won't be worried long

One of my strongest childhood memories is of my mother relating a bit of family folklore to me. It concerned some great-great-relation of her father's side of the family, a stoically creepy bunch of Old Yankees from Maine's Androscoggin County. This particular relative worked in a lumber mill, and during the course of his duties got his arm stuck in the machinery. As his friends tried in vain to find the best way to extricate the ruined limb from the works, my laterally-thinking ancestor came up with an easy solution -- power up the machinery and let it take the limb off quickly and cleanly. So they did.

I can't help but think that lingering effects of my mother's story somehow figure into the following random, but characteristically "Andrew," autobiographical antidote.

I adopted Mia not too long after Zoe Blackfeet, my previous feline companion, wandered off and never returned. Mia had belonged to some neurotic yuppies from Winchester who had soured on the idea of pet ownership and dumped her off at the vet's office.

Unlike Zoe (or Budwina before her), Mia was not a personable cat. I don't know if it was from poor socialization or abuse experienced at the hands of her previous owners, or a simple matter of temperament. I've lived around cats my entire life; they're capricious creatures. Mia, though, wasn't so much aloof as sociopathic, and able to switch from snugglebunny to psycho-slasher with no warning whatsoever. (She also possessed the ability to shed her weight in long white fur on a daily basis.)

Even if she wasn't the nicest cat, I was still happy to have her around and living in a decent home.

On a lovely spring afternoon in 2002, I was in my bedroom reading a book when Mia hopped on the bed and stretched out beside me. I patted her. She purred. I scratched behind her ears. She viciously bit and scratched my left forearm, and refused to let go until my limb had been thoroughly flensed.

It hurt like hell, but cat scratches usually do, and this didn't appear that much worse than some of the previous feline-related injuries I had dealt with. I washed the arm with some soap and water and let nature do the rest. That the cuts seemed to be a long time in healing or there was a growing burning sensation in the arm didn't worry me a whole lot. Nor did the fact that over the course of the following week or so my forearm swelled up to near-Popeye proportions.

Maura, of course, was concerned, but it's her job to be. Besides, who is more familiar with my internal workings than I am? It wasn't until I had entered the second week following the incident that I was forced to acknowledge that something wasn't right. (Maura's mom was particularly persuasive with her worried stare and repeated use of "Jaysis.") While my co-workers and family (not Maura, because she understands me) chimed in with a loud chorus of "EMERGENCY ROOM," I decided to take matters into my own (swollen and healthy) hands.

Using a sterilized needle, I opened up the bite wounds that were the source of the infection and let the stream of pus drain out. Afterwards I soaked the arm in warm water and Epsom salt for an hour before slathering the area with anti-bacterial ointment and bandaging it up. It took about a week of such therapy before my arm started to resemble its old self (though I still have a few scars), thus proving that not only that am I too laid back for my own good, but that I can occasionally remedy the problems which arise from my complacency (in an extremely painful and disgusting way that could have been avoided with a glimmer of foresight).

Prince Buster - Pussy Cat Bite Me (from Wreck A Pum Pum, 1976) - Felis dentata ska.

Tom Jones - It Takes a Worried Man (from Along Came Jones, 1965; collected on Millennium Edition, 2000) - Devo's cover of this folk standard will always be the definitive version as far as I'm concerned, but Sir Tom's powerhouse vocals and that magnificent horn section are almost enough to make me reconsider my position.

Love and Rockets - No Big Deal (from Love and Rockets, 1989) - True, but a perfectly fine song, nonetheless.

my kitten is a dream

After the tragic death of poor Tessie the Tortoise last June, my wife and the kindhearted folks of the Woburn Feral Cat Coalition tracked down and captured the combined litter of Tessa's and her sidekick Pepi's kittens so that they could be socialized and placed in good homes. One of wee kits managed to dodge the feral kitten round-up and started tagging along with Pepi to our house during feeding times. We named the orange and white ball of fuzz "P.J." as in "pajamas," "Pepi Junior," or perhaps as a subconscious homage to the Intrepid Mariner (and Friend to Felines) of the South Coast.

