June 16, 2010

Baby talk

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One sum­mer in my teenage years, I vol­un­teered at a kinder camp1, and that filled a gap in my knowl­edge about any­one under 10. Unfortunately, that gap only spanned chil­dren between 3 and 5, and aside from that range, I knew noth­ing about kids.

So inter­act­ing with chil­dren who’ve yet learned to speak I found espe­cially awk­ward. I never under­stood how to talk to some­one who didn’t seem to under­stand what I was say­ing. It was like talk­ing to a stuffed ani­mal, which I’m pretty sure can’t be done by any sane per­son with­out feel­ing creepy.

Rosella in the car

 

Not to men­tion how phony it sounds. Why do peo­ple raise their voices, as if a child trusts them more if they sound like them2? They don’t nor­mally talk like that.

Then I real­ized that I do kitty talk, with the boospy, and the schmoopsy, and the pokey of the belly. I talk to my cat all the time, a habit I’ve prob­a­bly picked up from liv­ing by myself for the last three years, com­bined with the fact that I’m an extreme intro­vert and stay in my house for the major­ity of my time.

Which is strange because Dolly doesn’t under­stand any­thing I’m say­ing (though I’m sure cats are intel­li­gent enough to evolve to talk if they believed any­thing a human had to say could be impor­tant). And this is after I wrote an entry seven years ago, specif­i­cally about how awk­ward I found it to talk­ing to cats.

Maybe I’m com­fort­able enough with cats now to hold a con­ver­sa­tion with one. Or maybe I’m going crazy.

Rosella with tongue out

 

I’m get­ting more com­fort­able with kids too. Not just talk­ing to them, but the idea of hav­ing them myself, maybe because my friends are get­ting mar­ried and giv­ing birth and I’m spend­ing more time with a few adorable boys and girls. I can talk to them even though they only respond in monosyllables.

Jodie Foster once described hav­ing chil­dren as the most cre­ative thing she’s ever done, and I com­pletely under­stand that now. I can’t think of any­thing more cre­ative than nur­tur­ing growth, curios­ity, imag­i­na­tion, and ideas in another human being. One day, I’d like to expe­ri­ence it for myself.

  1. Cause I had noth­ing bet­ter to do. Seriously. [↑]
  2. Though it worked for Owen Meany. [↑]
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June 9, 2010

Meat slap

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I’ve dis­cov­ered that bonk­ing my cat on the head with a pep­perette will not dis­suade her from eat­ing it.

Then again, I prob­a­bly wouldn’t give up bacon if some­one slapped me with a pound.

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May 28, 2010

The saddest fact in life is that our cats will die before us

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When I was young and a cat food com­mer­cial came on where the kit­ties would nuz­zle their owner after receiv­ing a por­tion of Brand X, I’d think to myself, “Those are prob­a­bly spe­cial cats, the way they use perky mod­els to por­tray every­day moms in clean­ing com­mer­cials. I won’t ever have a cat like that.”

But I was wrong.

She fol­lows me around the house, she sleeps under the blan­kets in the crook of my arm, and I can’t imag­ine my life with­out her.

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January 17, 2010

Cat Stretching

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When you have a cat, every day is filled with moments like this.

(I can tell she’s purring just from the way her stom­ach moves when breathing.)

(Compare this to a very sim­i­lar clip I made of Dolly six years ago to see how far I’ve come with video.)

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August 25, 2009

The Advantage of Having Stubble

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(Turn up the sound!)

I never have a lot of it, but when I do, it means I can scratch my cat with my chin.

Once again, taken with my iPhone.

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March 21, 2009

Model Cat

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Model cat

My Uncle Joe and Aunt Vivien bought me this model cat from Taiwan. It looks so real that I thought it was stuffed at first glance. It’s life-sized, though on the small side, so appear­ing to be a kit­ten. You can only tell that it’s fake when you look closer at it’s nose (plas­tic, with­out the same tex­ture as a real cat’s nose) and ears (too much hair — I’m guess­ing mem­branes are too dif­fi­cult to fake). If I wasn’t a cat lover, I’d def­i­nitely be fooled.

I’m going to put it in the back win­dow of my car; I’ve been look­ing for a dec­o­ra­tion ever since I got my car a year ago, and this is per­fect. Hopefully no one will smash my win­dows in an attempt to save it.

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January 6, 2009

Back To Life

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Christmas lights

Thumbnail: Present wrapping paper
Thumbnail: Cat under Christmas tree
Thumbnail: Scented infuser sticks
Thumbnail: Blue-pink gradient
Thumbnail: Powdered candy
 

The hol­i­days are over. I sus­pect that I’ve eaten more choco­late over the last two weeks than ever in my life.

