You Are Not Free To Move About The Country.

First of all, Happy New Year!  My campaign to have the holidays canceled was unsuccessful once again, yet we somehow managed to survive them anyway.  We even put up a tree, even if all we managed to put on it were lights.  (No, there's no such thing as a Buddhist Christmas tree.)  

Secondly, we flew out to Phoenix on Christmas morning to spend the holidays with my parents and my sister.  We almost didn't get home again.  Somehow, you don't expect flights to be canceled on a clear brisk day when the wind is blowing but there's nary a cloud in the sky.  But it does happen, and when it does happen it can be incredibly hard to get where you were going.

We were flying Southwest Airlines, like usual.  Besides not charging for checked bags, Southwest Airlines is about the only airline that has A Policy about what to do if you're a person of size, and you don't fit comfortably into one of their seats (Southwest also has the smallest seats in the industry, which is probably not a coincidence).  If an airline doesn't have A Policy, you might get grabbed out of line, embarrassed in front of 300 of your closest friends and forced to buy another ticket if you want to get on the airplane.  Or you might not.  It's like Russian roulette.  But Southwest has A Policy, we know what it is, and so we always buy three seats together when the two of us travel.  That way we have a whole row to ourselves, nobody's smushed up against us, we don't bother anyone and nobody bothers us.  They usually preboard us, the flight attendants are pretty nice, and if you're incredibly stressed out by air travel the way I am, nice flight attendants become a necessity.  So what I'm saying is, we fly Southwest Airlines all the time.  It's pretty unusual for us to fly any other airline, as a matter of fact.

We were supposed to fly back to Dallas on Monday night, the 28th. Our flight was delayed, but that's not at all unusual coming out of Phoenix.  So we checked in and we got snacks and we sat at the gate, reading books and so on, for quite a while before we began to realize that people from our flight were all starting to line up behind the check-in desk. It happened that we overheard one woman say that when your flight is canceled, you should call the customer service line because they could sometimes help you faster than the people at the actual airport.  Which was the first we heard anything about our flight being canceled, as there was no official announcement of any kind and nobody bothered to put up a sign or anything else. Honestly, if it hadn't been for that lady, we'd probably still be sitting in Phoenix wondering what in hell happened.  

What happened was, we got "timed out."  There was a big snowstorm back east someplace, and a number of canceled and delayed flights started a domino effect that started to affect flights that weren't even in the area.  Late flights pushed later flights to even later than that, until the crews that were supposed to work those flights literally ran out of time.  Pilots and flight attendants can't work more than a certain number of hours for safety reasons, and our flight ran out of hours.  So did another one right across the jetway, and about 300 more across the country.  

This is where I got my great lesson in how not to talk to airline personnel, courtesy of the lady behind me.  Look, getting kicked off an airplane is nobody's greatest moment, but this lady--I am not kidding, if she was going to be kicked off an airplane, then by God, everyone for miles was going to know about it and about how personally wronged she had been by the entire situation.  She wasn't even technically talking to me--she was talking to anybody and everybody in the immediate vicinity, as far as I could tell--and I still almost turned around and told her to shut up.  Well, I didn't.  Instead I was as nice as I could possibly be to the airline lady when I finally got up to the check-in desk.  If I had to deal with more than one Lady Behind Me in a shift, I'd have walked off the job, waved off my severance pay and activated the emergency slide on the way out--unless that's already been done, that is.  Call me crazy, but I just sort of figured we probably had a better chance of getting on a quicker flight home if we didn't piss off the person who was supposed to be helping us.

Anyway, when we finally did get to the check-in desk, we discovered that it's not exactly easy to rebook 250 people onto new flights with as full as airplanes get these days.  And just because you have a photo ID, can get through TSA and have money to pay for a ticket doesn't necessarily mean you are going anywhere.  There were no flights to Dallas with any available seats that night or the following day.  The flight they finally did get us on went from Phoenix to San Diego and then turned around and went to Dallas.  There wasn't even anything direct.  The airline lady checked Austin and Oklahoma City and even Tulsa, for heaven's sake.  She couldn't get us to any of them.  The best they could do was Dallas two days later.  

