Pets | Funny about Money

Of Weather, Dogs, Budgets, Stir-Craziness, and Taxes

July 29, 2016July 29, 2016 by funny

At 5:15 a.m., it’s 93 degrees on the back porch, and overcast. Was going to jump in the pool but then heard thunder and thought better of it. Turned around, came inside, fed the dogs, thought better of the better thought, ran outside, and plunged in the pool, thunder rumbling through the skies.

Leapt out, grabbed the hose, watered the withering plants, and flew back inside.

Now at least my hair is wet and braided, which will provide some convenient personal air conditioning for the next several hours.

Damn near 95 degrees at 5 in the morning means no exercise for the dogs. Cassie, with her thick coat and lion-like mane, has never been able to withstand that kind of heat for more than half a mile. Ruby probably could, but it might not be great for her. The prospect doesn’t thrill the human, either.

It means I don’t get any exercise, either. Could do some physical therapy exercises and yoga, but that ain’t the same as two brisk miles. Oh well.

Y’know, in all the years I’ve fed my dogs Real Food, I’ve never kept track of how long a batch of cooked meat, veggies, and starch lasts. Probably scared: I don’t wanna know how much this is costing me!!

However, we now have a hint. On July 15, I made a Costco run that included a giant package of frozen dog veggies ($6.49), a lifetime supply of chicken thighs ($12.64), and a massive amount of pork ($35.55), for a total of $54.68

Divided the pork into three packages. ONE of those lasted 10 days, when cooked with a sweet potato (on hand) and a few handsful of frozen veggies. So that means the $36 worth of pork alone, in theory, should last the dogs for a month.

It’s almost the end of the month. I’ve cooked 1/3 of the pork, half of the chicken, about half the frozen veggies, and embellished the results with about one cup of rice and two sweet potatoes. We have 1½ Tupperware-type containers of chicken-based dog food left — more than enough to last past the 31st. The first chicken cooking will cover 10 days. AND we have the other half of the packaged chicken thighs, still in the freezer: another 10 days! The remaining pork will make another 20 days’ worth of dog food.

30 days: pork
20 days: chicken
50 days: total days covered by Costco run

That means $55 and change is feeding two dogs for almost two months.

Holy sh!t. I had no idea feeding them actual, real food was that economical.

I’ve been adding a few bites of kibble (Whole Foods’ house brand) to both dogs’ meals, because I’ve not been confident that my dog food recipe sufficed for a puppy. (And of course Cassie will not put up with Ruby getting anything that she doesn’t get.) But now that Ruby is over two years old, she can go wholly on real food without risk. I think we’ll switch her over to 100% real food, which will cut the length of time the supply lasts by about 50%. But that should be tolerable. Especially since we won’t be buying expensive kibble.

Cassie is now 10 years old, and she’s incredibly healthy. You would never know she’s advanced in age. Her teeth are good. The terrible dog breath she had when she came to the Funny Farm is gone. No aches and pains seem to bother her. She races around the backyard with Ruby — and believe me, despite the short legs (or maybe because of them) a corgi goes like a rocket. Her coat is gorgeous. She eats well. And when the weather is tolerable, she can walk a mile at a fast clip with no problem.

My son’s dog, who gets nothing but the very best high-end kibble, has red swollen gums and bad breath. He obviously needs an expensive dental job. My son can’t afford that and so continues in denial. And (btw) that dog gets the doggywobbles every time he turns around. A vet claims this is because of a congenital intestinal problem, but that speculation has never been proven; one wonders if the issue would resolve in the absence of commercial dog food.

Cassie and Ruby eat everything in sight, and they never, ever get sick. Doggy diarrhea is rarely seen in these parts, unless one of them finds something weird to eat outdoors.

I first discovered this dawg wellness phenomenon when I started cooking Real Food for the German shepherd and the greyhound, during the late Chinese melamine fiasco. The difference in Anna, the decrepit German shepherd, was startling. She had been so crippled with age that she could barely haul herself off the floor. Shortly, she was chasing her ball around the backyard again, something she hadn’t been able to do in many months.

The budget is looking pretty good despite some small overruns.

Last month, on the first, I bought a $50 Costco cash card, solely to buy gas. The first tank of gas lasted until just a few days ago. I now have a full tank, which will probably last until the middle of next month — especially if I opt next month’s junket to Avondale. So apparently in my dotage, it’s costing nothing like $50 a month to buy gas.

As we’ve seen, I indulged myself with a gardening purchase (the composter), which would have led to a budget overrun without the other small surprises. But that may pay for itself this winter when I use it on the proposed vegetable pots.

One reason the budget is so tight at this time of year is that the utility bills are astronomical in this heat. In the winter, though, they’ll drop to almost nothing: both electric and water will fall into pocket change category.