The two New Year’s par­ties were great, although I missed see­ing Rob at Aaron’s. I did get a New Year’s kiss though, some­thing I nor­mally feel awk­ward about when the cou­ples are all par­tak­ing and I hide behind my camera.

The holes in my ceil­ings have yet to be fixed, and it makes me cringe every time I walk into my bed­room or bath­room, so I spent all my time in the liv­ing room. Every day, I’d wake up, eat, play games, watch movies, then fall back asleep there.

On occa­sion, I’d visit friends or see a movie, if only for the sake of get­ting out. Some nights, I’d open the blinds and let the burn­ing sky pour in, just so I could know that there was some­thing out there out­side of my lit­tle microcosm.

I’m glad to be back to life. I was feel­ing so lack­adaisi­cal and dis­con­nected, drift­ing aim­lessly with­out any rea­son or pur­pose. In a strange way, I feel recharged, if only because I had two weeks with­out a reg­u­lar schedule.

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November 29, 2008

Dexter the Cat

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Named after Dexter the ser­ial killer. You can’t keep this cat down. If you leave any­thing lying around that’s not more than 25 pounds, he’ll play with it. This usu­ally involves bat­ting, scratch­ing, knock­ing it off a table, or chew­ing it.

I sus­pect this is why Darren keeps his house so clean.

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June 25, 2008

Home Free

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Thumbnail: Darren outside
Thumbnail: Tazo Berryblossom white tea
Thumbnail: Sausages, egg, and toast
Thumbnail: Dexter
Thumbnail: Bubble tea parlour
Thumbnail: Bubble tea
Thumbnail: Cigars
Thumbnail: Korean soup
Thumbnail: Dexter the cat in window
Thumbnail: Mall people
Thumbnail: Tempura roll
Thumbnail: Teriyaki beef
Thumbnail: Sliced orange
 

I left when the sun was set­ting. Along the way, the road stretched out infi­nitely before me, as if to say that I can always get away, and there is always more to go. The tree line danced and waved across the hori­zon, even­tu­ally dis­ap­pear­ing with the sun. Then the lines of red and white in each direc­tion guided me all the way to Darren’s house.

In it are lit­tle things from the house I grew up in — some can­dles here, some cab­i­nets there — that my par­ents didn’t want after the divorce. So strange to see innocu­ous objects from my child­hood in a dif­fer­ent setting.

It was the first time we’ve been com­pletely sober together since we were kids. No alco­hol, no weed.

I found out a cou­ple things I wouldn’t have known otherwise:

  • My dad started dat­ing some­one. He is cur­rently sin­gle again.
  • He has a dance floor at his house and a nice car. This is typ­i­cal of my dad, who loves his toys.
  • My mother is still insecure.
  • My par­ents still see each other, but not alone. The cur­rent social rule among the group of par­ents, is that you can’t invite one to a party with­out invit­ing the other.

A week­end of sweet indul­gence, late nights, and inti­mate con­ver­sa­tion. No one under­stands my rela­tion­ships the way Darren does, because we both share these quixotic ideas about love. It was so com­fort­ing to be able to express myself on these things with­out hav­ing to explain my under­ly­ing feel­ings, as if some­one could truly under­stand me, espe­cially impor­tant in this cur­rent phase of my life.

It made me real­ize that home isn’t where the par­ents are, some­thing I used to believe1. It’s an idea.

A com­fort­ing place you can go to get away, where you’re com­pletely accepted for who you are.

  1. I’m not sure exactly when I stopped believ­ing this, but it was prob­a­bly some­where between the time my par­ents got divorced and I stopped talk­ing to my mom. [↑]
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June 20, 2008

The Cat in the Closet

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Dolly on my clothes

When you live with a cat who sleeps on things to mark her ter­ri­tory, you never won­der why your clothes are cov­ered with hair.

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May 1, 2008

Kitteh With Catnip

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One of the advan­tages of hav­ing such a lov­able cat is that peo­ple want to buy her things. I make a con­scious effort not to spoil her with human food, so she hap­pily accepts toys and treats from people.

Like this bunny filled with cat­nip that Louise bought for her.

One thing she really likes to do is grab her cat­nip toys by the teeth and shake them to release the scent. I don’t give her cat­nip very often, so in stoner terms, this meas she’s a lightweight.

And oh how she loves it; within a few min­utes, the fur of the toy is cov­ered in cat drool.

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October 2, 2007

Cat-Sitting Sprocket

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While Joel and his fam­ily were on extended vaca­tion, I took care of their cat, Sprocket.

He used to be 25 pounds (from the pre­vi­ous owner who overfed him) but slimmed down to around 14 or 15, I’d say. You can tell he used to be much big­ger; if you run your hand down the length of his body, you can feel the bones on his frame stick­ing out promi­nently, and there’s a fair amount of extra skin hang­ing from the belly.