So that was two more nights in a hotel room that we hadn't planned on, to say nothing of two more days' worth of meals and incidentals and Star Wars tickets (okay, that last thing wasn't technically a necessity, but hotel rooms do get boring after a while.)  Two days I didn't get paid for, either.  And two days of our cats wondering where in hell we'd disappeared to (luckily, our pet sitter was still available and could still come by and check on them).  Southwest hasn't offered us anything by way of compensation, but I'm going to send them a nice letter with the hotel bill attached and explain that really, it would be nice of them to offer us something.

One thing's for sure--no more night flights.  I'm only ever booking morning flights in the future, to make sure there's time to recover if something goes wrong.

Last thing: Huge thanks to the parents, who drove us back and forth to the airport multiple times, let us use their washing machine and went to the movie with us. And kudos to Edith, the Baggage Supervisor at Sky Harbor Airport.  She was in charge of getting our bags back to us, which evidently meant searching some 500 bags by hand and only bringing up the right ones, variously described as, "It's blue." "It's medium sized."  "It has wheels."  Thank you, Edith.  And thanks to the lady at the check-in desk, whose name I never got but who had to deal with The Lady Behind Me after she dealt with me.  Sorry about that, check-in desk lady.  

Car!

Those of you who hang around here a lot probably know I drive a 1998 Toyota Corolla that I've had for, oh, about fifteen years.  Hey, it isn't that I get overly attached to a vehicle.  It's just that no matter what time it is, it's never the right time to get another car.  There's a medical emergency or I have to go on an unexpected trip or Christmas is coming or (in this case) all three at once. Which is why the way things fell together over the last few days just goes to show that sometimes the universe just wants something to happen. 

It all started when Kellum the Great, our massage therapist, was over doing his thing in our living room. (That sounds dirtier than it is, unfortunately.)  I mentioned I was looking for a car (and had been for months, in point of fact) and he said I should really check out Grapevine Motors.  He'd bought two cars from them, and Suzy had bought one, and each time it turned out to be a pretty good deal.  I told him I was a tough customer.  I wanted another Toyota Corolla, for one thing, and I wanted it to be somewhere between 2011 and 2014 with less than 80,000 miles on it.  Also, I didn't want to pay more than $10,000.  But I went ahead and logged onto their Web site, and darned if they didn't have a 2013 Corolla with 50,000 miles on it for sale for $10,990. 

Since I have USAA, though, I also logged on to USAA's car buying service.  This is about as painless as car shopping gets, folks, and if you even think you might be eligible for USAA's panoply of services, you really owe it to yourself to check them out.  All you need is a parent who served in the armed forces at one time or another, and they don't even have to have been an officer anymore.  The car buying service will literally find you the car you're looking for, negotiate a price for you, arrange your financing and tell you where to go pick it up.  That's all you have to do; go pick it up.  I mean, that is pretty hard to argue with.  So I got on to the car buying service and searched for Toyota Corollas of a certain age, and the same darn car from Grapevine Motors popped up.  The Web site even helpfully told me that Grapevine Motors was about 30 miles from my house, in case I was planning a trip out there.

So in no time flat I was planning a trip out there.  From my work I'm about halfway there, anyway.  I drove out there in horrible traffic, missed the turn twice, and eventually stumbled onto the place just a block or two from downtown Grapevine.  And there was the Corolla, sitting near the front and under the lights.  I looked at it for about thirty seconds before deciding to buy it. The main hurdle was getting Joan out there, to make sure she could get in and out of the car without too much trouble (she's having a lot of trouble with her knee and surgery is probably on the horizon at some point). 

So the next night I made another trip out there, with Joan.  She could get in and out of it just fine.  I drove the '98 Corolla for the last time, having gassed it up and washed it earlier in the day.  The proprietor of Grapevine Motors gave me $900 auction value, which I thought was exceedingly generous.  Then he told me how much the Corolla was going to cost, I agreed, we shook on it and that was that. 


