Rube Sunday night, passed out and dreaming and unaware

Rube and I have this ritual: At night after I hit the sack, he’ll climb up on the right side of the bed, stretch his front legs over the pillows and then drape himself over my neck and chest, purring while I slather with kisses his face or head or whatever he ends up sticking in my pucker space. He doesn’t do it every single night, but most nights I can count on him stopping in before going off and doing whatever he and Carol get up to. But he hasn’t come the last couple nights, and when he’s been out from under the beds, we’ve sat on the couch awkwardly or he’s yelled at me for giving him his prednisone. I wouldn’t give it a second thought except for I’ve no doubt he’s still pissed at me for the ordeal at the vet, but I’m also quite sure he now knows that I know he’s dying, and like, say, when a friend tells you they like the feel of weasels down their pants, there’s really no turning back THAT revelation.

I can’t believe I’ve never written about how Rube and I got together: It was April ‘99, six months into living on my own for the first time ever, and I’d just settled in to write a story about a gun show when I heard this obnoxious “REE-ER! REE-ER! REE-ER!” coming from outside. The windows were closed and I thought it was a bird caught in the bushes at first, so I went outside and quickly realized it was a cat, so I psssspssspsssspssss’d fully expecting a cat to come out and not what was essentially a fetus. Picked it up and ran upstairs, and then called anyone I knew who had cats to see what they knew about taking care of a cat fetus. (Also discovered rather unceremoniously that he was a he after thinking he was a she because I’d never had a cat before and all cats were she to me. “Ruben,” in fact, came from “Ruby” because that’s what I’d always planned to name a girl cat. Props to my quick-thinking seester.) After taking him to the office and (someone, not me) losing a valuable photography equipment thing we used to try and feed him some milk, got him some formula and started feeding him by dropper.

Dad, upon hearing after Rube’s first vet visit the next day that the vet thought he was about two-weeks old, promptly said I shouldn’t get my hopes up, that he probably wouldn’t make it. Over my dead body was that going to happen: I was between gigs at the time, so I fed him every three hours like the vet said, and he went EVERYWHERE with me—stayed in the car for job interviews, slept in my shirt during assignments, came to the office with me while I manned the phones on the Sports desk. I not only litter-trained him, but I taught him how to expel waste (not as vile as you might think, although I was the human litterbox for about two weeks until I got him using litter.)

For the last 13 1/2 years, this jerk of a cat has given me more scars in places you’d never believe and has shit in my laundry more times than I count. He never fails to step on my nipple while situating himself to bathe my hair in the morning, and he yells at me when I touch his tail in any way. He once jumped into the toilet and right back out before I had a chance to sit down after a night of drinking MGD, he’s horked hairballs on just about every wood surface I own and poked holes in all my yoga and jammie pants with his claws. He rolls around on the freshly cleaned bathroom floor, huffing the bleach. He beat on his little brother constantly and walks across my keyboard as I’m trying to file my stories ...

before he settles down and curls up to my left, sticking his head in my face and paws over my arm, purring away.

He hears my car pull up and watches out the window while I come up the walk, cheeking the window pane until I get in the door, or did at least until a few days ago. Every tear I’ve shed or ounce of anger I’ve wasted over whatever jackass, he’s settled in on my chest and purred until I can pull it together to get out of bed. (Fun story: The first night TOG ever spent at the resort, I woke to find Rube sleeping at the foot of my side instead of the right side (where he usually slept) because TOG was there. Rube looked at me, and then looked at the passed-out TOG—we’d gone to see The Who the night before and, well, you know—and looked at me again with this look I can only describe as, “Are you serious with this shit!?” There’s something to be said when even your cat knows what a rotten situation you’re in, and I might’ve saved myself about five years of absurdity had I listened, right!?) After Dad died, he looked for him for weeks when Mother would come over; to this day, we’ll be on the couch and Rube’ll put his paw on my shoulder every so often, and dumb as this sounds, I imagine Dad’s telling Rube to say “Hey.”

For 13 1/2 years, this damn cat has been my everything, and now he’s dying, and I can’t do better than try to figure out whether he’s in pain and keep him comfortable because the alternative holds no guarantee and would likely be worse. It’s so not fair.

