A new date on human-altered bone from Bluefish Cave puts humans on the American side of the Bering Strait in the middle of the Last Glacial Maximum. At this point this is only a surprise to those who haven't been paying attention, but firm data points are always welcome, and frankly any advance in science is to be celebrated.
On the personal side, I feel obliged to inform long-term readers of some recent losses that are primarily of personal impact. Moby Dent, the Great White Car, is officially dead. We do not yet know the name of the Subaru Forester who has assumed his duties, and it may never matter to blog readers, depending on my future capacity to undertake adventures abroad in the future. Moby was not a car we would ever have chosen on our own, having been bought cheap from a family member in a time of crisis, but he got us where we needed to go that the buses couldn't take us for almost 30 years, and kept patching up and plugging along long after we really should have replaced him. He was the first and is still the only car I've ever known intimately, since I didn't even learn to drive till we'd had him for quite some time, so it is hard not to be sentimental about him. But the Forester is the first car we've chosen together and this is a cheering thing.
We need cheering things, because shortly before Christmas both the cats were mauled by stray dogs. Miss Thai is currently washing herself next to the keyboard, though things were iffy for awhile there; but thanks to the neighbors who drove off the dogs and took us straight to the vet (Moby being immobile and the Forester not yet chosen), the efforts of both our regular vet and the Animal Emergency Room, and the help of our friends who provided further mobility as needed, she survived and is doing well.
Dr. Bruce, the cat in the header, had his neck broken outright, and was dead before anybody knew the dogs had struck.
And Thai, who was his littermate, does not like to sleep with us without him anymore, unless the night is very cold.
Showing posts with label cats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cats. Show all posts
Monday, January 16, 2017
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
The Bird in my Hand
Yesterday Health Crap descended and it would have been a waste of a day except...
...Bruce stood in the hallway penetrating my misery with deep-throated yowls, quite unlike his normal crying, until I got up to see what was the matter and why he didn't just come in and harass me.
And found him with a hummingbird in his mouth.
Yes, you read that right. Bruce, who hasn't a clue how to hunt anything more intelligent than a jingle ball, had caught the fastest bird on two wings. And he had no idea whatsoever what to do with it, so he'd brought it to me, presumably to make me feel better. (He is our resident doctor, after all, though his usual treatments are bedrest,purring, and acupuncture.) So I told him he was a bad cat and carefully took it away from him.
It was a juvenile, judging by the downy bits and the lack of any distinctive throat bar. Except for the rapid pulsing of the powerful little heart, I would have thought it was dead, with its wings held out stiff and fragile as a dragonfly's, it's feet curled up in a bed of downy feathers, and its eyes squeezed shut. I carried it out the back door and set it on the porch rail, where it balanced on its stomach, still frozen. I was afraid it might be too terrified, or have taken too much damage to those stiff little wings, to take off, so I turned away, wondering what I had that might make a nectar container suitable for an incapacitated hummingbird.
And when I turned back again, it was gone as if it had never been.
A real blogger would've taken a picture, but hey, a real blogger would have a digital camera by now.
...Bruce stood in the hallway penetrating my misery with deep-throated yowls, quite unlike his normal crying, until I got up to see what was the matter and why he didn't just come in and harass me.
And found him with a hummingbird in his mouth.
Yes, you read that right. Bruce, who hasn't a clue how to hunt anything more intelligent than a jingle ball, had caught the fastest bird on two wings. And he had no idea whatsoever what to do with it, so he'd brought it to me, presumably to make me feel better. (He is our resident doctor, after all, though his usual treatments are bedrest,purring, and acupuncture.) So I told him he was a bad cat and carefully took it away from him.
It was a juvenile, judging by the downy bits and the lack of any distinctive throat bar. Except for the rapid pulsing of the powerful little heart, I would have thought it was dead, with its wings held out stiff and fragile as a dragonfly's, it's feet curled up in a bed of downy feathers, and its eyes squeezed shut. I carried it out the back door and set it on the porch rail, where it balanced on its stomach, still frozen. I was afraid it might be too terrified, or have taken too much damage to those stiff little wings, to take off, so I turned away, wondering what I had that might make a nectar container suitable for an incapacitated hummingbird.
And when I turned back again, it was gone as if it had never been.
A real blogger would've taken a picture, but hey, a real blogger would have a digital camera by now.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Idea Garage Sale: Persistent Cat is Persistent
We're having a battle of wills in our house right now.
One of the improvements made during the work on the back of the house last year was a railing on the back porch directly under a window. When the screens were taken away for repair and painting, the cats found this to be an ideal arrangement, and when the screens were returned, they quickly broke through the screen to continue using what they had come to regard as their personal portal. We had the screen repaired with a more flexible mesh anchored more deeply.