The reason I don’t allow the power company to prorate the electric bill is that I like having a lot of extra budgetary play in the winter, when I want to buy Christmas presents and have to pony up money for church donations. I wouldn’t feel I could afford those things if I had to pay for part of the summer bills all year round. Plus it’s a good idea to be eminently aware of how much air conditioning actually costs you at any given time…

We’re basically heat-bound here. I feel like I’ve been in jail all summer. Choir is out during the summertime. I suppose I could go to Church on Sundays and socialize a bit…but organized religion per se is not really my thing. I commune best with the Ineffable in nature, not under a roof. 😉

With recreational shopping out (permanently, it seems), hiking out because of the heat, and the cultural scene in estivation, there’s really nothing to do here but read the news on the computer and work. Hence: a 400-page book in draft, in a matter of days. Amazingly enough.

Thank God for the swimming pool. This summer was the first in two years that I’ve been allowed to get in the water. It’s a life-saver.

Wish it had some kind of shade screen over the top, so I could swim in the heat of the day. When I was young, dumb, and didn’t give a damn, I used to drop into the pool several times a day, just to keep cool. Now…not so much. Too scared about melanoma.

Adventures in Medical Science do that to you: create fear.

The weather this summer has been a real bear, and it looks like this is going to be a permanent thing. My son figures the Valley will remain livable until the mid-2020s, which is about when we’ll run out of the water the Central Arizona Project has been quietly pumping back into the aquifer. But water or no, if this kind of heat continues, the low desert really will become uninhabitable.

He’s talking about moving to Oregon, if his employer will allow him to work from home — as apparently is in the cards. I don’t know if I could afford to live there…the taxes, I fear, are too high.

SmartAsset.com calls Oregon “moderately friendly” for retirees. It’s a little hard to tell, though, because they don’t seem to take sales taxes into consideration. In Arizona, sales taxes are around 10% — depends on the municipality, because some cities tax food and some don’t. Property taxes are apparently higher because the cost of real estate is higher, and Oregon has no sales tax. It does have an estate tax, starting at $1 million — that presumably would not apply when I croak over. Or I could just start maxing out transfers of assets to my son before I die.

If you believe SmartAsset, it looks like Oregon is comparable to Arizona. In Oregon, you supposedly will pay $1,598 on a $40,000 income. In Arizona, the figure is $480. Huh…how do you suppose they have the chutzpah to put those two in the same category? They can’t possibly be figuring the sales taxes in there. Sales tax amounts to hundreds and hundreds of dollars a year here!

Must say that the prospect of moving across the country doesn’t appeal. I’d have to sell all my furniture, since the cost of a moving van is pretty prohibitive. Once there, I’d have to refurnish with Ikea junk or spend months searching for replacements in estate sales. Ugh! Not much fun, either way.

Heh… In the “very tax friendly” category, SmartAsset lists Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Nevada, South Dakota, Wyoming. :-0 Talk about “out of the frying pan, into the fire!” None of those are places I would jump to live in.

Hm. Ordinary unexceptional “tax friendly”:

Colorado is considered tax-friendly: that’s interesting. I could stand to live in Colorado. None of the others appeal, though, with the possible exception of Idaho and maybe New Hampshire.

Colorado: $1,852 taxes on 40 grand. Idaho: $837. New Hampshire: $0.

Zero? What are they smoking over there at SmartAssets??

Ah: here’s the explanation: SmartAssets’ figures don’t include property taxes. Well, hell. Then their calculations mean exactly nothing. It’s the property taxes that do you in when you’re retired!

Hilarious.

All these gingery calculations you see in the media about where to retire on a shoestring are pretty silly. None of them compare apples with oranges or take all the factors into consideration. For example: how much is it going to cost you to fly back and forth to visit grandchildren? If a state doesn’t have property taxes, how is it paying for its infrastructure? You can be sure the Tooth Fairy isn’t covering the cost of roads and schools…

So, let’s move to Mexico or Colombia, hm?

Those schemes fail to mention that Medicare doesn’t cover you when you’re out of the country. And as sad as America’s healthcare system is looking, our doctors and hospitals are still a lot better than what you’ll find in most of those “affordable” countries. Assuming you survive, say, a stroke or a heart attack, how much will it cost to fly you to the US for quality care? And how much more will your care cost you after medical attention has been delayed for the period it takes you to get transportation back to Medicare Heaven?

Welp. I don’t know if Arizona will remain livable for the remainder of my assigned years. If it doesn’t, I suppose Oregon or Colorado would suffice.

Wherever my son goes…I probably would follow him. Oregon, though: that would be good.

Why Your Insurer Asks about Your Dog…

June 28, 2016 by funny

Why does a prospective insurer ask you if you have a dog and, if so, what kind of dog it is before issuing you a homeowner’s policy?

