Insofar as this is the first thunderstorm we’ve had since I rescued Vazra, I find myself wondering about his past with regards to such circumstances. Where did he seek shelter? Did it scare him when thunder crackled near? Just how did he protect himself if caught out and about when a thunderstorm moved in?
He’s been rather relaxed and generally unconcerned about it. Does he comprehend the safety of his new environment under these circumstances?
It really is one of those weeks…
I just stepped into the garage to spray a rapidly growing mud wasp nest. While I was out there, I noticed the back passenger tire is flat. It wasn’t that way this morning. I have to take the car in early next week for the inspection anyway, so I’ll have that addressed then. But still, couldn’t it have waited? Like, a year?
Kako tried to leap to the kitchen counter, which she often uses as a springboard to get to the top of the refrigerator. She missed. Significantly. She tried to leap over Vazra who was moving, so she made a last-minute course correction that was actually incorrect. She hit the side of the cabinets with a painful whack. She again tried to miss Vazra as she fell and twisted around as she ricocheted to the floor. She landed on her side with a disheartening thud. She’s now limping significantly and crying when she places her rear right leg on the ground or when I touch her on that side. Nothing’s broken or dislocated, but she’s obviously hurt.
Loki‘s condition seems stable. Unfortunately, he plateaued in a bad place. The medicine helped a bit, but he’s suffering tremendously and is in a very weakened state. Another three or four days will tell if it’s time for a cardiac ultrasound or if we need to change his treatment. He’s not the same cat now…
My niece Courtney has been in the hospital all week. She came home yesterday. The poor lass is really struggling with a bizarre infection that beats her up constantly. Now she’s had her tonsils removed. What’s next on her plate?
I’m tired.
More integration mayhem
[Vazra on the left; Kako sleeping above Grendel on the right]
These are various observations about Vazra…
He is a lap kitty.
He gives kisses.
He gives love bites, and he did so immediately following his dental surgery (as well as before).
Although larger than Kako in size, he actually weighs less than she does. He’s a rather petite guy when you get beyond the fluffy fur. Like Loki, he’s mostly hair. Loki, though, weighs significantly more and is much larger than Vazra. Given proper measurements of weight and mass, he’s actually the smallest cat in the house, although his fine-ass coat makes him a wee bit larger than Woman.
He asks for what he wants.
He drinks from my glass of water. That means all five of them do it with absolute comfort. Good.
He knows what food sounds like both when it comes from a can and when it comes from a bag; likewise, he is quickly learning to recognize the sounds of various treat containers.
He will eat out of my hand and will take food from between my fingers, and he does it gently. Kazon, on the other hand, readily bites through my fingers, and that forces me to feed him only in an open hand. Kako is gentle, however, like Vazra, and has only nipped me by accident when trying to take food from between my fingers.
He listens and responds. He’s quite talkative.
He purrs at the drop of a hat.
He gives head butts.
He’s in no way put off by me putting my face near his, and he allows me to kiss and nuzzle him without negative reactions. But he is still finicky in ways I don’t understand. His reactions are not strongly predictable like the others.
He is rather lackadaisical with his response to the rest of The Kids. He growls a bit if they approach when he’s trying to sleep or when he doesn’t see them coming. He does get a bit overly excited at times and can be a bit rude with swings and hisses, but these times are rare and I’m learning how to predict and intercept them.
He rolls over and likes his belly rubbed. He seems quite sensitive about when this is acceptable.
He sleeps with me all night.
He pays no attention whatsoever to the other cats when he decides he’s going to lie down. This can sometimes be a very minor point of contention (it has thus far not caused any violence).
He has the largest eyes of all The Kids. They very much augment his other Persian features.
He can be very temperamental. I’m still learning about his personality. Unlike the other cats, I was not around for his entire life, so it is up to me to figure him out and help him adapt to life in this home. While I’m learning, there are still times when I’m surprised. There are even times when I’m not sure if he’s going to hurt me. He never has, and even his most violent responses are tempered and subdued. And I’ve really pissed him off from time to time (especially with forcefully brushing his belly, chest, the back of his legs, and under his arms). Live and learn… Still, he is not a violent animal and reacts with restraint even under the most violative of circumstances.
He’s been playing with Kazon more often than anyone else. This is normal as Kazon is the child of the family and loves to play. He has no problem forcing it on others when his inner child breaches the surface and demands attention — and that’s pretty much all of the time. When he’s forced it on Vazra, the reaction has been mixed. They’ve played the majority of times. I think that’s wonderful.
