A Thorough Bath Courtesy of the Small Cat

Hammett seems to have decided that my lack of hygiene is reflecting poorly on him, and so he has been licking me with great determination, including several sessions during the wee hours each night. Undaunted by my being 31 times his size, he tackles a few square inches each time he has a few free moments.

The diarrhea he had in his first week after being adopted has cleared up, but he still tends to have soft poop pretty regularly, which means he leaves a little brown smear wherever he sits right afterwards. I’ve gotten in the habit of rushing into the bathroom to mop his butt off after he poops, just as I had to do for Thelonious in her final weeks.

He also had a very smelly butt for several weeks because his poop wasn’t firm enough to fully express his anal glands, so Dr. Gordon expressed his anal glands last week.

In the course of that, Hammett got a little scratch next to his eye, perhaps when they put a hood over his head to reduce injuries to the doctor or technician. Dr. Gordon gave him a kiss on the top of his head and murmured comforting phrases. His eye itself was fine, and in the next day or two, the scratch healed up, but just recently, it has opened up again and seems even larger than it was to begin with, a red gash. He may have scratched himself. We will see Dr. Gordon again later today. I’ve been putting a hot compress on it now and then and it’s improving.

This past Saturday I went to a qigong class at Quan Yin, which I was hoping would help a lately aching knee and back. It was quite strenuous and is probably not the right class for me. There is a class on Wednesday, reportedly more gentle, that I may try.

After qigong class, I embarked on a long-dreaded chore, visiting Bed Bath & Beyond to buy a new shower curtain and a couple of other items. I always feel overwhelmed in those large stores, plus it often takes me absolutely forever to make the smallest decision, and I start to feel overly warm and sort of desperate and woozy.

I vowed not to spend all day mulling over any one item, and was very pleased when it took only five seconds to pick out a shower curtain (clear, so I can see what’s going on in the outer world) and five more seconds to pick out a couple of pillowcases (organic cotton flannel).

I selected a new comforter cover, also not too difficult a decision because they had only one line that was cotton and reasonably affordable. I’m sure Hammett will put a million holes in it in no time, as he has the existing comforter cover.

However, after that, I got hopelessly bogged down in the pillow protector department and there was much opening and closing of the packages that could be opened and closed, and starting over at the beginning in case I overlooked the ultimate pillow protector, and almost falling for “Treated with ULTRA FRESH” before remembering that means “Dipped in chemicals,” and plentiful agonizing over the various features. Finally, a selection was made and I raced for the checkout before any other consideration could arise.

On to Trader Joe’s to see if they had anything I should be eating. I got some potato chips recommended by my mother (the ridged ones in the red bag) and they were superior: extremely greasy.

I had plans to see a play that evening, preceded by burritos at Mariachi’s, and vowed not to eat beforehand so I would be hungry for dinner, but then the little voice said, “Surely you’ll still be hungry if you test just one potato chip,” and thus it was that I ended up keeping Tom and David and Lisa and Terry and Nancy company as they ate at Mariachi’s, though that was a step in the right direction, because usually if I plan to have a burrito, I have a burrito, regardless.

Lisa, David, Tom and I went to Intersection after Mariachi’s and saw Hamlet: Blood in the Brain, a retelling of Hamlet set in Oakland in 1989. I enjoyed it, and I will always see anything Sean San Jose is in, though I’m starting to think nothing will ever surpass their production of Dave Eggers’ Sacrament!, which I saw thrice.

Sunday was cooking day.

I recently finished The First Desire, a novel by Nancy Reisman. It was a bit writerly for my taste: filled with details that are supposed to make people say the book was “finely observed,” but that don’t sound like anything I’ve ever observed and thus merely seem to bog down the story. Overall, not enough happened for the number of pages read.

Now I’m reading Marian Fontana’s A Widow’s Walk: A Memoir of 9/11, which is the opposite. Her husband, Dave, a firefighter, was not even supposed to be on duty on 9/11. It was their eighth wedding anniversary and the start of a one-month vacation for Dave, who was still at the firehouse that morning, most likely waiting for his tardy replacement to arrive, when the call came to go to the World Trade Center.