Well, the obvious answer is that some breeds have a reputation for biting — no matter how much you love pit bulls and other kinds of molossers, you can’t deny the statistics. Dogs bite: some 4.7 million times a year, leading 800,000 humans to seek medical attention, of whom 386,000 will need emergency treatment. A third of all homeowner’s liability claims result from dog bites, at an average cost per claim of $32,072. Every year, the insurance industry shells out over a billion dollars for dog-bite claims.

Figures related to breeds can be confusing — even the placid golden retriever has been responsible for dog-bite fatalities, although a 2000 CDC report showed pit bulls and Rotweilers accounted for 67 percent of fatal attacks.

My son, a claims adjustor for a major US insurance company, once remarked that the most serious injuries insurers cover result from dog bites.

So, on the surface, it sure looks like dogs are a menace on four ~~wheels~~ feet, eh?

Well. Yeah. However…

The problem, IMHO, is not so much the ferocious dog as the stupid human. What we’re looking at here are statistics largely related to human stupidity.

• Dogs allowed to roam loose or walk off the lead
• Dogs that have been abused
• Energetic working dogs cooped up in someone’s house or apartment
• Dogs that have never been adequately trained
• Dogs not given enough to do to work off energy
• Dogs left unattended outside in a yard, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month
• Dogs bred to fight
• Dogs bred as “guard dogs”
• Dogs whose innate aggressive tendencies have been encouraged
• Children not taught how to behave around dogs
• Adults who don’t know how to behave around dogs
• Kids allowed to tease dogs
• People who get drunk or stoned around dogs, putting themselves at risk
• Humans who overall lack good sense

Oh yeah — and the occasional hapless burglar.

If you look at media reports — many of which admittedly are dramatized by way of selling papers and baiting clicks — you see that the vast majority of dog attacks involve some degree of human stupidity.

• Leaving a tiny infant accessible to a large dog.
• Keeping pit bulls with young children in the house
• Having six dogs around an 87-year-old woman
• Keeping a male pit bull, a female pit bull in heat(!), and a 12-year-old in the same house
• Keeping dogs (time after time after time!) that had previously demonstrated aggression
• Chaining dogs outside in yards
• Letting dogs run loose around a neighborhood or in rural areas
• Allowing small children to approach food-defensive dogs while they’re eating(!!)…one could add “keeping food-defensive dogs at all after a child is born”
• Attempting to feed strange dogs
• Keeping six pit bulls(!) around the house
• Mother sleeps through attack that kills 7-day-old infant sleeping next to her in the bed (what do we drink? what do we snort? what do we shoot up?)
• Mother sleeps through dachshund chewing both legs off an infant (ditto)
• Keeping nine dogs with a three-month-old baby
• Starving dogs until they attack to obtain food
• Leaving six-month-old baby alone with large molosser-type dog
• Bringing nine-day-old infant into home with five molosser dogs
• Interfering in a dog fight involving pit bulls, armed with a garden rake
• Allowing six-year-old to try to ride a pit bull like a horse

Oh god. You could go on and on.

A tiny minority of these reports involve people who are just going about their business and dogs that have never been a problem and apparently never were abused. But about 99.9 percent of the cases entail some kind of stupid behavior on the part of the humans involved.

This brings us to the stupid human incident of the day. No: to the two stupid human incidents of the week.

Stupid Human Incident the First

At this time of year, the corgis and I have to leave the house by 5 a.m. if we’re to get in anything like a dog-and-human walk. So a couple of days ago, we’re out the door shortly after the crack of dawn. About a half-mile from the house, as we enter Richistan (the upscale part of the ‘hood to the east of us), we come upon our neighbor Josie and her daughter with their three Chihuahuaoid dogs.

Josie has the hilarious custom of rolling one of the Chihuahuas around in a baby carriage, on the theory that even though the critter is too old to walk very far, it loves to go out and get fresh air. This is very cute, and as you can guess, Josie is imbued with a degree of charm.

Okay, so Josie y su hija, also a grown woman and, to boot, a law-school graduate, are standing around schmoozing with a neighborhood fixture, a sweet and lonely old guy who amuses himself by driving around and feeding the local cats. If you pass by while he’s out of his car sprinkling cat food on the pavement, he’ll waylay you and feed a treat or two to your dog.

One of the Chihuahuaoids is a mean little bastard. It threatens to attack anyone who comes within ankle-biting distance.

So when I see this clutch up ahead, I veer out into the street to get around them, it being a little early in the morning to enjoy breaking up a dogfight.

Josie & company take the opportunity to slip away.

Naturally, Old Guy pursues me and my dogs.