The result is that they will now spend hours on that railing, or sitting on the cabinet under the window in question on the inside, glaring from window to nearest available human. When we open the door, they often refuse to go through it. Thai has gone so far as to grab me by the arm and lean her head against the screen. You don't have to be as practiced at projecting words into a cat's mouth as I am to get the drift here: "Mommy! How can you be so dense? I don't want to go through the door, I want you to leave MY WINDOW OPEN."
This is a picture book set-up. Cute cats (standing in for obstinate toddlers trying to impose their will on the world), human (standing in for parents trying to instill a certain behavior - in a picture book the human would almost certainly be a child), simple situation that can be elaborated to suit. Either the cat would come up with more and more ingenious and funny ways to make the human see reason and meet with more and more deliberately absurd obliviousness, or the obstinancy would spread around the house, with the cat also trying to impose her will on eating, sleeping, and playing arrangements. I can almost see it.
Almost.
Except for the ending.
In real life, sooner or later Thai goes through the door and there's no practical reason why this should not become one of our daily life rituals. In the story, there has to be some resolution which will satisfy the reader. Some compromise which allows the cat/toddler a degree of control over her own life at the same time that she learns she can't always have her own way.
Without the resolution, I only have a situation, not a plot. Nobody wants to read a picture book story without a resolution. That would be pointless.
So even if I could write picture books, it appears I wouldn't be able to write this one.
One of the improvements made during the work on the back of the house last year was a railing on the back porch directly under a window. When the screens were taken away for repair and painting, the cats found this to be an ideal arrangement, and when the screens were returned, they quickly broke through the screen to continue using what they had come to regard as their personal portal. We had the screen repaired with a more flexible mesh anchored more deeply.
The result is that they will now spend hours on that railing, or sitting on the cabinet under the window in question on the inside, glaring from window to nearest available human. When we open the door, they often refuse to go through it. Thai has gone so far as to grab me by the arm and lean her head against the screen. You don't have to be as practiced at projecting words into a cat's mouth as I am to get the drift here: "Mommy! How can you be so dense? I don't want to go through the door, I want you to leave MY WINDOW OPEN."
This is a picture book set-up. Cute cats (standing in for obstinate toddlers trying to impose their will on the world), human (standing in for parents trying to instill a certain behavior - in a picture book the human would almost certainly be a child), simple situation that can be elaborated to suit. Either the cat would come up with more and more ingenious and funny ways to make the human see reason and meet with more and more deliberately absurd obliviousness, or the obstinancy would spread around the house, with the cat also trying to impose her will on eating, sleeping, and playing arrangements. I can almost see it.
Almost.
Except for the ending.
In real life, sooner or later Thai goes through the door and there's no practical reason why this should not become one of our daily life rituals. In the story, there has to be some resolution which will satisfy the reader. Some compromise which allows the cat/toddler a degree of control over her own life at the same time that she learns she can't always have her own way.
Without the resolution, I only have a situation, not a plot. Nobody wants to read a picture book story without a resolution. That would be pointless.
So even if I could write picture books, it appears I wouldn't be able to write this one.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Oktoberfest Blogfest: Bilocating Kitten
Since I signed up to join Bish Denham's Blogfest, involving posting a short ghostly experience, I reckon I better get on it.
This is a true story and the weirdest thing that ever happened to me.
Some years ago, we had orphan kittens. We were alerted to their existence by the agonized cries of the smallest, most-loudmouthed one, who was also the first to try to climb out of the box even though her eyes were glued shut by infection. We called her Intrepid. She was a dark gray tabby. She had two sisters, a dark gray tabby with white feet (Whitefoot), a black (Ford; she was an Explorer), and gray with a white chest (Pogo; he looked like a possum).
We kept them in the sunroom so our big cats wouldn't molest them and contract their fleas, fed them with an eyedropper, combed the fleas out of them, and washed their poor infected eyes regularly with saline solution. Before the recent reconfiguration of our back porch, the three rooms - laundry room, powder room, sunroom - were all connected to each other by doors, with entrance to the main part of the house from the kitchen to the laundry room and from the dining room to the sunroom. Once the kittens started moving around on their own, I would utilize the powder room as an airlock, entering through the laundry room, closing the door behind me, and then opening the door to the sunroom. But none of the doors closed very well.