Tuxedo Cat Island Paradise

On Sunday, Tom and I took the train to Sacramento for a birthday dinner for him and his brother Dan. Here’s who was there: Paul, Eva, Tom, Dan, Julie, me, Melinda, Jim and Abby. Sarah was busy in San Francisco and Steve was home ill. It was wonderful, as always. We came home that same evening on the train.

It has come to my attention that Hammett is a tuxedo cat, which Thelonious was not. I found this out when the plumber came to exacerbate my bathroom sink drip and said to Hammett, “Hello, you tuxedo cat.” A tuxedo cat is black with white markings confined to its face, paws, throat or chest.

Along with having had the dream that Hammett escaped via the fire ladder, I keep waking up thinking I’ve forgotten to give him some important medication and now something horrible is going to happen.

For 20 years, I have been waking up thinking I’ve forgotten to take my medication or follow some other crucial health-related procedure, and it’s quite disorienting because the delusion pursues me into full wakefulness. It always takes a while to convince myself that I don’t take medication (leaving aside the question of whether I should).

Quite often I have thought that I will write down, for once and for all, what it is I’ve forgotten to do so I don’t forget it again, so I now have quite a collection of incomprehensible reminders, if I can even think of anything to write down at all, which often I can’t. It’s rather frustrating, though I’m glad it hasn’t leaked into the rest of my life (so far).

Several nights ago, I found myself sitting up in bed with the lights on saying to someone unseen, “Can you hear me?” Whoever it was didn’t answer, so I didn’t say what was on my mind, which I think was that we needed to give Hammett his medication.

My ex-therapist’s techniques had no effect whatsoever on what I call the “night thing”; we finally decided it was a general expression of anxiety. Obviously I am now anxious about something happening to Hammett, which makes it even clearer that the night thing, in its classical non-Hammett form, expresses some anxiety about my own well-being.

From time to time (read: every year) I’m invited to draft my own performance review at work. I always turn in a masterpiece of fulsome praise and credulity-stretching compliments: “The sun rises and sets over Linda.” “She saved us a million dollars this year.” “The snacks in her cubicle are better than anyone else’s,” this being quite true.

This is kind of a fun exercise, and then, in due time, I get to hear my boss read this all to me out loud, which he does, beaming, as if he had written every word himself. “Linda, here is your review: ‘The sun rises and sets over Linda.’” It makes us both happy.

This year, I can’t think of any new nice things to say about myself, true or otherwise, so I may have to fall back on reordering sentences: “The sun sets and rises over Linda.”

It’s going to be a shock to my system when a new boss actually writes the thing himself or herself next year. “What?! Where’s the part about the sun circling me like a hula hoop? What do you mean you’d ‘like to see Linda striving harder to reach her full potential’?”

We had a good rain earlier this week. I had vowed to ride my bike every day this rainy season and not to take the bus, but it was so nerve-wracking riding home in the dark, in the rain, barely able to see—that’s the thing, not being able to see because my glasses are covered with water—that I will probably end up on mass transit after all.

First, however, I will try the thing of putting a drop of dishwashing liquid on my lenses so the water, in theory, forms a sort of clear sheet instead of clinging to the surface in drops.

I stopped by Freewheel yesterday and asked them if they’d solved this problem yet. “No,” the glasses-wearing Dan said. “Take BART.”

The toughest decision of the year has been made: which wall calendars to get for home and work. One thing that makes it slightly easier is to make the exact same decision every time, though this still requires an hour in the calendar store.

As in November of 2005 and 2004, and having passed up a calendar full of tuxedo cats, I now have wall calendars called Tropical Islands and Island Paradise. This brings back happy memories of oohing and ahhing over the pictures in such a calendar with Frank, who is now in Dublin, and both liking the same picture most.

The handsomer of the two (Island Paradise) will stay at work, since I spend much more time looking at my wall calendar at work than at home. For one thing, the one at home is kind of too far away to see without my glasses on. “Is that a palm tree?”