Over the past few weeks, Maura and the folks from the WFCC have been staking out the feral cat feeding sation in our driveway in hopes of trapping the dynamic mother-and-child duo so that Pepi could be spayed and released and little "Peej" could be socialized for adoption before his feral ways could become too ingrained (though I've yet to encounter a feral in our colony that didn't become human-friendly after spending some time around the wife and I. Maura tells me I'm a "cat whisperer," whatever that means).

Pepi, however, has turned out to be as elusive as Robert Denby, and can smell a set-up a mile away even though the irresistable aroma of canned sardines. While Peej has inherited his mom's cunning ways, the WFCC was finally able to trap the little fellow last night while Maura was at a roller derby bout and I was at Target trying to recapture my lost youth via action figures. (What, the Kid Flash shirt didn't already clue you in that I'm a major fucking geek?)

Pepi, alas, still remains at large, and quite possibly pregnant again, but Peej is now chilling out in a little pen we set up for him to feel secure as we try and get him acclimated to humans and indoor life. I've been letting him curl up on my lap while I read so that he can take in his new, strange surroundings from a safe vantage point, and it's been working out pretty well so far (apart from the savaging my right hand took when I tried to clean off some of the dingleberries he brought with him). Our house's resident feline population isn't sure what to make of the new arrival yet, but we're hoping they adjust fairly soon so that we can let Peej roam free and discover the many comforts of housecatdom.

The First Gear - Leave My Kitten Alone (from the Pebbles, Vol. 6: The Roots of Mod LP, 1980) - Here's some fine tooth-and-claw freakbeat from the British Invasion period, possibly featuring (the sources aren't entirely in agreement) the guitar stylings of a young Jimmy Page.

the evidence is strong

Mr. Spooky, looking for paths to cross.
Luck. It can pushed, pressed, and tried. It can be prayed for, hoped against, and trusted upon.

Ultimately, when we speak of luck, both good and ill, what we're really discussing is an after-the-fact assessment of the laws of probability. They can no more be negotiated with (through ritual, fetish, or prayer) than any other impartial force of nature...

...despite what the desperate throng of supplicants who've made the pilgrimage to Keno Mart's lottery kiosk would otherwise believe. Hope may spring eternal, but that's only because the soil of self-delusion is perpertually fertile.

Lene Lovich - Lucky Number (from Stateless, 1978) - An examination of love as a binary system.

(I briefly considered posting "13 Is My Lucky Number" by L.A. shock-punks The Child Molesters, but there are some things even I won't stoop to.)

without feeling fine

It was around this time last year that a small, black and orange female long-haired cat began showing up each night to munch on any food left over by our usual gang of ferals.

I named her "Contessa" because she looked like a photo-negative of Princess, another of our frequent feline visitors. This was soon shortened to "Tessa," "Tess," and (my favorite pet name for her) "Tessie the Tortoise." She became a regular, showing up first by herself, then later in the company of an even smaller female calico (a sister, we think) we named "Pepi." Tess made a point of watching out for her companion. She stood guard over the driveway until her friend had her fill, then the pair would take off together to their hidden lair.

The wife and I have a pretty good track record when it comes to earning the trust of the local ferals (to the point where the wife refuses to call them such, preferring "outside" or "garage" cats), but Tess was a hard sell. She loved the idea of human companionship, but would retreat to a safe distance whenever an actual pat or scratch loomed. She did eventually come around, and in the past few weeks would do figure-eights around my legs as I stroked her fur. She never warmed to being picked up, though, and the one time I presumed to try, she tried to razor my face with her claws, then spent the rest of the afternoon trying to wash the stink of my touch from her fur.