One night I woke up and saw Intrepid, or possibly Whitefoot, on the foot of the bed. I sat up and she pounced into the mass of covers pushed down there - it being June and too hot to sleep with the covers up - so that I had to fish around for her. I couldn't find her. As I woke up more I realized that, even had one of the felines in the house gotten the door to the sunroom open, a kitten who could barely climb out of a box would have had to cross the dining room and kitchen, climb the steep back stairs (each riser taller than any of the kittens at full extension), cross the landing, climb the second flight of stairs, cross the hallway, and climb onto a waterbed frame with no help from a dangling bedspread. It wasn't possible. This was a hypnopompic hallucination - essentially, my body had started to wake up, but my brain had continued dreaming for a short time.
Not a big deal.
Next day (possibly my memory conflates events and it might have been several days later), the kittens were lively and I had to move back and forth between the powder room and the sun room several times in the course of tending to kittens, so to restrict the time they spent underfoot I put all of them on the bench seat in the sunroom while I went to the bathroom to get what I was after. By the time I turned around, I had kittens in my way. Intrepid in particular seemed anxious to get stepped on - while Ford and Pogo chased each other, she was directly where I needed to step. So I gently lifted her aside with my bare foot under her belly, laughing at the way her little black paws clawed the air on either side of my instep, and returned to the sunroom - where I found Intrepid, too small to jump down, standing on the edge of the bench seat meowing frantically.
None of the kittens, at this point, could climb onto the bench seat without assistance. Even Pogo, the biggest and strongest, had to use an intermediate box placed next to it to get himself up. Yet there she was. But I had felt her furry belly across my instep. And although it was easy to confuse Whitefoot - currently at the base of the bench seat - with Intrepid, I had specifically seen that the kitten I lifted had dark paws.
I have no explanation for this. I only tell you what happened.
Intrepid was the only one of the kittens who died. She never gained weight past 6.5 ounces, never got weaned. She died while I was on an out of town school visit, probably of hypothermia in the middle of June in Texas, because her body couldn't retain heat and the other kittens no longer stayed in the box insulating her.
I don't know if that is relevant.
Weird things happen, that's all.
This is a true story and the weirdest thing that ever happened to me.
Some years ago, we had orphan kittens. We were alerted to their existence by the agonized cries of the smallest, most-loudmouthed one, who was also the first to try to climb out of the box even though her eyes were glued shut by infection. We called her Intrepid. She was a dark gray tabby. She had two sisters, a dark gray tabby with white feet (Whitefoot), a black (Ford; she was an Explorer), and gray with a white chest (Pogo; he looked like a possum).
We kept them in the sunroom so our big cats wouldn't molest them and contract their fleas, fed them with an eyedropper, combed the fleas out of them, and washed their poor infected eyes regularly with saline solution. Before the recent reconfiguration of our back porch, the three rooms - laundry room, powder room, sunroom - were all connected to each other by doors, with entrance to the main part of the house from the kitchen to the laundry room and from the dining room to the sunroom. Once the kittens started moving around on their own, I would utilize the powder room as an airlock, entering through the laundry room, closing the door behind me, and then opening the door to the sunroom. But none of the doors closed very well.
One night I woke up and saw Intrepid, or possibly Whitefoot, on the foot of the bed. I sat up and she pounced into the mass of covers pushed down there - it being June and too hot to sleep with the covers up - so that I had to fish around for her. I couldn't find her. As I woke up more I realized that, even had one of the felines in the house gotten the door to the sunroom open, a kitten who could barely climb out of a box would have had to cross the dining room and kitchen, climb the steep back stairs (each riser taller than any of the kittens at full extension), cross the landing, climb the second flight of stairs, cross the hallway, and climb onto a waterbed frame with no help from a dangling bedspread. It wasn't possible. This was a hypnopompic hallucination - essentially, my body had started to wake up, but my brain had continued dreaming for a short time.
Not a big deal.
Next day (possibly my memory conflates events and it might have been several days later), the kittens were lively and I had to move back and forth between the powder room and the sun room several times in the course of tending to kittens, so to restrict the time they spent underfoot I put all of them on the bench seat in the sunroom while I went to the bathroom to get what I was after. By the time I turned around, I had kittens in my way. Intrepid in particular seemed anxious to get stepped on - while Ford and Pogo chased each other, she was directly where I needed to step. So I gently lifted her aside with my bare foot under her belly, laughing at the way her little black paws clawed the air on either side of my instep, and returned to the sunroom - where I found Intrepid, too small to jump down, standing on the edge of the bench seat meowing frantically.
