Friday, June 18, 2010

who's your daddy?

a more peronal blog tonight. it's all about me. (ok, i hear you all saying....you, you, you........all about you.......), but truth be told, so far, this forum has not been so much about me, as about my experiences and of course "observations". so what could be so bad about my observations about my cats?

to begin.

i was an extraordinay kid. but then, hey, weren't we all? that's what kids are. these tiny little minds, all agog with promise and fantasy. a four or five year old child, if you watch it, is all pretend and make believe and i'm a sorcerer and i'm a gypsy and i'm a dragon slayer and i'm a train conductor....and .......ok, you get it. and it isn't until we, ahem.....adults......tell the tyke he/she can't be a dragonslayer, sorcerer, that the kid is stifled. we stomp out their dreams, because they belong to us and we want them focused on what we need....... soccer. spelling. violin. football. swimming. debating. the shit that WE want them to do. because we're so caught up in our own image and appearances, that we can't help ourselves. (our own image. hmmmmm..... bible talk......if you're a bible person.......god made man in his own image......and so we seem to be stuck on my own image.... and how can i mold my child thus?.......whew...

wow, didn't mean to get all heavy and shit.

that's not tonight's topic. child rearing and the mistakes that parents make. (i'm saving that for another time. too redundant to do it on "fathers day".......)

when i said i was an extraordinary kid, i meant it. smart, funny, precocious..

digress......

i just said precocious. i saw mary poppins last night, the broadway tour. good shit, truly. and that crazy song........ supercalifragilistexpialidocious. and of course in the play they rhyme it with precocious. can't get it out of my head. amazing show. see it if you can, on tour. (that was leftover from the tony blog)

i'm back....

my only flaws........if you could call them that.......were allergies. horses, dust, pollen, hay fever, rose fever and of course the biggest allergen of them all.......(probably still is, these days, in spite of air pollution, holes in the ozone, oil spills, peanut vapor on a plane, so the flight attendent can't give a bag of peanuts, because the lady 30 aisles back might die? ....WTF??? and the like)......would be .......

say it class........aloud.......all together now.........CATS!!!

we never had cats growing up. everyone in the family was allergic. we had a dog. dad brought him home when we were kids. he was a mutt. great dog, but a true "heinz 57". the guy that gave him to dad said he thought the dog was a beagle.

digress........

you all know beagle. SNOOPY!!...from peanuts?.... black and white or brown and white......and it's a pure breed. in the category of hound. they howl. owuuuuuuu. owuuuuuu. (picture the sound a wolf makes). signature sound. coyote sound. our dog NEVER made that sound.

back.....

our dog was a black and brown mix. not even a beauty, until of course he came to stay and then he was "our dog" and magnificent. see picture..........


this dog never sat next to a beagle on a bus. but dad, bless his heart, took the guy at his word, and thought he was a beagle.....he wasn't......but dad named him .......god love him.....snoopy.

so he was the family dog........actually, not really. he became my father's dog so dad could walk him and escape my mother......ooooooh.......another blog, another time....so sorry..........

anyway, there were no cats in any of our lives for fear of eyes swelling shut, sneezing 100 times, hives, you get it.....just a real attractive family at best when cats were around.

i always loved the look of cats. the quietude, elegance, cleanliness. but i dared not touch, lest i be consumed with "the misery".( this was way before you could carry around a hypodermic to shoot yourself in the thigh to circumvent anaphalactic shock.)

so thirty three years go by, in my life, and i can't touch or love cats. and then one summer in provincetown, (i stayed a couple of seasons as a bartender).....ooooh..
another subject for another time........i'm on a roll........i stayed in an apartment and there were two young lesbians in the next apartment with a kitten named zowie. i know, sounds stupid, but if you could have seen him.....well, see picture below..............
and he was just so cute, that i couldn't resist, and i picked him up, figuring i'd just sneeze for an hour as retribution.

and lo ........and behold......i was cool. nothing. nada....el zippo......trapped in disbelief, i nuzzled the kitty. nothing. and suddenly, i recalled an article in the NY Times that said that about every 22 years or so, you regrow all your cells, and grow in and out of allergies, (except your brain cels.... kids.... so don't do drugs......anymore.....) and i realized that zowie was appropriately named, because ZOWIE, i wasn't allergic anymore!!!!!!!

fast forward....

