Critters Archive

It's all fun and games until the zoologoist loses a limb.

I can't believe it, but it's been six months since Fil disappeared. Our house and our lives just haven't been the same without her. We really miss her.

I'm not sure what I was thinking. Perhaps I wasn't. But in my sun-stroked, wind-blasted, sleep-deprived state, I decided to adopt a new cat. In Chico. This is how it went down.

Raquel and I had gone up to the Chico so that I could ride the Wildflower. In our travels around town, we went to Sports LTD to pick up a few things. They were having a cycling sale for the Wildflower.

Calmly sitting just inside the entrance was a black and white cat. Typically, I went over and start playing with him. He was very sweet. He had fantastic markings and was silky soft. Obviously well taken care. I played with him for a few minutes, then we went about our business.

When we were paying, we started talking to the girl at the check out counter about the cat, Harry, about 2 years old. Turns out they were looking for a nice home for him. Interesting.

That night at dinner, we chatted about Harry and the possibility of adopting him. We both thought Makkie was a little lonely since FIl took off. Harry was a cute cat. He was bigger than Mak so he wouldn't be intimidated by him. We decided that we'd go back to the store after the ride and if Harry was neutered and if Harry had his shots and if Harry was litter box trained and if Harry had lived among other cats, we'd adopt him.

So after the ride on Sunday, we headed back to the store. We talked to the manager and Harry checked out on all counts. We decided to adopt him. I was thrilled. Harry, less so.

We had a tough time getting Harry in the car. He didn't want to leave. Actually the first time wasn't a problem, but he managed to escape and bolt back into the store. We tried three more times before we had him secured in the Subaru but not before he scratched me and Raquel.

We had sent one of the salesgirls over to Safeway to pick up some treats, but even that didn't seem to endear him to us. Harry had lived most of his 2 years in the store and we were taking him away from his comfort zone, from the only place called home. We should have listened to him.

When I heard about Red Moon Custom Pet Food, I knew I wanted to make some for Makkie. Custom designed pet food? Delivered to your house? How cool is that?

Here's the company line:

It doesn't get any better than this, guaranteed

At RedMoon, we've blended the best of science and natural pet nutrition to offer you a complete and balanced pet food that considers your animal companion as a whole. Our base formulas were developed to satisfy all of your pet's nutritional requirements, while our extensive range of supplements help you tailor your pet's food to their specific needs. All of our products are grain, gluten, soy, rice, wheat and corn free , and they're also backed by our 110% satisfaction guarantee.

It's essentially a product configurator. You've got several options for cat food (they offer dog food too), including base formula (salmon or poultry), energy level, and whole bunch of supplements. The website is very intuitive and easy to use. It was simple to design my creation.

I whipped up a version for Makelani that starts with the salmon base, has weight management and includes the Limber Leap Joint Renewal and Kidney & Urinary Health Booster. I dubbed this concoction "Makkielicious". Red Moon even printed it on the bag, which you can see in the picture above. I was a little disappointed that there weren't more options, only two base formulas and only one kibble shape for example, but still an amazing thing.

The food is a little on the expensive side. I bought the 2.5 pound "trial" bag for 9 bucks. The 27 pound size is 81 bucks. That includes shipping, but by comparison, I normally pay about 35 for a 27 lb bag of Natural Choice. Suffice it to say that Makkie is not going to be dining on Red Moon every night. However, he loves the taste and as a treat, it's more than economical. It's downright cheap. So I'll keep buying bags of Makkielicious as long as Red Moon stays in business.

Shot at 100 fps for a Pedigre dog food ad:

More on Flickr.

We ordered sushi from a place in Berkeley that delivers and it was pretty good—better than expected at least. The delivery was quick, the selection was impressive and the sushi surprisingly tasty. Mak definitely approved.

It's now been three months since Fil escaped. She's out there on the wind somewhere. It's the saddest thing that's ever happened to me. It's seems unfathomable that she's been missing for so long—a quarter of a year. I remember back to the first night she was gone when I thought, of course, she's going to come home. Then I thought the same the next night and the next. But, as of yet, she has not. Now, I no longer think she's coming home.

The cats have escaped from various places many times, and have always come home, but this time, it's different.

I don't know if we've done everything we could do to find her, but I did almost everything I could think of. We combed the neighborhood. We talked to neighbors. We plastered flyers everywhere. We visited shelters and filled out reports. I even signed up for some scam-like thing called the Amber Pet Alert, because I was so desperate. I would call her from our backyard. I left food out. I left my smelly clothes on the porch so she could find my scent and make her way home, but she never did.

Many people called. Many. I would rush home and try to find her. But while each call began with a sense of hope and relief, each ended in disappointment and frustration. Everyone who called was certain that he/she had seen Fil. But they hadn't. She had just disappeared.

I'll never understand why, but people would tear down the flyers we put up. Some were even torn down by well meaning people. I would respond to a call and see that the person who called had a flyer in hand which was obviously ripped from a pole. I thought how stupid can these people be, but I couldn't say anything. Our immediate neighbors to the north we're continually ripping down the flyer that was posted on the street sign in front of their place. As soon as I saw that it was ripped down, I would replace it in an endlessly stupid cycle that I eventually lost. Many flyers where shredded. I would see them laying in tatters on the ground. One flyer was even burned. I don't get it. I even had one neighbor who called to tell me take them down. After about two months, I gave up and stopped posting them.

Fil came into my life when I was living in a small village in Samoa. She just showed up one day and insinuated herself in my room (along with her brother Makelani). I didn't have a camera with when when first arrived, so I'm missing images from when she was really tiny, which a little sad. I was told not to bring my camera to the village because there was no place to lock anything. I wish I had ignored that advice.

From the beginning, there was something special about Fil. She exuded a sense of calm and belonging. She almost never meowed and was very quiet, except when she purred. She purred like a machine. I named her Filemu which in Samoan means silence, quiet, calm, relaxed and peace, but mostly she was just called Fil (her full name is Filemu Suamalie, or "Sweet Silence").

I lived with her and Makelani for a year in Samoa. For the cats, it was mostly a great time. They could come and go as they pleased (more or less) and the jungle was their playground. Fil was a supreme hunter and would come home with mice and birds from outside and kill anything that moved, roaches, lizards, spiders, centipedes, etc. inside.

When they were around 6 months old, Fil (and Mak) went under the knife for their de-sexing surgery. A vet from the Samoan Animal Protection Society came out to my house, set up a field surgery unit in my backyard and went to work on the cats while I watched.

I sat with them during the surgery and nurtured them back to health as they recovered. It was really rough on Fil. Mak was just snipped, but Fil had an ovarian hysterectomy, which didn't go all that well. The vet had a hard time finding her tubes and the surgery went much longer than anticipated. Fil was all drugged up, so perhaps it was harder on me.

The only issue at my place in Samoa was the dogs. There were a few of them, and they were viscous. I felt like the cats could handle themselves and mostly they could. Usually I'd let them out and they'd be gone for a while.

I'd be sitting at my desk or in the kitchen and I hear this "BAM!!!! as one of the cats jumped onto the screen door to avoid a pursuing canine. Even Fil, normally so elegant and poised was less that sophisticated when fleeing the attack dogs.

One afternoon I was sitting at my desk I saw a blur of orange, brown and beige out of the corner of my eye. It was quickly followed by several dogs. I went outside and watched as Fil escaped into a banana tree. I had to rescue to her from the tree tops.

Another time I could hear a group of darking growling outside. I went out to see a scrum of four or five dogs surrounding something and when they parted, Fil bolted out towards me. It was a constant problem in Samoa for both the cats and myself.

I worked a normal (or abnormal depending on your perspective) 9-5 job in capital, Apia. In the evening when I would come home, I'd open the door and the cats would rush out on to the porch. Fil was so excited to see me, her tail would vibrate. It was the most endearing thing.

When I left Samoa, I brought the cats with me to Sedona, Arizona where I lived with my mom for a few months while I decided what to do next. Again, the cats loved it. They could come and go. The outdoors of the high desert was a perfect playground for cats. Trees to climb. Dried river beds to inspect. Grass and leaves to roll around in.

There were no predators to speak of despite the warnings of coyotes. The only problem was Fil and her penchant to wander. Once on her travels, she fell into a cactus and she growled at me while I removed burrs from her all over her body. Another time, she hadn't come before dusk and we went out to search for her. I found her on a post at someone's house on the other side of the arroyo behind my mom's place. She was assiduously avoiding some punter dogs below.