None of the kittens, at this point, could climb onto the bench seat without assistance. Even Pogo, the biggest and strongest, had to use an intermediate box placed next to it to get himself up. Yet there she was. But I had felt her furry belly across my instep. And although it was easy to confuse Whitefoot - currently at the base of the bench seat - with Intrepid, I had specifically seen that the kitten I lifted had dark paws.
I have no explanation for this. I only tell you what happened.
Intrepid was the only one of the kittens who died. She never gained weight past 6.5 ounces, never got weaned. She died while I was on an out of town school visit, probably of hypothermia in the middle of June in Texas, because her body couldn't retain heat and the other kittens no longer stayed in the box insulating her.
I don't know if that is relevant.
Weird things happen, that's all.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
The New Header
Anybody reading this on the blog, as opposed to through Google Reader or whatever, can see that I've fooled with the layout. That's because I went to Heather Powers's workshop on niche blogging over the weekend, and she was real clear about the need for visuals.
This presents a problem for me, because I'm a text-based gal. I think in text. I barely even read picture books when I was little, but went straight to ones with chapters. I don't even own a digital camera. It's on my "to buy" list, but other things keep seeming more urgent - like books, brakes, books, fabric, books, professional memberships, books, saving Planned Parenthood, books, working plumbing, books...
So I don't have a lot of usable image files. I kind of wanted a line of pics under the title representing different idea sources: Art. Nature. Science! History. Play. But I couldn't make things line up and size right and anyway I didn't have great pictures for all of it. So I went with the best picture I ever took.
That's Bruce. He's in one of the columns from the front of our house, two of which the workmen dropped when they were fixing our porch in 2008.
This one split into seven pieces and had to be glued back together in the side yard.
Bruce, being boss cat, of course had to inspect the work.
I can't find a good font color that will stand out against all parts of the picture, so I'll probably change it sooner or later, but like I said, it's the best photo I ever took, and it's even metaphorically appropriate.
No, really. Because you've got a cat representing curiosity, and the column representing a whole pieced together out of fragments, and because people who see this picture out of context immediately start creating a context for it, the hollow column becoming a gigantic mouse hole or something.
Yeah, yeah, I'll get the digital camera. Probably before the cell phone. Which I still don't want, even after my experience with Moby in Austin. Every time I think I might want one, I see a cell phone commercial and my soul revolts. At least I can take research pictures with a digital camera. Can you say tax deductible? I thought you could.
By the way - we have our tax refund now. It was delayed because I once again used their forms with my SSN on them, and they file our return under Damon's SSN. This confuses them every year. This year I've got forms I have to fill out the SSN on, and the plan is to use his. Let's see if that confuses them even worse. Meantime - have you done your taxes yet? Times a-wastin'!
This presents a problem for me, because I'm a text-based gal. I think in text. I barely even read picture books when I was little, but went straight to ones with chapters. I don't even own a digital camera. It's on my "to buy" list, but other things keep seeming more urgent - like books, brakes, books, fabric, books, professional memberships, books, saving Planned Parenthood, books, working plumbing, books...
So I don't have a lot of usable image files. I kind of wanted a line of pics under the title representing different idea sources: Art. Nature. Science! History. Play. But I couldn't make things line up and size right and anyway I didn't have great pictures for all of it. So I went with the best picture I ever took.
That's Bruce. He's in one of the columns from the front of our house, two of which the workmen dropped when they were fixing our porch in 2008.
This one split into seven pieces and had to be glued back together in the side yard.
Bruce, being boss cat, of course had to inspect the work.
I can't find a good font color that will stand out against all parts of the picture, so I'll probably change it sooner or later, but like I said, it's the best photo I ever took, and it's even metaphorically appropriate.
No, really. Because you've got a cat representing curiosity, and the column representing a whole pieced together out of fragments, and because people who see this picture out of context immediately start creating a context for it, the hollow column becoming a gigantic mouse hole or something.
Yeah, yeah, I'll get the digital camera. Probably before the cell phone. Which I still don't want, even after my experience with Moby in Austin. Every time I think I might want one, I see a cell phone commercial and my soul revolts. At least I can take research pictures with a digital camera. Can you say tax deductible? I thought you could.
By the way - we have our tax refund now. It was delayed because I once again used their forms with my SSN on them, and they file our return under Damon's SSN. This confuses them every year. This year I've got forms I have to fill out the SSN on, and the plan is to use his. Let's see if that confuses them even worse. Meantime - have you done your taxes yet? Times a-wastin'!
Friday, February 25, 2011
How Sabertoothed Cats Yawned!
How a Smilodon Saber-toothed Cat Closed Its Gaping Maw
Not mentioned is the peculiar arrangement of the incisors, which jut considerably farther forward of the fangs than on other species, the better to grip and chew prey without snagging it on the fangs.
