Miscellaneous Odd Things

I eat pistachios daily for my blood sugar. And, I like them. Since my blood sugar will raise when I first get up if I don't immediately eat, and since I often wake up an hour or more before I eat breakfast, I keep a supply in a big glass jar by my computer and nibble a few while blogging in the morning.

Pippin also loves pistachios. If the shell is partly open, he can get his teeth in there and open it. Then he eats the nut, leaving the shells whereever they fall. I try not to let him have them, since I don't like stepping on pistachio shells and I don't want him begging or stealing food.

A couple of weeks ago, he waited until the waste basket next to the computer desk had about a two week supply of shells, and then knocked if over and had a field day. And I, of course, was stepping on shells even after I thought I cleaned them all up.

So, I started putting the shells in a plastic bag and tying it closed every day, so that if he tipped the basket, the plastic bags would spill instead of loose shells. More fool me. Friday night he tipped over the waste basket and ate holes in all the plastic bags, spreading pistachio shells all over the floor.

For a few months, I've had this odd thing going on with comment moderation. I would sign in, and dashboard would tell me I had one extra comment to moderate. So, even when there were none, it said one. And then tonight when it said two, I went to moderate and, by golly, there were two comments. One dated from February! After I moderated them, just to check, I signed out and then back in and sure enough, dashboard didn't say I had a comment to moderate! Now, where in cyberspace do you suppose that comment had been?

Hangin' Out In Hooligan Habitat

I was putting the raisin bran away in the oven this morning when I started thinking about the ways I have changed how I live because of the Hooligans. Well, take the raisin bran in the oven. About half of my kitchen cupboards have no doors. And the ones with doors are not as tall as the raisin bran box. Except for the cupboard that the mice get in; that one I keep no food in. And the thing is, Merry and Pippin like raisin bran. And are very, very smart. If they can get to it, they will get in it. Therefore, I keep a box of raisin bran in my oven.

They also will get into any garbage that smells good to them. This ranges from crab shells and salmon skin and chicken bones to the bag the walnuts came in. Meat wrappers. Melon rinds. Tin cans. Candy wrappers. Ice cream cartons. Tuna pouches. The container of any new food that comes into the house may end up on the list. I used to keep the more obviously attractive garbage in the freezer until garbage day, because I didn't want it smelling up my kitchen and if I put it out I risked bears breaking into the can and spreading garbage from one end of the block to the other. But, in those days I didn't have to hide so many things -- just the things that could attract a bear. The Hooligans are much worse than bears. So, I have a plastic cat litter pail with a tight fitting lid that is the cat garbage.

Food is always an issue; they love so many different things. I have the baggers at the grocery store trained to recognize what my boys will eat and to pack all of that in as few bags as possible. The stuff that goes in the refrigerator gets unloaded first, but while that is happening the other cat bait is under the kitchen sink or in the oven or locked out on the porch. If I don't, I will find that they have eaten the corner off the loaf of bread. Once I turned my back and they bit into the bottom of the carton of chicken stock and I had it all over my newly mopped floor. Last Saturday, I stopped ever so briefly to talk to my landlady while the Care-A-Van driver took up my groceries, and by the time I got up stairs they had a fried chicken thigh that I had intended for lunch in the middle of the living room floor, chomping and growling at each other to beat the band.

I used to keep my butter dish on a shelf in the kitchen. Missy never tried to get into it. Pippin knocked it onto the floor, breaking two cut glass bowls in the process, and had eaten the corner of the butter by the time I got to him. So, now that lives in the microwave. Along with varied items that I need to hide from them. In order to use the microwave for its intended purpose, first I have to unload it and hide the contents somewhere.

These creatures will even tear open a bag of cat litter, which means I also have to have containers with tight lids for that. Pippin eats canned food (he's prone to feline urinary disease and can't eat dried food), which he can't open by himself yet, so I can leave it on a shelf in reach. But, Merry get the runs if he eats canned food and so I have to get him dry. I could leave an open box of cat food next to Missy's dish, and she would leave it alone. I could fill her dish and she would eat out of it when she got hungry. Not these guys. If I leave food in the dish, they eat it until they pop. (And if it's dry, Pippin will get sick and if it's wet Merry will get messy.) When I left the food in its original packaging, they ripped into it. I hid it under the sink in the bathroom, and they managed to get the door open. I bought a huge Rubber Maid pitcher and put it in there, and they pulled that out from under the sink and got the top off. I put it in a six and a half gallon popcorn can, and Pippin figured out how to open that. So, now it is in the popcorn can, in the mouse cupboard.