After a few months in Arizona, the cats and I moved to Vail, Colorado. I couldn't find new tags for them immediately and the best I could were these key chains.

The cats never really loved the snow or Colorado. Hard to the blame them. They are creatures of the jungle. On top of that, we lived in two places: The first was a condo where my roommates were drunkards. The second was a single wide in a trailer park near Beaver Creek. Each places had it charms for the cats, if not for me. They had access to the outside whenever they pleased and more than enough people around to bestow their affections on. They didn't love the cold, but it certainly didn't stop them from going outside.

But the adventure in Vail was a short experiment. Within a couple months, we were all headed back to California

We lived for a few months in Walnut Creek before setting in to an apartment in Alameda, a little island off the coast of Oakland: A return Island living!!! Not really.

The year we spent in Alameda was a serious mixed blessing. I lived on the third floor and there was no easy access to the outside world. I would allow them to wander the corridor because there was no open doorways. The roamed up and down the hall, taking in the smells emanating from my neighbor's apartments. Despite this confinement, Fil managed to escape a few times.

It was also in Alameda that I first starting leash walking the cats. Mostly Fil. Mak was really to skittish to be walked. Fil took to the leash reasonably well. She would sometimes flop around on the ground like a demented ferret and occasionally freak out when there was a loud noise, but she took direction, followed my whistle and seemed to enjoy it.

Alameda was also the first place where we lived that had a shower door and both cats discovered the joys of sitting on the door above while I was showering. I guess they liked the steam or something.

On the flip side, both Mak and Fil almost managed to get themselves killed in the apartment. Mak fell off the balcony—three stories to the ground. How he survived, I'll never know. And Fil almost managed to get herself entombed behind the drywall. .

We landed in Oakland, right on the border of both Emeryville and Berkeley, where we still live now. Initially I thought this place was perfect for the cats and that they'd be able to come and go like they had in the past. But then I discovered the neighborhood pit bulls and decided better of it.

The house did have a few things going for it. One was a large plate glass window that looked out on a back yard full of birds and squirrels. It was cat eye candy heaven. The second was an easily accessible and huge glass shower door for the cats to sit on.

In the last few years, it was rare that I showered without Fil hover above me on the shower door. The flow of the shower was her Pavlovian bell. As soon as she would hear she'd come into the bathroom, leap to the top of the door and sit there while I showered.

After a while that wasn't enough for her and she started to want to come down on my shoulders as soon as I finished. She was very considerate of her claws and would only jump down after I placed a towel around my neck. Sometimes should get impatient and get into jumping position and start meowing at me before I was ready with the towel or even sometimes before the shower was over.

Usually she was content to the get on shoulders and travel around my body. But there days, especially when I used a minty conditioner that she'd sort of go crazy, get on my head and start licking my hair. It's very well documented.

She was not always super graceful at this event. There was the time where slipped over my shoulder and, grabbing for anything that would stop her falling, almost ripped off one of ear lobes. Another time she slipped off my back and I only saved from crashing the shower floor by pinning her against the wall of the shower. She was less than pleased.

Fil was far from perfect. She sometimes refused to use the litter box and lately she would cry constantly to be let out of the house. (sadly, she got her wish). But she was a fantastic companion and I couldn't really ask for more in a cat. I loved her to pieces.

* * *

The other week, my sister sent me this posting from her neighborhood listserv:

I just wanted to let everyone know that I have a cat, Buddha, who goes in and out. He has been missing since the beginning of November, and I really thought something bad had to have happened to him. He never stays gone more than a few days, or a week at most. Well, this evening I opened the door, and in he walked! So, if you have a beloved pet who is missing, don't lose faith - they may be ok!

So, I suppose there is some small sliver of hope that Fil will make it back. However, with each day, the hope recedes and the likelihood that we'll see her again diminishes. We still visit the Oakland and Berkeley shelters on a weekly basis and I still sit on the porch and whistle for her and probably will until we move.

My one hope is that she just wandered into someone's house and they fell in love her and are keeping her. She's persistent and eventually she will find her way out and come home. The other possibilities are not really worth thinking about anymore.

Fil will live forever in my dreams and in my photos, and I have videos of her here, here and here, but I want her to live in my house, gently purring while she sleeps in the crook of my arm.

Hard to believe, but Fil has been gone more than two months. Even as we continue to make the rounds of the shelters, call for her and constantly check outside for her, it is extremely unlikely at this point that she is going to make it back home. There's a chance, but it gets smaller every day.

However she is very much alive in my dreams. I don't dream of her every night, but most nights when I do remember my dreams, she's in there. There are the basic dreams where she is just home and everything seems perfectly normal, until I wake up. There are the Daliesque dreams where she's home, but she has back legs like a stork or something. The most vivid recent one is where she came home wearing a collar with the name tag "Missy". As I was struggling with how I was going to confront her new "owners", I woke up. Missy? Where the hell did that come from?

We really miss her terribly. Life is just not the same without her around.

What do cats do when their owners are away? There was one way to find out — "cat cams."

Fifty house cats were given collar cameras that took a photo every 15 minutes. The results put a digital dent in some human theories about catnapping.

Based on the photos, about 22 percent of the cats' time was spent looking out of windows, 12 percent was used to interact with other family pets and 8 percent was spent climbing on chairs or kitty condos. Just 6 percent of their hours were spent sleeping.

I've taken hundreds of pictures of Fil over the years and even though this one was taken with the worst camera I ever had, the RAZR cellphone camera, it's by far the favorite picture I have of her. Not even close.

Today marks three weeks that she's been missing. It doesn't seem real. It seems like it's happening to someone else. Every time I drive home from anywhere or open the front door, I fully expect to see her sitting there on the porch waiting for me as if nothing happened. Every time I don't see her there, a little part of me dies inside.

Fil's departure has really been a terrible ordeal for me, but it's even worse for Fil's brother Makelani. I have spent many weeks without my cats, but before she left, Mak had never spent a single night in his seven years (with the exception of his first few weeks) without his sister. Fil taught him everything. He didn't know how to use the litterbox or clean himself. He learned by watching her. Fil looked after him, groomed him, kept him calm, mostly.

He's a great little guy, but he's always been needy and now that she's gone, he's become incredibly needy. He cries for no reason. He stares longingly out the window, perhaps waiting for her to return. He's put on a lot of weight.

Of course, I can't explain why she isn't there. It's just something he has to learn to accept. Eventually he will, but right now, it's really tough on him.

Last night, just before 10pm, I got a call from a unlisted number, which often means a Fil sighting. I anxiously answered the phone. Have you found your kitty, the man asked. Sadly no, I said. Well, then can you take down your flyers. It's been three weeks, you owe it to the neighborhood, he said. What? I was stunned. I said I would take them down when I was ready, but I would not take them down now. He hung up.

What an asshole.

I mean, it's not like I live in Piedmont or North Berkeley. My neighborhood is the fucking ghetto where people leave old mattresses on corners and dump crap wherever they feel like. It's full of homeless wanderers dragging shopping cart trains (multiple cart tied together), people walking their pit bulls, cars on front lawns. Having flyers up on the stop signs isn't exactly going to bring the neighborhood down. It's already down. What a heartless asshole.

It's been almost two weeks since Fil disappeared and there's still no sign of her. While I'm not ready to write her obituary quite yet, I'm am getting seriously discouraged. As the days go on and she hasn't returned, it seems less and less likely that she will.

Meantime, I continue with the search and rescue efforts. I've been putting up flyers like crazy, talking to neighbors, visiting shelters, walking the neighborhood, leaving out food and water, and calling to her. In the course of this process, I've met many neighbors, which is good, and been given much advice, which is mixed.

Advice has included anything from working with animal communicators and tracking dogs to opening up my subconscious to Fil by thinking about her right before I go to sleep. Some people have said to leave my clothes out on the deck so she'll smell me and find her way home. People have regaled me with stories of wayward cats who returned after weeks, months and even a year. None of this is helpful. I just want her back now.

While I'm wallowing in grief, I'm fairly sanguine about the situation. Fil is either dead or alive. If she's dead, she was likely felled by one of the many hazards in the neighborhood: pit bulls, cars, raccoons or feral cats. No one has reported her dead to any agencies (to my knowledge) but she very easily could have sustained a mortal wound and gone into the bushes to die. Not a pleasant prospect.

