(Cat haters: Look away now.)
My cat's doodle cost me one thousand American dollars.

It's news. You know it is. What, you'd rather talk about the war? Not me. So anyway...

"Do I have pet insurance?" asked the blank form. Pet insurance? No...no, I don't. Then everything went black. Then green. Somebody took my gold card and ran. Help. Police. Anyone.

Feline Urinary Syndrome or FUS to you, me and Googie.

Googie's the fat expensive toy on the left.

So far, I estimate my cat's dingly-dangly will cost me 1 Large K, but I haven't picked him up from the vet, I'm unsure. But already we're halfway there since Monday morning. Ching-ching.

How can you put a pricetag on the unconditional love of a good pet? Easy. You feed him dry, fat-boy cat food everytime he looks at you with Those Eyes, tripping you the entire waltz to the catfood dish, and then he quietly builds a tiny sandcastle in the dark nether regions of his privates where Mr. Zippy lives. And when Fate decides to kick that sandcastle over, you go with the flow. Or, in this case, you go with the non-flow.

Stop making that face. You know you care, and this story is just mesmerizing.

A word to the wise (to all the rest of the idiots out there like me, "Carry on!"):
Never never never ever never let your cat get fat if they are (1) male and (2) neutered. "Obstructions can kill a cat in 48 hours." See? The internet is not just for porn sites after all. People talk more freely about cat obstructions and than they do about racoon feces.

So. How've you been? Good, good. Me? Eh, it's best to just talk about the weather. Damn, it's hot. And look, it's humid. Ok so nevermind the weather until November, I'm in denial. About a lot of things at once. Which is good in a way. It gets it all over at one time. Either that or you realize you're permanently blocked-up tighter than an overweight, neutered cat's wang.

Worrying really takes a big chunk out of your *free time* plus a big wad of your hair apparently. Instead of taking the time to stop and smell the roses, some people insist that you deadhead your beautiful blooms. Then while you're snipping, you have time to think about everybody's else's problems like they were your own. Why? Because if you're a nice person, your problem is always everybody else's problem. You have time to think about why people do things the same way again and again and get confused with the same results, wondering why mental people even have a favorite color or a favorite food since nothing makes them happy anyway. Wondering if they realize how cracked their nuts are, wondering if they are allergic to nuts, hoping they might be. The worst part about other people's problems is not the problems but usually, it's just the people themselves.

"Life. It's a gas, man." -- God

Remember when I used to be that sunny, bubbly, can-do, happy-go-lucky me? Yeah, me neither. So no big loss, huh? See, there's that silver lining I was looking for -- familiarity.

Oh stop it. I am a sunny, bubbly, can-do person. No, really. I'm just not lucky.

But for you, I have scratched up a few links of interest for obviously one of the nicest people in the world if you are still reading this. It's like being 7 years old again. It's the little treasure chest of toys you got to choose from after you made it through your dental appointment. Your dentist didn't give you toys after your appointment to take the edge off? They don't do that anymore? Well, that explains the biggest problem of modern society today, doesn't it...

Enjoy.


gel.tv

forums.pirated-sites.com

strangeco.com

phreeque show

what happened to the Chappelle Show




This post is dedicated to the memory of Butch, the best and oldest cat in the entire universe.

He's so old I don't have any pictures of him. Just cave paintings. Since those are too hard to scan, too dark to photo, just picture a striped yellow tomcat with a soft, white throat and wise, yellow eyes.

My dad always had an orange tabby cat. One was named Tommy and the other Butch. Tommy was rumored to have been poisoned by the mean old man next door, Mr. McNeil. Or as my sister and I called him. Mack-o. He hated that. He's a long story, involving his creepy grandson who visited in the summers and caught up all the "green lithurdthz". I had no idea what a lisp was until I met Willem. I also had no idea why someone would name a kid Willem. It made no sense to me to leave the "yuh" part out, and just make him normal, make him "William." Normal was good. Lizards were good. Good was normal.

Butch was found on the side of the road by my sister. Said she barely saw him there with his eyes closed and his forehead lying down on the edge of the road. To me he looked like a wet sock full of marbles as we tried to bathe all the fleas off his belly. That was the scariest moment in that cat's life, being bathed in an apartment sink. It scared him so bad that he went catatonic and I had to hold him in a towel until he came to again. I have never seen a cat faint before, but I guess he did. Needless to say, we never got all the fleas off of him after that. I feel like a killer.

He made up for it though, for the rest of his life. He was a badass but honorable. He never started a fight, but by God, he'd finish them. He always reminded me of my dad. I never wanted to see that cat die because I knew when he did, a part of my dad would go with him, and I wasn't sure how big that part would be.

Butch honestly looked just like my dad if my dad were a cat. Except for the eye coloring, they both had the exact same look, the exact same face. And the same demeanor. I don't think my dad likes tuna that much, and I never saw Butch drink a beer, so each had his own personal identity. However...

Butch just died about 2 weeks ago at the very ripe old age of 22, beginning the end of the story. My parents are looking for a new house the past few months because the neighborhood has finally gone unfriendly. So I know my dad saw Butch's death as an omen. My family is strange and discerning like that. So they figured they'd bury him in the front flowerbed where he liked to stay.

I told them no. Some drooler will accidentally dig him up when they buy the house and decide to personalize this house my parents have kept up for the last 35 years because "they don't like pink azaleas" or "I saw a lizard in the bushes" or "cheap white rock gardens are easier to keep up than a flowerbed", something tacky and disturbing like that.

Butch's Achievements in Life:
(besides living 22 years on a somewhat busy street)

That cat could eat the "ass end out of a bird"* in no time. Pounce, business, death.

(*The poetic words of my father, booming across the backyard as he inspected the mangled, dead bird -- dangling it by one tiny leg between his fingers to view the damage as they made the journey to The Promised Land, the garbage can. Or maybe tossed into Macko's yard.)

In my mother's experience, it's best to let Butch eat the ass end and not try to interfere. Once she stepped in before he finished with the mourning dove. Big mistake as we watched the dove fly away with no legs. I can only imagine what went through that bird's mind when he tried to land on a branch, over and over again until his untimely twilight...

Another achievement, he outlived 3 black house dogs of varying shapes and sizes. He was most proud of that, you could tell. Much like the apple that fell from the tree, my mother could overfeed a pet rock faster than I can feel sorry for a crack in the sidewalk. She turns her dogs into walking sausages. But what happy sausages they are. With a side of pancreatitis.


So I suggested the workshop. The workshop was like a giant clubhouse for my dad and Butch. My dad has all his stuff out there. We don't know what one-tenth of it is, but he knows where every, tiny screw is in there, and he could lay his hands on it it the dark if he had to. "Smart people are weird like that," my sister said once. She used to be smart once, too, at least once or twice a year.

So my dad, an ex-Army man, buried him out by the workshop. He found a cool, flat, dusty spot right under a bush where Butch liked to hang out as my dad sawed or drilled or tuned around on his broadband radio on a cloudy summer night. My dad placed flat stones over the top of it so it would remain undisturbed now in my father's abscence. If that doesn't break your heart, my mom walked by Butch's gave the other day and my dad had stuck a tiny American flag between the rocks.

Doesn't that just make you wanna cry? Especially since that flag was probably made in China.

Life is hard to describe, but I try.