I used to have flowers in the apartment. No longer. Pippin bites the flowers off. I would come home from work and find stems strewn about the living room -- and the flowers floating in the toilet. I didn't know if they would clog the plumbing if I flushed them. It might be a pleasant change for the plumber to find carnations and daisies and roses in the pipes, but I was never getting to enjoy them myself.

I used to have a house plant. I can't say any more about that, it will make me cry. At any rate, no plants. No flowers.

Fritos are my best friend. When I need to cook or eat something that would attract them, I throw a few Fritos onto the front porch, they run out, and I close them in.*

Once upon a time I had a lovely clock radio in my bedroom. I would listen to tapes of the ocean or waterfalls as I fell asleep. But, the controls were all on the top. And the Hooligans would walk on them. That was bad enough when they turned the radio on. But, sometimes they set the alarm. I would be sitting at my computer, they would be laying peacefully on the floor within sight, and the clock radio would go off loud enough to wake the dead, always on some terrible station I would never turn to.**

Because of them, I keep electrical wires covered with flex tube. Otherwise, they will bite right through them. My vet says some cats really like the feel of the jolt that gives them. These wires, by the way, were not plugged in when the damage was done. Or we would have had fried cat. And you know that nest of wires under your computer desk? Well, mine are all closed off behind a cardboard barrier. So classy looking.

A pile of books or magazines, since the covers are slick, will end up on the floor because they climb up on it and jump off. My favorite thing of all is not being able to keep out multiple reading sources without standing guard. I really like to have one fiction and one non-fiction book within reach, so I can read to suit my mood. And, I seldom finish Free Inquiry before The New Yorker arrives.

And if I don't want soda knocked on to the floor, since butting things onto the floor with their sweet little noses is one of their favorite things, I have to cap the bottle between sips. Put water in a sports bottle instead of a glass if I want to drink it and read.

* The door between the porch and the kitchen is the only door inside the apartment, except the saloon doors into the bathroom. There is no where else to close them.

** Actually, it reminded me of the story my friend Joyce Zinnerscheid used to tell of her friend who set his clock radio when he was drunk, and woke up the next day to the reverberating sound of "I AM THE LORD OF HELL FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" He was in a bunkbed. He hit the top bunk and knocked himself out.

The Mighty Hoover*

When it wanders o'er the floor
It makes the most God awful roar.
There it sits, the mighty Hoover,
In the corner, that fearful mover.
Up stalks tiny Pippin cat,
His shoulders down on carpet mat,
Until he's close enough to spring,
Then out come claws and everything.
He lands just right, and knocks it flat
It crashes down and goes ker-splat!
And after running off in fear,
He once again approaches near.
He sits upon the fallen beast,
He's killed it dead. What a feast
He has provided for his clan.
Ah, heroic Pippin, my kitten man

* A poem written for Maya when the Hooligans were about four months old.

Brave Boys

In Juneau, because it doesn't get dark in July until almost midnight, Independence Day fire works happen at 12:00 a.m. July 4th*. It is our family tradition that Kathy and Richard come over for a late dinner of spareribs on the 3rd and then we talk and enjoy each other's company, and finally go up on the roof/patio and watch the display. We're up on the hillside about 10 blocks from the waterfront, and the fireworks are set off from a barge right down there. We sit on the roof and have the best view in town. The booms echo from Mount Roberts, behind us, to Mount Juneau and then back across the channel to Mount Jumbo.

Because I have only one interior door, the one between the porch and the kitchen, when I am preparing or eating anything that the Hooligans would be interested in, I quietly toss three or four Fritos onto the porch, they run out, and I close them out there. Because the 3rd isn't a holiday, Richard and Kathy worked and then Richard had a nap before they came over, which got them to the door just as the ribs were done. I went to toss Fritos, and the Hooligans weren't interested. They hadn't seen the kids in a while and they needed to visit with them. For ten minutes. Amazing. And here I thought the furry little creatures were primarily motivated by their stomaches. Turns out that love trumps snacks.