If she's alive any number of things could have happened. She could have wandered into someone's house and the owners have her inside. She didn't have a collar. Maybe they haven't seen the flyers and don't know what to do with her or have and don't care since she's such an amazing cat. She could be lost, wandering around trying to find her way home. But since nobody has seen her, this seems unlikely. She could be out there having a blast, chasing birds, chomping grass and lounging in the sun. If that's the case, maybe she'll come home when she gets hungry and/or bored. Again, unlikely. I really don't know.

I do know that my house is now a very lonely place. My girlfriend has gone back to Brazil to attend her father's funeral, Fil is gone and now it's just me and Makkie. Poor Makkie who had never spent a night without his sister since he came to me, has been spending time alone for almost two weeks. He's always been a very needy cat. He doesn't know what's going on, why Fil is missing. All he knows is that he's alone. I'm sure he sleeps most of the day away, but it must not be any fun. He really relied on Fil for how to act as a cat. She was his guiding light. It must be worse for him than it is for me, if that's possible.

Another awful thing is that people in the neighborhood keep tearing down the flyers. I even found some that had been burned. I don't know what motivates people to do this, but it's really heartless. My own next-door neighbors to the east keep tearing down the flyers posted on the parking sign that is in front of their house. Why? No clue. There's just so much legwork getting them posted in the first place that having to repost them again and again is truly frustrating. If Fil would just come back, I could tear them all down myself.

In my continuing search for my missing cat Fil, I visited 4 local shelters: Oakland, Berkeley, Pinhole and Martinez yesterday. I searched through all the cat holding rooms. She was not in any of them. I filed a lost cat report. It's really the only thing to do other than check back at these places every 3-4 days.

I've been to many shelters and adoption centers over the years. But never before have I visited one as a missing owner. It puts these places in a whole new and very troubling new.

If you're coming to adopt, it's a place of new beginnings. It's the start of a new relationship with an animal that you are rescuing from the worst fate. But as an owner of a lost cat, you can only view these as places of incredible sadness, full of abandoned or lost pets, who don't know that their owners are desperately trying to track them down, and whose owners don't even know that they are safe in the shelter, but only temporarily.

Shelters can't hold on to missing pets indefinitely. They don't have the space and there seems to be a constant supply of incoming animals. So once they arrive, one of three things can happen: They can be issued a stay of execution if they can be found by their owner or adopted by strangers or they can be euthanized. I can't fathom the misery of turning up at one of the shelters in the search for your missing pet only to find that it had been put to sleep before you could get there. Unimaginable.

Similarly, these places keep notebooks full of reported pet deaths. Before they send you into the holding area to ID your animal, you have to comb through the death reports to see if he or she might be listed in there. I held my breath every time I opened one of these books. (In Berkeley, there was a tortoise shell listed as brought in dead on the 2nd, the day after Fil went missing, but it was brought in by its owner. Phew.)

Honestly, I don't know what to do at this point. This, and the not knowing where Fil is, is really the worst. I guess I just have wait and hope she returns, keep posting flyers and talking to people and going for walks around the neighborhood calling and whistling for her. But it really is demoralizing. Damn her for making me so attached to her.

Got a call this morning at 7:08 from some woman. I've seen your cat, she says. I get address. It's on Marshall Street, a few blocks away. We jump into action. Get dressed in record time. Run out to the car. Fly down the street. Find the house. Find the woman. No cat. Nothing.

I call Fil. I whistle for her. The woman says she had her dogs with her at the time so she couldn't grab Fil. She had seen the flyers that we had posted in her neighborhood the evening before.

We went around the block calling her, posting new flyers, returning to the house every so often. No sight of Fil at all.

We posted more flyers in the surrounding streets. We talked to people sitting on their porches, people walking their dogs, runners, drunks, crazy people, anyone who might have seen.

When we were about to give up and go home, I decided to go back to the original address where she was sighted by the woman. The house where Fil was seen playing had Tibetan flags hanging outside and a Buddha statue on the porch. They were probably the sort of people who wouldn't mind a stranger knocking on their door at 8am looking for a lost cat.

Right when we pulled up, we saw the cat. It wasn't Fil. It was similar, tortoise shell, white chest and paws. But it wasn't her. It was demoralizing.

I know it's only been three days and nights, but it seems like forever. The fact that cats can return weeks or months later is not really sustaining me at the moment. I just want her back safe and sound, purring in my lap or on my chest.

My little female cat Fil has been missing since about 2pm yesterday and I'm just sick with worry about her. She's escaped from the house a few times, but I've always managed to catch and get her back in within 30 minutes or so. Last night, we stood out on the porch and called her, left the door open, to no avail. For the first time in the last seven years, I went to sleep at home with Fil. It made me awful.

I went home for a few hours today and Quel & I plastered the neighborhood with flyers, offering a 100 dollar reward. We tried to go down the Oakland SPCA to file a report, but it was closed. I've got ads up on Craigslist both in pets and lost and found. Short of that, I don't know what to do.

I hope that she just wandered into someone's house and since she doesn't have a collar, they didn't know what to do with her. She's such a friendly and precocious love whore, that she can charm anyone. Since she doesn't have a collar, what are they going to do with her? Keep her, of course.

My neighborhood is full of speeding cars and pit bulls, so there's always that, but I think Fil is too smart/scared to get near the roads or the dogs, but she is only a cat, right?

Hopefully the flyers will produce a lead. I already did get two calls from neighbors, but they were both false alarms. Just other tortoise shell tabbies wandering around the neighborhood.

It's better to be a cat than to be a human.
Not because of their much-noted grace and beauty—
their beauty wins them no added pleasure, grace is
only a cat's way

of getting without fuss from one place to another—
but because they see things as they are. Cats never mistake a
saucer of milk for a declaration of passion
or the crook of your knees for

a permanent address. Observing two cats on a sunporch,
you might think of them as a pair of Florentine bravoes
awaiting through slitted eyes the least lapse of attention--
then slash! the stiletto

or alternately as a long-married couple, who hardly
notice each other but find it somehow a comfort
sharing the couch, the evening news, the cocoa.
Both these ideas

are wrong. Two cats together are like two strangers
cast up by different storms on the same desert island
who manage to guard, despite the utter absence
of privacy, chocolate,

useful domestic articles, reading material,
their separate solitudes. They would not dream of
telling each other their dreams, or the plots of old movies,
or inventing a bookful

of coconut recipes. Where we would long ago have
frantically shredded our underwear into signal
flags and be dancing obscenely about on the shore in
a desperate frenzy,

they merely shift on their haunches, calm as two stoics
weighing the probable odds of the soul's immortality,
as if to say, if a ship should happen along we'll
be rescued. If not, not.

"Two Cats" by Katha Pollitt, from The Mind-Body Problem

When you live with cats, your going to, occasionally, notice a slight acrid urine smell around the house. It's just part of the program.

For the most part, these smells are isolated to the litter box, which is how it should be. Every once in a while, I'll notice a smell outside the box, which means that one of my cats, usually Fil, has decided the litter box was not clean enough for her liking and she decided to improvise her own box. I have two boxes for them and I've become fastidious about keeping it clean, but she still pisses on various throw rugs, newspapers or piles of clothes, now and again.

I'm sort of used to the odor by now, having lived around it for six years, and usually I can find the litter box du jour and toss it in the washing machine or dump it out in the trash. But every once in a while, I catch the whiff of cat piss, but can't for the life of me locate the smell. There's a hint of an acrid smell in the air, I search for it, can't find it, and then it goes away. It hits me again, then I lose it.

This happened today. It took me all morning to realize that FIl had peed on my pajamas and I was carrying the smell with me all over the damn house. Fucking cats. Can't live with 'em. Can't drown 'em.

Visited the Zoo Safari in Sa˜o Paulo yesterday. Spider monkeys, Bororo, the baby hippo above, a giraffe, camels, big cats, peacocks, albino emus. All very cool. Pictures, accounts and descriptions to come. Many pics being uploaded to Flickr now.

Ok, so not technically a stray, since she had a collar, but she really didn't belong to anyone. Some guy tried to sell her to us for 50 euros, which is silly. She might have been around 4 months old. Badly in need of someone to look after her, feed her, bath her, cut her nails and love her. She was a total sweetheart.

She followed us around and that was before Quel bought a bag of food and started to feed her. Then we had a gang of dogs following us around Pied Piper style around and back into our hotel in Morro de São Paulo. We would have loved to take her with us, but we just wouldn't have been able to take her on the flight back to São Paulo. Here's hoping she has a wonderful life on the beach in Bahia.