a year later, i decide to get a cat. (talk about a cliche`....a single queen with a cat.) my first pet of my own. (not the family thing, not my sister's dog. mine.) suddenly i'm daddy. and i name him buddy. how not? he was indeed just that. and a trouper. if there was a game to be played, he'd say, daddy, count me in.......... see pictures.


digress.......

lots of you have cats. and i know you'll go toe to toe with me that your cat is better than mine. (you'd lose). but i really, honestly, get.... that cat lovers love their beasts. to be "cat owned" is a unique experience that you can't know about until you are. and i know, and i hope that you know, it's not a contest. (even though i'd win). this is about the love of the most exotic creatures ever. let's talk "just cats" a minute.

how do i love thee? let me count the cats.........

buddy was a mutt from the humane society, little when i got him, soon to be a big beast. almost 25 lbs. funny me, i thought that was big once. more about that later. when i was home with him, he was like the leftover love child of the '60's, all sweet and purring and cute. when alone, he was a terror. tore up the house whenever i'd leave. he'd unroll the toilet paper, turn over the chairs, shred the garbage, get into mischief.....truly a psycho. see sample picture below. that's my computer.......

a co-worker, whom i'll call the "cat lady of miami", with like 15 cats, said to me, "he's lonely, get him a buddy". hmmmm.. couldn't hurt, (although in retrospect, that was her answer to everything. that's how she came to have 15 cats. but oh well.....

so then came came the female, maggie. as in maggie the cat is alive! (ok, if you don't know that's cat on a hot tin roof by tennessee williams).


i named her so, because she was really small when she arrived, and the boy was almost 20 lbs, and on first visit he hissed at her, this little fluff piece, and she stood up to him and hissed right back and puffed and it just came to me. i'm alive. maggie the cat is alive! as she grew, she became a great beauty, so i'm glad i named her for an elizabeth taylor character in the movie. and we all lived happily in cat-wedded bliss for 18 years glorious years. (notwithstanding the kitty litter).

gaze upon her beauty.
isn't she something?

during the final 6 years or so of their lives, i met husband. they adopted him, but truth be told they were already older than i, so the "fun days" were but my distant memory. husband didn't know that part; the kitten part. eventually they passed on, at the ripe old age of 18........i'll spare you the tears, you have your own.......and i was grief stricken. the house was so empty. i mourned the proper amount of time, and finally said to husband, "i can't stand it. the house is too quiet." (this was right around christmas time of that year, and we had a festive tree up, and the season was upon us) and i turned to husband and said........."i need a kitten. "

so a humane society visit later, came peeps.

see picture below, in all her christmas kittenhood. she was small, so she'd climb the tree and survey her domain.



she was a tiny, tiny, beast with just the most incredible eyes. and tiny was good because buddy and maggie were both so big, i figured a small lap cat might be nice. i never knew the tyke's parents so there was no way to know that she'd grow. and i mean big time.


yep, same cat. and those eyes.........

it was a great kittenhood, as you with cats can attest. the usual bonding, frolicking, territorial shit, and then the boredom of the only child set in. she needed a buddy. so off we went, one more time and brought home a new boy.......rocky......a big moniker for such a small tyke. see picture. note the size of the kitten relative to daddy's finger. a wee one.........

ok, i heard you. you all said "awwwwwww"......and rightfully so.......

and again, didn't know the parents, and had no idea he'd grow to 30 pounds in a couple of years. i should have ventured into the everglades and simply adopted a panther. see picture.


where are siegfried and roy when you need them?????

but grow he did, and became the "lord of the manor", as cats will do. peeps is not crazy about him. (and i got him for her.....go figure). she's just so elegant and he's just too feisty and boyish. she's a lady, thank you very much. but for the most part they get along.

the dog is now old, (the dog story, savannah, is for another day), but still kind of spry, as long as i buy the doggie joint juice from k-mart, (see k-mart blog).

and the cats are in their miss jean brodie "prime", and husband and i help each other along as we age. (not all that gracefully, i might add, but grateful that they let us live there at all, if you know the feline way), and in spirit, the cats keep us young at heart. they are truly our children.

and sometimes, after husband goes to bed, and peeps is all tucked in, rocky who is attached to me at the hip, will stay up a little, and we'll have a cocktail together, like a good son with his daddy.




happy father's day, everyone.

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