Oh. Except for the title.

Yeah, I'd kind of forgotten that in transactions involving expensive things like cars, there are generally pieces of legal paper involved.  The proprietor of Grapevine Motors needed the title for the '98 Corolla and I haven't found it yet.  Half the time I'm lucky to know where my mortgage documents are, in case we ever have to evacuate before a flood or a tornado or some other oncoming disaster.  I think I'm going to have to go to the county tax office and have a duplicate created, which requires both Joan and I to be somewhere, dressed and scrubbed and with picture IDs, at seven in the morning.  But they can't sell my old Corolla at auction without it, so we gotta do it.  I'll let you know what happens.  I'm mildly concerned that if I take Joan out of the house before seven in the morning, she'll say, "Oh, great" and turn into a pile of dust. 

Anyway, title aside, I do have a very nice new car.  My odds of ending up on the side of the road in a pile of parts have dropped dramatically.  You can even tell what station the radio's tuned to.  And there's a (gasp!) CD player.  Best thing, though, is that it's another Corolla.  That means everything's right where it was in the old car.  I reach for the air conditioning and my hand goes right to it.  I need to turn on the defroster and there it is.  And get this:  I can turn the radio up and down using buttons on the steering wheel.  I mean, what kind of newfangled gadgets are the kids in Japan going to come up with next? 

Many many thanks to angel Kristen for helping to make it all happen.  As I believe I mentioned, it wasn't a good time to buy a car at all. 

It's Complicated

This has been one hell of a month.  I lost a brother-in-law, a cat, my patience and my last tenuous contact with Christianity.  And this month, I have all the joys of choosing (drum roll, please) a new health insurance plan. (rimshot)

Evidently Blue Cross and Blue Shield is canceling all of its PPO plans in Texas.  Those of us who are on one, and I liked my plan very much thank you, are all being shunted to a new HMO, which would be fine if either of my doctors took it, but neither of them do.  Given the choice between finding new health insurance and trying to find a new doctor, I will cheerfully take finding new health insurance.

Why not just find a new doctor, you ask?  Well, I will if I have to, but I'd really rather not have to.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a doctor who doesn't say, "Oh, it says here you're not on (blank). All my patients are on (blank) so I'm going to switch you to (blank)", when he first meets you?  Or worse, "Your problem is that you're fat. Lose fifty pounds and your wrist pain/bladder infection/sore throat/skin rash/brain tumor will clear right up."  I have heard these actual statements from the mouths of the actual doctors. But I can understand it, sort of.  I mean what fun is a patient who comes in and says, "Hi, nothing's actually wrong, I just need prescriptions for the meds I'm already taking, which I've been stable on for years"?  Not much of a challenge there, hey?  And what intrepid medical professional can resist the urge to say something like, "Well, I can see you're doing fine on (blank), but I'll bet you'll do JUST GREAT on (blank) XR!  And besides, I'll get a major speaking engagement from the drug company if I meet my prescription quota at the end of the month." No, they don't really say that last part out loud.  I just hear it.

So I'm looking for new health insurance.  There are something like 56 plans available.  After chopping off the "bronze" plans, which are basically worthless, it's more like 40 plans.  That is an awful lot of plans.  Yes, there's a company called Molina Insurance which can basically be dismissed outright because no one's heard of it, and a new one called Oscar that doesn't cover either of my doctors, but that still leaves some 24 or so plans.  And despite the fact that everybody from the health care representatives I've talked to on the phone to the President of the United States is telling me I need to compare prices and buy myself the cheapest plan, unfortunately, one glance at the monthly premium and the deductible is not enough to figure out if a particular plan will do the job for me.

You see, It's Complicated.  I have a chronic condition and I take certain prescription drugs. Some of them are Pricey.  The pricier a drug is, the more likely a drug company is to have limitations on it, such as you have to have your doc call and explain why you need it (preauthorization) or worse, you can't take it at all until you've tried all the cheaper ones and failed (step-up therapy).  The former is only a minor annoyance, but the latter is a serious problem if you're me.  Even if insurance companies sometimes waive that requirement at your doctor's request, they sometimes don't.

