on our giant bed any more. We couldn't train him to use the kitty stairs we bought, so we made him a comfortable bed on the floor. Little by little, his world shrank to the scope of the bedroom, although he did still go outside when it was warm and sunny. Then he got a nasty infection in his eye, right around the time we learned that our beloved friend, Cris, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Life became very hard, then, with Gus on the verge of losing his eye while Cris died by inches.

It cost us a lot of money and he needed a veterinary opthalmologist's services, but we managed to save his eye. Shortly thereafter, Cris died. I lost a dear and very much-loved friend, someone I had loved for nearly two decades. And I thought we had saved Gustav.

Lately he seemed to have more and more difficulty walking. His feet were acting strange, and his gait was very unsteady. Sometimes he would trip over his own feet because one foot had turned inward or outward unexpectedly. And the crying was getting worse. It was hard to tell whether he was just screaming because he screamed a lot of the time anyway, or if he was screaming because he was in pain. We had him on pain medication for his arthritis, but his kidneys were going and his digestive system was pretty messed up and he had lost most of the sight in one eye, and he never could smell very well because he'd always had herpes.

So when we heard him yowling on Friday, we thought, it's probably time for his pain medication, poor guy. But then the yowling got very strange, and we ran into the bathroom and found him lying on the floor having a seizure, or something. His body was rigid and trembling, he was lying on his side, he had peed himself and was drooling and frothing at the mouth, with one foot drawn up to his chest. We dried him and wrapped him warmly in a towel and held him and tried to calm him, but it was obvious something was very wrong with the old guy, and not so clear that anything would help. But we called the vet anyway, and finally found someone.

She didn't know much about his history, so she suggested we try to save him. Apparently, Gustav's retinas had blown out, so he had suddenly gone blind. The treatment she recommended would have meant medicating him daily. He might not regain his vision. And it was just a matter of time before his kidneys gave out anyway. He would have to stay in the hospital for 36 hours.

We did the right thing by the boy. It was a hard choice, not because there was any possibility that we were wrong, but because it feels so arrogant to take a life, when we cannot give one. But for Gustav, there was no quality of life left. Blind, surrounded by two rambunctious younger cats who seem to remember how he attacked them when he was younger, not really enjoying his food, unable to see, smell, walk, or hear very well, in a house full of stairs? If I were in his place, I'd want the bliss of the needle. Can't eat, can't shit, can't walk, can't hear, can't smell, can't taste, can't see? What's left of life to enjoy?

And for a cat so averse to human contact to be picked up and medicated three times a day? He only let us medicate him when he was very, very sick, because he was too weak to run away. As soon as he got his strength back he started fighting me over the medication. He's never bitten me, but he has, on occasion, got a claw stuck -- deep -- in me and caused some not insignificant bleeding. I know he doesn't mean to, but that doesn't make it hurt any the less. And he's very good at refusing to do things. Plus, he never really learned to interact with people. He's always preferred the company of his own species. And these last two remaining cats of the family never liked him and never will. His life would have been hell.

We said goodbye to him at the doctor's after assuring ourselves that he suffered no more. I hope by the time we go, we have the same option. Goodbye dear little Gustav. You tried so hard to be a good kitty. Life was not very fair or very kind to you. We tried our best to give you everything that made you happy, dear. We miss you very much, and always will.

Stumble It!

Caturday?

NO we don't have any more cats, geez

This is what it feels like at La Casa de Los Gatos, these days. Like we're mothering some kittens. And we desperately need a DRINK, goddammit.

You ever try raising kittens? Geezus, they're a pain. So, what's going on, we ask? Bandicoot was sick for quite a while, and then we had to leave him and go away, and he wasn't doing too great when we got back. We've spent the past couple of months curing him of whatever stomach ailment he picked up and making sure he's doing OK.

Bandicoot with Gustav

See, he's getting old. He wants to be fed about once an hour, all day. Sometimes he'll eat some kibble, but mostly he wants his food brought to him, and he always was a messy eater, and he's gotten a hundred times worse. Seems like he's not seeing or smelling too well, either. If you don't bring his food to him, he climbs up on the bed and pokes you in the face with one enormous smelly paw. Actually, his paws aren't smelly at all. Just big. Bigger than my eyeballs. Which is what he likes to poke, mostly. He doesn't want water from a bowl, either. He wants to lick the water in the shower. And his coat was a matted mess after the long stay at the vet. We're clipping and brushing and what-all, but he's a pig in a fur suit, he does not care for this grooming shit.

And Gustav is kinda sensing something in the offing because Bandicoot just wants to be left alone to sleep all the time. So Gustav has taken to howling every night, I mean Siamese cat x water buffalo bellows every night from, like, 1 am to 3 am. I'd kill him, except he's suffered enough already. I think. Little fucker. Sleeping like a baby next to me right now. Just half an hour ago he was trying to sit on Gojira's face and howling because she bit him in the ass. Apparently she does not care for this face-sitting business.