All Right! Potluck!

I was working with someone this week via NetMeeting (an application that allows one to see and even control a PC in another geographical location) to test something in Unix. This person, who was extremely easygoing, had the habit of checking his email frequently, and while we were running commands in Unix, suddenly switched to Outlook and saw the announcement for his department’s Thanksgiving celebration.

“All right! Potluck!” he said, in the same tone I reserve for, “Wow, a dinner invitation from Christopher Walken!”

While we’re thinking of things to be happy about, all right!: Democrats take the House and the Senate, Nancy Pelosi is the first woman Speaker of the House, and Rumsfeld has stepped off, I mean, stepped down.

Not having cable, I get only two clear TV stations, one of which showed 90 minutes of Dancing with the Stars right in the middle of the election coverage, so I had to call my parents, who have cable, and contrive to keep them from hanging up on me for six hours. I also turned on my PC and tuned to cnn.com, whose coverage was excellent.

Bush hardly seems upset about Rumsfeld, lending credence to my theory that he has secretly wanted to say goodbye to him for some time but was prevented by loyalty, blackmail, or a combination of both.

I just finished the biography The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the 70s in San Francisco, which I enjoyed. I have a couple of his albums and am quite fond of them. When he was ill and soon to die, of AIDS, he could hear a crowd not far from his house yelling “Sylvester! Sylvester!” That's quite touching.

The book is full of colorful expressions like, “You’re on my last gay nerve.” I’ll have to try that on my coworkers. A couple of times a year, I like to say, at 4:59, “Well, it’s been great to be here—thanks for having me. In fact, I had such a good time, I might drop by again tomorrow.”

Or, “Watching you work has exhausted me. I’ll have to run along.”

I know a fellow who says, “Work fascinates me. I could watch it for hours.”

Hammett is doing great. He’s very cheery and full of energy. He is using his scratching post rather than scratching the upholstered chair, which makes me very happy, and when he’s not napping, he likes to chase balls around the apartment, look out the window, and catch and eat bugs. If I put my face near his, he licks my cheek solicitously. At night, now and then he likes to climb under the covers and nestle close to me. He also likes to climb between the slats of the Levolor blinds to get to the windowsill for 4 a.m. bird-watching, which makes an awful noise.

The scratching post came with a cheap little shiny green toy that I almost threw out, but then I decided to toss it to Hammett and see if he happened to like it, and it turns out it’s his favorite thing. He walks all over carrying it in his mouth. I’ve found it in his food dish a couple of times lately. He likes to toss his head to send it flying, and tear after it.

He also likes to carry a little toy mouse around by its tail now and then, which is slightly disturbing. The mouse was given to him by the SPCA, otherwise he wouldn’t have it, as I think it has some kind of real fur on it.

I recently received a card from my friend in L.A. in which she apologized for not responding sooner to an emailed communication of mine. I assured her yesterday via email that I hadn't taken offense because, frankly, my memory's too shot to remember who did what or didn’t. That is, I'm more than happy to take offense, but it has to be right in the moment when wrongdoing occurs; otherwise, the miscreant will have to do without.

Even as I feel happy about Hammett, I feel exceedingly unhappy about Thelonious. What bothers me most, lately, is that I never dream about her. When she was alive, I dreamed about her quite often—for instance, that we were in a canoe and I was paddling along with one arm and holding her with the other, keeping her safe.

After she died, I looked forward to dreaming about her, because if the dream was exceedingly vivid, as many are, it would be a chance to see her again for a few moments. Tom said maybe the reason I’m not dreaming about her is something good. Maybe I don’t dream about seeing her safely through the water because I already saw her safely out of this life.

Last night I dreamed about Hammett for the first time: That he had climbed down the fire escape ladder into the backyard and was nowhere to be seen.

Jury Escapee Buried in Cat Litter

I went downtown last Thursday to find I had been excused from jury duty. (Why they can’t tell you that on the phone, I don’t know.) I was handed a slip of paper to take to the jury room in the basement, where I encountered the same woman I’d given the third degree three days earlier about bicycle parking.