In case you did not know this, psychopharmacology is basically a hit or miss proposition.  The goal, as I understand it, is to treat the worst of your symptoms with medication that causes minimal side effects, or at least side effects you can live with.  And by the way, when I say "you can live with" I really mean, "you can live with." One of the drugs my doc and I tried had me feeling like it'd be a great idea to carve my arms up with a kitchen knife.  Not because I was depressed or mopey or more anxiety-ridden than usual, just because it seemed like such a good idea.  I stopped taking the stuff and the impulse disappeared within hours.  But yikes.  So when I say, "side effects you can live with," I mean stuff like stomach upset, weight gain, weight loss, and losing control of your right arm so that it flops around on your desk like a fish kicking out its last few moments of life at the bottom of a boat, and yes, that happened too.  I am the queen of strange and entertaining side effects.

For me, every change of meds introduces a really fun six-week period during which I throw up frequently, have a more or less constant upset stomach, eat too much, refuse to eat at all, sleep too much, don't sleep at all, feel like driving my car about 180 on the 635 and have nightmares in which I'm directing a musical about Hitler that features a singing, dancing polar bear and six penguins.  Pick three or four and stir.  Usually they go away after the six weeks, but if whatever we're trying out doesn't work, or works badly, or the side effects are intolerable, we have to either change the dose or try something else--starting the fun all over again.  So this "step-up" therapy, while I understand the logic behind it, is out of the question, really.  I have to find a plan that doesn't require it, and that's getting harder and harder to do.

The good news is, I may have found one.  The bad news is, I haven't yet talked to the insurance company reps yet but the way I read this thing, it sounds like they cover NOTHING until you reach the $3,500 deductible, not even prescriptions. Which means I'm going to need $3,500 for January and February and possibly part of March, and apart from selling my car, I'm not sure where to get it.

And just for the record, I'm navigating all this nonsense with a major brain disorder.  Somebody please explain how that makes any sense at all.

Universal single payer, anybody? Cuz that'd be awesome.

Michael Eugene Young

Unfortunately, my brother-in-law has died after a long illness.  

He was 45. 

Dharma Talk

In recent weeks, the leader of our meditation group has been out of town a few times, and I ended up in charge for those evenings, just because that's the sort of thing that usually happens to me.  Last night I not only facilitated the meditation, I gave my first dharma talk. A dharma talk is sort of a sermon, I guess you would say; some lesson or something insightful about the world and the Buddhist place in it. I think it went pretty well, considering I was nervous and going from notes and so on.  (It's that whole public speaking thing. Even though there were all of three people there. Small crowd.)  Anyway, here's what I said, more or less:

I've been thinking about politics a lot lately.  Well, it's hard not to think about politics lately.  Every time you turn on the TV or log into the Internet, there's another story about who said what to whom and how everyone reacted. I think we have something like 17 people running for President.  They're all different, but they have one thing in common: They all think they're right.  What's more, they think they're right and everybody else is wrong. People are lining up behind their candidate of choice, all thinking the same thing.  This poses an interesting challenge to us as Buddhists because we have this little thing in our philosophy called non-attachment to views.

Non-attachment to views is pretty important.  It's referred to in the Noble Eightfold Path under Right Speech.  Thich Nhat Hanh also cites it pretty early on in his Five Mindfulness Trainings:  "Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, greed, and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, non-discrimination, and non-attachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world."

What is non-attachment to views? Well, basically it's keeping in mind that you might be wrong.  You may be absolutely positive about a thing, have reams of evidence on your side, but you never know when another fact might come up and change your whole interpretation of the situation. It doesn't mean you're not right, though.  It just means being open to the possibility that there may still be more to learn.

I have a bad habit.  I love to argue with people.  I'm trying to break that habit and spend less time trying to prove to other people that I'm right, but I still do it.  I especially like the kind of argument where I'm actually not sure that I have the right answer.  Depending on who I'm talking to, I might actually learn something.