Gojira with Zingi-bee

Gojira is still freaked out about Zingiber dying and won't go outside any more. She only wants to be at home, preferably in bed with us. (Fucking bitch wants to be RIGHT BETWEEN both of us, too, so forget a sex life.) And she squeaks like a motherfucker when she doesn't get her way. Also, too, claws. Hers are like tiny little razors. You can't tell you've been scratched till part of your leg bleeds and falls off. There's no possibility of trimming them, either. She's not the type to hold still that long, and we'd have to *catch* her first. Always an exciting sight, watching two rapidly aging people chasing an extremely lithe, swift, and nimble cat around. And when she's not being obnoxious and shrieking in your ear and bouncing off the walls, she's demanding attention. Pet me, pet me, scratch my ears, check my butt for poop stains, pet my belly so I can remove the skin from your hands. If she weren't so stunningly cute, she would have been a slipper a LONG time ago. Little bitch.

And MADU has suddenly developed a need for affection. What's with this? The lady with the French-perfumey big bosoms isn't giving him enough lately, or what? He's still running off to visit her regularly, I see him hiking down the road all the time, the little slut. Then he comes home and wants to drape himself all over us, and could we please pick him up and hold him so he can fall asleep in the most comfortable position and drool.

There was a time when the little fucker would barely give us the time of day. AFAHWC, we were convenient stepping stones for hunting mice on the hill.

I miss those days.

Yeah, so, WTF, y'all, check out the fucking heat wave that's cooking the whole middle of the country AND the eastern seabord, is this reality time for global warming deniers, or what? Will the stupid subside long enough for the marching morons to realize that they ARE every bit as stupid as everyone else has believed for years, and that global warming has finally decided to, like, personally cook their asses or something for being such fucking dolts? Only thing is, they'll be sure to take all of us with them when they go, y'know? Just to be assholes. Srsly, this heat is nothing to fuck with. Remember to wear sunblock, stay cool and aerated, go to a public place that's airconditioned, or your local pool, or whatever. Stay indoors, if you can. Drink LOTS of water, but not too much too fast. Stay safe!

Here's something for y'all to enjoy!

Stumble It!

Hey, everybody!

Your proprietors have been the shit about keeping this place clean and up to date, eh? Fuckwits.

So here's the deal. We're going AWAY! For a while! But. It's a journey of pains in the ass, which deserve memorialization.

No, I am not going to poop all over your lives by giving you all kinds of TMI unwanted crap about, I don't know, whatever the Tweeters are tweeting these days, mostly their bowel movements or their children's. We do not do this kind of cheap shit at this fine cathouse. No. Instead, we will wax eloquent upon all the people whose asses we would enjoy to kick if we weren't a crabby, curmudgeonly, elderly GIMP. Yeah, fuck this shit, we still have Teh GIMPITUDE. And someone will be made to PAY. We could start with John BONER, oh, eh, I mean Boehner, of course, the Dooky of Orange, the man of colour, except it's a colour not found anywhere in Nature.

Get ready to return to drinking yourself green by 5 pm daily, John. I hear Nancy Pelosi's gunning, heh, I mean, angling, for your job, and if you know Nancy like I know Nancy, then you know what Nancy wants she usually gets. HAHAHA. I am so going to enjoy watching your fat ass being kicked all the way back to the golf courses where you can stumble around drunk like the drunk stumblebum you are.

OK, enough with the fucking vitriol already. John Boner has actually almost kind of thought about making arguey noises at bloated limpdick misogynist whale, Flush Rimbowl, who is busy trying to sex some law student who might just sue his fucking ass off with extreme prejudice. HAHAHA, so to speak. Whatevs. We're supposed to be fucking packing for Chrisake, 30 books and 2 changes of clothing plus socks, haha, is that enough for a month? It could be more.

Awright, awreddy. We're off.

Here is a video of a cat for both our faithful readers. Because we know you love cats. You can stay in touch with some of us through the blog. We're not saying squat about the slackers who are supposed to be blogging and keeping things up while yours truly rolls around in agony recovering from various fucking surgeries and pains and trips to deathbeds. Jesus, my life sucks something awful, don't it? Anyway. This cat looks JUST like Bandicoot! Except Bandicoot would probably disembowel me if I tried to get him to swim anywhere. Enjoy!

Stumble It!

Caturday

That's Bandicoot. The big one. Gustav, the normal-sized kitty sitting next to him, has been desolate for the past two days.

Bandicoot was very, very sick this weekend, and we have no idea what happened. He spent all of Thursday night vomiting (yes, all fucking night, like every couple of hours). As you all know, certain people at La Casa de Los Gatos have extremely sensitive stomachs. We're talkin' hear someone/thing yarking within the limits of hearing distance, and barf along in tune. We're talking smell anything barfacious, like shit, stale piss, vomit, rotting corpses, and it's technicolour yawn time in old Hollywood city.

We're not naming any names now. We are not. But let me tell ya, anybody who has hardwood floors and can sleep through cat barfage, well, you're a better man than I am, Nelson.

Cats barf all the time, right? No big deal? I mean, do you know how much cats barf? If someone could figure out how to turn cat barf into a power source, we could probly run the whole planet very efficiently with low pollution thankyewveddymuch.

Wrong. If your cat barfs a LOT? Like all night a lot? Take the little fucker to the ER. They're really sick, and chances are their core temperature has dropped really low and they're completely dehydrated from all the vomiting, and if their gums are white or bluish, they may have been poisoned and could be close to death.

He was crying in a strange voice, and no beast in pain goes unheard in these parts. That's the policy. So we bundled him up and took him to the vet, and he had a chest x-ray and a sonogram and a blood panel, and I plan to plate him in gold when he returns. Lets just say it cost an arm and a leg, but I am grateful.

