Meow means “I love you”

After reading A Dove Story on Bossy’s blog, I felt inspired to tell the following sad, desperate and true tale of love, longing and loss.  A tale I call  “Cats” — the off off off off off off Broadway Version.

Meet Jag.  Jag is a studly cat.  A cat with a certain swagger to his step and a gleam in his eye.  He’s the bad boy, the one you just don’t bring home to mother.  Sure to be the father of many a neighborhood stray, his spawn is too numerous to count and all carry his powerful He-Cat genes.  If he could speak English, he’d sound a bit like Antonio Banderas.  However, come to think of it, Antonio Banderas doesn’t really speak English, now does he?  Alas, it matters not… Jag is a love stud, meant to roam freely, romancing the ladies and being the envy of other male cats.

Jag, however, lives inside.  He arrived at our house on Christmas Eve, and was supposed to stay only the night.  He is still here.  Mainly because no one would claim him, and I, being the sap that I am had the audacity to name him.  Once they are named they are yours.  He is not fixed (but will be shortly) and outside of his nightly “events” is quite well behaved.  His “events” would be entertaining if they weren’t staged at 3 a.m. 

What are these events, you ask?  Well, Jag is a love stud, and the lady cats know it.  They gather on our front porch to sing songs of love, lust and catnip to our front window.  Inside, Jag is listening and composing his own song of frustration and love unattained.  Thus begins the bad broadway musical version of “Cats” in our front room.  There is singing, then some dancing, then more singing then there is the sad, forlorn screaming that marks the apex of the drama. 

That all was bad.  And ever so loud.  But not nearly as shocking as “The Tunnel of Love” that I found behind the couch.  It appears that in desperation of his lady-flock leaving him, Jag decided that he could tunnel through the wall to the outside to cavort with his admirers.  I envision him spending hours clawing at the drywall in a futile attempt to share his seed with the world.  I envision his lady friends breaking off nails as they attempted to dig through the stucco on the outside of the wall.  It’s like a bad prison escape movie.  All for love.  Or lust.  Or just plain cat-insanity.

The “heat” season appears to have disappeared for the moment and our house is once again quiet at night.  The musical extravaganzas have gone dark.  The wall has been patched and repainted and the cat is scheduled for some snipping in the near future.  But I still see the gleam of unrequited love in the eyes of my “love-stud” and I wonder how many hearts he’s broken along the way.

P.S.  Why didn’t I just put him outside if he wanted to go so badly, you wonder?  Because once a cat comes into my house they remain inside cats.  No cat goes outside here, too many bad things (coyotes, diseases, fights, cars). 

Ahhh… the cool crispness of Autumn in the air…

It’s autumn, which is my favorite time of year.  Or at least, it used to be.  I am a babe of the midwest where autumn means cooler (sometimes downright cold!) weather, brightly colored leaves, cider, and the smell of burning leaves on a cool evening.  Since I moved to Phoenix in 1992, I have not returned to my roots for autumn — mainly because with the weather in the Great Lakes states it’s hard to determine what day autumn will fall on.  And yes, I said day singular for a reason.  And if you’ve ever lived there, you know what I’m talking about.

That being said, the remembrance of autumns past got me to reminiscing about other things… perhaps you’ve often had these same thoughts:

Wasn’t baseball supposed to be the SUMMER sport?  Why are they playing well into October?  Didn’t it used to end in September?  When did this change and why didn’t anyone inform me?

Candy corn.  Is it a vegetable or a candy?  Or is it both?????

If I buy a pumpkin now… will it last until Halloween?

Do the Cincinnati Bengals really love Halloween, or what?  Uniform colors people… uniform colors.

Is it possible that the chlorophyll that trees produce could actually be masking their true colors, and when autumn comes and the chlorophyll production stops, their true colors come out?   Okay, that really is true… go here to find out more.

Why do I LOVE cider but don’t love apple juice?

How many costumes can you think of that involve a winter coat and boots?  There are many but very few good ones… trust me — I remember many a Halloween that involved snow shovels.

If I buy my Halloween candy now, will it A) still be good at Halloween, or B) still even be around at Halloween?  After all, I am married to a serious sweet-tooth.

Why are there braille instructions on a drive-up ATM?  Okay… so it’s not really an autumn related question, but it’s been driving me crazy for years!

And so I leave you… pondering my musings, scratching your chin and cursing me for giving you a glimpse into my twisted mind.

Welcome to my world.  Muahahahahahahahahaha (that’s evil laughter for all of you who don’t read aloud to your computer monitor).

It’s the end of the world as we know it… and I don’t feel fine.

Phoenix has been in the news a lot lately, and I can’t say much of the news has been good.  Okay there’s the Diamondbacks making it into the playoffs, but other than that we aren’t exactly being bastions of society.  I’d say that the heat here finally melted people’s brains (and with it their common sense and human decency) but it’s cooling off and the mercury is actually dipping into the low 70s at night.  No, I think society as a whole is collapsing like a Jenga tower with one too many pieces taken out.  And Phoenix, sadly, seems to be right in the thick of the badness that is enveloping the American culture.

Case in point:  Today an elderly man was struck by a truck while waiting at a bus stop.  That’s awful, right?  No wait, it gets worse.  After the out-of-control truck struck and killed the man, the onlookers STOLE HIS GROCERIES!  Yes, that’s right, as the man lay dying the people around him didn’t attempt to help him, they took his eggs and milk and flour.  That is just sick.  Sick and twisted and makes me seriously doubt the idea that people are inherently good.  If the first thing that comes to someone’s mind when a person lay before you DYING is to steal their belongings, then maybe George Carlin is right when he says that humankind is just a disease that has taken over the earth.

Earlier this week, also in the lovely Mecca known as Phoenix, a woman held in custody after “causing a disturbance” at the Phoenix airport died after she somehow managed to strangle herself with her own handcuffs.  Wasn’t she supposed to be in custody?  Isn’t custody supposed to entail someone actually watching her?  I mean, when I was a teen and was babysitting people’s children, I had to watch them to ensure they didn’t light each other on fire or run with scissors or … I don’t know, STRANGLE THEMSELVES WITH HANDCUFFS!  I was a minor at that time and understood that if I was in charge, I needed to be responsible and watch the people I was entrusted with.  Why did that not happen with the Phoenix police?  I’m baffled first that someone can strangle themselves with their own handcuffs, and secondly that it would happen while they were in “custody”.

What has the world come to?  And what are we devolving into?