Watershed Moment in Jen History.

I haven't had a very good week.  Over the long weekend, we got news that Joan's half-brother Pete, who went AWOL about 40 years ago, had died.  He and Joan weren't in touch (that being evident by the fact that the local police had to call our local police, who came to our door and left a detective's phone number.  It's never good news when that happens.)  Joan is basically his sole living relative, so it fell to her, which is to say, us, to make the final arrangements.  He owned so little and had so few plans that it wasn't much to do, actually.  He's a veteran, so he'll be buried in the veteran's cemetery near where he lived, which doesn't cost anything, fortunately.  (Just paid for a roof, a new transmission and a water heater--can somebody tell these things not to all hit in the same month?).  His nice landlady is cleaning out his apartment and giving most of his possessions to Goodwill.  There won't be a funeral service but if there's any money in his accounts, we'll give in his name to Stand Down if they take donations, or the Wounded Warrior Project if they don't.

So, I mean, it's not been insurmountable or anything.  Just kind of sucky.  And Joan is okay.  They didn't have any kind of relationship, really, except when they were kids, and that was a long time ago.  Sometimes I think I'm sadder than Joan is.  I mean, the guy wasn't a prince or anything, obviously, and we're not rich or anything, obviously, but if we'd known about his living conditions and the state of his health, we probably could have done something to help.  And I'm bummed I never got to meet him.  Okay, I never got to meet Bette Davis, either, and somehow I've survived all these years.  But, anyway, I would have liked to meet him.

This may or may not have any relation to what happened this morning.  I was bumbling around the kitchen, making coffee and my usual breakfast (banana, peanut butter, graham cracker; paradise) when something moved in the sink.  Things do occasionally move without the aid of human hands around here; we have three cats and possibly a poltergeist, though I prefer to just believe in the three cats.  I ignored it because I was busy slicing the banana.  Then it moved again, and I could no longer ignore it because its feelers were wiggling near the top of the counter.  Joan had just gone back to bed for another half-hour of sleep; we had a series of thunderstorms roll through here last night, and I don't think either of us got much decent shut-eye.  So, really, really not wanting to, I approached the sink, looking for a weapon.

Freeze picture.

Digression:  Let it be known that I, Jen, am afraid of those big palmetto bugs.  Or cockroaches or water beetles or whatever the hell they are.  The ones that are three inches long and can fly.  I'm not inserting a graphic here because a graphic would be too graphic.  They terrify me.  They make me scream like a six-year-old girl.  We have a rule in this house: If there's wildlife running around in here and it has six legs, Joan handles it.  If it has eight legs, I handle it.  (Once there was a snake in here.  Imagine the consternation.  I mean, snakes got no legs.  Who's responsible?  Well, the answer was me, but you can see how this might have caused some serious division-of-labor issues.)  Part of that is, of course, because the degree of revulsion I have for this particular critter won't let me do the right thing, the Buddhist thing, which is to say, catch it and throw it outside.  I can do this with eight-legged critters, unless they're running really fast, because that particular revulsion isn't there.  I also did it with the no-legged thing.  But six-legged things?  It does not work.  My only thought when confronted with one of those horrible creatures is to get it the hell away from me as fast as possible, which practically always involves stomping on it.

So what does Joan do, when I outsource my fear and loathing of six-leggers to her? Well, she stomps on them.  Really, it's a Hobson's choice.  Get stomped on or get stomped on.  And I'm not sure that outsourcing stomping is correct, in a Buddhist-y sort of way, but I'm so terrified of these critters that I. Don't. Care.  Well, I didn't think I cared, anyway.  (It's not correct.  First Precept:  "I will do my best not to kill, or to let anybody else kill."  Kinda hard to fit stomping-uponst in there anywhere.)

Roll picture.  I approach the sink.  The six-legger in question, which is indeed one of my nemeses, wiggles its feelers at me.  I have a second to wonder if I'm going to throw up.  Then I reach for my weapon--a pitcher--and as I do, a strange thought occurs to me: I'm going to kill this living being because I'm afraid of it.


Which kind of stopped me dead in my tracks.

Yeah.  That was basically it.  It wasn't harming me, harming Joan, harming the cats (they'll stare at it with riveted intent, but they won't kill it; predator fail).  It was just sitting there being disgusting.  If being disgusting were a capital crime--no, I won't get into that now.  But let's just say the body count would be high.

Standoff.  It looks at me.  I look at it.  It wiggles its feelers some more.  I don't have feelers to wiggle.  But I do have an eight-ounce glass next to the sink.  I grab it and plant it squarely on top of the critter, which runs around the circumference of the glass a few times, then stops, confused.