He has feline enteritis. Not the panleukopenia (FPV) kind. It made his tubby hurt a lot. He's on painkillers, antibiotics, and an IV drip for fluids and has been in the hospital for two days now. We're leaving in a little while to bring the babby home.

Oh, and Gustav, up there? When Gustav's mom threw a blood clot and had to be ... killed, OK? She was killed. Gustav was desolate. He had never really been separated from his Mom and didn't know how to cope. Bandicoot very kindly took him under an enormous Maine Coon paw and kept him company and kept him out of trouble and slept next to him to keep him warm, and put up with his bullshit. (Gustav was extremely neurotic and crazy when he first came, attacking all the other cats constantly and yowling in a voice like a Siamese on crack. Rescue kitteh. Bad history. Tranquilizers for two years.) So ever since The Coot has been in the horse spittle, Gustav has been inconsolable. And when he's inconsolable, he yowls. LOUDLY. You know, just in case you don't realize he's, like, suffering, or whatever.

Geezus, I can't wait for it to stop. He didn't let us sleep much so I ended up taking a pill, which I hate (I don't like taking medication of any sort and react badly to most of it, but two days without sleep is too much) and I have a splitting fucking headache from the medication. I sure hope he quits yowling soon or I'll have to kill myself.

Just kidding. If I killed myself I would miss out on the joy of bringing our own dear Bandicoot home at last, after two whole days away!

Just look at that little punim. Who could resist such a one?

Stumble It!

Caturday!

Well! Hasn't this been an exciting week!

• Bishop Willard "Mitt" RomneyCare started the week claiming to have created 100,000 jobs while at vulture corporation Bain Capital, but ended it whimpering something about "6,000 jobs."

• After claiming that Romney won the Iowa state caucus, the GOP had to reverse itself and announce that Santorum actually won (Headline: Santorum easily slides ahead?)

• Jon Huntsman (who? Oh, c'mon! You know! The guy who was polling at 1% or lower but the media still insisted he was in the race, even while refusing to let Buddy Roemer or Gary Johnson speak!) finally took his two million dollars worth of dental work and three hot daughters out of the public eye by announcing that he's dropping out of the race.

  In a slap-in-the-face to all the "liberals" who love him (because the Republicans/conservatives hate his motorcycling ass with a passion), he endorsed Bishop Willard. WTF, Jon? Y U treat us so bad, after telling us that schmuck was unelectable? Did the Temple Leaders threaten to take away your planet, or what?

• Rick Purreh finally took pity on a suffering America and took his moronic undereducated dumber-than-the-last-Texas-hick ass back to N*****head Ranch where I guess he's keeping the local coyotes in fear for their lives and asking God "Why? Why me, Lord?" as he weeps incoherently into his bourbon-and-branch.

  Whom did he endorse? None other than "amoral jewelry-debt piglet"* Newt Gingrich, the man with the plan for trinkets from Tiffany's.

• Meanwhile, the Godbag Faction of the Republican Party met last Sunday to anoint Santorum as their Chosen.

  No, not with santorum, you sick little puppies. In any event, those Fuckus on The Fambly turds, those Christianist Bible-bashers and homo-haters and misogynistic morons of Rightwingnuttia decided that their Not-MittRomney candidate would be Rick Santorum. These assholes were totes backing (P)Rick Perry just last week, so, talk about pivoting on a dime here. Faithless sluts.

• Perennial punching bag and media slut-moron Sarah Palin apparently has lost even more of her brain to whatever deadly disease was making her spew word salad.

  After being informed that Newt's second wife, Marianne Gingrich, would be interviewed by ABC right after the South Carolina Republican debates, Babble Spice snorted that this would help Gingrich soar. Puzzled media bobbleheads have finally figured out that she meant Newt's amoral and perverse sexual shenanigans might have left him a little *sore,* or something. **

• Over in Wisconsin, the Recall Walker campaign announced that it had received more (lotsmore) signatures than the minimum required to achieve their aim. Down, down, down goes Snotty Wanker, erstwhile governor of Wisconsin and rent-boy for the Koch Bros.

So, what's the deal, Republicans? Are y'all just tired of being a party, or what? Because this is some pretty weak fucking sauce, here, jes' sayin. I know we here at La Casa de Los Gatos have been saying for a while that President O could just cold phone it in, but, man? Do y'all have to make it so EASY for him? Y'all spent six years telling us he was a weak-ass n*****, a compromiser who caved on everything and apologised to everyone and bowed to foreign leaders and was morally weak. Meanwhile, he's been kicking y'alls asses nine ways to Sunday every day of the week.