She processed my paperwork and I left, but after going ten steps, I went back and apologized for being grumpy about the bike parking. Her face lit up and she smiled and waved her hands as if to say there could be no thing in this world less needed than an apology from me. She said it was totally fine and wished me a nice day, making me very glad I took the few moments to do that. That must be a lousy job, dealing with an endless stream of disgruntled prospective jurors.

Every four or five weeks, when my name comes up on a list, I have a hideously stressful week at work, which of course was last week, the same week as jury duty. You might think one would do anything to get out of it, but because it’s so horrible, it’s extremely poor form not to show up, because then it gets dumped on someone else.

Really, the only acceptable excuse for not being present is if you yourself are dead, so after I was excused from jury duty, I hastened downtown to my cubicle and its soothing endless flow of emails to find that my boss had announced he has been promoted and that his last day with us will be in two weeks.

I’ve had this boss for almost three years, and though I didn’t have any pressing reason to make a major change, I had begun to fear my life might be exactly the same for the next 20 years, so it was kind of a relief to see this manifestation of impermanence.

When I came to this boss’s group, I was somewhat surly because I’m just naturally surly and also because I was leaving a group with a hundred people in it, where I had many, many friends, and coming to a team of about ten people who were deployed in three or four cities, with only a few of us here in San Francisco. I felt isolated in the new building for a long time.

I was also a little worried about expanding my customer base from 50 or 60 developers, whom I’d come to think of as my flock, to thousands of strangers, as I’m not really a natural customer service person. I was pleased to find that I was able to feel sympathetic about the problems of people I didn’t know and would never meet in person.

My boss took a little getting used to—I’m sure he’d say the same about me—but I came to appreciate the clarity he brings to all situations. His department is free of chaos and crisis. He also has a soft and kind heart. If there is a nice way to say something, he’ll say it that way.

He is also completely relentless when he decides to achieve something, in a polite and firm way, so he has been a tremendous advocate in our dealings with other groups. We love that about him. We smile with evil pleasure when one of us says, “I’m going to have them meet with the boss.”

Over the weekend, I finished The Red Carpet, a collection of stories by Lavanya Sankaran, who can write rings around Jhumpa Lahiri, even with a hit-and-miss approach to capitalizing proper nouns and even given that nearly every story fell apart at the end, lurching awkwardly to a stop. Sankaran’s characters are vivid and her stories draw you in immediately.

If I’m going to live 40 years, give or take, and there are 52 weeks per year (that part is certain, anyway), and if it takes me, on average, what with one thing and another, three weeks to read a book, there are only 693 books left! If there are a hundred books on my library list, that’s one seventh of all the books I will ever read. That’s why I feel no obligation to finish a book or magazine article that does not immediately grab me.

On Saturday I did my cooking and in the evening Tom and I watched Bend It Like Beckham, which I loved, especially Juliet Stevenson in the role of the mother of one of the main character’s teammates.

On Sunday I did the same thing as last Sunday: Took BART to Berkeley to meditate at the Shambhala Center, after which I had lunch with my meditation friend. Then we went to her house in Point Richmond so I could meet her current crop of dogs.

Hammett is doing well. He’s proving to be a top talent when it comes to transferring cat litter from the box to the bathroom floor. I see in retrospect that Thelonious (who I miss terribly) must not really have been trying.

To Do List Speedily Dispatched

One corner of my apartment.

Last Friday there was no acupuncture because my adored acupuncturist had injured some of his needle-inserting fingers while surfing.

On Saturday morning, I dealt efficiently with several of the items on my to do list by crossing them off my to do list without doing them. David Sedaris has a piece in which he writes about his father criticizing his life as “one continuous round of pleasure.” That’s what we’re aiming for here.

I went to Rainbow for groceries, and as is now my custom, didn’t bother to buy much fruit, because I’ve been buying it at Whole Foods. Why is it that Rainbow’s Gala apples (from Oregon) are small and yellow and defeated-looking while the ones at Whole Foods are large and crisp and delicious, and, on top of that, come from even closer at hand? Maybe Whole Foods has contracted to buy every single good Gala apple grown in California.