More here, here, here, here, and here.

In an increasingly common occurrence, area man Andrew Hecht was rushed to Berkeley Alta Bates hospital following a major cardiac arrest induced by his two cats, Makelani and Filemu.

The events unfolded around 10:33pm when Mr. Hecht opened his bedroom window before going to sleep because of the unusually warm evening. In a sleep deprived state, also caused by the cats, he opened the window just a bit too much, investigators said. They estimate sometime between 10:33 and 10:47, the cats slipped silently out the window.

Mr. Hecht was able to rescue both animals, return them safely inside and call 911 before losing consciousness. He was rushed to the hospital after EMT first responders discovered him passed out the floor of his living room.

"It was ugly", said EMT Jarvis Greenview, the first licensed medical person to arrive responding to the man down call. "I arrive on scene. I notice the 'man down' is still down. And the cats were just sitting on him. Surveying the situation and surroundings, it was clear as day: the cats did it."

In the past year alone, Greenview has been called to the scene of 43 cat-related coronary incidents.

Mr. Hecht was rushed for emergency treatment to Alta Bates where he revived after several hours in the operating room.

"Mr. Hecht is lucky to be alive", said James Gostowski, Head of Cardiology at Alta Bates. "Feline-induced Myocardial Infarction is one our top killers. It's one the most fatal forms of cardiac arrest."

Feline-induced Myocardial Infarction (FIMI) is an acute episode of heart disease marked by the death or damage of heart muscle due to insufficient blood supply to the heart muscle usually as a result of a coronary thrombosis or a coronary occlusion. It is characterized especially by chest pain, shortness of breath and proximity to one or more cats.

Aasif Gupta, a third year cardiology intern at Alta Bates, summed it up. "Sure, cats can be cute, and, while not fully researched, the healing powers of purring is undisputed in the medical community. But they are killers." Gupta added, "you'd be foolish to keep one or more at home."

Mr. Hecht will remain at Alta Bates for several days under close observation. When reached for comment, Makelani and Filemu just stared blankly.

There's an interesting story in the NYT, Sorry, Fido, It's Just a Guy Thing, about straight single guys with cats.

John Scalzi, 39, an author in Bradford, Ohio, has been a cat guy his entire life. In September 2006, he posted a picture of a piece of bacon taped to his cat, Ghlaghghee (pronounced Fluffy — an ode to George Bernard Shaw), on his Web site www.scalzi.com/whatever. Thousands of viewers apparently found this hilarious.

Mr. Scalzi, who is now married and has a daughter, blames Hollywood for the continual bad rap that has befallen the male cat owner. Originally, he said, only strong men like Don Corleone, or the villains in a James Bond film, had cats.

"But then in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, Hollywood decided that we need to have the token gay man as the witty sidekick friend of the main female protagonist," he said. " 'What kind of signature thing can we give him to convey that he is not an entirely masculine being? I know! We'll give him a big fluffy cat!' "

In fact, Mr. Scalzi thinks that dogs are for the weaker of spirit, since the dog is, in effect, "your wingman."

"If you're feeling insecure about your space in the world, you get a dog because he will always back you up," he said. "He's the insecure man's best friend."

A man with a cat, on the other hand, "is secure with himself," he said. "He's sharing his space with a predator*." (my emphasis)

I'd love to have a dog and have been thinking about adopting a greyhound for years. But my lifestyle, skiing most weekends in the winter and being away from the house for long stretches, either for work or cycling or traveling, doesn't really lend itself to having a dog. As much as I want one, it will have to wait.

On the other hand, while my cats insinuated themselves into my life, they generally fit nicely into my little world. They can take care of themselves for days on end. All they need is a enough food, water and a clean litter box.

Plus how could you not love these guys?

*To be fair, I live with one predator and one predatard.

Almost every time I change cat food, I have to engage in psychological warfare with the cats (Well, this mostly applies to Mak. Fil is pretty damn easy going.) Not always. Sometimes I bring home new food and Mak just loves it. That was the case with Science Diet. He can't get enough. But I wanted to move away from Science Diet to something more healthy.

At first I tried raw food. You can buy frozen patties of various meats, beef, chicken, rabbit, etc.) which you can thaw out and feed to your pets. Sure it's expensive and a monumental pain in the ass, but it's healthy for your cats, so I figured I'd give it a shot. But it won't be healthy if don't eat it, which they didn't. I'd defrost the patties overnight in the fridge, then leave a few out for Mak & Fil in the morning. When I'd come back from work it would be mostly uneaten. Mak would cry for some other kind of food. This went on for a few weeks with Mak living off his nightly treat. Then I couldn't take it anymore and caved. I was trying to do the right thing for the cats, but they weren't interested, so why did I need the aggravation. Back to Science Diet.

A few weeks back, my local pet store jacked up the price of Science Diet, so it was time for a change. There's a food which was only slightly more expensive, but a whole lot healthy called Natural Choice. They've got a version which is specifically designed for indoor neutered and spayed cats. The food is more natural, full of vitamins, has Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, is shaped to promote healthy teeth and is even formulated to reduce litter box odor. What's not to like?

Mak wasn't having any of it.

Now, this little critter looks harmless enough, but looks can be deceiving. It doesn't take much to convert her from sleeping angel to death, destroyer of shirts. Here's how it works:

I'm lying on the coach. It's a warm, relaxing afternoon after a hard ride up Tunnel Road and I'm chilling out. I'm wearing a new white linen long sleeve shirt from BR (probably my first mistake) and Fil is sleeping in the crux of my arm with her head resting on my chest, purring gently, being all cute and stuff. THEN ALL OF A FUCKING SUDDEN, ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!

THERE'S A NOISE IN THE HOUSE. I THINK MAK JUMPED OFF THE CAT CONDO AND THAT NOISE, WHATEVER IT WAS, CONVERTED FIL INTO DEATH, THE DESTROYER OF SHIRTS. USING ME AS A LAUNCHING PAD, SHE HEADED FOR HIGHER GROUND AND IN DOING SO DUG HER CLAWS DEEPLY INTO MY TENDER FLESH THROUGH THE AFOREMENTIONED SHIRT.

It all happened so fast, it's over before I know it, but the aftermath will last, well, just a little longer. I have two lovely bleeding welts, one my right side down my abs and another up on my left shoulder. And the shirt, well the shirt is pretty much fucking ruined, or as Fil would put it, it's now air-conditioned.

My body will heal with the help of a little neosporin. The shirt is f'ing history. Might as well use it to clean the toilet. Ah, the joys of cat ownership.

Happens all too infrequently these days.

It's always terrible to lose a loved pet, but to lose two in a week is almost unthinkable. But that's exactly my friend's Jon and Betty have had to undergo this week. I can't even being to express how I horrible I feel for them. While both Merlin and Smokey have walked the earth for a long time, and J & B were mentally prepared for their departure, it's a whole other thing to be psychologically prepared and then have to deal with losing them both in the same week is hard to swallow. I can only imagine how I would feel if something like this happened to me and my cats. I'd be comatose for a month.

Merlin, pictured above, was probably the most beautiful cat I've ever seen. Massive deep blue eyes, cream colored coat like no other, complemented by chocolate patches on his face and forelegs, punctuated with perfect white mittens. You just wanted to reach out and pet him, but he wasn't so much interested in you. He was as ornery as he was gorgeous. If you tried to pick him up, you'd be in for a rough ride as Mer threw all his strength at you in his effort to get away. Mer was nothing if not powerful. Jon lovingly referred to him as "The Beast" and loved to tell stories about how an angry Merlin would sink his fangs into his flesh and fantasized about harnessing Mer up and having him pull a chariot or plow the back 40. I look forward to Jon's beastly stories of Mer's exploits grow like fish tales over the years.

Smokey, the Zen Master, was the ying to Mer's yang. "Smokes" was an old soul of a cat who loved nothing more than to get in your lap, purr and shed like muthafucka. Super sweet. You couldn't ask for a nicer cat.

You can see more pics of Merlin and Smokey on Jon's Flickr site.

Got to love the post-modern cardboard reconstruction. It's a genre I'm well familiar with.

Nothing scares a cat like a random event that they can't percieve the origin of. And nothing is more difficult for a cato percieve than the origin of an earthquake. So the when the earth starts to move, even with the most minor quake as we had tonight, and you have 2 docile cats sleeping on you while you lie on the couch watching TV, you're in for more than your basic garden variety earthquake startle.

