Post 260: cat etiquette

Cats regard it as bad manners to stare at them. They get into a hissy fit, snarl, protest your rudeness, turn their heads away from your gaze, then high tail it when stared at.

I try to mind my cat manners with Andy and Dougy. It promotes harmony in the home. Besides, unlike the boys when one upsets the other by “staring rudely”, I can’t run fast enough to catch the miscreant! (Or run away if I’m staring rudely…..)

That said, I felt a presence a moment ago. I turned to my left, and there was Andy, stretched out on my old computer chair, staring rudely at me. How dare he!

“What’s up, kittycat? Forget your manners?” I asked my boy. I put a double rudeness stare back on Andy just in case he missed my point. He blinked, turned his head away.

“Woo hoo!” I proclaimed moments before I did my staring rudely victory dance. “I beat you at your own game, buster. Stare at me, and I’ll stare at you till our eyeballs dry out. Yeah!” (I did a fist pump to emphasize the victory.)

Andy has no sense of humor and an over-sensitive nature. The staring rudely contest was fun while he did it, but not so when I returned the rude down: He got up and ran into the kitchen.

“I’m just a kitty…” I thought I heard him say. “Meany!”

Now I feel bad. I’ll go out to the kitchen and give him some Greenies, the boys’ favorite treat! (Dougy must have read my mind. He just walked over and gave me a tail brush, his way of letting me know he expects some sort of service. Or treat!)

Post 259: bedside manner

Dougy often stops by my bed when I sit on the side in the morning. He’ll scratch on the box spring (bad boy!), stretch, give me a look that tells me he wants to hop on my bed but is waiting for my OK.

The sign he’s waits for is a pat-pat-pat on the mattress, my hand signal to him to jump up and join me. Once he has the sign and jumps, he always lands with a thump and one “meow”!

I then pat, stroke, scratch, and talk with him. He gets all excited and walks back and forth, tail up, making contact with my hand and side till I start a nose rub, something both boys really, really like! (Persians have a difficult time reaching that spot after all!)

Today, during the back-and-forth business, I thought I heard something. I leaned closer to Dougy, and realized all this time he’d been purring!

Purring! PURRING!

That may not be a big deal to most people, but I am totally deaf in my right ear because of an infection when I had shingles in 2007. My left ear “works” but ringing in it sometimes cancels out subtle sounds…like Dougy’s soft purr. Yet there he was, rumbling like a freight train this morning, probably every time he “asks” to hop on my bed and I play our little ritual out, just not loud enough for me to realize he reacted to the ritual with a purr.

Today, though, I finally caught a slight hint of a sound, leaned closer to Dougy, and heard that soothing, happy sound of a happy cat!

Happy cat, happy me! If you don’t hear, then hear, it is a miracle, a joy I can’t describe!

Post 258: paparazzi problems

Andy and Dougy know one thing: That black rectangular thing pops a bright light when it’s pointed at you. Dougy gave me a cutey pie look today. I brought out the camera, and he did what the boys do every time: He closed his eyes at the exact moment the flash went off! So much for cute! Doug 12 18 2013

Post 257: Christmas in times of Bach

How Christmas is celebrated varies from century to century. I personally wish I’d been alive when J.S. Bach brightened the season with his Christmas Oratorio. You may not have time to listen to the whole video, but I suspect you will be blessed if you settle away from the hustle and bustle of our commercialized Santa-driven Christmas for a time when Christ not only was in Christmas, His birth was the whole reason for celebration.

When I was hospitalized for Wegener’s granulomatosis in December 2003- January 2004, I missed the Christmas season. In a still hospital room at University Hospital in Denver, Colorado, where I was shut off from news, music, most contact with others but hospital staff, Bach’s final glorious exaltation of the new-born Christ Child played over and over in my mind, a brassy, diamond-like brilliance of contrapuntal expression of J.S. Bach’s intent to bring glory only to God through his work.

This music gave me hope I was healing, that I was going to live, that there was reason to live!

My hope, wish, and prayer for you is that you have a blessed Christmas. Though I don’t speak much about faith or try to proselytize others, one thing Christianity brought to this world was some of the greatest works of art and music ever created. In some of those works, you can find a pure expression of God’s grace and benevolence.

Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) truly stands among those who, though music, created the best of all these expressions of faith. In his Christmas Oratorio, we also prepare to stand in front of the cross, where Christ died for our sins. It isn’t all Santa and electronic gizmos, afterall. There is a greater meaning to the season. It is a celebration, of course, but it is the beginning of a spiritual road to Easter and the Resurrection. (Sorry to get a little “preachy”!)

Post 256: birthday boy!

Perhaps not many care, but today is Ludwig von Beethoven‘s 243rd birthday! I’m celebrating by spending my day listening to classical music. Not all his, though.

If you were 243 years old today, you’d be a grump, too! [Getty Images]

Post 255: worn out…leave me alone today

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Post 254: One year after Newtown…December 14, 2013

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Twenty-seven words. The same number as the number of innocent people who died in Newtown, Connecticut, one year ago today. Twenty children. Six school staff who tried to protect those children. The mother of a mentally unstable gunman. Twenty-seven lives snuffed out in a shooting spree.