Maura did managed to coax Tess and Pepi to take up residence in the garage for the winter. Beside the warmth and shelter the space provides, it was also supposed to give us an opportunity to keep tabs on the pair. The presence of the large, tough, and fiercely territorial neutered male Marmalade would keep away any would-be suitors until we got a chance to get the lasses seen to by the low-cost spay and neuter people. A reasonable plan, though it didn't stop Tess from getting knocked up by one of the oversexed toms who slipped through the population control net.

Tess, with Pepi in tow, left the garage's communal quarters for the privacy of their old hidden lair, though they still showed up at our house at mealtime. Once Tess gave birth to her litter, she and Pepi switched off between maternal duties, one keeping an eye on the kids while the other grabbed a bite to eat. (Poor Pepi got the shit end of the deal as Tess chose to linger and lounge on our patio for most of the day while Pepi was stuck babysitting.)

We'd been through a similar scenario with a mother cat and kits a few years previous. The ideal plan is to wait until the kittens have been weaned and start following the mother to the food station, then nab the lot of them. The mom gets spayed and released, and the kittens socialized for adoption. Based on information given to us by the local feral cat coalition person over the past couple weeks, Tess's kittens had started to wander and we'd begun to coordinate our plans accordingly.

Last night I got a call from the woman in charge of feral cat coalition. Some neighbors of ours had discovered a dead cat in their backyard and were too nervous about potential diseases to dispose of it, and she was wondering if we could take care of it for them. The corpse had dark fur and was located pretty close to where we figured that Tess and Pepi had their lair, which immediately had me imagining the worst. The last I'd seen Tess was Monday afternoon. She seemed well enough then, but she missed three mealtimes since.

It was late by the time Maura got home last night, so we had put off getting verification until this morning, hoping against hope that our fears would not be confirmed.

They were. In the mud of the neighbor's yard lay poor Tess's body. There weren't any signs of violence or other possible causes of death. Maura suspects she was poisoned (not intentionally) by something. I wonder if she wasn't clipped by a car (or knowing my neighborhood, some shithead speeding down the street in an SUV) and died trying to make it back to her hiding spot.

As rotten and unwelcome as the discovery was, at least we know what happened to her and aren't left to guess her whereabouts, and we were able to lay poor Tess to rest down by the back end of our yard.

A distressed and confused Pepi has since moved back into our garage, where hopefully she'll take up permanent residence. We've still got to round up Tess's litter, which will be trickier without having her around to vouch for us.

I knew on Monday that this was going to be one fuck of a week.

The Damned - I Just Can't Be Happy Today (from Machine Gun Etiquette, 1979) - No kidding.

and wider and brighter

I'm going to take a break from the class war today in order to pay tribute to Armagideon Time HQ's resident feline matriarchs...

...Little Baby Setzer (the gray and white tabby) and Nubby (the tuxedo cat). They started visiting our house in the summer of 2005 as part of a quartet of feral kitten sisters. When we brought the entire group to our vet to be fixed that following spring, we were informed that both Nubby and Setz had already been knocked up and that they were too far along to safely abort.

(Maura and I have since been told that was bullshit by someone from the local feral cat spay and neuter group, but what's done is done.)

We took the pregnant pair of felines into our home, and they gave birth -- two days apart from each other at the end of April 2006 -- to two litters of four kittens each. While she carried out her maternal responsibilities to the letter, Nubby wasn't enthusiastic about motherhood and let the more dedicated Setz pick up most of the slack.

Unlike their non-pregnant sisters (Money and Princess) who couldn't wait to get back outside after the post-spay observation period, Nubby and Setz embraced the housecat life style and never looked back. We ended up keeping four of their kittens (Jem, CooCoo, and Carmen from Nubby's brood and Witch Baby from Setz's), the other four (Tyra, Beezo, Ultima Morpho, and Gizmo) were placed in good homes.

The Cure - The Lovecats (from a 1983 single; collected on Staring at the Sea, 1986) - Staring at the Sea being one track and the Atlantic Ocean removed from Standing on a Beach which I own in LP format. It was the first Cure album I bought (at In Your Ear's Harvard Square location, along with a copy of PIL's Album, in the January of 1992), and I picked it up because I thought the girl I was dating (a very strange woman named Maura) was a big fan of the band.