Magnitude-3.7 quake rattles San Francisco Bay area

Associated Press

BERKELEY, Calif. - A small earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay area Wednesday evening, but there were no immediate reports of injury or damage.

The quake, which struck at 7:12 p.m., had a preliminary magnitude of 3.7 and was centered about 2 miles east of Berkeley, just across the bay from San Francisco, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

No one reported any damage or injuries, according to a Berkeley police dispatcher.

The temblor occurred on the Hayward Fault, which geologists believe is due for a large quake in the potentially lethal 6.7 to 7.0 range.

"It's a pretty small earthquake, but just another reminder we're eventually going to have the biggie here in the Bay Area," said David P. Schwartz, who has studied the Hayward Fault extensively as chief of the U.S. Geological Survey's Bay Area Earthquake Hazards Project.

The Great Quake of 1868 struck on the Hayward Fault, a magnitude 6.9 rumbler that killed five people. Severe quakes have happened on the Hayward Fault every 151 years, give or take 23 years, meaning it is now into the danger zone.

The instant the house started to shake, both cats flew off me, and, as usual, didn't put too much thought into the havoc cuased by using me as a springboard with claws fully extended. To be honest, they don't put too much thought into anything much other than trying to escape the house or where their next meal is coming from. Fil zipped upstairs and took refuge under the bed. Mak leapt off the bed and looked around for something to flee from, but finding nothing, starred wide eyed at the TV, the largest, most obvious culprit.

It was all over in a few minutes. I coaxed Fil out from under the bed. Mak calmed down and before too long they were ensconsed back in their usual spot, my body.

This was nothing compared to what happened last Friday when Jen came over. Usually she peeks in through the windows in the door and taps lightly. The cats look up, acknowledge her presence, give her all clear, and she enters the house. But on Friday, Mak was patrolling the TV and didn't see or hear her. So when she opened the door, he wigged out and darted away like a spaz, which totally startled Fil, until then using me as a chaise lounge. She made a beeline for the kitchen counter, the furthest point from the front door, leaving a trail of foul smelling beaded liquid on the floor. Mak litterally scarred the piss out of her. Her fur was all puffed up, but soon relaxed when she realized it was only Jen and not whatever kitty boogeyman keeps cats twitching in the night.

Fil's on the job

I love Nature. I think it's one of the best and most worthwhile shows on television and continues to be a shining example of the reasons why we need to keep supporting public broadcasting.

Their latest effort, Penguins of the Antarctic is truly spectacular. If you dig penguins, and you'd have to some kind of backwards freak not to, you'll love this show. The Emporers from "March of the Penguins" are there, but so are the Adélies, the Kings, The Gentoos, the Macaronis and the chinstraps. The photography is brilliant and hopefully you can catch it while your local PBS station is still showing it. If not, or you're unlucky enough to live in London, Sydney or Samoa, you can catch some videos on the Nature website.

It seems my cats, seemingly normal under regular supervision, are like a couple mental patients who when you look the other way for a minute are smearing their feces all over the walls. Here's a report from my sister tonight:

Mak & Fil are AOK :-)
I filled up the food & water & changed the litter & gave them a couple of treats & some love.

Just a couple of FYIs....

1) There were some scouter ants by the food and by the door. I cleaned up the food bits that were out of the bowl and killed the ants. I don't think there is anything more that can be done at this point, but keep an eye out for more please.

2) One of the kitties either pooed outside the box, or pulled a poo from inside to the bathroom floor & stepped in it more than a couple of times. I cleaned this up and put up the bathroom rug (I figure the cats may eventually either pee or poo on it, so just get it out of the way.)

That's all for now!

Fucking incredible.

I've been looking for months (ever since I moved into my new place) for a cat proof fire place screen so I could keep my ever curious critters out of the fireplace. Not so much because I plan to have fires, although that might be nice now and again, but because the fire place is filthy, covered in soot from years of use and has a shelf at the back which would be impossible to clean because of the angles involved. Of course, it's not impossible for Mak and especially Fil to get up onto said shelf and turning their snowy white paws into a black mess and then tracking that mess over the walls, the white cabinets, the fridge, basically everywhere.

While I was looking for a suitable screen, I have jammed a framed print against the fire place and buttressed it with a plastic crates full of books - not really the ideal set up for my living room. I was getting sick of having this shit cluttering my place, so I gave up on finding a screen for now and went to Home Depot to have a piece of plywood sized down to cover the roughly 28 x 33 opening. It's not an elegant solution, but it's a solution. Now the junk is out of the living room and the cats are out of the fucking fireplace.

I woke up this morning to the sounds of the cats going nuts. Usually they are very active in the morning, wanting to get up for whatver reason, sticking wet noses and whiskers in my face at 6am just to let me know who's in control, perhaps. But this morning they were more frenetic than normal.

I got up walked downstairs and saw that both Mak and Fil were on the condo riveted to something outside and emitting their beliigerent meows, the kind you hear when they want to rip some critter apart. I walked over and saw that there was a huge gray long haired stray cat on my porch peering inside the window and checking them out.

Now, I want to let my guys out. I know they love it. They are jungle cats. And I had high hopes moving here, but I just can't do it.

For one thing, I have to keep their claws trimmed so they don't scratch the shit out of the hard floors (and each other). Then there are just too many other lethal animals in the neighborhood from these strays to the pit bulls. It wouldn't be fair to my guys unarmed into a knife fight. This isn't Alameda anymore. This is Oakland.

And Mak might think he's a devil dog who can run roughshod over his tiny sister, but he's really only a 9 pound cat who hasn't been outside much in the last several years and would get ripped to shreds if he came upon even the most novice of street cats.

Sad to say, but unless I take them out on the leash, my little guys are housebound for the duration.

It almost never happens like this. Fil is always the one taking care of Mak, and rightly so. Mak needs round the clock care. But it did happen and I have it all documented here.

More photos of Fil taken this morning with my 10D.

And, yes, for this and many other reasons, I love her to death and would have gladly gone all the way to Samoa just to pick her up. (as it turns out, I was already there).

I let the cats out unsupervised for the first time since I left Vail, CO yesterday. They've managed to escape before and been out on the leash a few times. But I haven't let them out and let them wander on their own since Colorado, where I didn't have to worry about dogs or traffic or the cats not coming back since they would never venture too far in the snow.

But Oakland is a different story. The lots in my neighborhood are close together which means that it doesn't take much effort for them to get into the neighbors yard and then the next yard and the next and then get lost.

Then there are dogs. Lots of them. And this is a tough neighborhood, so we're not talking Shi Tzu's here. I've seen Pit Bulls, Dobermans, German Shepards, basically all the breeds that can tear a little cat to shreds. But my cats are wily, have dealt with dogs, so I wasn't that concerned.

I was really concerned about them just getting lost and not being able to find their way home. Which is why I waited almost a month to let them out. I wanted to make sure they knew where home was.

Still I was nervous. Actually, I was fine until they discovered a seam in the fence behind the storage room in the backyard and disappeared in the neighbor's place. Then I started to panic. I thought, what if something happens to them? What if I never see them again? Totally irrational, I know, but I felt it nonetheless. After about 5 minutes it was time to shepherd them back into the house.

Mak was easy. He's not so bright. All I needed to do was grab a treat container, shake it a few times and he came running in. Fil would never be tricked by something so pedestrian. I started whistling for her. I could hear her rummaging around the neighbors (she has a bell on her new collar). I had to come out a few times and whistle for her, but finally she got on the roof of the shed and I could grab her from my deck. I scruffed her and brought her inside.

I felt so much better. I can't believe how much anxiety I get when I think about not having the cats. I don't know if I'm going to be able to let them out again without having a fucking coronary.

Last year it was sleeping cars, this year, Macy's and the SFSPCA has put cats up in a luxury hotel suite in their window display right off Union Square. Lots of people checking out the cats (and a few dogs) over the weekend.

My pictures here. Not the best shots, shooting through crowds and the glass, but you'll get the idea.

The real story here.

Ok, so my cat has a bit of a purse fetish. What of it?

I'm starting to think about letting the cats out to run around in the yard and the neighborhood. I'm not worried that Mak will travel too far, but I think I might need one of these for Fil. I love this part:

If your pet wanders outside the boundary you have determined, you will be alerted immediately and sent the continuously updated location of your pet, to the 2-way wireless device of your choice; cell phone, pda, computer ,etc.

Too bad it doesn't work for cats yet.