He asks if it’s OK to give the dogs a treat. I say, “I wish you wouldn’t.”

This is far from the first time I’ve asked this guy NOT to give Milkbones to my dogs.

Why am I such a Scrooge that I don’t want some random guy giving my dogs treats? Let us count the ways…

They are corgis. Looking at a Milkbone causes them to put on a pound. Possibly a pound per glance.
They have their own treats. Load them up with Milkbone calories, and when I reward them with their treats for this or that achievement they get too many extra calories.
Ruby is all over the guy, jumping up on him and totally out of control. I do not want her to get the idea that strangers will give her treats for jumping on them.
My dog is not your teddy bear.

Ignoring “I wish you wouldn’t,” the old guy grabs a Milkbone out of his car, snaps it in two uneven pieces and tosses them to the two dogs. Ruby grabs the largest piece, which is about 2/3 of a Milkbone made for a Great Dane.

Forthwith, she starts to choke.

Actually, she’s having a reverse-sneezing attack, a common spasmodic condition among corgis. A mild incident looks like this:

When it comes on her with this thing in her mouth, unsurprisingly the crud goes down the wrong way.

Now she’s choking and horking and choking and horking and choking and horking and choking and horking. I realize I’m going to have to get her to the emergency vet — at five in the morning! — but we’re a half-mile from my house and that facility recently moved. I’ll have get her back to the house, look up the veterinary, figure out where the place is, and drive her down there. Meanwhile, my dog is choking to death.

Cassie’s lead tied to a belt loop, I snatch her up off the pavement and start hiking home as fast as I can go. About the time we get to the point where I think I simply can NOT carry her another step, she finally stops heaving.

This has gone on for a good ten or fifteen minutes. But once the spasms stop, she recovers well enough to walk the rest of the way home.

You realize: not only have I told this guy repeatedly not to give my dogs Milkbones, but this is not the first time such an episode has happened! Is there a reason the guy can’t remember that she had a spasmodic attack the last time he handed her a “treat” over my objections?

See what I mean about stupid humans?

So I figure that as long as it’s hot, Cassie and Ruby and I will have to stay out of our favorite part of the ‘hood, since this guy haunts at sunrise.

Stupid Human Incident the Second

So this morning we head south and end up in the park.

I know better than to enter the park at dawn because a LOT of people let their dogs run off the leash there. There’s the constant risk of a dog fight, because these folks don’t seem to understand that the leash laws protect their dogs and them as well as their fellow citizens who pay taxes for the privilege of using the park, too.

It looks clear, though, so I figure we can stroll through one quarter of the park, then come back around and loop through the ‘hood to the south of the Funny Farm, easily racking up a mile or so on the way home.

But naturally, pretty quick along comes an old guy with an aged black lab wandering around loose. Very nice dog: it’s too old and too mellow to argue.

So I’m standing there chatting with him, when along come some dog-walking friends from the Richistan Trail with their strange and funny-looking mutt.

This adorable dog, which is about the size of the lab, is the cutest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. It has champagne-colored curly fur all over and weird blond eyes. I mean, its eyes are a sort of pale transparent tan, very light.

Before they rescued it from the Humane Society, it had been abused. It’s afraid of people, especially men. They’ve been socializing this dog over the past year or 18 months, and the critter has come a long way.

One thing they do to try to convince the dog that it should be happy is take it to the park and let it run around on about a 50-foot lead. The dog loves this, and the interaction it has with other people and their dogs seems to be calming its neuroses considerably.

The old guy wanders off with his lab, and we’re standing there chatting. The ill-trained Ruby wants nothing more than to jump all over this dog (as she jumps all over everyone and everything). Dog is afraid of other dogs, too, but has pretty well overcome this fear and seems to recognize she’s playing.

As I’m about to go on my way, the dog takes off for a romp, dragging this long leash behind. He’s run around me and now wrapped my feet like a Maypole.

And when he shoots off across the park, he yanks me off the feet before his humans can stop him.

I manage to avoid falling on the ground, which has just been irrigated and is your basic pool of mud. This is good, because I have osteoporosis in one hip and would likely have broken that hip if I’d hit the dirt.

What I get instead is a rope burn around both ankles:

leash burn — Doesn’t look like much, but lemme tellya: THAT HURT!

Is this their stupidity, my stupidity? Yeah: combined human stupidity. They should’ve had their dog at heel and not let it race around until they were clear of other people and dogs. I should have been paying attention instead of yakking with my friends and letting Ruby bounce around.

Note to self: Stay out of the park, stupid!

It doesn’t leave a lot of places to walk in the neighborhood: Can’t go through Richistan. Can’t go anywhere near Conduit of Blight, which thanks to the train construction is now awash in bums and creeps. That leaves an area to the north of us, not the greatest part of the ‘hood, and a small area to the south. Boring.