If Rainbow ends up having to close its doors, not that I have heard any inkling of such a thing, it will be because everyone is shopping at Whole Foods instead. I guiltily recalled filling out a survey at Rainbow not long ago which was not titled “Why Do You Shop at Whole Foods Sometimes Instead of Here?” but I suspect that’s what they were trying to get at. One heartless fellow I saw there on Saturday was actually carrying a Whole Foods bag.

When I got home, I did my cooking, and in the evening Tom and I watched Paradise Now, about suicide bombers in Palestine, which was very good, and Loverboy, which is about a woman with a pathological, almost romantic, attachment to her child, and which was so-so, despite being directed by Kevin Bacon and featuring him in a smallish part. On the other hand, the mother’s dread of a future she can’t control and her tragic solution have come back to me a few times since, so maybe it was better than so-so.

Who has not felt that “I’m not going to be able to stand it” feeling?

On Sunday I went with a friend to the Berkeley Shambhala Center to meditate in the very beautiful meditation room there, followed by talking and eating and walking, which is exactly my kind of outing. It was delightful.

Yesterday I had to report for jury duty, a savage inconvenience in that the courthouse is not located anywhere near a Whole Foods, which I had forgotten about when I was buying only one banana at Rainbow and also when I was cooking a bunch of food I may not get to eat, as I’ll probably be eating more sandwiches than usual.

Jury duty was pretty much like being on an airplane, complete with a crying baby, people kicking the back of one’s seat, electronic gizmos making the same beeping noise over and over, clattering laptop keys, and one fellow agonizing at top volume to his new friends about what he will do if he’s called upon to impose the death penalty—this was civil court, by the way.

We had to fill out questionnaires and then we could leave for the day. I wrote that I don’t believe in monetary damages but rather in reconciliation and forgiveness (true, although I had just realized it while filling out the questionnaire). If I were really crafty (and didn’t mind being jailed for perjury) I could have covered all the bases by saying I also think purveyors of asbestos should get the death penalty. That would have made me unfit for a spectrum of cases.

To be on the safe side, I also filled out the hardship form. I hate to sound like one of those whiners who will do anything to get out of jury duty (though I am totally one of those whiners), but this case is going to be six weeks long and my back actually is sort of killing me lately, though I don’t have a doctor’s note to that effect—my doctor happens to be an AIDS specialist, and since I do not have AIDS, I don’t like to bother her with more than 10 or 15 trifling complaints per year.

Also, it is my custom to rise from my seat 95 times per hour to go wash my water cup and/or tea cup, to put something in the recycling bin, to fill my water bottle, to go to the bathroom, to visit my neighbors, to wash my tea filter, to brush my teeth, to put something in the microwave, to say hello to my boss, to get fresh water for my flowers, to wash silverware, or to show the two coworkers I’ve had for years the gang signal I’ve developed for us in case we fail to recognize each other in the hallway.

The signal is a C formed by the thumb and forefinger, dangled casually at thigh level, which stands for the application we administer; let’s call it Coursware. One coworker rejected it out of hand: “No.” The other said, “Be careful with that outside,” and mimicked me pleading for my life, squealing to an assailant, “It stands for Courseware!”

There's the Hammett!

Water Boy on His Way to Gitmo?

This afternoon I went to Walgreens to drop off film and get more film, and was on my way to Whole Foods for apples, flowers, lemon olive oil and a vegan brownie when I came upon a driver, northbound on Third St., making a right on red onto Mission St. despite the presence of many pedestrians.

When the car following did the same thing, a frustrated pedestrian showered the roof and window of the offending little red auto with water from a cup he was holding. The car made its turn, and the pedestrian crossed the street. Soon the amplified voice of the law came blaring through the warm afternoon air: “Hey, water boy!”