What do you when you have a fucktard cat who doesn't understand the litter box and sprays through the seem where the two pieces of the box join? I've tried to hold him down and make him watch his sister use the box. Nothing. I've tried pushing his ass down when he's taking a leak. Nothing. Next step is to just tie tie him to the back of your bumper, but the people from Peta would be all over my ass. So as much as I'd like to inflict seriously bodily harm on the little shithead, I just bought a top entry litter box and am praying to my lord and savior that it does the trick.

I've have the new box in the house for a two weeks to get them used to it. I put some cat nip in there so they'd check it out, which they did, but have pretty much ignored it since. I just put the litter in it and Filemu, the good cat that she is, got right in and took care of business.

So will the fucktard get in there too or will he shit in the darkest corners of the apartment? Stay tuned.

While I was away back east to do computer training at the behest of my company, my cats (I'm not sure which one, but I have my suspicions) dragged my Chiron fleece from my desk into the living room and annointed it with their foul urine. Think they're trying to tell me something?

This is best shot (so I think) from a series of photos that I took of my little guys playing king of the hill on the kitty condo a few days ago. I love it when the cats sumo. It's mostly harmless. Mostly. But I almost never have a camera around. It usually happens so fast that If I don't have a camera in my hands when the action goes down, I miss it.

But not this time. This time I had the camera close at hand when Mak & Fil dueled it out for supremacy on the condo. It's hard to capture cats in the middle of doing much of anything but sleeping, so I really feel lucky to have captured this action on "film".

It's not a great shot, technically speaking. I was too lazy to get of my ass and move from the couch where I was sitting to take better advantage of the light coming from the sliding glass doors. And the composition leaves a lot to be desired, but the action, well, the action doesn't get much better. If anyone ever doubts the ferocity of the Samoan Fighting Kittens, all I have to do is bust out this photo for them to behold.

Toilet Train Your Cat and Throw Your Litter Box Away!

The CitiKitty Toilet Training Kit teaches your cat to use the toilet through a series of gradual steps. In just a few weeks your cat can be using the toilet.

Sounds great, right? No more litter. That's a good thing. No more cat smells. That's a really good thing.

The problem is one of my cats (guess which one) has the toilet skills of an inbred, sun-stokred mongoloid. Who knows, might work for your cat though.

I went home for lunch today (no sign of any urinating transients), but when I stopped at the mailbox I was buzzed by three low flying mallards, 2 horny males in pursuit of a female. The males were fighting each other and trying to mount the squawking female at the same time.

The resident felines in the Abandoned Planet Bookstore on Valencia in the Mission District of San Francisco. I've been coming to this bookstore for years. The cats have always been there.

If you look closely (or at the original shot), you can see a reflection of me taking this shot in Fil's left eye. Pretty cool. This pic and a whole lot more posted on Flickr.

In the last few months I've been catching Mak drinking out of the sink, the toilet and even the track that the shower sits in. Every time, I think, fuck I must be out of water. I grab him, go to the fridge, pull out the Brita jug and head to the cat's water bowl. It's almost always full. It's full because I keep it full. I put Mak down in front of their bowl, but he doesn't drink. I hold him there so he understands he's in front of a clean bowl of water, but he just squirms away. How did I get this fakakta cat in my life?

The other day Chip and Dale here were chasing each other around the large pine tree in front of my house. Up and down the tree. Across and around the trunk. Back and forth across branches. All over the damn tree.

Needless to say, Mak & Fil, safely locked away inside the apartment, we're freaking out, but then we know how they feel about squirrels. They were running back and forth between their condo in front of the balcony and the little window in my bedroom to get the best view and to patch any holes in our outer defenses.

There is all sorts of animal activity around the apartment these days. I saw a family of ducks with 12 new ducklings waddling across the lawn when I came home last night. There are tons and tons of squirrels. Birds are all over the place. If I could let Mak & Fil out unsupervised they'd come home with all sorts of presents for me.

I finally went and bought a 16 foot retractable lead so I take Fil on walks and not be limited by the short 4 foot leash that I had been using. More freedom for the cat, I thought. Great idea, right? Not quite.

The retractable bit makes this noise that spooks the shit out of Fil and every time I would engage it, she would flip around, get this startled look in her eyes and refuse to move forward. She was very serious about it. One time she freaked out so badly that she squirmed out of her harness and I had to track her down, which wasn't too hard since all she really wanted to do was nibble on the flowers and the grass.

I did the only thing I could which was to take the lead off, carry her down to the shore and let her run around off leash, which she loves. I think she'll get used to the new leash and over time it won't be a big problem. clearly I need to tighten her harness so she doesn't flip out into demented ferret mode and escape.

I love this shot. Not just because it's so cool, showing Fil as the quintessential hunting machine that she is, but also because it reminds of a different time and place, partly of my life, but mostly of the life of my cats when they were free to run around the jungle in which they were born and lived for the first year of their little lives.

My cats were not made to be under house arrest and I feel horrible keeping them cooped up in the apartment all day when they should be running around putting the fear of god into the local squirrel population and terrorizing the neighborhood strays like I know they badly want to.

Just to let know that Mak is 100% fine, having suffered no obvious damage after his harrowing 35 foot fall from the roof my building. Other than showing little inclination to go outside, he's little changed at all, and back to his cuddly, crazy self. The only difference is that thanks to his hijinks, I'm 100 dollars lighter in the wallet.

I almost had a heart attack last night. I think anyone would have likely had some palpitations under the circumstances. It was brought on, of course, by my shithead and extremely lucky Samoan cat, Makelani.

I've documented Mak's inferior intellect multiple times on this site. Earlier in the evening, in a typical Mak event, he stuck his head in the handle of a brown paper bag and since he couldn't figure out how to extricate himself, he just dragged the bag around the apartment as if nothing was wrong.

Around 7:30 or so, I let the cats out on the balcony for their evening perambulation. I watered the little basil plant that I bought, and stood on the left end of the railing to prevent Fil, my female cat, from jumping onto the roof and escaping, which she has done several times.

When it came time to herd the cats back into the apartment, I grabbed Fil first because she's the troublemaker. I put her inside and as I shut the door and turned to get Mak, I could him see crouching down, going into the butt-wiggle, I'm about to the leap on the roof and there's nothing you can do to stop me, mutherfucka. Everything that followed sort of happened in slow motion.

I usually leave Mak out on the railing and put Fil inside first because while not having two brain cells to keep each other warm, Mak has always been on the cautious side. Some would say chickenshit, but I give him the benefit of the doubt and say cautious. But something snapped in his little brain. For a second, Mak thought he could fly. He forgot about three things. First, he's a nine pound cat and not a hummingbird. Second, the Theory of Gravity. Third, and most important, the little balcony railing that he was on is 35 feet above the ground.

As I stood there in the doorway, I saw Mak jump up to the sloping roof, desperately try to hang on the ledge, fail and disappear from sight, falling at roughly 9.8 meters per second per second. HOLY FUCKING SHIT!! MY CAT JUST FELL THREE STORIES TO THE GROUND!!

I ran to the balcony and looked down. Mak was down there, walking around and mewing like a crazed beast. I ran out the door, down the stairs and outside where I found a freaked out Mak, tail poofed out about three times normal size, covered in mud and looking for a way to get back in the building.

I swooped him up and whisked him upstairs, all the while trying to calm him down, to no avail. Other than being slathered in mud, he didn't seem to have any major damage. I was shocked.

Back inside I put him on the floor and watched him walk around. He was walking with a pronounced limp, favoring his hind right leg. I tired to pick him back him. He wasn't happy. I prodded him and pushed him to look for sore or broken spots. He was tender for sure. He didn't want me touching his hid leg. He was sore under his forearms. But didn't seem broken. He's a fucking tough cat. Coming from Samoa, the land of people impervious to pain, that's not hard to believe. (Twice when I was in was living in the village, I had a host brother who broke a foot, had it reset by a masseuse and was walking around on it the next day as if nothing had happened).

Everything seemed fine, but I wanted to take him to the vet just to be sure. But it was late now, after 8 o'clock and all the vet offices in Alameda were closed. I could take him to the emergency hospital in San Leandro, but it's ten miles away, and Mak doesn't travel all that well so with the all the trauma that he'd suffered already, I didn't want to have to pile it on if I didn't have to.

I gave Makkie a sponge bath and cleaned him up a little and went off to a dark corner of the house to lick his wounds. He was eating. That was a good sign. I could hear go in and out of the litter box twice. That was positive too. He could leap from the ground to the couch and from there to the condo. Everything seemed good.