I have heard Republicans telling me for six years or more about the fight against terrorism and how y'all are going to follow bin Laden to the gates of hell, and y'all know where he is and will take him out but only if we elect you (WTF? Treason much?). So, do we wanna talk about who might actually have taken bin Laden out? Because, you know, I don't remember that Republican President we had before Mr. Obama, you know, the one that NOBODY seems to want to talk about, I mean, they're *still* talking about Clinton and Carter, but you know, that guy, seems like everyone's done gone and forgotten about him, when he said he didn't care about bin Laden any more, and he disbanded the task force that was supposed to be looking for bin Laden, I don't recall ONE SINGLE Republican saying anything then. Not one word about following him to hell, or they will pay, or none of that shit. No, sir. None a that shit. And now Mr. Obama, he took out that Mr. bin Laden, and he took out that Mr. al-Zawahiri and he took out a whole bunch of these here, what the Republicans was calling "terrorists," round about ten years ago. He took them all out. And what do you suppose our fine Republican friends did about that? Did they say "Thank you, Mr. Obama"? Did they say "Thank you Mr. President, for keeping our country safe"? No, sirree, they did not. They said he illegally invaded a sovereign nation. These people, who had no problem with the US invading the sovereign nation of Iraq, which was NOT involved in any attacks against us, got all upset because Mr. Obama had to send a surgical strike team to take out the man who masterminded the most recent attack on American soil, who was being sheltered on Pakistani territory, by our "allies." Imagine that. Did you think you'd live to see the day when a bunch of "America, right or wrong! America, love it or leave it!" assholes would be more upset about the rights of those who shelter our enemies than about our right to pursue those enemies who kill our citizens?

And when he's not the Caveman-in-chief, he's supposed to be some kind of Superman who is singlehandedly preventing yon teabaggers from getting anything done while shoving unpopular measures down the collective throat of the American people. He's a Marxist, a Stalinist, a Fascist, and an Islamist, he controls the courts (which, nevertheless, stubbornly refuse to rule in his favour on certain issues, why, no one can say). He's using mind control techniques to hypnotize the weak willed sheep who are cowed by his bullish tactics even as they are seduced by the pork he proffers. Geez, no wonder we're obese. Half our metaphors are about spectator sports and the other half about food. Oh, NOEZ!! He's forcing states to take care of sick people, disabled people, poor people, babies and children who might be hungry, starving people, old people! How AWFUL!

What the FUCK kind of world are we living in where these nutbags can turn reality into something resembling sausage, i.e., chopped up, mixed up, and stuffed up a pig's anus? Seriously. There is a styful of pigs on the Republican side of this election. Fortunately, it's thinning. Still, the choices fucking suck.

So it's off to Florida for Mittens and Newt and Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, while the rest of America stabs itself in the eye with a fork over and over and over, just to dull the pain.

Happy Caturday, y'all!

* Forever indebted to Kirsten Boyd Johnston of Wonkette for the so-fitting sobriquet of "amoral jewelry-debt piglet" for Newtie.
** Apparently, Bobblehead Barbie was correct, and them South Carolinians just LERVE them some amoral pigfuckery of the adulterous, wife-dumping, intern-humping, vow-breaking Nouveau Papist variety. Newt Gingrich just won South Carolina.

Stumble It!

Caturday!

Yes it R CATURDAY!

Confession of the week: things have been very very very stressful at La Casa de Los Gatos. It's Yahrzeit time for Dad and Zingiber, who passed over the Rainbow Bridge just a smidge over a year ago.

Bandicoot decided to celebrate by developing a bad cold which blocked his little tubes, so his eyes were running, and getting ooky and almost-infectable, which means daily (sometimes twice or thrice) eye-washings and cleanings. He's a good little trouper, especially since he gets rewarded with some horrendously stinky vitamin treat. It seems to be helping a bit with the eyes, but Jesus what a fucking pain. All the others want one too, or at least want to know what's going on, which doesn't help.

We have surgery coming up in three weeks (slightly less). House has to be clean, cats medicated and doctored, garden put up for the winter, books put away so someone on crutches can get around. It's minor surgery but still fucking painful. Actually, it's fucking painful now, so what's the diff? Anyway. Nothing like icing your knee during winter. Still need to make several gallons of soup so I won't have to try to get down the stairs on crutches to cook dinner. Not that it helped the last time. I dropped a bunch of weight from being vomitous all the time. Can't take pain medication, it just makes me feel gross and pukey and brainless. Hopefully, I can smoke pot for the pain. Well, not *smoke* as such, since we quit smoking this year, for good and finally.

Meanwhile one of my nearest and dearest has just had massive surgery for a very rare disease. Called the hospital late last night, out of surgery (must have been about 9 hours, jezus how can they cut on anybody for that long?), in recovery, things are looking good. Now for rest, rehab, and recovery.

I have PT to look forward to starting mid-December. The knee is killingly painful now with pain running across the bone, not just the muscles, which makes me wonder just what the fuck is going on. X-rays and MRIs show the implant is holding firm. So why the fuck is it so painful? The pain is crippling my foot, goddamnit, I can't put the weight on the foot, flat. And the small muscles of the ankle seem to be working at odds. The nerves aren't firing properly, so the foot drags. What a joy! Walking becomes an exercise in coordination. Are the toes lifting high enough? Or is there a chance they're not lifting properly, which means they'll catch and drag, and possibly twist all the ankle muscles again? The swelling from the last spectacular twisting hasn't quite subsided yet.

Anyway. Fun and games at the old homestead. Countdown to surgery. On the PLUS side, I'll get to watch LOTS of films. And I've read close to 100 books this year, so I needn't feel too bad about being a brainless vegetable for the end of the year. On the MINUS side, Gojira Helen Wheels is *already* sleeping on the knee or ankle every chance she gets. We'll have to get the Old Protective Plastic Bucket out to guard against her. What a fucking brat.