I let out a long breath.  Now that it's contained and not going anywhere, like, say, up my nightgown, I feel a lot better.  Of course there's still the matter of what to do with it.  Getting it out of the house as quickly as possible comes to mind.  If it were an eight-legger, I'd slide a thick piece of paper or an envelope under the glass, pick them both up, and carry them out.  But I can't do that with this creepy thing.  What if it gets a leg around the edge of the paper and, you know, touches me?

Finally I take the gas bill and slide it under the glass.  Then I lift glass and gas bill and put them both on top of a can of cat food.  Then I lift glass, gas bill and cat food and take them out the back door.  I disassemble the whole thing on the patio and back off, keeping a careful eye on the critter. It makes a few laps in the glass, then eventually notices somebody's opened the door.  It takes off down a crack in the wood and that's the last I see of it.

I will, of course, be asking Joan to go get the glass.  I'm not going back out there unescorted.  I'm pretty sure I've already paid the gas bill, but even if I haven't, it can sit there and rot for all of me.  And the can of cat food?  Already opened and fed to the feral cats that eat on my porch.

I'd like to think I'm not going to kill another living being just because I'm afraid of it, or annoyed by it, or otherwise disturbed, but I'm sure I'll at least swat a mosquito at some point.  (Is there a self-defense exception?)  And I'll probably still yell for Joan if a six-legger invades the house again.

Then again, maybe I won't.

Sebastian, Nicholas and the Talking Heads

I'm not what you'd call superstitious, exactly, but I do sometimes see things happen that seem to link together with other things that happen. Which is a roundabout way of saying I'm superstitious. Kind of. Let's put it this way: If a black cat crossed my path, I wouldn't turn around, but I'd probably start humming that song by the Stray Cats. Which is why I shouldn't gamble. Well, one of the reasons. The other reason is the Fifth Precept, under which I promised to do my best to avoid alcohol, mood-altering substances of various kinds, and, uh, gambling. Pretty explicitly, in point of fact. Well, Buddha said "horse-racing," but Buddha didn't know they were going to build Las Vegas and frankly, I think he'd be a little appalled if he had.

I dunno if you live in a state where this goes on, but around here everybody was nuts for the Mega Millions Lottery, for which the pot got up to a ridiculous half-billion dollars last week. I don't know what one would do with a half-billion dollars--buy Namibia? Feed India for a year?--but nobody I know seemed to be able to resist trying to find out. We even had an "office pool" at the ol' law firm, into which $5 bills were flung. I got around the "no gambling" prohibition by bringing in Joan's $5 bills, but really, is karma dumb enough to be fooled by such a cheap trick? I think not. Obviously we didn't win, and I think part of why we didn't win was that I joined in. I mean, not only was I gambling, but I was knowingly and deliberately gambling, in violation of the prohibition, and using a cheap excuse (come on, it wasn't Joan's money any more than it was my money. It all comes from the same place) to boot. That's GOT to be bad karma.

Yes, I know. The other reason we didn't win was that our odds were half a billion to whatever number of tickets we bought. But, like I said, I'm a wee bit superstitious. Which was why getting introduced to someone's cats yesterday became an adventure in not getting completely startled. I was over picking up a couple of cat traps that belong to Kittico, and the nice man who'd been using them to trap, neuter and release some of the scads of stray cats in his neighborhood invited me in. Two big fluffy Siamesels came up to greet me and sniff fingers. "JoAnn," said the man (I don't know why he thinks my name is JoAnn, but I'd decided not to argue with him), "meet Sebastian and Nicholas."

For the uninitiated, Nicholas is the name of one of the bad guys in my novel. San Sebastian is the city where it all happens. That this guy would have cats named Sebastian and Nicholas is like the weirdest coincidence ever. The only thing that would be weirder is if his cats were named Nicholas and Roland, and then I can promise you I would have bolted out the front door and never come back, not even for the cat traps. (Roland being the other bad guy. And a lot worse than Nicholas. To say nothing of fluffier.)

When it comes to the stupid book, things just seem to happen in a weird coincidental sense. Yesterday morning, before I met Nicholas and Sebastian, "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads came on the radio. Which isn't significant, either, except that I quote it all the way through the book. Whenever that song comes on the radio, something good tends to happen. What with the Talking Heads and Sebastian and Nicholas, pardon me if I was expecting maybe some good news from a literary agent or other all day yesterday.