About the only way to get any variety, then, as long as it’s hot, will be to put the dogs in the car and drive to the canal or take them to the Murphy Bridle Path along north Central. And between you & me, stuffing the dogs in the car, hauling them someplace, getting them out, stuffing them back in the car, and hauling them home is counterproductive. It’s enough hassle to discourage me from taking them out at all.

Hence, this rant.

Can anything constructive come of a rant? How about this…

How to Avoid Dog Bites

• Never leave an infant or small child sleeping where a dog can reach it.

Close the bedroom door if the dog is at large in the house with you while the child is napping. Crate the dog or tie it by a leash to a doorknob if you intend to nap while the child sleeps.

• Never allow a child to tease a dog.

• Never let a child to try to ride a dog.

• Never leave a child unattended with a dog, in the yard, in a vehicle, or in the house.

• Teach your children to stay away from dogs that are eating.

• Crate-train your dog so that it can be kept out of harm’s way and gets a break from the kiddies. Train your children to leave the dog alone when it’s enjoying some private time in its crate.

• Teach your child always to ask permission before petting a dog.

• Teach your child not to wave her or his arms around when near a dog (dogs perceive this as a threat).

• Teach your child to avoid unknown dogs and leave the vicinity if they see a loose dog.

• Don’t allow your child to drag a small dog around, pick it up, or play “dress-up” with a dog.

• Do not keep a pack of dogs in a household with children.

• Never let your dog run loose. Anywhere. No, not even in dog parks. Especially not in dog parks.

• Do not chain your dog outside in the yard.

• Do not idiotically train your dog to be aggressive, and never keep a dog that has shown aggression toward humans.

Mmmm! Love human...for dinner... — Mmmm! Love human…for dinner…

• Unless you’re an experienced trainer and you have exceptionally good sense, avoid molosser breeds. Many or most of these dogs have been bred as protection, fighting, or herding dogs; they are large, powerful, and potentially dangerous. Some are unpredictable and have a short fuse.

• When you reach the age of decrepitude — say, over the age of about 60 — choose a pet dog that is not big enough or strong enough to overwhelm you. Bear in mind that you will not get any stronger as you get older, and that most large dogs can easily overpower an elderly or disabled person: not necessarily in an aggressive mode. Accidents happen…don’t invite any that are worse than they need to be.

• Do not drink when you have a dog around.

• Do not use drugs when you have a dog around.

• Try to use common sense, forhevinsake. If you don’t have any, see if you can buy some! Maybe you can get an inoculation or something. Arghhh!

Image: Cane Corso, By Kumarrrr – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1688119

How to Freak Out a Dog

May 18, 2016 by funny

🙂 The secret: Birds. Birds raiding a feeder are total Dog Freak-Out.

It’s a San Diego morning: cool, slightly overcast, occasionally misting a little sprinkle. Absolutely gorgeous. After a mile’s walk with the poochies, I felt inspired to refill the hummingbird and the real bird feeders.

Couple of weeks ago (or more?), I dumped the rest of some old bird seed in the two plastic feeders that lurk around here, habitually disused. With two of them filled and the cat barriers holding off the neighbor’s predator, we were rushed with flying bug-eaters of all kinds: finches and sparrows and thrashers and towhees and mockingbirds and doves of three varieties and a number of things that I have no idea what they are.

It was really quite lovely. So I decided I should do that more often. Having used up the bird food and sunk under another tsunami of work, that plan was forgotten until yesterday, when I serendipitously stumbled upon some bags of bird food at the Walmart. Hallelujah!

So the birds are now fed and I’m in the Leafy Bower enjoying a very pretty morning, and the dogs are going BATSH!T chasing the birds.

Cassie, who will eat anything (it’s a corgi trait), is trying to hoover up seeds that drop when they spook the birds into flight.

Doesn’t take much to amuse a human, does it?

Yesterday I started working on the client’s book layout at 5 a.m. Flew to a doctor’s appointment at 10, running late and carrying page proofs for the book I’m supposed to be indexing. Couldn’t find a place to park at the Mayo; parked illegally and raced up three flights of stairs, only to be told they’d moved to a new building. Ran down the way to the new building, raced up another three flights of stairs.

Got there so late that there was exactly zero wait time, putting the eefus on the plan to get at least a little mark-up done on the textual study of umpty-umpteen centuries of Semiramis narratives. Oh god.

Back to the Funny Farm; back to work on the book layout. At a little after 7 p.m., sent word to the client that page proofs had been ordered. Bolted down some food and then went back to work on the Semiramis index.

And that is what I should be doing right now. But I’m not. Because I’m beat. And it’s totally too nice a day to be mining salt.