In the past, we have closed the door when we went out and just assumed that Merry and Pippin were hiding from the noise. After all, we don't see many bears around from the 3rd to the 6th or so; if it scares bears, of course it scares cats. Well, this year it was raining and so I went inside and watched from the window next to my computer desk and what do you know? The Hooligans like fireworks! Pippin was standing on my desk and looking out the window, and Merry was watching through the skylight! What a hoot. Such brave boys. Not only are people more important than Fritos, curiosity beats fear.

* Photo from Juneau Empire, July 5, 2007. Fireworks and Juneau as seen from Douglas.

Back Sliding

Now the cats have grown up graces,
Seldom falling on their faces.
Now they have explored the house,
Played with toys and killed a mouse.
Long ago they'd draped the hall
With toilet paper, towels and all.
And so imagine Granny's wonder,
At finding aluminum foil down under!
Oh, those bruisers, what disgraces,
Still spreading things in obscure places!

Searching for a Black Cat in a CoalbinAt Midnight

When Merry and Pippin were about nine months old, I went to California for my annual November trip, leaving them in the care of Richard and Kathy, who were to drop in daily and feed and play with them.

I flew out on Sunday. On Wednesday Richard sat up in bed, realizing that he had forgotten I had already left and my babies hadn't been fed. The first thing the next morning he went up to the apartment. At first the fact that the kittens didn't come out to greet him didn't worry him, as they never had. But when he got upstairs and discovered that the door had blown open, he began to worry. He put out food, but he didn't dare close the door because how were they to get in to eat if he did? He and Kathy spent several days searching for them. Posting photos on power poles. Walking the block and calling. Searching the apartment. Calling the pound. Looking in the paper. Not sure if they should call me and ruin my vacation or not. After all, the previous November I had returned from my vacation to find my beloved Missy had died. How could they face me if they had lost my boys? But, they kept putting out food and water, and it kept disappearing. So, if Merry and Pippin weren't eating it, something was.

Every time they went to my place, they put out cat provisions and sat in the living room to see if the cats would come in to eat. Finally one day they heard little teeth eating kitty kibble. Quickly they sneaked up the stairs, and saw the cats run into the closet. Now they could close and lock the door. And when they looked in the closet it took forever to spot Pippin's green eyes beneath the legs of my navy pants. Merry was behind Pippin, and Pippin is coal black. As near as we can tell, since neither cat tried to get out again until this year, they had been hiding in the closet all along.

Friday Cat Blogging VIII

When the Hooligans were about six months old, I came home from work to the sound of Pippin meowing in distress. There he was, on top of the kitchen cupboards, unable to get down. Wretch that I am, I grabbed the camera and got a picture of it before I helped him. Being short, I stayed on the floor and put a chair on the counter and encouraged him to jump down to it. Lots of soft voice and offering food.

I don't know how long he had been trapped up there, but the first thing he did when he got down was make a bee line for the cat box. I had my landlady's son go up on a ladder and check the next time he was over, and Pippin hadn't left any surprises up there.

Granny's Boys a story I wrote for Maya when I got the Hooligans

Now, Granny was very sad when Missy died. She felt very lonely and her lap was as empty as her heart. She missed Missy's soft grayness and the warmth of her purr. And she realized that it's hard to read a book without a purr in the background. When she came home from work at night, there was no old lady cat to greet her, no thump, thump down the stairs, no sharing how their day had gone. And Granny almost didn't want to go home at night, because Missy wasn't there.

At first Granny thought about how Maya and Mama and Dado were going to come to visit her that summer, and how Dado is allergic to cats, and how now he could come into her apartment and not get sick. And so Granny was going to wait until after they had come to visit to find a new cat to live with her. But when she mentioned to Mama how lonely she was, Mama said, "I don't know if we are going to be able to come to Alaska this summer. It may be a few years. You need to get a kitten and take care of yourself. When we come, you and Uncle Richard and Auntie Kathy can come to the hotel room to visit."