The gunman whose 2nd Amendment rights and weak gun control laws and enforcement, society’s poor handling of people in need of psychiatric help allowed him to become the agent of murder and mayhem, then took his own life. Arguably, the world is better off for his suicide death, a 28th death by the same hand, that awful day. But we’ll never learn why he did what he did.

The nation was in shock, and the President took steps to establish a bi-partisan committee to develop a legislative response, the start of a solution to these all-too-common mass murders. Congress failed to pass the recommended changes. The families affected by the murder of their first graders were visibly stunned, saddened, appalled, amazed at the irresponsibility of Congress. Something needed to be done. Anything!

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/12/11/opinion/sandy-hook/sandy-hook-blog480.jpg

How many children need die before the nation’s legislators take effective, serious action? It’s a question that remains unanswered.

As awful as Newtown was and is, children continued to die in America in between Newtown and now, if not in multiple shootings in a few incidents: Does one child dead from gunshot stand as a “better” situation than 20 at once? Ask the mother of the one dead child. The father. The siblings. The grandparents. The neighbors. America, people! Ask America! How many children, people have to die before the gun culture and Congress recognize every death is a loss in incalculable possibilities, is unnecessary, has nothing to do with a “well-regulated militia” or a “secure free state”?

Want to see the results of nothing? “Mother Jones” makes it easy for you by bringing these photos and stories together in one article. View the photos and read the stories of 192 children 12 and under who died by gunshot (murder, accidental) in the year since Newtown, and ask yourself, again: How many children need die before the nation’s legislators take effective, serious action?:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/children-killed-guns-after-newtown-portraits

December 15, 1791: In a bitter irony, tomorrow is the 222nd anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Of those 10 rights codified, the 2nd Amendment rights continue to be problematic in ways the people who wrote those murderous words couldn’t possibly have imagined. Of course, back then “well-regulated militias” of one didn’t go on murder sprees and kill 20 first graders, six school administrators, and their own mother.

Post 253: “I’d rather sleep!”

Sometimes the human gets to interrupt the kitty’s sleep…! Dougy the Persian cat’d rather sleep, but the human keeps trying to wake him up. All goes well untill the human brings out the ultimate kitty distraction. It nearly works.

Sleep well, Dougy!

Post 252: …nur ein Traum

The test was easy for a math test! I couldn’t believe it! All of the questions were basic math, something even I could work out in my head and get correct answers.

“I’m aceing this one,” I thought. I guess the class finally convinced our teacher we were as dense as he always claimed!

Page two, however, was problematic. Whatever the reason, this fill-in-the-blank section, text with missing words we were expected to supply, dealt with Eastern European and Central Asian politics, geography, ethnic components, and other minutiae math students generally don’t discuss in class. What the heck was the teacher thinking?

“Oh well,” I thought, “I’m reasonably good on this sort of question, but it might take a bit too much time to complete just now.”

I’ve taken enough tests in my life that I know a good strategy is to answer all the easy questions on the whole test first, then go back to work on the harder ones. If they pose a problem, skip them and go on to the next easier questions, and so on till the test is completed as best I can with as many questions answered (correctly for the most part!) as I can.

2011-01-01 Andy in window and on desk 004

Usually, using this plan, I have lots of extra time to deal with those 10% or so really tough questions, and the extra time spent almost always results in a decent guess or two, all questions answered, and a chance of actually getting a decent passing mark. I almost always got decent grades as a student, so the plan has some validity! It greatly reduces that “Oh my god! I have no idea what this is!” panic all students taking tests know deep in their loosening bowels!

Well, I answered a few questions on the Eastern European and Central Asian section, but took a glance at the third page: German!!! Yes, though I am a dreadful German student, I speak enough to be intelligible to children and dogs. All I had to do on page three was select the correct English word out of four choices to match the German word in the left hand column. There were a 100 words at least, and I felt really great to find I had no problem matching English words to German! Whew! As I would know to answer when I got to the probability questions (of which there surely would be some), in this instance my chances of success by randomly guessing would be p = .25. But I actually knew every word!

Fellow students around me were making the sounds of suffering, little pathetic whines of dismay and doom. Apparently they’d hit the Eastern European and Central Asian part or skipped ahead to the German page, or, worse, looked even further ahead in this test with dozens of pages: Astronomy, Geology, Current Events, Farsi, Religions of the World You’ve Never Heard Of, Causes of Plate Tectonics, Dogs of the World in Alphabetical Order and Spelled Correctly, and more! This was one comprehensive bitch of a test!

“Teacher,” one brave and frustrated soul finally piped up, “this is a math class, so why are we being tested in all these other topics we never even studied?”

“Meow,” said the teacher. I felt a tap on my chest. There was Andy to the rescue. *Dieser Test war nur ein Traum!

* [This test was only a dream!]

Post 251: a lesson for all people, all times

Today, one nation’s first black President spoke movingly, brilliantly in a memorial service for another nation’s first black President.

This is the Barack Obama who inspired me in 2008, and again in 2012.

For those who saw this speech through the distorting lens of hatred, of another ideology, you missed the speech of the decade, a speech I think will come to be compared favorably with another speech, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. I feel sorry for you.

This speech not only honored Nelson Mandela, it told you a lot about our President’s heart, his motivations, what inspired him to place himself in a position to suffer the vile slanders and unjustified vitriol of the haters of the American extreme right, his raison d’être.

Well done, Mr. President!