Unfortunately, presidential candidates and their supporters don't often have the kinds of arguments where they might learn something.  To admit to having learned something means they were wrong before, and most candidates aren't going to admit they were ever wrong.  (One in particular, when confronted with evidence that some of the things she said--oops, I said she--are obviously false, basically keeps talking like she doesn't care.  Maybe she doesn't.) So what do we do, as Buddhists, when we come upon a situation where people think they are right and everyone else is wrong?  How do we defuse the situation, or at least not create any more harm?

Well, one way is to leave, I guess.  If you aren't there, you can't get into an argument. But that's not very satisfying and it doesn't really help the relationship.  I got some insights about this in two relationships I've had before.  One was with my uncle Al, who had Alzheimer's disease.  I'd come to see him and he'd say, "Now, you're Jane, right? You work at the bank?" and I'd say, "Why, yes.  I am."  For the time of the visit, anyway, I wasn't married to being Jennifer, music student, or Jennifer, aspiring writer, or Jennifer, whatever else. I could be Jane. In fact, since he wouldn't remember if I was Jane or not, I didn't really have to be anybody at all, which was kind of nice, in a way.

The other is a friend of mine who was about as far right as I am far left.  We used to fight like cats and dogs until a couple of years ago, when I got tired of it and started changing my approach.  I guess I was convinced that someday I'd say the right thing or quote the right person and he'd believe me and I'd win.  Well, nowadays when he goes off on one of his rants (and I know nothing of this ranting, myself; I am completely innocent of ranting), I try to respond with, "It sounds like you believe (blank.)"  If I do this right, he says, "Yeah," and usually adds, "It's not just a belief.  It's a fact."  Then, if I'm not caught up in trying to prove I'm right, I can say something like, "How did you come to believe that?" and just listen to what he says. What he says is actually not relevant, though I might learn something. What's important is that he starts thinking about it.  If you really want to change somebody's mind about something, you have to convince them to do it themselves.  How that starts, is by getting them to actually think about it.

See, most of our beliefs about the world and our place in it aren't really ours.  If you examine some of your beliefs and how you came by them, you might be pretty surprised to discover that you believe them because someone told you to.  Very rarely do we actually look at the pros and cons of a thing, evaluate them and then decide, on the basis of the evidence, what to believe.  Most of our beliefs are pretty knee-jerk.  This is of course true of other people, as well.  In a way, you can't blame them for believing what they believe, since they've never really examined those beliefs.

Now, that doesn't mean my friend thinks about where he got his ideas and suddenly says, "Why, you're right.  It's all bullshit." (You can say bullshit in my meditation group.) But sometimes I can see the wheels start to turn in his head, and that's pretty cool.  And our arguments--they're more like discussions now--have become a lot more interesting.

Besides, people like talking about themselves.  If you're ever in an uncomfortable social circumstance where you feel like you're being interrogated--meeting the girlfriend's parents, for example--one way to ease the situation is to turn the questions around. "Oh, enough about me. How did you decide to go into investment banking?" Not only will you feel less on the spot, the other person's going to go away from the conversation thinking you're pretty cool.  Why? Because you encouraged that person to talk about himself. And people like talking about themselves.

So that's the advice I have.  Don't marry your opinions, and try to get other people to tell you where theirs came from. It might not solve anything, but it might defuse a few arguments and open up a little space for discussion.  And the world needs some space for discussion.  That's all I have for you today.

The Vagina Monologue

Warning: this post contains the word "vagina." If you cannot handle the word "vagina" without giggling, please do not read this post. Go over to Yahoo where you will be safe. I'll get to that in a minute.

Today, I learned that some body parts are more equal than other body parts. But first, I have an ugly confession to make. Everybody has a bad habit, and this one is mine: I hang around in the comments section of the Yahoo page.