Megafauna are so cool.
Not mentioned is the peculiar arrangement of the incisors, which jut considerably farther forward of the fangs than on other species, the better to grip and chew prey without snagging it on the fangs.
Megafauna are so cool.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
My Sins, According to Thai
My cats are very disappointed in me. And when you look at my job performance the last few days, it's hard to blame them.
I'm letting workmen crawl around under their house with power tools and noisy bangy objects.
I left them Thursday to go to the farmer's market, bringing back tuna steaks that I wouldn't share with them.
Thai resents that I watched a DVD with Damon last night (the movie adaptation of Beezus and Ramona is great even though Beezus is too old) instead of playing videogames on the computer where she could catlap me; while Bruce resents that at the end of the movie I got up to do other things even though he was catlapping me.
I moved Thai out of the chair in front of the sewing machine just so I could sew, and even went so far as to close the door to that room when Bruce wanted me to do something for him but wouldn't tell me what it was. (I suspect he wanted me to chase the workmen out from under the house.)
I shut them out all afternoon one day this week without checking whether they might want to come in.
I've allowed it to rain when they wanted to be outside.
I am presently typing a blog post around Thai instead of rubbing her tummy like I'm supposed to.
In many ways, I am a terrible person to them. I leave them alone some days; do things they have no interest in when they need attention; refuse to let them participate in fascinating activities like sewing; and take them off the table when there's food on it. Even if the food isn't one they're interested in.
Yet, they purr for me, doctor me when I'm sick, snag me as I walk by to say hi, and forgive me even for vet visits and workmen. If my cats are happy, I know I'm not a terrible person.
It's good to get outside your own perspective and see yourself from another point of view once in awhile. If they can forgive my sins of omission and commission, I reckon I can, too.
I'm letting workmen crawl around under their house with power tools and noisy bangy objects.
I left them Thursday to go to the farmer's market, bringing back tuna steaks that I wouldn't share with them.
Thai resents that I watched a DVD with Damon last night (the movie adaptation of Beezus and Ramona is great even though Beezus is too old) instead of playing videogames on the computer where she could catlap me; while Bruce resents that at the end of the movie I got up to do other things even though he was catlapping me.
I moved Thai out of the chair in front of the sewing machine just so I could sew, and even went so far as to close the door to that room when Bruce wanted me to do something for him but wouldn't tell me what it was. (I suspect he wanted me to chase the workmen out from under the house.)
I shut them out all afternoon one day this week without checking whether they might want to come in.
I've allowed it to rain when they wanted to be outside.
I am presently typing a blog post around Thai instead of rubbing her tummy like I'm supposed to.
In many ways, I am a terrible person to them. I leave them alone some days; do things they have no interest in when they need attention; refuse to let them participate in fascinating activities like sewing; and take them off the table when there's food on it. Even if the food isn't one they're interested in.
Yet, they purr for me, doctor me when I'm sick, snag me as I walk by to say hi, and forgive me even for vet visits and workmen. If my cats are happy, I know I'm not a terrible person.
It's good to get outside your own perspective and see yourself from another point of view once in awhile. If they can forgive my sins of omission and commission, I reckon I can, too.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Happy Thanksgiving
What are you doing online? Go be with your family!
What, me? I have to be here. Thai wants her morning laptime. It's this or play Sims.
What, me? I have to be here. Thai wants her morning laptime. It's this or play Sims.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Idea Garage Sale: November Story
I used to get a certain mood in November in West Texas. For those of you who have never lived there - i.e. most people in the world - West Texas is what is known as a "semi-arid" landscape. This means that it's not the Mojave, Sahara, or Saudi Peninsula, we have vegetation year-round most places, and that our droughts are about 7 years long. San Angelo, where I lived from the time I was ten till I left for college, bills itself as "the wool capitol of the world," but if anybody of my generation recognizes the name, it will be from receiving Laugh-In's Fickle Finger of Fate Award when its reservoir caught fire.
If rain falls, it will probably be in May or October, causing floods. But all the same, most of the Novembers I spent there were misty, humidity hovering in the chilly air that came down from the Arctic (there being nothing between San Angelo and the North Pole but a bobwire fence, and I hear that fence is down) without ever precipitating. The hard, bright sun of summer hides behind solid cloud banks that never, ever rain. The leaves are off the scrubby trees, except for the dull green cedar and live oak. Looking out from - well, from anywhere - you can see the curvature of the earth, dun grass fading into blue-gray sky spattered with restless flocks of black birds, grackles mostly. The perpetual West Texas wind doesn't fail, but when its not dragging clouds of dust down from the Panhandle and Oklahoma, it creeps along at a melancholy pace, and it smells wrong. Hunting season starts, and you're likely to encounter a quiescent lump of deer on your way to the icehouse for a candy bar. (Also, I get really awful sinus problems, so I'm drugged to the gills to begin with.)