How would I like to be fooling with my next novel idea? Let me count the ways.

Over at Plain & Simple Press, I posted another excerpt from a work-in-progress in the Fire-Rider series.

PLEASE Keep Your Cat Indoors!

March 12, 2016March 11, 2016 by funny

Why do people insist on letting their cats roam loose?

Okay, I know the answer, which I’ll tell you in a minute.

But first let me inveigh against this habit. Obviously, if you let your cat roam around the neighborhood, you don’t care about wildlife and you don’t care about your neighbors. But presumably you like your cat.

Letting your pet out to roam as an “outside cat” is a form of animal abuse. It puts the cat at risk of injury, disease, and violent, painful death. In short, it’s criminal.

Outdoor cats run a good chance of being run over by cars, attacked and killed by dogs and coyotes, infected with feline leukemia and a variety of unpleasant parasites, infected with rabies (cats are now the main carriers of rabies to humans in this country), attacked and injured by other cats, carried off by hawks or barn owls, bitten by raccoons, accidentally poisoned by lapping up leaked antifreeze or rat poison, and deliberately poisoned, trapped, or shot by angry neighbors.

If you loved your cat, why would you put it at that kind of risk?

The answer, of course, is that you would not. Therefore, it’s only reasonable to assume you hate your cat (and your neighbors, and the wildlife for a mile in all directions), and you are deliberately abusing the cat.

Oh, no, you protest. You love your cat! It just won’t stay inside! It rips out the window screens and claws the paint off the doors trying to escape. To that, say I, bullshit. Who’s the human here?

Let me tell you the real reason cat owners let their cats roam around outdoors: They don’t want to clean up after the beloved kitty any more than you or I want to clean up after it. They let their cats outside so that the animals will deposit their urine and feces somewhere else. Admit it: if you do this, it’s because you get about half as much mess to have to clean out of the cat box (and your carpets, and the comforter on your bed, and the cushions on your sofa) as you do when you keep the animal indoors.

Before you fly into a Cat Lover Frenzy, hear me out. I have had a lot of cats in my life, beginning in infancy. Where we lived in Arabia, no dogs were allowed. Dogs would get into it with the jackals that routinely came into camp at night, and the jackals carried rabies. At that time, rabies vaccination for dogs was uncommon; in Arabia it was unavailable. So dogs were banned in camp.

But cats were not. Everyone had cats. At one point, a couple picked up a breeding pair of Siamese cats while they were on short leave in Paris. Before long, the place was overrun with Siamese cats.

Let me think…we had Buttons (an unneutered male that whose chronic war wounds were always in one of three states: open and raw, scabbed, or scarred); Whitey, a (surprise!) white female cat, which had kittens; her funny little white kitten that had a gray spot on its head, right between his ears, exactly in the shape of a pair of horns; Sheba, a seal-point Siamese; a gorgeous long-haired blue-point Siamese; one of his offpsring, a mentally retarded Siamese cat that we named Caslan, said to be the Arabic word for “stupid.” In San Francisco, another Siamese cat (and its fleas). In Arizona, my mother’s Siamese cat. Then after I married, I ended up with my mother’s Burmese cat and its six kittens, whose chronic diarrhea was more than she could deal with. Then a lilac-point Siamese and a chocolate-point Siamese and two of the lilac-point’s kittens, all four at once. Then the famous Boozer and not long afterward two of her kittens. That would be…what? Yes.

Twenty-two cats, not counting the ones my mother had when I was too little to remember them.

The cats we had in Arabia were allowed to roam the camp. In the 1950s, that was just what people did. There was little traffic, and it was thought that cats would run from jackals, jumping up on cars or climbing trees to get out of reach. But when we came back to the states and bootlegged a cat into our apartment, my mother grasped the idea that cats are better off kept indoors.

And so for years, she and I both had indoor cats.

The last Siamese Tribe of Four, however, gave the lie to the idea that cats will always use a cat box.

Not necessarily so.

And when a cat learns that it can go outside the box, it will go outside the box. Nothing you can do will change the animal’s mind. And no, these cats did not have urinary tract infections and they did not have bladder stones and yes I did keep their damn cat boxes meticulously clean.

They peed and shat all over the house. Their favorite shithouse was the dining-room. They ruined about 2500 square feet of incredibly expensive, ultra-luxurious carpet, the like of which I had never seen before and have never seen since.

The people who sold us the house had fixed it up, planning to live in it permanently, just before the neighborhood’s property values exploded in a frenzy of gentrification. We got the house because its value had shot up so high they simply could not resist collecting. But because they’d figured to be there for a long time, they had installed top-of-the-line everything, including those amazing carpets.

The cats destroyed them.