I didn't get any. But hey, the week is still young. And I sent another query letter this morning. Hi, Ms. Lyon, I'm cute, quiet, housebroken, amenable to the editing process and I like the Talking Heads. Into the blue again, into the silent water, under the rocks and stones (there is water underground...)

Talk Thursday: The Aminal Life

Total k swum in July: 8.15 (25.8 to go!)

Well, kids, my last feral cat is gone. Her name was Frost (is Frost?) and she was a calico. She lived in the shed next to the house and showed up twice a day for feeds, and while she wouldn't come anywhere near me, she'd sometimes act like she was going to get close enough to sniff my hand. Anyway, I haven't seen her since the beginning of June, and because she was so regular, I have to think she's probably really gone this time. Gone to where? Don't know. Fatal case of truck or stray dog or coyote, I expect, or maybe an illness that she couldn't fight off. Another time she disappeared for about a week and came back dragging a back foot. It seemed to get better by itself (which was a good thing, since good luck catching her, taking her to a vet, and then catching her again to get the cast removed). But I think I'd have heard from her by now if I was going to hear from her.

So my backyard menagerie, which once numbered twelve (count them, twelve) feral cats, is down to zero. Unless you count the orange guy, who lives a few houses away and comes by for

extra meals and some loving-on. There's also a couple of grey cats that happen by every now and again, but I'm completely without any squirrel patrols, and the big ugly scary bugs that more or less never came into the house are, uh, coming into the house. (And the internal cats are completely useless, by the way; they come over and stare at the bugs with great interest, but don't do a darn thing to kill them. Cats not being Buddhists, they could kill with impunity; me, I have to yell, "JOAN!!" and try to ignore the fact that Joan stomps on them, rather than catch them and take them outside.) Yesterday I bought twenty pounds of cat food and couldn't figure out why I was doing it. Then, this morning, when I found the bin of food on its side halfway across the deck with the lid partially unscrewed, I remembered: The raccoons.

Y'all might remember last summer's bout with the cute furry and dangerous little masked

denizens of the aminal kingdom. They're attracted by the cat food, of course, and since I wouldn't stop feeding the external cats just to get rid of the raccoons, they had a nice source of food all summer long. I hadn't seen any in quite a while, though the last encounter was particularly cute; this one hid behind the food bin, stuck a paw out and scooped food out of the food bowl, pulling it behind the food bin to chow down. As if he was invisible back there.

Anyway, I thought they'd moved on to greener pastures. Perhaps it's the absence of Frost, but The Raccoons Are Back, People. And they're polluting the waterer by washing cat food. So I took the seemingly necessary step of putting out a small dish of water next to the food bowl. Maybe they'd wash in that, and leave the waterer alone. As it is, I've become the local watering hole for half the block and I'm filling the waterer every two or three days. When Joan saw this, she said, "Jen, I get that you don't want to chase away the raccoons, but is it really necessary to put out a finger bowl? I mean, what's next? Cloth napkins and a sherbet appetizer?"

My dad called me last night. He and Mom are visiting relatives in North Dakota, and my aunt and uncle had been hearing strange chirruping noises from the basement at night. My uncle finally went down there with a flashlight and a baseball bat and found not a prowler with a speech impediment but four baby raccoons. He and my dad caught them one by one and relocated them outside, under the porch. When my dad tried to walk away from the last one, it crawled out and followed him. Yep, Dad had become Mom. Luckily, the Real Mom showed up and put a stop to this nonsense in a hurry. So you might say this ridiculous fondness for pesky wildlife runs in the family.

(By the way, my aunt and uncle are selling the house in which I spent the only really happy part of my formative years. I'd kill to keep it in the family. Can anybody lend me $1.8 million and a speedboat until my first runaway bestseller? Anybody? Hello?)

Sunday Scorekeeping: Raccoon 2, Jen 0

If you follow me on Twitter (@jenstrikesagain), you already know that I'm having an interesting adventure with that most cute and furry of all backyard pests, the North American raccoon (Procyon lotor). This probably came about because of the feral cats. When we moved into this house some six years ago, we found that a colony of wild cats (about five or six, though I forget the exact number) had already claimed the alley, portions of the yard, the underdeck and the roof of the shed. Being rather fond of cats, even cats that hated me and hissed when I got too close, I started feeding them and became the neighborhood crazy cat lady. However, I also trapped them all, got them to a vet, got them shots, and got them spayed and neutered (I think I scooped up a few of the local non-ferals while I was at it, but thus far none of the neighbors have complained or, in truth, have probably even noticed).