One of his nicknames (the first, although not likely the last) is Brat. That has everything to do with his tendency to be quite vocal in ways that resemble a tantrum, and also his temperamental personality that can lead to entertaining but thus far not dangerous moments of “I want! I want! I want!”
He’s learned to use all of the cat furniture, although we’re still working on his rare inclination to use the love seat for a scratching post. I’ve always hated it anyway, and I intend to get rid of it ASAP as it’s one of the final vestiges of Derek, yet I’m still working with him to ensure he understands what’s to be used for that purpose and what is off limits. That will be important when I finally get rid of the POS love seat.
His plaintive cries to go outside, or those echoed throughout the house when I step outside for any purpose, are tapering off rapidly now. If I’m out for longer than expected, he’ll show up at the door and start crying, but he’s becoming more comfortable both with being inside and with my comings and goings.
He loves to be in contact with me.
Like Kazon, he follows me often, much like a puppy. Some of that may be his lack of comfort with new surroundings, in which case it will decline as we move forward. It never did with Kazon, so it might never change with Vazra.
He can be quite psychotic when left to his own devices. Without me seeing him, there are times when he’ll awake, find his way to some arbitrary door or cabinet, then suddenly beat on it while singing a woeful tale. It’s funny. It’s also a bit sad insomuch as he still reaches times when he knows he’s not in his usual element and desperately wants to find some order in things. In time…
Did I mention he’s psychotic? When he’s completely wound up and feeling particularly frisky, he spins in circles. I at first thought he was chasing his own tail. Further observation proved that wrong. He just spins in a rapid circle. More often than not, he does it two or three times, if not more. He’ll do it even more often when he’s in a mood.
He’s quickly becoming more playful. He did not play at all for the first few days he was in his new home. I’ve tried continually to engage him and have enjoyed progressive results. In fact, now he’s playing on his own from time to time. It’s been wonderful to see him dropping the façade and stoicism more regularly.
I’m rather amazed with how personable he is. It will be quite interesting to see how he responds to newcomers when that time comes.
I have seen in him the same deep reservoir of existence I see in all the other kids, a deep well from which his personality springs. Without the gift of watching him grow up in my care, I am as entertained by his antics as I am in learning who he is and what he’s about. I knew sufficient amounts of both before I rescued him. Had I not, I would never have entertained trying to adopt him. Based on the results thus far, confirming once again at least some minor level of expertise in observation, I’m thrilled with the results of my integration efforts and the overall “spirit” of home. I see in The Kids a great deal of myself. Their acceptance of Vazra is a perfect example. He’s an outsider, a stranger, an unknown, a possible danger to them and theirs, and he certainly is not a part of the normal scheme of things. Yet here he is, and they have essentially accepted him into our home since his introduction. It’s amazing. It’s more than amazing, actually; it’s quite extraordinary in a most intriguing way.
Yet it’s not statistically impossible. My guess is I’m quite lucky in this regard, somehow gifted with four cats who are so entirely comfortable with their supremacy that an intruder is not considered a threat.
I’m sure it’s far less complicated than that. Or is it?
I’m assuming I own this place, right?
In reference to yesterday’s calamity… Be warned I am so pissed off about this that I have spared no outrage in this post. Expect me to be at my most savage. This includes a tirade the likes of which I hope never to post again.
It was a Sunday morning like so many others before it. I awoke, took a shower, gave Vazra his antibiotics, gave Loki his steroid inhaler dose, gave The Kids a treat, and finally headed to Starbucks around 8:00. I sat with friends and enjoyed a casual morning of coffee and good conversation. Eventually it was time to come home and do chores, so I stopped and checked the mail on my way home and came in the door around 10:00. I started a load of laundry, cleaned the cat boxes, and then sat down to do some writing and posting. It was just before 11:00 in the morning when I realized something was amiss.
I was sitting at my desk reading the news when I heard gurgling coming from the bathroom. It sounded like the toilet. I got up and went to see what was happening. There wasn’t any problem with the toilet when I used it earlier to evacuate my bladder, so strange noises seemed out of place. When I lifted the lid, there was a splash of water on the underside, but otherwise nothing seemed amiss. Air bubbles in the line, perhaps? Or some creature lost in the sewage pipes (that mostly came from recently seeing a story about a woman who discovered a baby opossum in her toilet in the wee hours of the morning; the poor thing apparently had crawled up through the pipes and was trapped under the shut lid)? Something else entirely?
After standing there for a minute or so waiting to see if anything else would happen, and during which time absolutely nothing happened, I closed the lid and went back to the computer. Before I was able to sit down, more gurgling noises drifted out from the bathroom.
OK, I thought, something is definitely wrong.