Even though confused my past and present tenses -- she had been a big fan, but became disgusted with them after The Top -- the purchase was a mini-watershed moment that shook me loose of punk purist attitudes concerning music.

12 Days of Christmas - Day 8: meow bless us every meow

Another Thursday, another snowstorm. The commute this time out was a breeze, as everyone took the lessons of the previous Thursday to heart and stayed home -- an idea I could totally get behind, if it wasn't for my wife's troubling work ethic. As it was, we made better time getting home last night than we do on a snow-free evening commute, meaning that we got back to Mt. Misery with time to spare...time which was spent shoveling out the driveway and steps from the foot of snow dumped since we left yesterday morning, but still...

I was clearing off the path down to the backyard when Scraggly mysteriously appeared at my feet. Scraggly (a.k.a. Mr. Scraggles) is a solitary soul who belongs to none of the local feral cat colonies, but chooses to go it alone. He's a frequent enough visitor to our house, as he knows we can be relied upon to provide him with a heaping bowl of dry kibble, chicken, and Fancy Feast whenever he turns up.

Unfortunately he's a cagey bastard with an intuitive knowledge of when the folks who spay and neuter ferals make their rounds, though that has been mitigated by our success in getting the female feral population in our vicinity successfully spayed (but not before he put Nubby, our feral-turned-house cat, in the family way a couple of years ago. CooCoo the Marshmallow Ninja is a dead ringer for her deadbeat dad. Jem, not so much.)

I was surprised by Scraggly's appearance last night because he tends to lie low during bad weather, especially when the snow blocks the gap in the back fence he uses as an access route. (We try to keep it clear, but it's difficult to do during ongoing storms. The other day my wife had to walk around the other side of the block to guide one of our lost and crying feral colony members home.) He watched me shovel out the path while waiting for my wife to bring him out his dinner. Once he was finished filling his belly, he turned and headed off down the hillside, leaving behind a trail of footprints in the snow (but no pregnant female cats, thank Providence -- or rather "Thank the Woburn Feral Cat Coalition").

Stiff Little Fingers - White Christmas (Live) (from a 1980 single; collected on Punk Rock Christmas, 1995) - The first time I tried to buy this compilation (at the late, lamented Disc Diggers in Davis Square) I opened up the case in the Papa Gino's down the block only to discover that the disc inside was a Mariah Carey holiday single. A chunk of coal would have been preferable.

My first experience with SLF's material came from an import compliation of live punk tracks. I can't remember the name of the album, but it was pressed on what was intended to be multicolored vinyl, but instead looked like someone puked a mass of half-digested gummy bears on the turntable. While most of the material on the collection was of pretty lousy aesthetic and sound quality, the live version of "Alterative Ulster" included on it was nothing short of outstanding -- rip-snortin' agit-prop punk that held together beautifully in a live performance (a sad-rarity, I hate to say). I shortly afterward picked up the band's Hanx LP, which offered more in-concert punky goodness.

I eventually located a copy of Inflammable Material, the band's debut LP. I expected the world of it based on my previous experiences, but it sounded oddly flat to me; overly produced and studio laminated, possessing none of the jagged yet focused rawness that originally attracted me to SLF. It wasn't that the album wasn't good, but my frame of reference for hearing the songs was centered around the live renditions, and couldn't be budged.

So in honor of Irving Berlin, Mr. Scraggles, and the ghost of Punk-mases past, here's a bit of live holiday cheer for your seasonal enjoyment. It starts rather shambolically, but pays off in spades by the song's end.

Vacation: Day 5 - Fish don't fry in the kitchen

Well, we're movin' on up...

To the east side...

To a dee-luxe apartment in the sky...
The kids are loving their new digs. (Skillfully assembled by yours truly, I might add.) Their moms might have been homeless beggar cats, but now the whole extended family is living the domesticated high life.