Also, Bandicoot has a new, irritating habit: Licking Teh Hoomin. He will lick my hand (or nose) for up to an hour, if I let him (I don't; his breath smells like fish). I've taken to wearing my sleeves down over my fingertips. Thank god for winter (did anybody think they would EVER hear me be grateful for the cold? Yes. It's official. I am fucking grateful for the cold).

When he can't lick me, he licks my mouse. Yes, THAT mouse. The electronic, wireless, purchased from fucking Radio Shack or whatever guaranteed to be mouse-flavour-free mouse. Or my little table for my laptop. Pica?

Anyway. This is why we have kitten fever at La Casa de Los Gatos:

Hippity-hoppity!

Stumble It!

Anniversaries

You know what day it is. A day when we should all be remembering those young men and women that we have repeatedly sent into harm's way, by lying to them, telling them they were fighting for their country, or democracy, or freedom, or some such other bullshit.

A day when we should be weeping over the fact that so many of them come home broken in body and mind to a nation that seems to have forgotten all about them, except when it comes time to buy yellow ribbon magnets from China for a dollar or two. A day when we should be doing something about the fact that SO fucking MANY of our vets are unemployed, or homeless, or struggling to get by.

Today is all those things. If you know a veteran? Give them a hug or a thank you, call them up to say hello, take them to lunch or dinner, offer to help them out with something, anything. It could be something as small as picking up groceries, babysitting their kids, polishing their resume, setting up their computer, taking their damn dog for a walk. Do something. Anything. Just to let them know you appreciate what they went through while they were sweltering in a trench somewhere getting their ass shot off or getting water tainted with decaying corpses and rotting food thanks to George Bush, Dick Cheney, KBR, and/or Halliburton.

If you don't PERSONALLY know a veteran, you can always volunteer with one of the many fine organizations that help our vets in various ways.

These men and women risked their lives and their minds and bodies to do what they saw as their duty to the nation. You don't have to agree with their politics or their service to do them the kindness you would do any other human being. Step up and do your bit for them, and remember, in one month's time, a WHOLE LOTTA them will be coming home from Iraq.

If you're a business owner, you can help by hiring them. If you're working for a big corporation, ask them if they're interested in hiring veterans. If you work at a restaurant or other service/retail business, ask your employers if they will offer vets discounts, then publicize those discounts. Everything you do helps.

And, if you're a voter? Get your ass out there, register to vote, make sure all the vets you know are registered to vote. They don't have to vote for YOUR candidate. Just make sure they vote. Offer to drive them to the polls if they're disabled. Help them register by mail. But make DAMN sure they don't vote for Mittens Romneycare, because that miserable plastic-faced billionaire bastard is talking about PRIVATIZING the VA. After G.W. Bush's disastrous experiment with Walter Reed, I don't EVAH want to hear about veterans lying in pools of their own piss while rats run across the floor and mold spreads from leaky ceilings.

Today is also a very sad day here at La Casa de Los Gatos. It is the anniversary of my father's death. Dad fought in WW II, and was on the losing side, initially, so he spent some time as a POW. He came back from the war deaf in one ear, due to shrapnel, and with an enlarged heart. He lived a long, and mostly healthy, life, but his war stories were enough to give us kids nightmares for weeks. And I know he suffered from PTSD, although he was a gentle man who turned it inward into deep depression rather than outward into beating his wife and kids.

Goodbye, Dad. I still miss you so very much. I think I always will. You loved me and you taught me to love myself, even if the lesson took a long, long time to root itself.

Today is also the anniversary of Zingiber's death. For 14 long years, he was with me every moment, a fat, silly, fearful, neurotic, sweet, affectionate, jealous, possessive, overweight lump of love. I miss him every single day. No one has ever loved me the way that fool did. No matter what I did to him — and here I have to admit, shamefacedly, that there were times when he got on my very last nerve, and I did yell at him and torment him in various small ways — he never, ever held anything against me, not even for a second. I could attribute this to his complete and total brainlessness, I guess, but every night when he put his fat, furry little head on the pillow next to me and breathed softly and warmly into my ear, I realized that he might have been as stupid as the day was long, but that was real love in those big green eyes.

I miss you baby. I wish I could tell you one more time just how much.

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CaturWeen

Yes, I missed Caturday. I went out of town over the week, and was fucking exhausted by the time I got back, not to mention hung-over as fuck-all. And I missed Hallowe'en, too. Just be grateful I didn't see fit to inflict Jesusween* on ya.

* Warning: StephenColbert Alert.

Things are tough all around, no need to dwell on what can't be cured, since it must be endured. La Casa de Los Gatos has never treated the blog as a place to whine about the many misfortunes to which flesh is heir. Suffice it to say that life sucks, and I'm sure yours no less than mine. We resign ourselves to updating our book list with book reviews for the year so far, and film reviews, over at the sisterblog. In the meantime, we stand in solidarity with #Occupy and the Indignados who #Occupy everywhere. Sadly, ex-Marine Scott Olsen was injured when Oakland Mayor Jean Quan decided to loose the police on the harmless Indignados there. We'll be keeping an eye on the #Occupation, but for today, we're weaseling out with this, for your amusement:

Figure out where YOU can #Occupy.

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Caturday!

And we pulled a Rupert today, too. Blog, read, blog, write, putz around, and then we're gonna watch a movie, yay.

It's getting close to surgery scheduling time.