I went back to the restroom and again lifted the lid on the toilet. This time, brown goo was rapidly bubbling up inside. That’s when it got worse. A geyser exploded from the bathtub and quickly began filling it with the same brown sludge.
Even I can readily recognize sewage when I see it. And there was a lot of it filling both the toilet and bathtub, gallons of it flowing into my bathroom in an undeniable home invasion of the worst kind.
I dashed back to the desk and grabbed my cell phone to call for immediate help. In the meantime, the bathtub continued to fill with all manner of unspeakable horrors. The same kind of disgusting rubbish was also overflowing the toilet and spreading rapidly across the bathroom floor.
This is a bunch of shit! I meant it literally. Sewage was washing back through the pipes and pushing its way through the toilet and bathtub drains — and rapidly filling both and flowing out on the floor.
I reported the problem to the appropriate people while trying to remain calm, all the while making abundantly clear the severity of the issue and need for an immediate intervention. As soon as I was off the phone, I corralled The Kids and put them all in the bedroom with some litter boxes, toys, scratching posts, and their food and water. That would at least keep them out of harm’s way for the moment.
With help on the way, I grabbed all the towels out of the cabinets and built my own beaver dam in front of the bathroom door. Regardless of the cause, I knew this problem would be a whole lot worse if this offensive brew was allowed to spread to the rest of the house. If it reached the bathroom door, it would not just be the hardwood floor that was in jeopardy; it would rapidly soak into the carpet and begin dispersing throughout the abode, and that in turn would allow it to attack all of my belongings. Logic made clear that cleaning and recovering from the mess would also be drastically more difficult if it escaped from the WC.
The plumber arrived in short order, as did a couple of maintenance-type folks, and they went to work addressing the problem. It was already too late to be a quick job, however, and the plumber informed me of yet another disastrous aspect of all of this: the garage was full of sewage and it was flowing out under the door and into the street.
Mother fucker! Can this shit get any worse? But of course…
While the professionals worked to locate, identify and address the problem, the bathtub was filling with horrendous sludge that no person should have to see, smell, or otherwise experience. The toilet, on the other hand, was overflowing. Under different circumstances, it would have made a nice decorative water feature with the soothing sound of fluid and lavish flow over smooth porcelain surfaces. But there was nothing satisfying with this.
The smell was overwhelming, sending me often to the edge of nausea. And it kept coming.
There was a growing pool of the unpleasant muck on the bathroom floor, and the towels I’d already strategically placed at the door were rapidly becoming saturated in brown waste material and liquid. I grabbed the rest of the towels I’d smartly stacked next to the door and added them to the growing structure blocking the filth from the rest of the house. It didn’t take long for them likewise to become heavy with sludge. I could see small pools beginning to seep through as it continued its way toward the door.
I was out of towels. What the hell was I supposed to use then?
So I began grabbing sheets and augmenting the towel dam. By that time, of course, the bathtub was more than three-quarters full and still it did not stop. The toilet, on the other hand, was beyond hope. It overflowed in symmetrical fashion with a roar that waterfalls might otherwise joyfully provide. This was not joyful, though.
Having found the clog in the main sewer line right under my garage, the plumber was quickly working to clear the flow and stop this disgusting incursion. By then, I was adding blankets to my little structure as the bathtub continued to fill and the bathroom itself became full of nauseous fumes and sewage. If the flow was not stemmed quickly, there was nothing else I could do to keep it from expanding beyond the one room where it was isolated (excepting, of course, the garage).
Then, as suddenly as it began, the smelly cesspool began to drain. Mere inches from the top, the level in the bathtub began to go down, and the toilet rapidly emptied. The plumber obviously found the problem.
One of the maintenance folks came in with a wet-vac and promptly hit the bathroom. With a standing pool of raw sewage on the floor and my makeshift barrier succumbing to the onslaught, he was just in time to save the day.
The plumber later reported what precisely caused the problem: a tampon, but not just a tampon. It was a tampon wrapped in a wad of paper towels.
With a preemptive apology to those with sensitive natures, be forewarned I’m about to be as rude as I have ever been.
What kind of fucking cunt crackwhore bitch-from-hell lunatic vagina-bearing asshole flushes a tampon? More importantly, what level of female ignorance is involved with a ho who will first wrap her used tampon in a huge wad of paper towels before flushing it? Is there no intelligence involved in such a thing? No level of common sense that might prevail against horrendous stupidity?
I don’t care how bad you’re bleeding, bitch, but you better take that shit and dispose of it properly instead of subjecting so many others to the unwarranted horrors of an apparent lack of brain power as is necessary to perform this kind of oblivious assault. You inundated the senses and homes of people with sewage, and the people who suffered aren’t nearly as stupid and dumb and ignorant and unworthy of life as you are.