So then Granny started to think about a kitten and right away she thought, "One kitten all alone while I go to work would be as lonely as I am right now! That's not kind to do to a baby animal!" And, indeed, Missy had not started out as an only cat -- when Granny got Missy, Uncle Richard's cat Sheba and Mama's dog Samantha had been there.

So Granny started looking for a pair of kittens. But December isn't kitten season, and they were hard to find. Her friend Christina thought she had found a pair, but nothing came of it. Then her friend Rena found a pair, but they were given to someone else by accident. Oh, Granny was in despair! She wondered if she would find kittens before spring, if she would have to go home to that lonely apartment until then! Oh, she didn't know how she would stand it.

And then, Rena heard about a kitten that was coming to Juneau from Haines. And it had two brothers! And so she called the people who had the kittens, and they put the two boys in the shoe box with the little girl kitten and took them all to the air strip to fly to Juneau. Luckily the pilot of the four seat plane had a cat carrier that she was able to put the kittens in, so they didn't have to fly all that way tied up in a dark shoe box!

And so, two days before Christmas, a cat carrier was brought to Granny's apartment. And now when Granny comes home from work, she is looking forward to seeing her boys. They come thump, thump down the stairs or out from behind the couch and meow at her. They tell her about their day and she tells them about hers. And they climb and wrestle and chase toys and bathe each other and bat at the newspaper while she reads it and finally climb up and fall asleep on her bosom! And they purr so loudly, and she thinks, "Ah, magnificent thunder pussies."

And it is a very good thing Granny didn't wait until after Maya and Mama and Dado came to visit, because Dado wasn't able to come.

Friday Cat Blogging VII

And here are some poems I wrote when the Hooligans were younger.

Back Sliding

Now the cats have grown up graces,
Seldom falling on their faces.
Now they have explored the house,
Played with toys and killed a mouse.
Long ago they'd draped the hall
With toilet paper, towels and all.
And so imagine Granny's wonder,
At finding aluminum foil down under!
Oh, those bruisers, what disgraces,
Still spreading things in obscure places!

Brothers

Jump on your brother's back,
If he resists, attack!
Wrestle him to the ground,
Grab the toy that he found.
Smack his face, wash his ear,
Litter mate he won't fear.
And when in knots he's tied,
Sleep curled into his side.


Lewis & Clark

The world is for exploring, when you're a little cat,
You have to poke and pry and climb, we all know that.
Crawl into the oven, or on the refrigerator shelf,
Get locked up in a cupboard, make a monkey of yourself.
Get trapped atop the highest place
That you can get your silly face.
Jump and knock the knick knacks down.
Slide across the floor, you clown.
Yes, the world is for exploring, when you're a little cat,
Just be sure that you stay safe, and don't go splat.

Feline Brotherhood

Warm little bodies, silken soft fur.
Sweet little faces, deafening purr.
Snuggle and cuddle together all night,
Then wake up and begin to fight.

In A Nutshell follows.

Cat Adventures

I was lucky this morning. First of all that cats don't know how to sneak. And then that the Care-A-Van was a few minutes late to pick me up. Since that meant that I was still home when the odd noise came from the kitchen and I discovered that the Hooligans had managed to open the cupboard with the potato chips and were making advances on the bag. I was able to remove their new toy, fasten the cupboard, and wrap a rubber band around the fastener (the old one had broken, which was why they managed to get it open).

Because if I had been gone when it happened, I would have come home to find that they had eaten most of the bag, thrown up from too much salt, and left chip crumbs from one end of the house to the other.

In A Nutshell follows.

Friday Cat Blogging VIBrothers Are to Play With

What could be more delightful than a pair of siblings who hang out with each other?






And play with each other?





And obviously care?

In A Nutshell follows.

Captive*

Soft as silk and black as sin,
What a cuddly mood he's in.
He curls his little kitten self
On Granny's ample bosom shelf.
He purrs and then he purrs some more,
Contentment oozing every pore.
She smiles at him, reduced to "ahhs"
As he wraps her heart around his paws.

*Another poem from the Hooligans' kittenhood.