I made endless attempts during my eight-year tenure there to write something that would convey the emotional state of November to somebody else. But I haven't much use for mood writing, and emotional states are awkward to plot. Here's one I started writing and couldn't finish, though I knew exactly how it should read.
Marion Jabot lives in what my Mom called a "crackerbox" house next door to the local cat lady's bungalow. She was an unspecified school age, probably junior high or high school (I think I tried to write this when I was twelve), she has an Airedale named Bobo, and she hates cats. She teaches Bobo to chase them, because she thinks they're sly and evil and up to something. Even after the cat lady (Annie Wise; I don't know why these names stay with me so well) dies and the cats are all hauled away, the bungalow standing empty, she sees cats gathering there in huge numbers, night after night. Bobo sees them, too. Bobo is afraid of them. But no one else notices anything unusual.
I no longer remember - perhaps this is a plot point I never solved - how she and Bobo were to get trapped, alone, overnight in the bungalow. It would be a November night, and the cats would corner her, led by a huge tortoiseshell with glowing eyes, who she identifies with Annie Wise; perhaps as her reincarnation, perhaps as her witch's familiar, for Annie Wise is patently a witch figure. They would be everywhere, all glowing eyes and silent movement and savage claws and teeth. She and Bobo would try to attack, but they melt away in one part only to surround them more closely in another, until they give up and huddle together in a circle of cats, all night. The tortoiseshell would walk all over them, make eye contact. And when the sun rose, they would all go away, leaving Marian and her dog exhausted, bewildered, and unharmed; beyond the knowledge that the cats she hated, who certainly could have killed her if they'd cared to, didn't care to and weren't malevolent at all. Her idea of cats had nothing to do with the reality of cats, and everything to do with who she was, herself.
And that would be what November feels like in West Texas.
Naw, I didn't think you'd get it. Maybe you could if Ray Bradbury wrote it, or August Derleth, on a good day, like when he wrote "The Lonesome Place." But it was way more than I could do when I was twelve, and I've gone in entirely different directions since then.
And November in San Antonio doesn't feel that way at all.
If rain falls, it will probably be in May or October, causing floods. But all the same, most of the Novembers I spent there were misty, humidity hovering in the chilly air that came down from the Arctic (there being nothing between San Angelo and the North Pole but a bobwire fence, and I hear that fence is down) without ever precipitating. The hard, bright sun of summer hides behind solid cloud banks that never, ever rain. The leaves are off the scrubby trees, except for the dull green cedar and live oak. Looking out from - well, from anywhere - you can see the curvature of the earth, dun grass fading into blue-gray sky spattered with restless flocks of black birds, grackles mostly. The perpetual West Texas wind doesn't fail, but when its not dragging clouds of dust down from the Panhandle and Oklahoma, it creeps along at a melancholy pace, and it smells wrong. Hunting season starts, and you're likely to encounter a quiescent lump of deer on your way to the icehouse for a candy bar. (Also, I get really awful sinus problems, so I'm drugged to the gills to begin with.)
I made endless attempts during my eight-year tenure there to write something that would convey the emotional state of November to somebody else. But I haven't much use for mood writing, and emotional states are awkward to plot. Here's one I started writing and couldn't finish, though I knew exactly how it should read.
Marion Jabot lives in what my Mom called a "crackerbox" house next door to the local cat lady's bungalow. She was an unspecified school age, probably junior high or high school (I think I tried to write this when I was twelve), she has an Airedale named Bobo, and she hates cats. She teaches Bobo to chase them, because she thinks they're sly and evil and up to something. Even after the cat lady (Annie Wise; I don't know why these names stay with me so well) dies and the cats are all hauled away, the bungalow standing empty, she sees cats gathering there in huge numbers, night after night. Bobo sees them, too. Bobo is afraid of them. But no one else notices anything unusual.