Have I mentioned how much I hate being cut on? I like to think my integument would go with me to my grave, intact. I've been lucky, never a broken bone in my long life, and this is my fifth surgery EVER (that includes the tonsillectomy as a kid, and the replacement of my left knee, and the two arthroscopic knee surgeries which resulted from accidents).

This will also be arthroscopic surgery. They don't use anesthesia for that anymore. They give you a drug called Versed, or *twilight.* It puts you under, but you can regain consciousness during. I seem to remember doing that briefly, but they hadn't started sawing on my leg yet at the time (thankyoudeity). I seem to remember someone putting their hand on my eyelids, and a voice saying "Close your eyes. Close your eyes."

I hate losing consciousness. I don't like pain much, either, but you know what, pain is something we can all put up with. It's no fun, and it can be depressing. But if the choice is taking pain drugs that turn you into a zombie or suffering a grinding pain for the hours that you're awake, but being mentally functional, I'll take the pain. And going under is the worst kind of loss of control, isn't it? I have to do this. I keep telling myself I have to do this. But I have weird reactions to drugs, not having taken many in my life. Most painkillers just knock me out for days. Vicodin gives me projectile vomits, and the last time I had Versed, I slept for three days. I just could not open my eyes, except to drink and pee. It felt like a very bad binge drunk hangover. So I guess I can look forward to a little Percocet and a lot of pain (I hate Percocet too, but my body tolerates it -- I lose my appetite and I can't sleep, but at least I'm not horking my innards out or unconscious for more than 12 hours at a stretch).

Of the 260+ books on the list for the year, I've barely read 60. Bah. Perhaps I'll save the fiction to read post-surgery. A lot of George Eliot, some Tolstoy, Don Quixote (I'm re-reading it), some Flannery O'Connor and Wallace Stegner and William Faulkner. I guess I'd better try reading all the film books before surgery. Can I do it? There's only 20 or so. I'll have to re-read Kurosawa's Something Like An Autobiography, and also Stuart Galbraith's The Emperor And The Wolf, a book on the long filmic collaboration of Kurosawa Akira and Mifune Toshiro.

So, books, film, and music, all geared up and ready. Now to put the house in a sparkling state of cleanliness and shut down the food garden for the year. All the barrels and pots need to be scrubbed, bleached, hosed down. The deck needs to be sealed. Can I do it? I hate being a gimp, I really do. I used to do all this stuff myself, for years. Now I need to rely on others. But hopefully, this surgery will put me in a position where I can exercise my way back to a reasonable shape. I don't need to be able to run up or down the stairs in the dark, four at a time, like I used to. I just need to be able to haul brush down the hill. Weed for 10 hours at a stretch, instead of having to get down off the hill because my leg is cramping. Is that too much to ask?

Enough whining. Tomorrow we have a hike planned. Let us hope that cramps, pains, etc. are under control by mid-day and we can at least try for a mile. And then it's home, sweet home, and playing with fancy machines. And eating some fine, fine ribs and roast potatoes and stir-fried choy with my two dearest friends. The obligatory tormenting of the resident felines proceeds apace. They got their pillow moved from the middle of the bed to one side, and judging from the chorus of howls that went up, you would have thought we dissected them individually without anesthesia. How pussy-whipped are we? The pillow is back in the middle of the bed, even though all the little bastids are now sleeping sprawled out all over, everywhere *except* the pillow.

A pleasant Caturday, all!

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Sally Kern, Ambulatory Fecontainer

If you didn't already know who Sally Kern is, feel free to look her up right here, which is where we pinched this horrifying photo.

Sally Kern's bigotry doesn't just aim itself at Teh Ghey. She is also no fan of women or minorities (no, she doesn't belong in either category), as she evinced by this speech. So why should it even be news that this dreadful cackling cow is making yet another gay-themed grab at headlines? She's got a book out. It's titled The Stoning of Sally Kern. Regrettably, it's not an instruction manual. Stupid twat, I mean, twit. Can you imagine having anything at all to do with this fetid ambulatory pigshit canister? No? Neither can we. Yet, somehow, she managed to find something that would join loins with her long enough to spawn. There's a persistent rumour in blogtopia that her husband, Southern Baptist minister Steven D. Kern, was once a member of the KKK. There's also the little matter of her gay son. Srsly. Click that link to read an interview with him. If your gaydar doesn't hit 12 out of a maximum of 10, let us know. These people just make us hork a big fat fucking hairball, OK? Srsly. And then there are people like this in the universe, who renew our faith in humanity and make it clear that the Kerns of this world are not a reason to give up on all its beauty, wonder, and awe:

The reason you have to "deal with" homosexuality is because these men and women are our fellow citizens. America is the people who show up. The show up for work, school, volunteer. They show up in the military, the police, the fire department (and the fire department calendars). They raise their kids and watch out for their neighbors.

The lesson I choose to take from 9/11 is not the paranoid fantasy that "they" are destroying us. It's that people are good. On that day, they called home to say "I love you". They helped strangers escape the danger -- sometimes dying in the effort. They fought back and made God work like the devil to take their lives. And they didn't check each other's religion, sexual preference, political party or immigration status.

Wonkette commenter JustPixelz

Yeah. That. Also, kittehz. We at this blog don't take our responsibilities lightly.