This is one case where I believe the wench responsible should be taken out and shot, but only after cramming up her you-know-what a dirty tampon wrapped in a wad of paper towels soaked in raw sewage. Perhaps then she’d get the point.
Listen up, people, because I’m only saying this once.
You do not flush tampons. Regardless of whatever white trash existence you may have grown up in, you don’t put that shit down the toilet.
You do not flush paper towels. There is a level of intellect required to know this, and I believe it’s equivalent to the tables used by kindergarten children.
You just don’t do this fucking shit.
If you’re so intellectually challenged that you don’t know this, you don’t deserve to live. You sure as hell don’t deserve to enjoy any semblance of civilized life, but civilized is absolutely what you ARE NOT!
While I doubt it will happen, I assure you I will be merciless if I ever figure out what empty-headed cunt-bitch-whore-crack-slut-from-hell did this to me.
But they didn’t just do it to me. It affected several homes. I just happen to be downhill from all of them, so my experience was worse than any other.
If you’re a woman and any of this surprises you, get a gun and go shoot yourself. Do it now before you inflict this level of terror on anyone else.
If you’re a woman who already knew this, then beat it into your children and siblings and friends and any other female you know or see on the street so they don’t totally fuck up the lives of other people by way of this level of incompetent living.
She better hope I never find out who she is. The least I’ll do is ensure she becomes my new toilet and general refuse receptacle. And I’m not fucking kidding about that. I’ve never seen such idiocy in my life. I hope I never do again. This woman single-handedly tapped the most vitriolic and vicious depths of my rage and anger.
In the meantime, I’m still cleaning up. The carpet needs to be shampooed (despite not being impacted directly, sewage was tracked all over it; it also absorbed the smell). All of my towels and sheets and blankets are being ruined in bleach-and-scalding-hot-water washes, and that followed by hours in the dryer on high heat. The bathroom floor is being replaced, but it has also been bleach-and-scalding-hot-water mopped at least half-a-dozen times already, and it’s just been sprayed with an enzymatic solution designed to kill all biological life (bacteria and viruses and amoebas and the like included). The same was done to the garage.
Sewage leaked into the walls, so significant maintenance is being performed there to cleanup the mess and keep it from growing into something even more dangerous. The toilet and bathtub have been bleached time and again, followed by significant disinfecting, the same enzymatic treatment I just mentioned, and all followed by more bleaching and more disinfecting. I may never feel secure with either of those again, regardless of how much they’re cleaned. I’ve used more air freshener and Febreeze in the last 24 hours than is available in the entire city of Dallas, and I’m not done yet. I’m burning scented candles as long as I’m awake.
And speaking of being awake, don’t think there was much sleep last night. There wasn’t. The smell was near overwhelming, and I had to run the exhaust fan in the bathroom all night long to get whatever help I could. In the heat of Texas summer, I have the windows open to ventilate my home. I’m keeping The Kids away from and out of the bathroom for as long as possible to ensure they aren’t exposed to the many infectious agents found in human waste, the same infectious agents to which I have been overly exposed in the last 24 hours.
Just so we’re clear on this, our waste products cause the likes of cholera, parasitic fluke and worm infections, tuberculosis, mononucleosis, brucellosis, fungal infections, staph infections, tularemia, myocarditis, rickettsioses, leptospirosis, Reiter’s syndrome, Pontiac fever, Legionnaires disease, Rota viral infections, Norwalk viral infections, Rhinoviral infections, Guillain-Barré paralysis, pneumonia, diarrhea, dysentery, and a list of ailments that is longer than you can possibly imagine.
As the EPA points out, “[s]ome common fecal-oral viruses are also transmitted by person-to-person spread, by respiratory inhalation and contact with infected surfaces…” Did you understand that? What I have been subjected to by this witless woman from hell is the possibility that I might easily be infected with an almost infinite list of infectious agents simply by breathing or touching surfaces exposed to her potty experiment in stupidity.
And that says nothing of what kind of threat this poses to The Kids.
I will reiterate one more time: I have never in my life been so angry and resentful at anyone than I am right now. My life has been turned upside down. My life and the lives of my children have been threatened and placed at enormous risk because some empty-headed woman who should have been aborted lacked common sense equal to that of dirt.
In closing: If I ever find out who the responsible party is, I will end up in jail because of my response. Thankfully, that person will already be dead and it won’t really matter at that point since my need for vengeance and justice will have been satisfied. I assure you, however, she will suffer tremendously and hellishly before I kill her.