I no longer remember - perhaps this is a plot point I never solved - how she and Bobo were to get trapped, alone, overnight in the bungalow. It would be a November night, and the cats would corner her, led by a huge tortoiseshell with glowing eyes, who she identifies with Annie Wise; perhaps as her reincarnation, perhaps as her witch's familiar, for Annie Wise is patently a witch figure. They would be everywhere, all glowing eyes and silent movement and savage claws and teeth. She and Bobo would try to attack, but they melt away in one part only to surround them more closely in another, until they give up and huddle together in a circle of cats, all night. The tortoiseshell would walk all over them, make eye contact. And when the sun rose, they would all go away, leaving Marian and her dog exhausted, bewildered, and unharmed; beyond the knowledge that the cats she hated, who certainly could have killed her if they'd cared to, didn't care to and weren't malevolent at all. Her idea of cats had nothing to do with the reality of cats, and everything to do with who she was, herself.
And that would be what November feels like in West Texas.
Naw, I didn't think you'd get it. Maybe you could if Ray Bradbury wrote it, or August Derleth, on a good day, like when he wrote "The Lonesome Place." But it was way more than I could do when I was twelve, and I've gone in entirely different directions since then.
And November in San Antonio doesn't feel that way at all.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Idea Garage Sale: An Invasive Species
I was on the balcony writing when I heard that deep-throated ventriloquist "meow" cats use when their mouths are full, and out came Thai with a mouthful of bird.
Thai is a lousy hunter, so it wasn't dead. I know some people say when a cat brings you live prey that they want you to play with it and learn to hunt for yourself, but I assure you, Thai doesn't know how to kill things. So I would have had no choice but to take it from her, even if it had been a house sparrow, which honestly I'd as soon she killed as not. But it wasn't. I think it was a juvenile Carolina Wren, though it had an eye ring instead of an eye streak and the tail was missing. It was so small, and the beak was a wren beak, and the breast feathers were yellow.
Thus began the great pursuit. Of course I didn't succeed in taking it from her. She let it go before I could, and then I was running interference to keep her from catching it again and it was hopping and flying frantically, until it wound up in the bedroom between the wardrobe and the built-in bookshelves. So I shut Thai out on the balcony and tried to drag it out with a towel, but no dice. But the wardrobe is in an alcove created by the bookcases being built around a disused but not filled-in door to the study. So I went around to the study (having to shut Bruce out of that room and the bedroom, which is a more elaborate process than it sounds like), moved the full bookcase, and opened the door.
Now, I had been feeling lousy and moreover this was during the period when the desktop computer wasn't functioning and we were still trying dodge after dodge to bring it back. The wren had all kinds of dusty holes and corners in which to hide, and took advantage of them all, while I couldn't google "animal rescue" or "How do I get a scared wren out of my study?" But, being the old-fashioned kind of person I am, I had the phone book and a landline, and I used them.
Most of the animal rescue places weren't answering their phones for one reason or another, but I finally got one, where a woman told me to darken the room, open a window, and leave it alone for awhile so it could find its way out. I told her I wasn't sure it could fly. It was fluttering around about the height of the baseboards and had no tail. She said in that case when it tried to get out the window I should put it in a box and bring it over.
The study is not that easy a room to darken. I tried to hang a towel over the windows in the balcony doors, but it didn't work well. The wren had settled down behind the filing cabinets, which is near the corner with the open window, so I built a crude pen out of file boxes and stuff that could be set flush to the floor and were taller than the wren's demonstrated flight capacity. Concerned that she was probably overheated and lacking any other bait, I set a shallow dish of water in the middle, shut the connecting door, fetched an indignant Thai off the balcony through the bedroom, shut her and Bruce both outside, and had lunch.
After lunch, I came back up in time to see the wren perch on the water dish, fly from there to the window, and fly away.
So I swept the study (the doorway was filthy) and put everything back where it belonged. Thai snubbed me all day, making a point of being near me so I could see her doing it.
If you don't automatically think "picture book" after all that, you should reconsider whether writing for children is your true calling. The situation is accessible to small children, the action is visual and potentially funny, rife with ways to delineate in art and text the soft-hearted, muddle-headed, messy householder and the desperate but resourceful young wren who doesn't trust her, and it ends with a punch line. Depending on the emphasis chosen, you could imply morals about keeping your workspace tidy, courage and resource in the face of danger, or even training your cat not to hunt. Make the householder a dog to whom the visiting cat has brought a live bird as a present, to make up a quarrel (she says!) and you've got a Beatrix Potterish anthropomorphic social farce.
That's the obvious use. But why stop with the obvious? Especially when the obvious is a format I've never been much into. I never even read them much, advancing to chapter books as soon as feasible, and you may not have noticed this, but my wordcounts tend to run high for a picture book.
Couldn't I also use an anecdote like this as an anchor for an article for a nature magazine? As part of a work of non-fiction on urban wildlife and how to deal responsibly with the intersection of human residence with the animal world? Raccoons and possums in the attic, skunks under the shed, squirrels on the bird feeder, mice in the compost heap - I've got them all. Can I write about them? Could it be a fable? A cartoon short subject script? (Nope, not getting into scripting, either!)