Because It's There

As Merry gets a little older,
Merry gets a whole lot bolder.
And now he really wants to know
Just how high that he can go.
From stove to frig to cupboard top
Up and up, he'll never stop.
Suddenly, a worried frown —
He's ten feet up. Can he get down?
Piteous mews to call for Granny,
To save him crashing on his fanny.
Granny's only five foot two —
What does he think she can do?
Although the path is very steep
That silly kitten has to leap.
Carefully, now brace and look,
Retrace the path that up he took.
Granny coached him through the muddle,
And afterwards they had a cuddle

This was written when the Hooligans were about six months old.

Friday Cat Blogging V

Clues in Sound
Merry and Pippin and I live in a two story apartment. The kitchen and living room are on the lower floor (the second floor of the building) and the bedroom, bath, and book room on the upper.

Here in Juneau we have a local access channel called CHCH (the channel channel) which plays classical music without any commercials or other speech and trains the camera out over the Gatineau Channel. In the evening, if I'm reading, I have CHCH on and when I turn it off, the Hooligans know that I am going to be going upstairs soon.

One thing I learned from Richard is that if you feed a cat the minute you get up, that cat will start waking you up to be fed and that will get earlier and earlier. So, I feed them downstairs.

Since we live in Alaska, the sun is up at night in the summer and not until long after I've left for work in the winter. No clue for Hooligans from the daylight.

The trick, for them, is to know when I've gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom or to clear my sinuses so that my CPAP won't make me feel like I'm being smothered and when I've gotten up to go downstairs. Doesn't do any good to meow at me if I'm going back to bed.

They have learned that if they can hear the CPAP, I'm going back to bed even if I'm currently sitting at the computer while my sinuses clear. If they hear the electric toothbrush, I'm going to get dressed and go downstairs next.

So, when I woke up in the middle of the night with a nasty taste in my mouth and brushed my teeth, but the CPAP was still on, it confused them.

Friday Cat Blogging

Brothers at Play

Merry and Pippin are best friends, and have been since they were small kittens. Here they are exploring the wonderful world of bubbles. Every cat owner should have bubble soap -- watching them bat the bubble and see it disappear is delightful. Once they have become blase about that, blowing the bubble full of smoke is a new variation. When they hit the bubble, the smoke hangs in the air for a few seconds, which they are not expecting. I haven't done that with a cat in over 30 years, since I stopped smoking.


They also loved the rocking chair when they were small. These days they are so big that it isn't as much fun, but in the early days they climbed the back and batted each other through the bentwood and peaked at each other through the caning.




This wonderful blue ring was a gift to the Hooligans from Maya. It provides hours of entertainment. When they stop playing with it, I put it away for a few months and then when it comes out again it is, once again, novel. They don't forget it, but they do become interested in it again.



In this picture the laser light is crossing the ceiling. Merry is tracking it, Pippin has lost sight of it and is searching for it. The light on the wall is a night light, which my apartment is full of due to the long, dark, winter nights.







Here they are playing with a shoe string that Merry has carried to the top of the scratching post. All of these pictures were taken before the Kitty Condo was purchased.










And here they have pulled the shoestring down to the bottom of the scratching post. Soon Merry carried it back up again, and the play started all over.

Needless to say, these two always sleep soundly.

Carousin'

Some nights those cats just have a ball
As they go ripping down the hall
And round the room and down the stair
To cupboard tops, just everywhere!




Then Pippin leaps, that silly soul,
Into the condo's top most hole.
And in and out he twines himself,
While Merry sits on the bottom shelf.





He's up! He's down! He's out! He's in!
And peeking back with silly grin!
Then fling themselves into a heap
Of pure exhaustion, and so to sleep.

Friday Cat Blogging

The Hooligans and Their Kitty Kondo Condo
What an unfortunate name the manufacturer gave this piece of cat furniture. Being a bit of a language purist (when I change a word it is for my desired effect, not some ignorant sounding stupidity imposed on me by an advertising person!), I simply refuse to use it. Here we have Pippin, otherwise called Sweetie and "you soft black devil" or "Oh, NO you don't" curled up in his Cuties box. Both cats love curling up in slightly confining spaces and this box is a great favorite. At the moment I think it is under my desk, having been pushed there by Merry. Come December, I will need to buy another box of clementines so that they each have a box. (They did at one time, but my cleaning help threw one away thinking it was garbage.) See what pretty eyes Pippin has. What with him being black, that's about the only facial feature you can see when I take his picture from the front.