Did any of y’all hear something about a cat being tossed out of a baseball game by its tail? One of my dearest friends/old editors has been yakking about it on FB, and I of course am all horrified at the thought. No, I don’t want a youtube link if it exists; I just want confirmation so I can prolong my outrage accurately.

Witnessed a near ass-whooping tonight at one of the bars a town over, and it was AAAAAAAALLLL Cheeks’ fault. I was at home catching up with Kaffy and CatRags and getting my underwear in the wash when Girlie (who sometimes wants to be known by her handpicked superhero name, Bitch Fantastic, from here on out) rings in to let me know she and one of her pals are out at said bar, get my ass over there. Threw on some clothes and arrived to Cheeks without the rest of The Unit (and here I COULD make several scatological “That’s like A without B”—what the hell’s that device called?—thingies, but they would be WRONG, WRONG WRONG. Also, Cheeks has informed me he’s now reading along with the class). So I’m sitting there with the gals drinking my Dog Style and trying to come up with our obnoxious request for the evening because it’s my new goal in life to think of the most pedantic, awful song requests for them to perform ("Hell is for Children” was particularly inspired, I think, and has been my favorite so far), and a crowd starts gathering at the door. Upon further examination, we notice that the big hairy bouncer at the front is squeezing the neck of some douchebag like he’s going to pop his head like a zit while others are trying to separate others and we don’t know what the hell’s going on when suddenly, Cheeks yells “GO FUCK YOURSELF, CONVICT!” then starts singing “Why Can’t Weeeeee Be Friends?” which we thought was hilarious and perfectly appropriate. There was one chick who clearly didn’t, however, because SHE RUSHED THE STAGE AND TOOK A SWIPE AT HIM WITH HER NAILS. Now, all we saw was her bounding up to the stage, and we were like, “Whoa, holy shit!” but we didn’t think she actually made contact with his flesh.

So the story is, this chick was trying to put in a request or talk to him while he was in the middle of a conversation, and he was all “Hold up, give me a sec,” so she wigs out and tells her douchebag friends to tell him what-for, only instead of reaching HIM, they went up to aNOTHER table of douchebags, who got all puffy, and then fighting ensued and so on and so forth. I just hope they weren’t waiting for him in the parking lot.

Oh, and since everyone’s been asking, no, I have NOT given up my reporting career as perhaps my FBing has led y’all to believe. I HAVE been picking up shifts at the restaurant, though, since Girlie/Bitch Fantastic has been a little shorthanded and, you know, it’s the LEAST I can do n’ shit since I essentially live there, anyway. And I have to say, it doesn’t suck. I mean, I think I’ve talked about how I waitressed for a little bit in college and how God-awful it was and how even worse *I*was at it, but this is actually fairly cool. I just need to get the hang of it a little better, so no, I do NOT have a set shift and no, I will NOT tell you when I’m there. At least let me get a little better at it before you come in and try to make me lose my shit, huh?

So Mother was supposed to hunker down at Chez Broad after the storm last week, right? It was against every sane bone in my body, but she’s my mother, so one makes sacrifices. Anyway, she arrives, and I tell her that she can crash in my room since I have a queen and I’m used to crashing on the couch. Well, she can’t crash in there because my boys will want to sleep in there with her, she said, even though you can SHUT my door to keep them out and really? They might pester her, but they sleep with their momma (aka me). Okaaaaaaaay, so I hand her a sheet and make up the couch for her, and she sits down while I go over to my D-List celebrity BFF’s so his lovely woman can teach me to prune my own head when it gets too unwieldy.

I get back to the crib, and Mother tells me that I need to take her to my uncle’s because she’s going to spend the night there. Annoyed, I ask why, and she tells me that my eldest was harassing her. “I told you he hangs out on the back of the couch and he’ll leave you alone if you leave him alone,” I reminded her once again. But then no sooner did I walk out of the can when I looked, and there was Rube crouched on the cushion with his paws on her pillow, looking at her like, “Yeah? What’re you going to do, old crazy lady?” I guess he did that to her several times while I was gone, and she freaked out.

Hey, worked for me.

a feline UTI in my oldest, y’all. And giving him medicine has been a serious drag.