Only in America, I tell you...

Squeeze - Cool for Cats (from Singles - 45's and Under, 1982) - Sadly, Catside Estates does not offer central air in its condominiums. The motion was taken up at the last tenants' association meeting, but the members got distracted by a stray moth flying by and nothing was ever resolved.

Ja'net Du Bois - Movin' on Up (Theme from The Jeffersons) (from Television's Greatest Hits, Vol. 3: 70's & 80's, 1990) - Sing it, Willona!

or could it all just be me

Last night, Maura was feeding the outdoor cat colony when she noticed that one of the cats, Sioux, had an ugly, suppurating puncture wound on his back. I cleaned it out as best I could with peroxide and a topical antibiotic, but because it was so deep and nasty looking we called the vet’s office to have it looked at. The appointment was at 9:30 this morning, so we figured that we’d take Sioux in, have the cut cleaned out and sutured, then drop the poor guy off at our house before heading into work. If only it turned out to be that simple.

The wound turned out to be a fight injury, which means that we’ll have to crate Sioux up for a minimum of forty-five days. (If we hadn’t gotten him vaccinated for rabies already, we’d have to quarantine him for six months. Being proactive and conscientious pays.) As the pus pocket and scar tissue formation were on the severe side, Sioux also required minor surgery to drain and clean the wound. Maura didn’t anticipate that it would come to that, so didn’t think twice about feeding Sioux this morning, which meant that the surgery had to be delayed until the early afternoon (and we weren’t sure until a half hour ago if we’d even be able to bring him home tonight).

Taking into account the commuting times to and from our jobs and the possibility we’d have to drop everything to pick up Sioux, our plans to at least clock half a day’s work were scrapped and we decided to get some things done around the house instead. In my case, it meant mowing the lawn, a task I happen to love immensely. It’s especially enjoyable when the mower blades come unscrewed while the motor’s running full-bore. Getting to the underside to bolt them back on involves flipping the infernal machine over and flooding the carburetor, thus killing the machine until it dries out. I employed the wait time wisely, watching The Guru on USA -- or more precisely, watching five minute segments of the film (which wasn’t that terrible, to my surprise) intercut with ten minute blocks of commercials.

I did finally get to complete the job, though not without loudly announcing “This will end in either victory or the utter destruction of both the machine and myself….Hopefully not myself,” within earshot of my neighbor who I didn’t realize was out in his own yard. (Eh, if my wife’s singing to the feral cats hadn’t already clued the neighborhood in to what kind of people we are, I’d be more embarrassed…) Because it was still early, and I had nothing else on my plate apart from waiting for the vet’s office to call, I even broke out the weedwhacker and pruning shears and added some finishing touches to the yard. It’s very impressive looking at the moment, although my pride in a job done well is tempered by the knowledge that we’ll back to Crabgrass City by the weekend.

Afterwards, I crashed out for a while and watched Trevor Nunn’s 1996 version of Twelfth Night, featuring Grant Morrison Barry Andrews Patrick Stewart Ben Kingsley turn in a decent performance as the fool, Feste. I’m not so keen on the whole anachronistic setting/costuming trend when it comes to things Shakespearean, but my love for the play (my favorite of all the Bard’s work) kept me from getting too distracted by the faux Victoriana vibe. The idea that anyone could mistake Imogen Stubbs in drag for Steven Macintosh did stretch my suspension of disbelief to the limits, though.

I came away from Twelfth Night with hankering for more dramatic art of the highest caliber, which I was able to find in the form of Mark L. Lester’s 1979 classic attempt to address the problems of post-industrial capitalism, love across class lines, and which leotard looks best with red-sequined roller skates. Shakespeare may not have written Roller Boogie, but he damn sure wishes he had:

Alas, poor Bobby James! I knew him, Jammer: a fellow
of perfectly feathered hair, of most excellent satin hot pants: he hath
done the eight-wheeled cha cha with me a thousand times; and now,
what a major bummer it is! my buzz harshes at it.