Here is Pippin getting some exercise. I drilled holes in the bottom of the "tiger ledge" and screwed in hooks to hang things from. I rotate various items onto these hooks and the Hooligans have a playground that they don't get bored with. Notice the wonderful sisal wrap around the scratching post -- actually I found this when I was in the pet store looking for a taller sisal post, because as you can see my boys had outgrown the scratching post a friend had given them when they were little kittens. The shop didn't have a taller sisal post and we couldn't find one in their catalogue, but there was this wonderful thing, and other than its silly name, I have been perfectly satisfied with it. Anyway, it allows for stretching and claw sharpening.

And here we have Merry getting ready to spring at the toy. Merry is also called Sweet Face and "Will you move your ass so I can feed you?" and "Bite my foot one more time and I'm throwing you out on the mountain and changing your name to Bear Bait!" That last is the name I am calling him even as I write this.

Merry is the larger of the two -- he was an ounce larger when I got them and now weighs two pounds more than Pippin. He is taller and has bigger bones. Pippin is the smarter of the two (as measured by being able to figure out how to get into more places I thought were secure [which is why all my cupboards have child proof catches on them and I store a box of Raisin Bran in the oven] and make more messes) and, because of being just that much smaller, can jump higher. Merry was the first to get up onto the tops of my kitchen cupboards, where he got stuck and had to be helped down. Pippin wasn't big enough for about six weeks after that, and although he had to be helped down the first time, he goes up and down at will now. Merry hasn't been back up.

Both, as with all of the tomcats I've ever known, are very affectionate. They love to cuddle with me and with each other. When they were very little, they would both curl up on my breast and the purring was very loud and comforting. They make a good team, tackling things together. My favorite time they did that, they were about eight weeks old and I was tying the bow in my draw string jeans while they climbed my pants' legs, batting at the strings. It is moments like that when I wish there was someone around with a camera, because it was very funny.

I got them about a month after Missy died. The apartment had become too lonely without her, and their antics, particularly when they were in the jumping-flea stage, made me laugh so much they reduced my blood pressure. I named them for Tolkein characters, and other than the fact that people hear Mary instead of Merry and think he is a girl, they are perfect names for them. Pippin is, as was his namesake, always into things and curious about things best left alone and Merry has a sunny disposition and gets into less trouble.

Friday Cat Blogging

Granny's Boys
Before they became the Hooligans, when they were small, Merry and Pippin were known as Granny's Boys. Like all cats, they love to get in small, enclosed spaces. Here is Merry, in the waste basket. I would come downstairs in the morning, and there he would be. I would come home from work, and there he would be. Isn't that the sweetest kitten face you've ever seen? I'm glad that it is an attractive basket, since he certainly isn't trash.

Pippin, who has always been his own cat, preferred the dish strainer. Flash bulbs show that his fur isn't pure black; there is some mottling of fawn in it. However, under any other light, he looks deep, coal black. You can see him here, helping me fix breakfast (see the blender with my smoothie in it). Wherever I am, there they like to be, and they love to hang out on counters and help me cook or clean up. Try and convince them that cat hair isn't a necessary ingredient (the equivalent, perhaps, of garlic) in any and all dishes; it does no good. They know I would be lost without their help, have no idea that there ever was a time before them, so they don't worry about how I got along in those far off, unimaginable times.

They also love to climb. This is one of my favorite pictures of Merry, as he climbs the scratching post with a black shoe lace in his mouth. Notice the tension in his little neck -- it reminds me of Julie with the box, if you want to know the truth. After he climbed the post with the shoe string, he would lay it across the top and then lay on his back and bat at the ends. Talk about a kitten who could entertain himself -- he even made his own toys. I've never seen another cat do anything like this. Because he has always been the larger cat, he was always ahead of Pippin in athletic pursuits.