I hope I am never forced to write something similar in the future…
With the summer sun simmering toward the west as temperatures rise and misery unfolds over the land, I listen to the hum of the air conditioner as it blows sensually throughout the house. There’s no doubt it’s more than comfortable in here. Especially when compared to the hellish environment outside. Only gluttons for punishment are enjoying this season.
It’s days like these when mostly I ponder what might have been for any of The Kids.
Vazra‘s the best example, of course, since he’s only been inside for little more than a week. And he’s black. Can you imagine? The poor thing must have suffered immensely out there in the baking light of day. One thing most smart people in Texas understand: never own anything black that has to go outside. Don’t buy black cars or cars with black interiors, don’t wear black clothing when it’s hot, don’t put your bike outside long enough for the seat to warm up just enough to send you into hysterics when you finally climb on to take a ride, and certainly don’t have black pets who are left outside all the time. It’s just too hot.
It’s during this contemplation I realize what kind of difference I’ve made in the lives of animals who otherwise might not have been so fortunate. Even when I feel stale, they can easily wash away the blahs and invigorate me. Sure, friends are great and work can be diverting, even therapeutic, but that’s never enough, is it? It shouldn’t be. There’s far more room in our hearts and minds to accommodate meaningful non-human relationships.
That’s why I’m not sure I entirely trust people who don’t have pets. Don’t get me wrong and don’t assume I’m just dumb. I understand allergies, those who travel for a living, and similar situations where it’s just not possible to have a pet. After all, what exactly is one to do when one is home fewer than 20 days per year? Is there a genuine relationship there if you have a pet who relies on you for everything? Truthfully, any pet under those circumstances would have a much better relationship with the pet sitter.
Despite the exceptions, caring for animals in my home is unique, an experience unlike so many others, a wonder and phenomenon that affects every aspect of my life. It’s as though it centers me. If I had an aversion to hairballs on the carpet or wood floors, that might be different. I don’t even mind the suspicious noises at all hours of the night that indicate someone is up to no good. Yet even those excuses are just that — excuses.
Having pets balances me somehow. I’ve grown up with them. From my earliest memories through more than three decades of life, animals have always shared my home and heart. They’ve been my roommates, my closest friends, my confidants, my caregivers, my adversaries, my charges, my nursemaids, and my children, not to mention a great deal more. In some capacity, they’ve filled every possible role one could imagine.
I’ve enjoyed the most essential yet silent agreement with each of them: I’ll do all for them that I can, including unconditional love, and they’ll return the favor. Seeing them sprawled about the place now enjoying the comfortable temperature and knowing food’s readily available, I feel good. It’s that simple.
Difficult fails to describe trying to comprehend life without animals. I look back and I look forward, and no matter where I look — when I look, there is a vacant hole only they can fill. Things could only have been different in the worse ways without them. And I can’t begin to think about their fate had I not intervened…
And now that I am completely off track from where I started this post, do let me attempt some recovery — and face saving — via a quick return to the point I lost before the first sentence.
Pets should not be purchased. There are far too many in shelters all over the world to make buying one anything other than a selfish and brutal act against the innocent lives that will be lost because someone got their pretty dog knocked up or forgot to let the cat in one evening. Bestial gallivanting aside, hundreds of thousands of animals are put to death each year, and a tragically large number of those are right here in the United States.
I know they might not offer the exact breed or color you’re looking for, and perhaps they won’t have the right gender to fit your requirements, but there’s a tremendous amount of unconditional love that’s put to death each day because someone would rather spend money to purchase an animal as though it were a piece of clothing or furniture, instead of reaching out to the great many animals we humans have placed in jeopardy from precisely that kind of mentality. Amazingly, and very much unlike people, they demonstrate the most wonderful ability to erase the chalkboard and start over. It’s a clean slate, and they create it themselves. All they need is the opportunity.
Is owning that purebred really that important? Is supporting mostly questionable breeding practices worth the life of an animal? Are you able to fight against the inherent genetic problems created by human desire by setting aside vanity to focus on being humane? Unfortunately, too many give the wrong answers to those questions.
All of my kids are adoptions. Most are rescues. They’re better people than a lot of pet buyers, and giving them a home rescued animals from certain death instead of providing financial incentive for some selfish human to continue the sexual exploitation of animals just to get that certain color or set of features.
Even if you can’t adopt, why not consider fostering animals? Maybe you already have too many and can’t permanently take another one, but could you provide care temporarily for an animal that needs to be saved?
In either case, stop buying pets. It’s repulsive and offensive. It’s also a selfishly signed death warrant for one or more animals not fortunate enough to have a home or a pedigree.