I'm not sure why Yahoo, exactly, except that it seems to have stories that I like to read. Rather it has stories that I care about, and it would not surprise me if Yahoo picks stories for the home page based entirely on what you click. Sort of like Pandora Radio but with a much more sinister intent.

I'm not proud of this. I have tried to break myself of the habit and number of times, but apparently, I like a little drama in my life, and / or, I just like arguing with people. The only fortunate in outcome of the incident I'm about to relate, is that I might have just gotten myself banned from Yahoo for life. Apart from the trouble of finding another email address, I might actually come out ahead.

It was an article about abortion. Of course it was. I really don't have anything else I feel the great need to argue about, except abortion. And the mistreatment of pregnant women by the legal system, but that's another thing. Anyway, some wit had just made the brilliant observation that women must enjoy having abortions, or else they would just take birth control pills. Now there's all kinds of things wrong with that particular twist of logic, but let's stick to the points made. I answered him with, "Why yes, it is a great thrill to take a day off work, go to a surgical suite, take off all my clothes, lie down on a steel table and let somebody poked a hose up my vagina. I'm surprised everyone doesn't do it."

This, by the way, is called sarcasm. Or rather, sarchasm, that vast gulf between your witty remark, and the person who is incapable of understanding it. My post came up on to the comments section, and much to my surprise, the word vagina was spelled "#$%$.". I was unaware up until this point that the word vagina was a swear word. I thought we were all adults here.

I made another post, in which I observed that the word vagina had apparently been censored by Yahoo. I used the word penis just to see what would happen. To nobody's surprise, the word penis came out just fine. The word vagina was once again spelled #$%$...

Ponder that for a minute. Seriously, think about it. Female body parts must be censored from the delicate minds in the Yahoo comments section, because obviously the word is too coarse for the ears to hear. However, male body parts are just fine. How does it make you feel, ladies, knowing that Yahoo thinks your body parts are swear words?

Well, you know what I did next. Or if you don't know, you can probably guess. I typed the word vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina and clicked send. It came out #$%$. #$%$. #$%$. #$%$. #$%$. #$%$. #$%$. #$%$. So I did what everybody should do, when there's an issue that needs lots of attention immediately and you don't know how else to get it. I went over to Twitter and called out Yahoo for being the sexist bastards they obviously are. Several times. And then I went back to the comments section and typed in v@g1na v@g1na v@g1na v@g1na v@g1na v@g1na v@g1na v@g1na.

I don't know how Yahoo will take to being called out. Thus far there have been no replies. They might answer, or they might do nothing. Or they might ban me for life from the comments section. I did mention, did I not, that my going into Yahoo comments is a bad habit? Getting banned for life might actually be a good thing. If nothing else, I could probably get back those chunks of my life I keep losing 5 minutes at a time.

Anyway, that is my story, and I'm sticking to it. I'm sure I will have something more significant to write about next week. Like maybe world peace, or the Syrian crisis, or global warming or who knows.  In the meantime, please be advised that this is the first blog post I have ever composed entirely in Google Voice, while driving, in the rain, in Dallas.  Cheers y'all.

Pavane for a Cat: Caesar, 2000-2015

Ever since I put that post on Facebook, people have been asking me what the heck happened to Caesar, anyway.  Well, as you all know, he was not young, nor was he entirely well.  But the real story of the life and death of Caesar the Cat actually goes back to before 2005, when he was just a young whippersnapper and I was still working for the Federal Government under the psuedonym "F. Mulder."

We'd had Seez for about three years at that point. He was a year old and homeless when he and his sister Chloe came to live with us.  We got them from a cat rescue organization, and as usual, my only regret was that we couldn't take all of them. By 2005 Caesar had weathered the Big Move To Dallas (four days trapped in a car!! Howling at every 18-wheeler that went by!!) and had settled into a pleasant routine of long naps and extra snacks.  However, we took him in for a routine checkup and found a lump on his leg.