The pedestrian must not have known this meant him, because he kept walking in the exact same manner and did not even take the opportunity to drop his plastic cup into a trash bin he was passing at that exact moment, as I certainly would have done.

I had meant to turn off Mission St., but had to see what was going to happen next, so I followed along and was immediately rewarded by the sound of running footsteps belonging to a police officer in full SWAT gear. Actually, I don’t know what full SWAT gear looks like, but he was in a frightening navy jumpsuit.

He stopped the pedestrian. I stopped, too, and gave my view of the matter, which was that water is not going to hurt a car, while red-light-running cars can easily hurt pedestrians. The police officer didn’t appear particularly gratified to receive my opinion, but was reasonably polite.

I walked on a bit, but couldn’t leave the apprehendee to sink into Guantanamo without a ripple, so I went back and gave him a piece of paper with my name and phone number on it.

I hope the water-hurling pedestrian was let off with a warning, though the police car that roared up with lights flashing makes it seem not so likely. I wonder where he was going and if he had to call his boss and say, “I’m sorry I never came from lunch, but I’m in jail.”

The Hammett news is all good. He is eating and drinking; he appears to be free of diarrhea and bleeding, and he seems to be enjoying himself mightily.

The Flagyl-giving went perfectly smoothly yesterday and this morning. Fundamentally, he is of a placid and trusting temperament. I think what went wrong Saturday morning was that I was hanging onto him too far down on his neck, leaving his head free to thrash about, and I probably didn’t insert the syringe far enough in, making it too easy for the Flagyl to foam back out.

He is a darling little fellow, very sweet. Pictures are coming soon, though to the untrained eye, they will probably look a good deal like pictures of Thelonious.

I’m trying to think of a way to begin the next anecdote without saying I was sitting on the toilet, but I can’t think of one, so: I was sitting on the toilet one day not long ago and my baggy cotton pants were therefore bunched on the floor. Everyone pees! (my acupuncturist has a copy of the book Everyone Poops in his bathroom) and so did I, and when I was done, before I could hoist my bloomers into operating position, Hammett leapt into them and began digging around, perhaps looking for the entrance to the wine cellar.

He moves fast. Just as one is thinking he is in the bathtub, he no longer is; now he is trying to climb into the refrigerator, and a second later he is batting a Ping-Pong ball across the floor.

A critical mass has been reached in regard to the number of people I do not recognize in People magazine, so I have canceled my subscription, though this has happened before and not proven to be permanent. The magazine is also featuring an inordinate number of stories about people who lost weight and how they did it, which I could not be less interested in.

I’m sure I’ve explained how the Atkins Diet works. I’m Atkins and this is my diet: Eat whatever you like, and if you gain weight, buy bigger clothes.

Over the weekend, Tom and David and Lisa and I had dinner at Osha on Valencia St., and Tom and I saw Brokeback Mountain. He hadn’t seen it yet. I was seeing for the third time, and it made me even more miserable than the first two times. How heartbreaking the final scene is, ditto when Ennis visits Jack’s childhood home.

On Sunday, I did my cooking and saw 12 and Holding, which was awful. While it was pretty to look at, the candy colors contrasted jarringly with the sorrowful events, and it couldn’t make up its mind whether it was a tragedy or kind of a stupid, even offensive, comedy: Look! A fat lady eating a pastry! Last but not least, while some of the performances were excellent, others were utterly unconvincing, and characters one was presumably supposed to feel sympathy for seemed like brats.

Fortunately Unfortunately

My life is starting to feel like a book I had when I was a child that followed this pattern, except it was about going to work and being hit on the head by a rake and mine is about this:

Unfortunately, my beloved cat died. Fortunately, I got a new kitten. Unfortunately, the new kitten had bloody diarrhea. Fortunately, the vet said it was probably caused by worms and that medication would help. Unfortunately, she asked me to give the kitten Flagyl via syringe. Fortunately, the kitten readily took Flagyl via syringe, as the vet demonstrated. Whew!