Too, FUCK YOU Sally Kerns! FUCK YOU very, very much, you horrendous bitch. Why can't all the people who have a problem with their GAY FAMILY just deal with it and leave the rest of us alone?

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Caturday!

And this blog was BROKEN this morning when I checked on it! Troubleshooting: they call it that because it's a fuckin' heap of trouble and you're ready to start shooting by the time you figure it out.

Anywho. I fixed it. Somehow, a line of text in the template that called a javascript got borked. I commented it out, but, you know, after three years of not even looking at software, ever, I had forgotten how to comment out stuff in HTML.

Maybe it's just time to throw out all the fucking software manuals. Or read them. But who's got the time?

La Casa de Los Gatos is planning to make the pigmeat today. Baby back ribs cooked with cherry juice, cherry preserves, jalapenos, garlic, red wine vinegar (just a smidge), a little palm sugar. With a side of baby bok choy and golden roasted potatoes.

Food is one thing that is not lacking in this house.

The fall is coming, isn't it? Feel it in the air? The sky is a richer, darker shade of blue, even in the hottest part of the day. The light is more golden. The tomatoes have finally set fruit, but the deer have harvested several of the plants for me. I want venison carpaccio SO BAD! So fucking bad.

The Republican Party is in some kind of crazy death spiral, where every candidate is top of the heap for two to six weeks, then flames out to some disgraceful embarrassing level. Today, Michele Bachmann, who was last month's "tea party darling" (notwithstanding the fact that there is no such entity as the Tea Party registered in the US as a political party; although there sure are a shitload of vultures making business off the "tea party" meme) clocked in at a lousy four per cent (4%) of the Republican electorate's support. Behind Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, Willard (Mittens) Romneycare, and Rick (Dick) DinglePerry.

I'd shed a tear, but I seem to be fresh out of delicate lawn handkerchiefs with lace edging.

So RickDick DinglePerry is the pig at the top of the heap right now, and who's putting money on his staying there? He's already making calls to Repugnicant leaders everywhere, begging them not to keep pressuring Chris Christie and Jeb Bush to jump (or bellyflop, as the case may be) into the race.

Thad McCotter is still in the race, but a life-support system attached to his candidacy showed a remarkably flat line.

So here. Laugh at this, instead:

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Caturday!

Yes, it's that time of week again, and despite missing my best (and fattest) feline buddy, I still celebrate me some kittehs on a weekly basis (in between daily and hourly celebrations, of course, which are required by Our Feline Overlords).

What are the little fuckers up to, or rather, what have they been up to lately?

We got Bandicoot some chewable vitamins because he's getting old, and the sparkle in his eyes was dimming some. Needless to say, he quickly figured out that these are dispensed of a morning right after the hoomin wakes. Right, you got it. Every morning on the dot, 17 pounds of fat, hairy, stomach-swinging Bandicoot (with inch-long claws of a painful sharpness) proceeds to leap on me in anticipation. And if I don't wake up, why, he just extends those little razors and pokes me till I do. He will lick noses, exhale on me, sneeze on me, poke me in the eye with a paw, all until I wake and give him his treat.

Cat snot, ew.

Gojira would like a taste of Bandicoot's chewy vitamins, but since she already acts like she's huffing speed, she is SO not getting any. Ever since Zingiber abandoned La Casa de Los Gatos for his other home (I still maintain they're xenoanthropology grad students from a different planet out here doing fieldwork), she's taken to dragging this little toy around and making "Come watch me hunt and kill, kittens" noises (Zingiber took to doing this after he adopted Gojira and took her under his Mighty Muffin Maker -- not with real mice, of course. He was too stupid for real mice. But he regularly hunted (mostly unsuccessfully) a series of toy mice which he would then bring her, dragging them up the stairs with loud yowls).

Every night she brings the stupid thing upstairs and places it on the floor on one side of the bed or another. Throwing it down just means she'll repeat the trip. She's also (for whatever reason) decided she can't be touched or looked at with intent at certain times. Any attempt to make contact, real or virtual, leads to loud, indignant meeps, leaping and running away, frequent licking of the spot on which someone might have touched her if they weren't across the room, and terrified expressions, sometimes in quick succession.

What do I know? I hear cats make a substance in their brains that's analogous to LSD. I could believe that.

Madu is a punk cat. He got two ear piercings last week. He's a fucking idiot, too. He never seems to win a fight, but he sure knows how to get in them. Of all the animals who have lived at La Casa de Los Gatos, this is the only one who seems to get in a fight every fucking week of the year. The others got in a couple of fights, and that was it, they got the shit beat out of them and it never happened again. I'm beginning to think this dumb fuck goes to sleep in the middle of a fight. There's no other explanation for the weekly bod-mod attempts.

Gustav has taken to mugging us for pettings. Yes, the same Gustav who spent the first two (or more) years in this house acting as if he was going to be eaten by the Horrible Hoominz is now sticking his face in a person's face occasionally, asking loudly for hugs and kisses and pets. See, Prozac works miracles.

They're all getting old (except Gojira, in whom youth, quite literally, springs eternal). Right along with the rest of us, I guess.

But it's Caturday, and the garden is calling, so I'm off to enjoy the beautiful greenth, and the hot golden sun and deep blue skies of Paradise! Happy Caturday, all!

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Caturday!

Independent woman ... enjoy!

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Caturday!

Of a long weekend, no less!