How do I afford this, you ask. Well, if you live in Dallas, there's a couple of organizations that can help you out. One is Feral Friends Community Cat Alliance, and another is Kittico. Both organizations have the same basic idea; feral cats will never be house cats, they don't like people, they have rotten lives on the street getting hit by cars, eaten by dogs, starving and getting diseases, and the best thing we can do for them is make sure they don't make any feral kittens while giving them sufficient food and a safe place to sleep. Makes them better neighbors, too; if not in heat, they won't howl, and if fed, they won't dig through trash. Both organizations work for free, or nearly. In fact the only time I had to actually pay big bucks for neutering a cat was when I scooped up a mom cat, already pregnant, and had to take her to the McKinney SPCA because everybody was full up. That cost me a hundred bucks, not to mention a day's pay. I figure I've singlehandedly prevented about a thousand kittens by now, so it was worth it.

Anyway, my little colony of cats went up as high as twelve at one point, but street cat life is hard and I'm now down to one. I call her Frost. Two or three hangers-on come over from local houses for extra meals once in a while, but for the most part it's me and Frost. Frost always has a dish of food outside and a bowl of water, and it's this that has attracted other backyardigans. This very hot summer I ran through water like, well, water; I think every squirrel in the neighborhood, to say nothing of birds, small rodents and other cats, were drinking from the bowl. And now, just recently, we have this raccoon.

No, not that one; that's just a representative photo. But she does look a little like that. I first suspected I might have a problem when I found the external food bin turned on its side and, uh, opened. The bin opens like a submarine hatch and is hard for me to manage on cold mornings. I couldn't figure out how in hell a cat (or, say, an opossum) could do that with just paws. Course, if you have opposable thumbs, less of a problem, right? Guess what has opposable thumbs. Yeah. See above.

The next day, I found the water fountain knocked over on its side, the water gone, and the water reservoir on the other side of the lawn. Also odd behavior for a cat or an opossum but quite logical for a raccoon, which likes to wash its opposable thumbs before it eats. I don't know why, they just do. I am not a student of raccoon behavior.

So I called Tracy, my time-traveling neo-craftsperson animal trainer friend and champion closet-door opener, and laid out the evidence. She agreed that I probably had a raccoon, and should try to trap it because it might be rabid. Rabies is bad in North Texas this year. I have a trap, so I took it out and baited it with bread soaked in agave nectar. (The correct recipe is marshmallows, but I didn't have any marshmallows. Excuse me for living.) Set the trap, went to bed, waited. The next morning I opened the door and found the trap on its side, the door open, all the bread gone, and the raccoon nowhere to be found. I called Tracy to report this and she said, "Oh, definitely a raccoon. Better luck next time."

Trouble is, I wasn't sure there'd be a next time. If Madame Raccoon could defeat a Havaheart trap, she was pretty smart. Hard to know what I'd come up with next time. Besides, I asked Tracy what to do if I caught her (for some reason that hadn't yet occurred to me) and she said, "You'd call Animal Control and they'd come get her." And then what? "Rabies is really bad this season," she repeated, emphasizing the words really and bad. Getting the hint, I asked if there was any way around the whole Aminal Control solution. She said, "Well, you could take her somewhere else and release her, like a public park or something. But don't get caught. It's illegal." Nice. But it beats killing her, which, you gotta admit, is kind of un-Buddhist-y.

Yesterday, Joan and I went to the State Fair of Texas, probably our first visit of many. Last night about 10:30, when we finally got home, I carefully opened the back door and turned on a flashlight to check out the feral cats' food bowl. Whenever I have to go out there at night I break out the flashlight; there's all manner of creepy crawlies known to hang around the food bowl, and they freak me right the hell out. The last thing I want to do is step on one. Instead of creepy crawlies in the bowl, though, I got a full-face shot of one very startled raccoon. "Oh my gosh!" I exclaimed to this fuzzy critter that doesn't, as far as I know, speak English. "Hi!"

In response, she retreated a way, though not all the way down the porch. This is good. Raccoon wary of human means raccoon probably not rabid. Then Frost, my sole surviving feral, came bounding up the porch for her evening meal. When she saw the raccoon, she hissed and took a swat at it. Raccoon immediately backed up another couple of feet. Very good. Raccoon wary of cats means she knows her place in the universe. And another hint that she's probably not rabid.

I filled the bowl, then called Joan in to check out the raccoon, which had waited patiently under the table for Frost to finish her meal before she ventured in to check out the leftovers. This morning Joan and I had a Discussion about the raccoon. The Discussion pretty much finalized that we're not going to try to trap her again. Much as they're not exactly welcome visitors, this particular one is not getting into the trash (why bother, there's plenty of cat food!), not rabid and in general not bothering anybody. I'm not sure what we'll do if Madame Raccoon shows up next spring with a litter of raccoonlets, but I guess we'll cross that frozen wasteland covered with ice when we come to it. (That's a Texas winter, in case you were wondering.)