Before my son was born, I found a new home for all four cats (believe it or not, a doting human took them all in, the poor wretch), had all the stinky carpeting torn out, and replaced it with outrageously expensive wool Karastan that couldn’t even hold a candle to the magnificent carpet the cats had ruined.

Soooo…..

The next cats were outside cats. That would be Boozer and her two kittens.

Why? Because I never wanted to clean up a mess like that again!

For that matter, I hoped never to have to clean and disinfect another cat box again. Although I did. Two of them. About every other day.

Boozer and Blue, her gorgeous male kitten, lived to a ripe old age. But Kit-Tan was poisoned by antifreeze, quite possibly left out by a neighbor who expressed his dislike of these loose beasts, who used the raised garden in his front entryway as their toilet. She suffered hideously. My husband — by then my ex-husband — could not bring himself to put her down. So she suffered hideously for weeks and then for months, becoming incontinent (among other things) and destroying yet another houseful of carpeting.

So I can say from experience that turning a cat out to roam the neighborhood is an act of unadulterated selfishness. No matter how much lip service you give to the joys of the cat’s picturesquely predatory nature, the truth is you do it because you don’t want to deal with a cat’s filth.

And it’s a blatant act of cruelty.

Some people are so besotted with their cats, though, that they simply do not and probably can not register the amount of devastation the animals inflict, the filth and disease they spread, the distress they cause to neighbors, and — most amazingly — the degree of risk a roaming cat faces.

My dear neighbor, lovingly known by her father as “Other Daughter,” is something of a cat lady. She’s the reason my yard’s walls are capped with carpet tack strips — which works pretty well, BTW, to keep the cats out of the yard. She walks around the ’hood a lot, and she sees things. She was horribly distressed when she found a cat run over in the alley. She was heartbroken when she found a cat in front of her house evidently killed by a coyote — she packed it sweetly in a little box and left it out for the dead animal patrol to pick up.

And yet…and yet… It does not register with her that her cats could get run over, her cats could get eaten by a coyote, her cats are a damn nuisance to the neighbors.

The only reasonable conclusion is that she doesn’t want it to register.

Friday Frolics

March 4, 2016 by funny

As it were…if one has an odd idea of frolicking… 😀

Awaken at 4 a.m. Retrieve the computer, open the new Chinese grad student client’s thesis. Mm HMM. As suspected (since she wept that her dissertation director called her English “appalling”…just think of what that one would think of my Chinese!), yes, as suspected, it’s a tangle of Chinglish. But not too awful: the organization is good, the research is adequate, the methodology…uhm, remains to be seen.

By 6:30 I’m done with Chapter 1 and have sent the references off to my honored associate editor, who very likely will assign them to her underlings. Earned about 30 bucks an hour, so didn’t feel bad about that at-tall.

Figure out that the way to keep the MacBook’s external hard drive from repeatedly falling on the tile floor is to Scotch-tape the USB cable into the drive’s connection. Add this decorative touch to Apple’s fine styling.

Feed the dogs, throw in a load of laundry, walk the dogs, eat not much breakfast, read the newsoid.

Toss a particularly ugly shirt, a recent Costco buy, into the car and head down to the Ghetto Costco outlet, where as usual they take the thing back and return my money, no questions asked. Fill the Dog Chariot’s tank with gas preparatory to tomorrow’s endless jaunt to the far, far, far, FAR west side (approx. half-way to Yuma). Yesh: filled the tank for under twenty dollah!!!!!

In living memory, it has cost $40 to fill that thing when it’s 3/4 empty. Dance to spring!

Next: Over to AJ’s, a local gourmet market. Get the avocado. Get the frozen peas. Do not get the MSG.

MSG, you ask? What would one want with such a discredited, politically incorrect product?

{sigh} Those of you who are not dog owners should avert your eyes. Those of you who live with dogs no doubt are familiar with a particularly annoying doggy quirk, coprophagia. Ruby has, of recent, decided to phage copros. But — this one’s weird — not her own. Cassie’s.

Ugh. Humans hate that.

You can discourage this revolting little habit by adding a light sprinkle of MSG to the dog’s food. Of course, I’ll have to add it to Cassie’s, since Ruby’s not interested in her own product. At least, not so far.

When metabolized in the canine gut, MSG taints the dog’s excreta with a flavor so ghastly that even a dog will not eat it! Works like a charm. Within two or three days, your dog will be convinced that this activity is not worth the effort. It’s a quick and easy way to break a dog of that particular irritant.

But damn. McCormick’s meat tenderizer no longer contains MSG. It’s salt and some other chemical, unrecognized. The store did not have any Accent.

Back home, order a little jar of Accent from Amazon. No shipping charge, now that I’m an Amazon Prime member. This is good, because the cost of shipping 4.7 ounces of the stuff probably would have cost more than the product itself.