With my productive work days averaging about four hours long lately, I'm not going to divert any energy into developing this idea in any of those formats. I need to focus on Len, and keeping the existing projects in the mail, and keeping the house and yard from smothering in neglect. It's not impossible I will use this someday.
In the meantime, having put it into a blog post, which is using it after a fashion, I can forget about it for awhile.
Thai is a lousy hunter, so it wasn't dead. I know some people say when a cat brings you live prey that they want you to play with it and learn to hunt for yourself, but I assure you, Thai doesn't know how to kill things. So I would have had no choice but to take it from her, even if it had been a house sparrow, which honestly I'd as soon she killed as not. But it wasn't. I think it was a juvenile Carolina Wren, though it had an eye ring instead of an eye streak and the tail was missing. It was so small, and the beak was a wren beak, and the breast feathers were yellow.
Thus began the great pursuit. Of course I didn't succeed in taking it from her. She let it go before I could, and then I was running interference to keep her from catching it again and it was hopping and flying frantically, until it wound up in the bedroom between the wardrobe and the built-in bookshelves. So I shut Thai out on the balcony and tried to drag it out with a towel, but no dice. But the wardrobe is in an alcove created by the bookcases being built around a disused but not filled-in door to the study. So I went around to the study (having to shut Bruce out of that room and the bedroom, which is a more elaborate process than it sounds like), moved the full bookcase, and opened the door.
Now, I had been feeling lousy and moreover this was during the period when the desktop computer wasn't functioning and we were still trying dodge after dodge to bring it back. The wren had all kinds of dusty holes and corners in which to hide, and took advantage of them all, while I couldn't google "animal rescue" or "How do I get a scared wren out of my study?" But, being the old-fashioned kind of person I am, I had the phone book and a landline, and I used them.
Most of the animal rescue places weren't answering their phones for one reason or another, but I finally got one, where a woman told me to darken the room, open a window, and leave it alone for awhile so it could find its way out. I told her I wasn't sure it could fly. It was fluttering around about the height of the baseboards and had no tail. She said in that case when it tried to get out the window I should put it in a box and bring it over.
The study is not that easy a room to darken. I tried to hang a towel over the windows in the balcony doors, but it didn't work well. The wren had settled down behind the filing cabinets, which is near the corner with the open window, so I built a crude pen out of file boxes and stuff that could be set flush to the floor and were taller than the wren's demonstrated flight capacity. Concerned that she was probably overheated and lacking any other bait, I set a shallow dish of water in the middle, shut the connecting door, fetched an indignant Thai off the balcony through the bedroom, shut her and Bruce both outside, and had lunch.
After lunch, I came back up in time to see the wren perch on the water dish, fly from there to the window, and fly away.
So I swept the study (the doorway was filthy) and put everything back where it belonged. Thai snubbed me all day, making a point of being near me so I could see her doing it.
If you don't automatically think "picture book" after all that, you should reconsider whether writing for children is your true calling. The situation is accessible to small children, the action is visual and potentially funny, rife with ways to delineate in art and text the soft-hearted, muddle-headed, messy householder and the desperate but resourceful young wren who doesn't trust her, and it ends with a punch line. Depending on the emphasis chosen, you could imply morals about keeping your workspace tidy, courage and resource in the face of danger, or even training your cat not to hunt. Make the householder a dog to whom the visiting cat has brought a live bird as a present, to make up a quarrel (she says!) and you've got a Beatrix Potterish anthropomorphic social farce.
That's the obvious use. But why stop with the obvious? Especially when the obvious is a format I've never been much into. I never even read them much, advancing to chapter books as soon as feasible, and you may not have noticed this, but my wordcounts tend to run high for a picture book.
Couldn't I also use an anecdote like this as an anchor for an article for a nature magazine? As part of a work of non-fiction on urban wildlife and how to deal responsibly with the intersection of human residence with the animal world? Raccoons and possums in the attic, skunks under the shed, squirrels on the bird feeder, mice in the compost heap - I've got them all. Can I write about them? Could it be a fable? A cartoon short subject script? (Nope, not getting into scripting, either!)
With my productive work days averaging about four hours long lately, I'm not going to divert any energy into developing this idea in any of those formats. I need to focus on Len, and keeping the existing projects in the mail, and keeping the house and yard from smothering in neglect. It's not impossible I will use this someday.
In the meantime, having put it into a blog post, which is using it after a fashion, I can forget about it for awhile.
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