As I said, Pippin is his own cat. He much preferred to climb my daughter in law, Kathy, and snuggle with her. She obviously enjoyed it too -- such contentment on her face and in the lines of his body. Pippin has a real talent for just melting right into the person he is laying on. Pippin is a little older here than they are in the other pictures, and Kathy is wearing a sweater, so it must be around my birthday (in April, still sweater weather in Alaska). I was given them right before Christmas, which is when the other pictures were taken.

Dominoes

I have mentioned that I have interrupted sleep. Sometimes it is worse and sometimes I think that I have solved it and sometimes I have almost solved it. I used to sleep like the dead. Julie could tell you about the time she came home after I was in bed and had forgotten her key and couldn't wake me up with the doorbell and pounding on the door and pounding on the window over my head and calling from the neighborhood 7-11. I have always had to get up in the night to pee, but I would be asleep again before my head hit the pillow.

Well, those days are long gone. I injured my left foot about four years ago and ignored the injury (a result of my own ethnic background [Colonial descendant]and our stiff upper lip and ignore the pain stupidity) until it was so bad that I couldn't walk more than absolutely necessary for over two years and while that was going on my previously injured back flared up for lack of exercise. The other things that happened because of lack of exercise were the onset of a mild case of type 2 diabetes (increased the number of night time visits to the loo), restless legs syndrome, insomnia, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea. To this we add the unrelated fact that I had congenital paradoxical turbinates which meant that my sinuses tend to get clogged. I had surgery, but it only fixed it so far and the ENT doesn't want to go back because it could make things worse.

Here we are. I use a CPAP machine for the apnea. But my sinuses get clogged and I feel like I'm being smothered and so wake up. I get up to pee and have to take the mask of my CPAP off and put it back on, which wakes me completely even if my sinuses aren't clogged. I found that taking a quarter of a percocet and two coral calcium pills handles the restless legs most of the time, so that now I only have a bout once a month or less, rather than the three times a night it was before. For a little over a week I have been on Sanctura, which reduces the bathroom visits from eight a night to two. I have recently acquired a facial sauna which fills my sinuses with steam and when I add oil of eucalyptus it can clear them out in 15 minutes (five to heat up and 10 to use) instead of the 45 minutes it used to take. And, I don't have to use Sinus Buster, a good product but since it is pure capsaicin pepper extract, painful, any longer. I can't use decongestents, because of my blood pressure.

Where I stand right now is, I have solved everything except the sinuses, and they are not as bad as they were. Sometimes I get a good night's sleep. Last night was not one. I was up three times with sinuses and had trouble getting back to sleep each time. So, this morning I slept in until 10, which is the time I usually take my Sanctura. I have to take it at least two hours after eating and at least one hour before eating. If I had gone down and had breakfast at 10, I would have needed to wait until noon to take my pill, but then I would have been off for the 10 p.m. pill and . . . If I had gone down and fed the Hooligans, I would not have been able to resist eating myself, since I woke up very hungry. So, I stayed upstairs, took my pill, and read blogs until 11. Which meant the Hooligans ate late (usual for all three of us is 7:30). And so when I was feeding them Merry got impatient and jumped down off the counter and landed on my right foot, scratching it.
And the dominoes go: injure left foot, live sedentary life for four years, develop sleeping problems, solve some sleeping problems but not all, lose sleep because of sinuses, sleep late, delay breakfast so I can take my pill, delay feeding cats so I can delay my own breakfast, get scratched on my right foot by starving tomcat.

More Kitten Poems

Here are two more of the poems I wrote for Maya when the Hooligans were little.

Bedroom Lamp

What a realization!
What a minor shock!
Our Merry is an athlete.
Our Merry is a jock.
He crouches low,
He springs up high,
He swats the cord,
That dangles from the sky.
His claws connect,
Well, what a scamp!
Our Merry has turned on
The hanging bedroom lamp.

Litter Mates

I'm sleeping quite soundly,
Tucked up warm and neat,
When two wicked kittens
Start wrestling my feet!

They tumble, they rumble,
They climb up my side,
Those silly young kittens
Must think they can hide!

Here he comes!
There he goes!
That zany black Pippin
Is stalking my toes!

How he laughs!
How he mocks!
That wicked gray Merry
Has stolen my socks!

& they run & they hide
Pounce, scamper -- karoom!
Up the stairs, down the hall
As they bounce about the room.