Happy Fourth of July, all. Enjoy lying back, relaxing, resting, hanging with family and friends.

This feline is crawling into the overgrown garden for yet another valiant battle with the goddamn weeds. They're taller than me right now (OK, so I'm height-impaired, let's get THAT out of the way shall we, and quit the snickering?), especially the dog-fennel, and the buddleia has dead branches that could prove to be a fire hazard. Wish I had rappelling gear to make me feel secure on those slopes, but them's the breaks.

Missing our Zingiber more than ever, on these warm summer days when he would walk through the tall weeds, his eyes the same perfect shade of green, the giant whipping plume of his tail marking his passage through the overgrown garden. His quiet cat-smiles (that slow, lazy blink of the magnificent orbs) at all the other small life.

I never saw Zingiber kill anything, not even a fly. Poor sweet silly feline, gone and so sorely missed.

For all you other cat-lovers, here's a thoroughly enjoyable video:

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Can't We All

Just do like these guys and GET THE FUCK ALONG?

I mean ... how cute is this?

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O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?

Right here. It's stung me too many times this year to toss it off casually. Two family members (I think both were the last of their generation); too many feline friends.


Dad died last month. He was in his 90s, so it came as no great surprise except, apparently, to my inner child or summat, because I keep catching myself speaking or thinking of him all the time, in the present, or worse yet, as if he was actually present.

It's been almost exactly a month since I got the phone call. I had made reservations months ago to spend a couple of weeks around Thanksgiving with him. Let us give thanks for those parents we have left. Those relatives, of any degree of relativity. No, not really. I'm not terribly fond of my relatives. Although I was very fond of Dad.

I've been told I look like him. (A piece of flattery that would earn anyone a place in my good books, or on my Xmas list.) He was a handsome man. All I know is, I got his teeth (fragile), his feet (flat), and his tendency to tear up in old age. Also, thick eyebrows, early graying (he was 30 when he went completely silver, but the fates were kind and gave me an extra decade to get used to it), and a reading addiction I just can't shake. Thanks, Dad.

My father was a good man. One of the few I've ever met. His word was his bond. He never said anything he didn't mean (and because he was a gentle man, that meant he often said nothing at all, because he couldn't bear to be mean); he never told a lie. I miss him a great deal already. But he's been gone for several years now, fading a little each year. Losing his hearing, and then his sight, and finally even words. At first, at the beginning of his long decline, he would answer my questions with "I don't know. I don't know how to say. I've forgotten the words." In the end, he could not speak at all, although his brain could decipher that we were making patterns of sounds. He attempted to join in, but could only produce strange, disjointed noises, shouts, barks, mutters, all cadenced just like his normal speech.

Hard as it was to hear that he was gone, it wasn't intensely painful. After all, he was no longer mobile, nor continent, and the last stroke left him with a feeding tube. If he had understood what was happening, he would have hated every minute of it. So perhaps it's just as well that multiple small strokes took away his power of understanding.

But barely had I placed his bones in a funeral urn, crushing them with my hands, when came more bad news: Zingiber died suddenly, a week after my father.

O grave, here is thy victory. Stop taking my nearest and dearest away. Or at least slow your pace a little. Over the past decade, I've buried two sets of parents (natal and in-law); lost too many dearly-loved friends; and said goodbye to six cats and a dog, two charming chickens, and several bunnies. I'm done. I want a year or two without funerals and burials and mourning. Is that too much to ask? I'm feeling my own years, and I've spent thirty of the past X years worrying about, and taking care of (in my own incompetent fashion) my parents. They're gone, now, and I really have stopped caring. I don't want to give any more hostages to fortune. I'm ready for my own last trip to the banquet, goddammit. Ready to be worm food. Life sure is a lot bleaker without my dearly beloveds. Goodbye, Dad. I wish I could have talked to you more, but I really did spend every single day's worth of vacation over the last three decades with you. And Mum made every second of it a hell, so I'm sorry I didn't bite the bullet and sit through her needling, her vicious jibes, and her petty, pointed remarks and stay for the delight of your company. I couldn't do it, in the end. I just couldn't take any more. I'm sorry. I have always loved you, and I will always love you. And I always felt your love, Dad, surrounding me, making my life a better place. Making me all the good things I have ever been, or could be.

Goodbye, little Zingiber. I'll tell your story, my love. It will live in my heart always, just as you will, with my beloved father, and my sister, and all the others I loved who left me behind in their dance between matter and energy.

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Caturday!

from www.icanhascheezburger.com

And ... must add this too ... however, there is a commercial at the beginning -- sorry. But I thought the video was worth it. Mos def.




Enjoy your Caturday!

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Cat-ur-zzzzzzzzz

Or for the other inhabitants of La Casa de Los Gatos. Strenuous snoozing (if there is such a thing) by All And Sundry. Feet poking into noses, nipping of tails, pinning down of hoominz who might want a little less bed-crowdment. Also, paws in the face and eyes.

Hope y'all had a great time at the Rally for Sanity And/Or Fear today, those of you who went. Best estimates are that the crowd was over 250,000. Yay from all of us who couldn't (snivel) go. Looks like a Good Time was had by all.

Rainy weather here, now, at last. Maybe the ground will be soft and moist enough to be worked by Tuesday. If all goes well, the resident gimps are hiking tomorrow, hopefully in some wonderfully piny park.

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