(Not many people are aware of this, but Xanadu was based on an early Folio draft of Coriolanus. The Japanese-only laserdisc featuring the original ending where Gene Kelly eviscerates Michael Beck during an elaborate tap dance sequence goes for big bucks on eBay.)

In the time since I began putting together this post, poor Sioux has come home from the vet’s. He’s a bit groggy and depressed, but doing well otherwise:

So there you have it, my day so far – an epic tale of mundanity, otherwise known simply as life.

Here are two relevant tracks by two bands whose fairly impressive bodies of work were overshadowed by the public awareness singularities called the “signature hit.”

---

Simple Minds – Life in a Day (from Life in a Day, 1979)

Modern English – Life in the Gladhouse (from After the Snow, 1982)

meow meow birthday

Our kittens had their first birthday today. I suppose that makes them technically "cats" now, but they'll always be "the kittens" to me. I can't believe how quickly the time has flown. It feels like just yesterday that I could fit the little fuzzballs in the palm of one hand.

(l-r, Witch Baby, Carmen, Jem, Auntie-Mom Setzer, Petit CooCoo)

Happy birthday, kit-sters!

Fluke - Kitten Moon (from Risotto, 1997) - Yeah, it's kind of a lazy post today, but this track kind of makes up for it.

is truly outrageous, truly truly truly outrageous

This is Jem, who has recently decided that I’m his bestest friend in the whole wide world. Unlike the other members of his extended feline family, who are content to express affection for their humans in a more mellow fashion, Jem is a cat of action and expects “Boy” to respond in kind to his current obsessions.

His name came from the white spot between his eyes, which I thought looked like a diamond when he was a newborn kitten, hence “Gem.” My wife changed the spelling to “Jem” when filling out paperwork at the vet’s office, most likely because she was thinking of Jem Finer of The Pogues. He also responds to Jemma, Jembo, JemJam, and “AAAAARGH! Those are my toes, dammit!”

I’ve seen other bloggers ghostwrite cutesy posts from their pets’ point of view. Since I pride myself for keeping things authentic here at Armagideon Time, I’d be uncomfortable putting words into Jem’s tiny mouth. He’s a very clever cat. Why couldn’t he express himself in his own words?

It wasn’t easy getting the little fellow to the keyboard. The first time I tried, he got distracted by some cobwebs on the ceiling, and proceeded to tug at my shirttails and cry until I lifted him up so he could swat at it.

Then he kept dropping a balled up twist tie at my feet in order to let me know it was time for some cat soccer practice. His goal tending skills are remarkable, and mid-air catches are his specialty. Another couple of weeks of drills, and he’ll be ready to sign with Real Madrid.

When Jem finally made it to the keyboard, he managed to type this:

Fdsifjsojvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

;[ppoo[[[[[[[[[[[

AdsfDSAEDWSADEWFRWFEP;SQW qhasjkfspgspo

…before he somehow stumbled across a hotkey combination that reset all my display settings. While I was trying to fix the problem, he snatched my Iron Fist Minimates figure off of the computer desk and ran downstairs with it. A mad chase ensued, first with Jem, and then with Addy the beagle-boxer, who picked up the figure after Jem dropped it under the dining table.

So ends that experiment. Next time, I’m going to get one of my wife’s pet turtles to co-host instead.

Jem and The Holograms – Theme From Jem – I never even made the connection between Jem the cat and Jem the cartoon until a couple months ago. Since then, I’ve found myself singing the theme to him whenever he’s engaged in his usual antics. Freezepop added a cute cover version of the song as a hidden track on 2004’s Fancy Ultra Fresh album.

The Cure – The Lovecats (from a 1983 single, collected on Japanese Whispers, 1983) – This song is the end of the road as far as my interest in The Cure goes. The Top was an interesting, trippy failure, but it all went careening downhill from there.