The Fundamental Interconnectedness of Everything

Playing on the iPod: David Blonski and Synchestra: "Wind Dance" (their best ever)
Meters swum today: 1600

I had another spooky moment at the pool today. Luckily I didn't gasp in delight and swallow a great big ol' mouthful of water. In fact I was already out of the pool and putting stuff away in my cute little red mesh baggie thing that conveniently holds two fins, two hand paddles, goggles, ear plugs, shampoo and soap, and can be yours for only $11.95 at SwimOutlet.

But I digress. I was standing there, right, and this guy came up to me and said, "You inspired me today, doing butterfly on that stroke swim. So I did some too." "Oh good," I said, having no clue what to say. "I'm glad." Blink. Blink. I mean, this guy, I've seen him swim before, he's very good, and I wouldn't have thought he would need li'l ol' me to inspire him to do anything. Plus, I wasn't exactly trying to inspire anybody. I just like butterfly. It's violent and noisy. I've always had a soft spot for stuff that meets that description.

This just goes to show something or other. You never know who might be watchin'. You also never know, do you, how your actions might affect other people. Like the butterfly that flaps his wings in Thailand and causes Hurricane Katrina. Or the butterfly that Jen does at the pool which causes...seriously, do you know who you might have affected today? That lady you held the train door for? Maybe if she hadn't caught that train she would have, I dunno, been late for work, lost her job, her house, turned to drugs and ended up shooting six people in a robbery. One of whom was your cousin Bob, whom, if he hadn't died in the hypothetical robbery, might have perfected his technique at making slow-burning smoke-free fossil fuel substitutes out of falling leaves, thereby solving the world's energy crisis and making billions of yard apes delerious with joy. Douglas Adams pondered these possibilities quite a bit in his masterpieces, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (solve the whole crime, find the whole person, etc.) Dirk, in particular, maintained that any time you have a problem, anyone you encounter will say something that will bear in some way upon the problem, so that simply by talking to enough people, you will arrive at your solution. He also held that the best way to handle getting lost was to find a car that looked like it knew where it was going and follow it. You might not end up where you wanted to go, but you might end up somewhere you need to be.

All of which is particularly relevant because I killed a cat yesterday. Well, caused it to be killed. Volunteer for a cat related charity long enough and you'll meet dozens of little old ladies with more cats than sense. One of them called to say that one of the feral cats she's been feeding had been hit by a car and was limping around on three legs. Right away, I'm positive that the right thing to do here would be to put the cat to sleep. Feral cats cannot survive with three legs, or with three good legs and one in a cast. And they're wild animals. They're not gonna put up with being caught and hauled in for follow up appointments to have stitches removed. She said she'd talked to the SPCA and that they'd come and get it but she was afraid they'd put it to sleep. I told her I didn't really have any other options for her but I'd come take a look.

Well, that was a mistake. This cat hadn't just been hit by a car, he'd been run over. He was hopping around with the mangled back leg pulled up against his body. He smelled bad, was scrawny and wasn't taking care of his fur. She got all teary-eyed when I mentioned putting him to sleep ("Look, he's hopping around! He wants to live!") and so I finally said I'd take him to our clinic. The clinic only spays and neuters; it doesn't really treat. It does, however, have a vet who will see the cat for free, or the next thing to free. So I went to the clinic and wheedled them into seeing the cat, and they told me to come back that evening and pick him up. Or his empty carrier, whichever was left.

Guess what, it was the empty carrier. I wasn't surprised at all. Not only did the cat have a "shattered" back leg, he had internal damage to his intestines and liver (hence the smell) and wasn't digesting any food (hence the scrawny) even though he'd been eating. Also, he was FIV positive - not a big deal for a house cat but a certain death sentence for a feral. If he had it, some of the other cats in that nabe probably did, too. Anybody who wasn't already vaccinated needed to be, and sooner, not later.

So I had to take the empty carrier back and tell the old lady this. She was not happy, as I suppose you can imagine, but she took it pretty well, I guess. She made me take ten dollars cash for gas money and said she'd tell her neighbors about the FIV thing. Will she ? I dunno. But, if I hadn't gone over there MUCH against my better judgment, if I hadn't taken this cat to the clinic, if it hadn't been tested...you see what I mean? You just never know who might be watchin'.

Sucked losing the cat, though. I never get used to that.