There's this new couple on the cul-de-sac du Broad, an interracial couple who can't keep their, ahem, "lovemaking" quiet. At all. All times of the day and night, you can hear them going at it throughout the 'hood, and when one can't find the other, there's wailing. Oh, the wailing. Day and night, there's screaming and wailing, screaming and wailing so loud you can hear it with the windows closed. It gets so loud sometimes, the boys rush to the window to see what's going on.

Stupid feral cats in heat.

Ok, did y'all know about this thing called The Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet!?? DID YOU SEE THA HALFTIME ENTERTAINMENT!?? It was KITTENS! Glorious, glorious KITTENS, frolicking and sleeping and bathing and ... and ... KITTENS! Wheeeeeee! Kaffy and I did some serious giggling while watching it last night a 12:30, and we weren't even fucked-up.

[UPDATE: Behold! The cuteness: Lookit]

Did y'all see the article about little Cy, the ragdoll kitten?

That is all.

Poppy called: Puff died this morning about 4:30. She's not quite sure if he was in any pain, though she was pretty sure he was awfully uncomfortable at times, and it just kept getting worse. But she was with him; the vet people got her up when it was time. (And I'm totally going to get the name of the clinic she went to so I can pimp them out; she said his care was exemplary. It's in Franklin Park, Ill., is all I know.)

She's going to send me a picture a little later, so I'll post it.

There's a little sadness in the feline world this weekend: Poppy's oldest and most favoritest baby, Puff (aka Herr Puffen Huffen), has advanced kidney cancer. The good news is, Pop took him to a vet oncologist on Thursday, and with chemo, he has a 70 percent chance of going into remission and hanging out for a few more years. The not-so-good news is, he has to get through until Monday to wait for the biopsy results and start treatment, and he's not doing great. He's not on death's door or anything -- at least, I don't think -- but I went over there yesterday to help Pop administer a fluid IV for him, and he's down to, like, 7 pounds, wants to eat but can't and has really raspy breathing. He jumped right into my arms and cuddled with me, though, so I want to believe he's got some fight left in him, if not for anything else than for Pop's sake, because she a mess right now. And I can't blame her; when it's the Rube's time, I don't know what I'll do. I mean, I raised him from two weeks old, so he's MY BABY.

Anyway, good thoughts to Puff, por favor.


[UPDATE 11/12: Talked to Poppy earlier -- Puff is hanging in much better than expected. This morning, he got up in bed with her, and he's definitely interested in eating though he can't swallow; she's been making him mush and feeding him through an eyedropper. He also gave the vet techs hell today when they hooked him up to the fluid IV, so THAT'S the Puff we know and love.]

Doncha just want to eat him?



He was dead asleep in this picture, too.

Wake up this morning and head to can for my bladder's morning constitutional when my oldest jumps up on my lap for his morning cuddle. We settle in, and the little guy saunters up an starts swatting at his brother's tail. Well, Rube wasn't having any of that, so he jumps down between my feet to find the Ween hunkered down, neck extended and staring. That puts Rube on the defensive, so the two of them glared at each other for what must have seemed like an eternity when finally, the great trucemaker arrived:

This is what I found as I was walking out the door to get to my assignment today. Kinda not hard to see why it's hard for me to work sometimes, yes?

And I get to make out* with him on a regular basis. I know you wish you were me.

*When I say make out, I mean he sits in my lap or cuddles in the crook of my arm and licks my face. Nothing weird about it, you big pervs.

Elliott, aka "Weenie Been" and my youngest, has just taken a bite of Mommy's White Castle cheeseburger. The outcome of this canNOT be good.

Right now, the boys are lounging on the office bed in somewhat of a '96' position: on the pillows, backs to each other. No, that does NOT make them gay, so stop it! (And y'all know who you are.)

So, can just I tell you I'm now addicted to ring tones? At $2.50 a pop, I probably shouldn't be, but "Brass Monkey," y'all! You can't turn down the "Brass Monkey"! Right now, I have it set on "Song2" by Blur -- you know, the one that goes "WOO-hoo!" I can't wait for it to go off during a big serious meeting. That'll be cool, huhuhhuhuhuhuh. (Beavis.) Next up? The Grand Master Flash version of "White Lines." ("Don't you get too high, baby.")

Won't be covering the debates tonight after all, but I will hunker down and watch them. Not like I'll have a choice, because Fox is broadcasting them, too. Should be interesting.