Then he came to sit in my lap, like normal, except, he wasn't normal. He was shaking ever so slightly, more than his normal high octane purr. I got worried. I thought, fuck, if something is really wrong with him and I didn't have him looked at by a professional when I had the chance, I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

So, I grabbed him, took him downstairs and into the car. He started freaking immediately, as he normally does anytime he gets anywhere near my car. I gave him some treats which calmed him down, but he kept a low grade caterwaul all the way to the Bay Area Veterinary Specialists.

Inside Mak was calm, which was a surprise. I borrowed a pet taxi to keep him from running around or coming into contact with a dog, so nothing bad happened. I was asked into the exam room. A tech came in asked me a bunch of questions about what happened, and gave him a cursory check, including an anal temperature reading that might have been more traumatic than the fall. I know if someone scruffed me by the neck and jammed a rod up my ass, I wouldn't have been in a cooperative mood.

The doc came in, felt Makkie up, watching him walk around and declared that nothing was broken. There was a possibility of internal damage, but since he was eating and using the litter box, it was unlikely. He was probably just sore and in pain and prescribed a liquid pain killer to ease his suffering and help him heal.

I was so relieved. Nothing major wrong. Almost even better, no overnight stay, no x-rays, no bandages. I got away with a $110 bill, happily paid and went home, a sedate Makkie in the back making no one peep.

Mak has to be one of the luckiest cats in the world. First he was saved from a life of torture at the hands of village idiot kids in a remote part of Samoa by some soft hearted human. Now he survived a 35 foot fall without a scratch, only some residual soreness and damaged pride.

Needless to say, balcony privileges have been permanently revoked and it's time for me to find a more suitable place for me and the cats to recreate.

I finally took Mak out for a walk last night. It was his first time out of the house, other than hanging out on the balcony, since he escaped while I was carving a pumpkin last Halloween. He needed it. He's starting to look portly and he needs some exercise.

Typically, there was tons of activity on my street, exactly what I didn't need with a nervous cat on my hands. After I carried him downstairs, I put him on the grass and he was freaking out at every little sign of movement. There were some people walking in the garage. There were some cars in the street. There were some guys playing hoops at the little court down the way. Any chance I had of coaxing him down the sidewalk was lost.

So I picked him up and carried him to the shoreline/mudflat/jetty thing that's at the end of the street. The whole time Mak is caterwauling like I'm taking him to the kitty abattoir. He only calmed down when I put him in the ice plant and let him explore, but just barely.

The whole time he kept his belly to the ground and slinked through the vegetation like a WWII GI in the hedges of Normandy. The sounds of the baseball game at the high school and the squawking birds and my shuffling feet would send him for cover. He continued to meow like he was having a near death experience.

After about ten or fifteen minutes, he calmed down enough to do some rock climbing over the jumbled pile of concrete that forms the jetty. He wanted to poke his little head into every nook and cranny, nose constantly vibrating, sniffing the shit out of everything he could find. I think he might actually have been enjoying himself at that point.

When it came time to head home, he was a champ, more or less. Still with his belly scraping the pavement, he let me lead him right back to the apartment building, crossing the street twice and stopping only once to play around in the ivy. He flew up the stairs and when we reached my floor, he zipped down the hallway right to my door. Inside we cleaned himself for a few minutes and them crashed, hard.

I don't know if I'll take him out anytime soon. The whole experience was enough to give both of us a heart attack.

Today after I took a shower, I caught Mak drinking the water out of the shower door track. It was so disgusting, but there he was, slurping it up like nobody's business. I thought maybe their water bowl was empty, but when I went to check it, the bowl was half full. I topped it off with fresh, filtered water, put Mak in front of it and he would not drink. He just squirmed away. He's not working with a full deck.

I moved the kitty condo in front of the window and now they can sit on it and peer outside. Before they wouldn't touch it. Now it's their favorite play thing. Why didn't I think of that earlier?

What more can I say about this picture? I think Fil might have a chemical imbalance or she's going stir crazy from being under house arrest for a year half. Clearly she's not right in the head. Either that or she's mistaken me for a very large cat. I probably would have been laughing uncontrollably, but since this happens every morning now, I'm just mildly amused.

John & Betty, and Betty's brother Benj (in the background above), came over to Alameda on Sautrday afternoon for lunch. And what do I do when I have friends in from out of town? Take the cat out for a walk, of course.

It was Fil's third time out on the leash, and she didn't do too bad, considering all the company, the distractions and the gale force wind blowing off the bay. She did get freaked out by some ropes that were banging against the side of the one of the aparment buildings in my complex, which caused her flip out like a juiced-up bucking bronco, but she mostly loved it, eating up all the attention, along with the grass, and was just thrilled to be outside and away from her shithead brother.

I gave John my camera, so we could document the event. The pictures kinda suck (sorry, mate). Totally my fault though. I should have told him to stand between me and the sun. To be fair, it's hard to think on your feet when your walking your cat. It's hard to do anything else, like, for example, keep a straight face, or assure your friends and neighbors, that you're not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Here's an interesting discussion from Jonah Goldberg over at the National Review Online about how the state of Wisconsin is considering open season on feral cats. The reason: they kill too many birds. As Goldberg so aptly puts it, "some people want to give granny a shotgun so she can kill Sylvester before he gets Tweety Bird."

The weather is improving and the days are starting to get long enough so that there's a sliver of sunlight left when I get home from work. Today I decided I want to take Fil for a walk (I'd love to take Mak, but he'd freak out).

My mom had bought these harnesses for my cats when she had brief custody while I made a quick trip to DC and New York. I don't know if she ever used them. She might have told me, but I can't remember. I actually thought she was joking when she said she bought them. I've had them ever since I came back west, but never used them until recently.

Now, my poor cats, who grew up running around the jungles of Samoa, have been more or less under house arrest since they arrived in this country. They were living large in Sedona and had some brief ventures in the snow around Vail, but other than that, they've been locked safely inside the house. Well, there was the daring Halloween escape, but that was an anomaly.

This was the second time I took Fil out. The first time, I harnessed her up, carried her downstairs and she mostly flopped around on the ground like a demented ferret. She did some exploring, but went into kitty hysterics when someone walked by.

This afternoon, it was a different story. Sure, she flopped around a little, but once she got used to the harness and understood the lead, she walked right with me. We walked down the street to the bay and watched the sunset over San Francisco. She even came up to a complete stranger and let herself be rubbed down. I probably let her eat way too much grass, but she was in heaven being outside and I wanted her to enjoy it as much as possible.

We were out for about 45 minutes. When we came back to the apartment, what did Mak do? He tried to sniff her ass and then sulked off. The venture out took a toll on little Fil. She crashed. Now she's curled in tiny ball, hugging her face and sleeping right next to me. She's hard not to love.

Fil, my female cat has always liked to get up on the shower door when I'm taking a shower. It's one of her many endearing qualities. I even chose the apartment I'm in now partially because it had a shower door perch for Fil. But lately, she hasn't been satisfied with just hanging out and watching, she feels she needs to get into the cleaning act.

So Fil cantilevers her body out over the shower, latches onto my head with her forepaws and starts licking away. Eventually this is going to get annoying, but right now I find it adorable, especially when I see the look of determination in her eyes to get at my head.

Even better, when I'm getting ready to get out of the shower and put the towel around my neck, Fil jumps down onto my shoulders. This morning she was a little anxious, didn't wait for the towel and slipped off my back when she jumped down. I had to pin her between my back and the wall of the shower to keep her from falling to the basin and the peeling the skin off my back with her sizable talons on the way down. She was wet and freaked out after that little misstep, so who knows if she'll venture back.

Click here for the hottest girl on guy action.

This morning I finally let the braying cats back out on the balcony, mostly just to see if Fil would make the leap to the tree or navigate her way somehow down the facade to the ground. She did neither. Instead, she casually walked down to the east end of the balcony and lept onto the roof. She looked down at me briefly as if to say, who's in charge now, ass hole, and then disappeared.

I was calm and rational about it. There's no way for me to get on the roof, so I just had to wait her out. I figured in about a half an hour, she'd find her way down to the ground and I could head out and call her. Thankfully, I didn't need to find her. She just reappeared on the balcony in about ten minutes.

I need to find some chicken wire or something and block off her acccess to the roof. I really want to be able to let the cats out there unsupervised, but I can't do it if Fil is going to run all over the show.