The vet immediately sent us to a specialist to have a biopsy done.  The biopsy confirmed what we'd suspected; Caesar had cancer, a kind of fibrosarcoma that is often correlated with the ingredients in kitty vaccines (though the link has never been proven). He also had the same kind of fibrosarcoma that had killed our previous cat, Uhura.  However, unlike Uhura, Seez was only five years old, and healthy and strong, so he stood a good chance of beating this disease.  I just didn't know how we were ever going to be able to get him to stop chasing his feather toy long enough for chemotherapy.

Turned out he didn't have to. Radiation therapy for cats had just become available.  Yes, I said radiation therapy for cats.  Presumably dogs, also, and iguanas and guinea pigs and who knows what.  I had to be talked into it, because it seemed like a kind of crazy idea, but the oncologist was pretty confident that the radiation would do the trick.  "You don't have to treat them like it's 1945 anymore," was basically what he said to me.  So we decided to give it a try.

(Don't even ask how much this cost.  I've spent my money on stupider things.)

Radiation therapy was breeze for Seez.  As the oncologist put it, "He hops in a box, he goes to sleep, and when he wakes up he gets fed.  What's not to like?"  The hardest part was taking him in for treatment every other day for six weeks.  Good thing I hadn't started swimming with the swim team back then because there's no way I could have done it.  I would wrestle him into the kitty carrier in the morning, drop him off at the vet's on the way to work, pick him up on the way home and then do it all over again two days later.   Of course, he got wise to the whole "being wrestled into the kitty carrier" part, so it got more and more interesting as the days went by.  But he weathered the radiation therapy pretty well, even if he did glow in the dark a little at night.

After the radiation was over, Caesar had surgery.  The oncologist removed the (mostly dead) tumor and found another tumor, also dying, underneath the first one. The margins were clear, as they say, and the oncologist was pretty sure he got all of it.  If it wasn't a complete cure, it would at least buy him a lot of time.

At the time, all I really wanted was for Caesar to live a normal span of years.  And he did.  16 is really getting old for a cat, though some cats live to be 20 and a very few have even made it to 30.  As most of you know, he picked up an eating disorder along the way, and went through these phases of refusing to eat and dropping lots of weight.  Toward the end of his life, I was sticking a vitamin supplement down his throat and giving him whipped cream every day to try to keep his weight up.  It wasn't working very well, either,  Also, we fed Seez on the counter so the other cats wouldn't get into his special food, and toward the last few weeks of his life he lost his ability to jump up there.  He put up with being lifted, but you could tell he didn't like it.

Another thing--Caesar was gradually losing his position in the household.  As the resident male, he was of course alpha kitty.  He won the swatfests and disputes over treats that occasionally broke out. Or at least he used to win them.  He had started losing face to Sparrow, the young upstart. Going from alpha kitty to beta kitty is not a good thing for a cat.  A couple of times, Joan and I had the conversation about whether it was getting to be time.  As long as he was eating at all, though, we were content to let him keep doing it.

Well, I took him to the vet two Saturdays ago for a routine weight check and maybe a blood test, and history repeated itself. Caesar had another lump, but this one was a big one.  It stretched from the middle of his leg all the way up into the middle of his back.  It was also hard, which the vet took to mean it was probably necrotic.  It was right in the path of the old tumor.  Which is weird, because did it really take eleven years to grow back? or was it something new and exciting?  Why didn't we ever notice it?  For that matter, why didn't the vet notice it, seeing as he was there for a weight check once a month?  We'll probably never know.  I called Joan to come down and we had him euthanized right there.  No point in dragging it out and risking that he might be in pain.  I got to hold him in his last moments, and that was an honor and a privilege.  And it was so quick. One second he was there. The next, Caesar was gone.

Caesar was his own cat.  Chloe is definitely my cat and Sparrow is Joan's cat without a doubt, but Caesar was Caesar's cat. He was calm and self-possessed, liked to sleep on my meditation cushion, and had a way of remaining Above It All, or at least above the other two.  He was friendly, liked to be petted and have his ears rubbed, but he was a cat's cat.  We are keeping his ashes on the mantle next to Uhura's.  The household is a lot quieter with him gone, but it's certainly richer for his having been there.