Thumbnail: Sprocket the cat lounges
Thumbnail: Sprocket the cat yawns
Thumbnail: Sprocket the cat
Thumbnail: Sprocket stalks Dolly

He never got along with Dolly. For the entire time he was with me, which was just under two months, they got in about two dozen fights. Every now and then, there would be a tremen­dous cacoph­ony of hiss­ing, growl­ing, meow­ing, and run­ning from one end of the house to the other. I’d say that Sprocket was more often the aggres­sor, but Dolly started her share of fights. Even though she still has her back claws (Sprocket is com­pletely de-clawed), he had a large weight and size advan­tage. His bite is also very strong (which I found out from feed­ing him treats1), I’m guess­ing from all the prac­tice he got from eating.

It made me re-think get­ting a sec­ond cat while Dolly’s still alive. Two cats can fill a house nicely, but she didn’t get along with him at all. Since they don’t know how old Sprocket is, the aggres­sive­ness may sim­ply be due to his age, but I’m not sure I want to take the chance.

In any case, I can tell he enjoyed the change of pace, which was liv­ing in a house with two par­ents, two kids, and two dogs, to just me and a cat. He’s a sucker for treats, meow­ing qui­etly as a “reminder” to give him one. One funny thing I noticed is that he seemed to have harder-than-average paws. When pac­ing around on the kitchen tiles before being fed, it would sound like a horse trot.

[kml_flashembed movie=”/videos/sprocket.swf” width=“480” height=“375” wmode=“transparent”/]

Sprocket also loves atten­tion. No mat­ter what I was doing — cook­ing break­fast, play­ing games upstairs, writ­ing down­stairs — he would fol­low me around. It did make my Tai Chi prac­tice more dif­fi­cult, as he’d spread out on the open car­pet and roll around under my feet.

He loves to sleep on blan­kets, and would always fall asleep on my sheets when I was under them, most com­monly near the feet. He got along espe­cially well with Bronwen. When she stayed the night, he would keep her up by con­stantly walk­ing over her body, look­ing for a warm place to nestle.

I’ll cer­tainly miss him. Hopefully, he’ll remem­ber me the next time I go over to Joel’s house.

  1. I don’t think he was ever fed by hand; he would always nip my fin­gers when giv­ing him a treat. Dolly is the oppo­site. She very del­i­cately moves towards the treat with her mouth, and snatches the treat with her tongue. [↑]
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October 27, 2006

My Cat Can Beg

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[kml_flashembed movie=”/videos/dollybegs.swf” width=“480” height=“375” wmode=“transparent”/]

Before giv­ing her food, I use to ask Dolly to shake or beg or give paw, and she’d lift one paw up (always her right one) for me. Now she’s asso­ci­ated the paw-lifting action with being fed, so she skips the step of me say­ing any­thing and auto­mat­i­cally does it.

She’ll do any­thing for food really.

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November 19, 2005

Winter Has Come

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Thumbnail: Cat snowprints

Thumbnail: Cozy comforts

Cats are always curi­ous in the snow. As they sniff, the touch of their noses melt the snowflakes, and their tongues come out to lick away the mois­ture. They cau­tiously walk into it and inspect their paws, won­der­ing how they sud­denly became wet.

As for me, I’m com­fort­able at home with a warm drink and the glow of my mon­i­tors. The week has me burned out nowa­days, and the week­ends have become the only time for me to relax, the only time I can enjoy the sun­light dur­ing the short­ened win­ter days. You can always rec­og­nize a win­ter sky by its pale­ness, caus­ing par­tic­u­larly bright days and orange nights.

Christmas will be here soon. Vacation and trips home and fam­ily and the spirit of the sea­son. Fall has come and gone. How does the time pass so quickly? Did I imag­ine I’d be here, at this stage in life, a year ago? Not at all.

I never real­ized how much I missed the win­ter, until the snow started falling.

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November 11, 2005

Introduction: Lacey

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Thumbnail: Lacey hides

Thumbnail: Lacey scratches

Thumbnail: Lacey naps

Aaron and Karen adopted another cat, and named her Lacey. She’s a tiny thing, with downy white hair and ears like satel­lite dishes. So far she’s a bit shy, as Chaos fol­lows her around often, but I think she’ll get used to it.

Until Lacey came along, I would have never sus­pected how much the cats look like their own­ers, but the resem­blance, as dif­fi­cult as it was to put my fin­ger on at first, is strik­ing. Chaos is the nearly over­weight cat who some­times has a goofy look on his face like he’s say­ing “WHATSGOINGONOVERHEREGUYS??”, and Lacey is much smaller with big ears and del­i­cate features.

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