Unfortunately, when I tried it myself, the kitten frantically shook his head and Flagyl foamed out of his mouth, ending up all over his face, on the floor, on my sheets, on my pillowcase and on my clothes. (Why, just the same as what happened when I gave Thelonious anything by syringe.)

Fortunately, the vet, upon being called, said that if any whatsoever had gotten in him, it was probably enough. (To be on the safe side and with her approval, after we got off the phone, I tried to administer another one-third of the dose and hope I haven't overdosed him. Probably not. Geeze, I hope not.)

Unfortunately, we have three more days of this!

At least I won't be so foolishly overconfident as to try this on my bed again.

Grim Reaper Beaten Back for Now

I took Hammett over to Mission Pet Hospital yesterday to see Dr. Gordon, who didn’t seem perturbed by the described symptoms, and recommended a couple of tests: a fecal float (test for worm eggs) and the ELISA test for giardia (which are parasites).

Normally, I would have everything done at MPH, but the SPCA pays for treatment for 30 days after you adopt an animal from there, besides which they are wonderful people and I retract any unflattering remarks made yesterday when I was going crazy over Hammett and pre-menstrual to boot, as it turned out.

I must also correct my account of having been enraged over Hammett walking on Thelonious’s cardboard carrying box, and not just because my mother said, “I hope this isn’t offensive, but I kind of thought you might be going overboard when you said one cat can’t walk on the other cat’s box because it might contaminate the hair sample. I confess a warning signal went off in my head: beep-beep-beep.” She added that she supposed I could send any hair in question to the FBI forensics lab.

But no, it is just that it wasn’t quite accurate (not to mention that it sounded awful: enraged at a cat?). The box in question is in my closet, which is normally forbidden to Hammett because various breakables have been placed there for the time being. Of course he has gained entry several times and of course has most wanted to do the thing I most don’t want him to do, as is the inborn nature of the cat.

When he did it yesterday, it was for about the fourth time and while I was freaking out about him bleeding on the floor, and I was distinctly and suddenly irritated, but “enraged” is going too far, unless you want to discuss the incident on Howard St. a few days ago when some fellow decided to pull his car into the bike lane, not letting my presence there be a deterrent. The fateful word (“moron”) again escaped my lips at an attention-attracting volume.

So, anyway, Dr. Gordon wrote down the tests he thought Hammy should have, and I received many congratulations from the front desk on having adopted a new kitten, plus when I said, “As in Kirk, not Dashiell,” one of the front desk people said, “I get it,” and described having met the real Kirk Hammett, who this person said seemed like a nice man, which I already knew from having seen Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.

I recommend that movie to anyone who enjoys documentaries, even if they don’t like the related musical genre. My ex-therapist liked it, for instance. My favorite part is when they say to Rob Trujillo, after having auditioned several bassists, “We want you to join Metallica, and to show our welcome, here’s a million dollars.”

(Rob Trujillo plays on Jerry Cantrell’s excellent CD Degradation Trip. Some time after Degradation Trip came out, the two-CD Degradation Trip, Vol. 1 & 2 came out and I wasn’t sure whether to buy it or not, since it had only X number of songs that weren’t on the original, but I did and it was absolutely worth it. I’m sure I’ve mentioned that Jerry Cantrell is a genius and that I have a ticket to see Alice in Chains at the Warfield in November!)

This morning Ham and I went over to the SPCA, where he was examined and given a deworming pill. I have to give him another in two weeks, plus switch him to bland food for seven days (Hill’s i/d), plus—here my heart sank—give him Flagyl via syringe for five days. Three syringes were thrust into my hand.

When I had to give Thelonious Flagyl in pill form, it made her foam at the mouth, and anything administered via syringe was also a misery, so the two together sounded dismal in the extreme, but the technician demonstrated giving Hammett this formulation, which is fish-flavored, via syringe, and indeed it was easy, thank goodness. Plus that eliminated one day out of the five.

On our way home in a cab, what looked like the truck for a gardening service started to turn in front of us. The cab driver yelled, “Watch out!” at the female driver and then added, “Baby,” followed by a rakish chuckle for my benefit, as who could not fail to enjoy his sexist put-down?