More laundry into the washer. Water plants, water plants, water plants, water plants.

Dribble Round-Up on weeds running rampant in front yard and alley, having noticed while driving out that the yard is looking a little tacky. The neighbor’s behind me looks worse. And of course, Manny’s is a jungle, since they like to grow poppies in the gravel each spring. At least they grow their weeds on purpose.

Repair the paper towel holder that fell off the wall, out in the garage. Throw lunch on the grill. Scour pan left to soak in garage work sink.

Dine magnificently while reading New York Review of Books.

Grab Cassie, who has become extravagantly filthy, drag her into the bathroom, and drop her in the bathtub. Scrub dog, scrub dog, scrub dog, scrub dog, rinse dog, rinse dog, rinse dog, rinse dog, rinse dog, dry dog, dry dog, dry dog, dry dog…dog escapes.

Haul wet towels to garage, throw those in the washer with wet bluejeans.

A dog and her dirt... [Click on the iimage to enjoy its full, soggy splendor] — *A dog and her dirt… [Click on the image to enjoy its full, soggy splendor. Yes, the topsoil covering the bottom of the bathtub* is from the dog.]

Scrub bathtub. In the process of getting all-purpose cleanser out of the bathroom cupboard, tip over the bottle of toilet cleaner, which tumbles out onto the floor. I can’t get those things open without recourse to a wrench, so once I do manage to break into a bottle of the stuff, I just stick it back in the cabinet, open. Take that, Big Nanny!

Toilet cleaner squirts across the bathroom floor and slops onto bath mat.

Finish the job by squirting the rest of it into the terlet. Wash the caustic cleaner off the bathroom floor. Carry the bathroom rug, which was wet and hairy anyway, out to the garage to go in the washer next. Scrub toilet.

With hair dryer in hand, corner Cassie. Dry dog, dry dog, dry dog, dry dog, dry dog, dry dog…dog escapes.

Clean up kitchen. Hang clothes, load more laundry.

Dog is limping. If you wouldn’t put up such a fight, Dog, that wouldn’t happen. Place dry towel on bed, atop Dog Blanket. Place dog on bed. Place other dog on bed.

Ruby evicts Cassie from the Wet Dog Towel.

Move Ruby. Pick up Cassie and put her back on towel. Repel attack of The Look from Ruby.

Retrieve computer. Climb onto the sack with the dogs. Consider doing a little more work. Nothing very urgent is pending. One thing ought to be done today, right now. But the world will not end if it doesn’t get done today, right now. Read news. Play games at Washington Post site.

The Post‘s collection of online games, BTW, is primo. Check it out if you like benign time-wasters.

Who Said It: Candidate or Beauty Queen? is not to be missed, BTW.

Write this post. Realize it’s 7:00 p.m. Would like to go to sleep, but it’s too early. Besides, the washer’s still running.

Maybe I can get a little more marketing work in.

BUY THIS BOOK!

Duck-Duck: Is she back??

February 11, 2016 by funny

Policing the yard after returning from today’s early-morning bidness group meeting, what should I find at the bottom of the pool but unmistakable Duck spoor!

And lo! Floating on the surface was a suspiciously mallard-like feather…

Could Duck-Duck have relented? Could she have decided to come back, despite the trauma that drove her to abandon her (probably deceased) eggs last year?

If so, she’s much earlier than she was before. Last year she came around in April, probably too late under the best of circumstances to spawn a successful brood. When she flew off, terrorized by Other Daughter’s cat and by Ruby attacking the cat in a berserk frenzy, we were almost at the end of June: already too hot for ducklings to gestate, and soon to be too hot for survival at all.

But it’s only February now. Weather’s in the mid-80s, which I suppose could suggest romance in the Duckish mind. If she’s pregnant now or gets that way soon, she could lay a clutch of eggs that just might produce ducklings this year. A twenty-eight-day gestation would put hatching sometime in April.

The effing cat has not been back in the yard all year, the damn thing. In my insanity, I topped all the backyard walls with strips of carpet tacks. Once his feet were punctured a few times, “Milo,” the goddamn thing, lost interest in jumping over the wall. Also I think Ruby’s batshit lunge at him may have given him second thoughts about visiting.

Since then, though, Other Daughter has picked up at least one other cat — maybe two. It’s hard to tell: there are a lot of feral cats around here, and you never know who’s feeding the beasts. But of late I haven’t seen any dratted cats in the backyard.

Quacking, however, is likely to draw their attention. I’m afraid Duck-Duck (not being a fool) is incapable of regarding Ruby the Corgi as some kind of duck ally. While the easiest way to get rid of the damn cat is to sic a dog on it, alas, it’s also a very fast way to get rid of nesting ducks.