In front of my house, I said, “I normally like to tip generously,” to which he replied, “Thanks!”, which was premature, as I had not gotten to my second and concluding clause, which was an explanation of why he wasn’t going to receive any tip whatsoever.

Thank goodness the meter stopped right at six dollars, because I’m not sure even I would have the nerve to request change in coins from a cabbie in order to avoid tipping.

In the entrance to the spay/neuter clinic at the SPCA, there are tiles inscribed to various departed animals by their owners. This one caused me to enter the clinic in tears:

FIRST BABY
STILL MISSED

Hammett Is Bleeding

I thought I was safely ensconced in my bathtub. I guess I forgot to put on my safety belt or raise the bulletproof shield.

Yesterday when I got home from work, I noticed there was a reddish streak on the yellow comforter cover, obviously produced by Hammett, obviously blood. It didn’t smell like anything at all. I hoped it was a fluke. It was not.

This morning (and I apologize; I thought we were going to be able to drop the subject of cat poop for 15 or 20 years) I saw in the litter box some lovely firm turds and a pile or two of diarrhea. Next to the box was a drop of pure red blood. I got my measuring stick so I’d be able to tell the vet this afternoon exactly how big it was, instead of saying, “Really big!”

It was a half-inch in diameter, which does seem like a lot of blood for a small cat, and maybe explains why he hasn’t been quite as frisky in regard to chasing things as I had assumed he would be; I hope it doesn’t explain his bouts of seemingly random meowing. I hope those aren’t cries of pain.

While I’m hoping, I hope he isn’t seriously ill, and I hope I don’t have to spend $1600 on an endoscopy, and I hope the SPCA doesn’t say, “If he’s ill enough at six months old to need an endoscopy, bring him back and we’ll euthanize him,” and I hope I don’t have to take him back to the SPCA in his little box and leave him there for good.

I called Mission Pet Hospital and asked if Dr. Press by any chance had a cancellation this morning. James asked excitedly, “Did you get a new kitty?” He is the one who sent me a condolence card for Thelonious such a short time ago.

I told him about the blood and he said, “Uh-oh.” Now, maybe he meant, “Uh-oh, I’m sorry things aren’t quite right,” rather than, “Uh-oh, I’m sorry your new cat is going to die right after your other cat died,” but I would have felt better if he’d said, “Oh, really?” and sounded a little bored.

They are booked solid this morning, but I have an appointment with Dr. Gordon this afternoon—an introduction to a non-SPCA vet that the SPCA funds—so we’ll just have to wait until then.

Maybe it’s not serious and I’m freaking out because it’s so soon after Thelonious’s fatal illness, though I also called my father and he said they’d never experienced that with any of their cats.

Needless to say, I have been in tears since seeing the drop of blood, and I also have felt extremely angry at moments: How dare those bastards at the SPCA stick me with a dying cat? Don’t they know I’m at my emotional limit for this season?

I even felt enraged for just a second or two at Hammett for walking on Thelonious’s carrier box, which is the same cardboard box in which she was brought home from the SPCA long ago and which is my last reliable source of black hairs that were hers. I’m afraid Hammy will fall into it and contaminate the pool of hairs.

I have plenty of black hairs around, but one can no longer say whether a given hair is hers or his. Without a doubt, the ones in that box are hers and so no other black cat must access that space until I have gotten around to picking the hairs off the folded yellow towel and taping them to a note card.

It’s odd that two and a half weeks after Thelonious made a bloodstain in the hallway, Hammett bled not eight feet away, and Hammett has lately been sitting in the exact spot that Thelonious developed a fondness for in the last couple of months of her life, under the computer table.

I hope he is not going to follow her into the great beyond right away, but beyond taking him to the vet and doing what the vet says, there is nothing I can do.

If Hammett needs any medical treatment in his first 30 days after adoption, the SPCA will do that for free. I just spoke to them and they said he likely will need treatment, so I have an appointment there for tomorrow morning, as well as the appointment this afternoon at Mission Pet Hospital.