I came home last night and Fil was gone. I was looking everywhere, all her usual hiding places, if you can call them usual since I've only been in the new place two weeks, but she was nowhere to be found. Mak was following me around in my search as if he was trying tell me something. I think he was trying to tell me that Fil flew the coup. I was freaking out.

For the first time, I had left the sliding glass door on the balcony open so the cats could come and go as they pleased and Fil came and went. I live on the third floor and there's no simple way off the balcony. It's either a 25 foot drop to the hedges below or a leap of faith to the branches of the large tree in front of my place. I can't imagine that Fil did either, but she got down somehow.

I went down to search for her totally expecting to find a dead or severely damaged kitten in the area just beneath my apartment. I started hearing muted meows within a few minutes of walking around and whistling for her. Within about 15 minutes I found her down on the ground looking as if nothing was wrong. She just sailed past me with her tail vibrating as usual.

I have no idea how she got down. Maybe the tree, but who knows. One thing I do know is that outside privileges have been revoked indefinitely.

I went shopping in the city last night with my buddy Brian and his wife Becky. First stop, Macy's.

Macy's has teamed up with the SF SPCA to put together some awesome window displays that look like classic train cars. Inside were crtters available for adoption. How could you not want to take one of these little guys home? (lots of pictures on the links above if you want to check them out)

The calm:

After 5 months or so of house arrest, I finally decided to let Mak and Fil have a run around around the apartment complex. I supervised Fil because she had a tendency to drift away to another zip code and everything went fine. Then I let Mak out by himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Mak is sort of nervous cat and this usually works in his favor when it comes to self preservation. But in his roaming around the neighborhood, he came across another cat and when he came back in the house, he was bleeding from at least three different places that I noticed. I first noticed the slight abrasion on the top of his right ear. And as I poked around his little body, I discovered all sorts of injuries. He had a little stinger on the side his head by his left ear. And he had a major gash on his belly that went through at least two layers of skin. He also had an assortment of other scratches that had already dried over.

I want to say, well, you should see the other cat, but I've been keeping Mak's talons shorn because of the internal struggle between the four cats in the house. Basically Mak got messed up. Hopefully he learned a lesson. I sure did.

I cleaned out all his wounds. Put on some non-stinging anti-biotic liquid that they gave us in the Peace Corps and started giving him a course of Clovamax because I don't want him to abscess.

He spent most of the weekend in a low key mood, literally licking his wounds. Poor guy.

Last night when we were carving our over-priced pumpkin, Jennifer noticed that the screen door was open and my cats were nowhere to be found. I didn't freak out. Each of them has gotten out a few times since I moved to Walnut Creek, and we always recovered them without too much trouble. But never have they both escaped at the time nor this close to nightfall.

I went out to search armed with a little plastic jar of cat treats, but I couldn't find them. Anywhere. I looked around for about half an hour. Shook the treats. Whistled. But they were nowhere to be found.

I went back to the house, finished carving the pumpkin, watched some TV and went out looking during the commercials. But all I managed to scare up was some of the local cats who were charmed by the jingling of the cat treats.

Just after it got dark, I went out again and saw Mak walking towards me down the road. I went towards him, but like a little shithead, he bolted into the bushes. I coaxed him out with treats, but when I finally grabbed him there was a car coming down the road and people walking towards us on the sidewalk and Mak, who is a nervous cat at the best of times, freaked. I managed to hold onto him, but he tore into me, carving up my arms and my hands with his talons. What did I ever do to him other than keep under house arrest for 6 months?

Once I had Mak under control, I saw Fil, grabbed her and spirited them off to the apartment with Mak simpering all the way. The little shits are now safe and secure, thankfully.

My male cat Mak(elani) has been acting funny lately. More funny than usual, anyway. In the morning, he's more plaintive than typical, following me around as soon as I wake and crying at me more incessantly than normal. He's also been going in and out of the litter box excessively. I wouldn't even know about the litter box except that Mak hasn't quite figured out what to do when he's finished his business in the box. Instead of burying his waste, he scratches around at everything in site but the litter. He's always done this, just not 10 times a day.

The crying doesn't worry me so much as this litter box business. If he has an infection or worse, some kind of kidney crystal or stone, that's bad news. Today I got worried enough to take him down to the Vet. Now, Mak is a nervous cat at the best of times. In the car, inside of the pet taxi, with his sister Fil, who's a rock, he freaked. He was going crazy all the way on the short ride to the vet's office. Inside, he calmed down a little, but there were dogs in the office and really didn't enjoy that. It was all I could to keep him calm.

We waited inside the exam room for the vet. I let him walk around so he could get comfortable. He tried to jump up on the desk, but lost his footing and fell spectacularly, and very uncatlike back the floor. The vet came in, asked me a bunch of questions, weighed him, took some notes and came back with an estimate for a urinalysis and and urine culture, plus some other things that ran to 342 bucks. That's 3-4-2. Not to cure him, mind you, just to find out what might be wrong.

I was dumbfounded. I hadn't spent that much on my own health in the past years. Granted I had really good insurance with the Peace Corps and Electronic Arts, while Mak is one of many Americans without coverage (ok, so he's not American. Fine). I didn't know what to do.

On the one hand I want nothing more than the best of health for my cats. On the other hand, that's a shit load of money just for some tests that I would probably hesitate to have run on myself. I thought about it for a long time. He wasn't crying. I probed around his nether regions. Nothing. There hasn't been any blood in the litter box. That would have worried me. I guessed (hoped) it was just an infection, paid for the antibiotics and left, feeling a little guilty, but knowing that if drugs don't work, or if Mak exhibits any further problems, I can always take him back to the vet when I am more financially stable than I am at the moment.

Be strong, Makkie!

Fil, my female kitten, has become a one woman guerrlla attack cat when it comes to Jen's tuxedo, Smudge. Smudge will enter the living room, gingerly now, as she suspects an imminent attack from any direction. Fil will stalk her or launch a speedy offensive without provocation. And there's nothing I can do to make her stop. Squirt guns don't work. Throwing pillows doesn't work. Giving her a stern talking to doesn't work. She's just a truant. I didn't raise her that way.

MAK ON HIGH RODENT ALERT

Since I moved back to California, I've already seen more wildlife here in the WC than I did in three months in Colorado. To be fair, I did see a wolf trying to steal burgers off our grill one night, which I would never see here. But just in this apartment I've seen a thief of a racoon sneaking into the complex and several ducks bathing in the pool (eat your heart out Tony Soprano).

The latest critters to catch our attention have been the squirrels that live in the trees across the street. Mak and Fil go nuts every time they see one of the rodents scurrying around. Everyone knows squirrels are a threat to national security in general and the integrity of this apartment specifically, so the kittens are natually on high alert, doing their part to keep America safe from rodentia.

THAT'S RUBY ON TOP AND SMUDGE ON THE BOTTOM

The reactions are predicable. Fil has taken everything in stride and while is no friend to the two previous occupants, she is hardly antagonistic. Mak on the other hand is a pain in the ass. Of course, he's the only male in a home full of estrogen, but that's no excuse for being a prick (in most cases anyway).

Jen's cats Ruby and Smudge are having a difficult time with the additional housemates as well. Ruby is a skittish cat to begin with and with the arrival of Mak and Fil has taken up permanent residence in the bedroom, hissing at anything that dares enter her private lair. Smudge is more nonchalant, going about the house with nary a care in the world, that is, until Mak decides to randomly attack her.

Smudge is a super sweet cat with some adorable idiosyncrasies. She will come to you. All you have to do is whistle the theme song to "I Dream of Jeanie." When she does come, she will set her bulk on your chest and lick you. At least she has always done me, which either means I taste really good, or I'm seriously dirty and need to be bathed.

This morning I was writing some postcards using my red sharpie because I couldn't find another pen around. Fil, being every so catlike, decided she needed to be in my lap at the same time I was trying to write "Uzbekistan" on a card to a friend serving in the Peace Corps. For her troubles, Fil know has a nice red "permanent" mark on her otherwise pristine white little paw. And I always thought she was the smart one. Sheee-it.

Yesterday I went to go pick up a friend of mine and while I was waiting for him outside I was "playing" with these two dogs. There was one black lab like friendly little guy who came over and wanted to actually play. Then there was a this German Shepherd on a leash who seemed to want to play, but when he came over and I put my hand down so he could check out my smell, the fucking beast bit me. I thought I was done with dog bites when I left Samoa.

It turns out this dog, named "Kaiser" must have somehow known I was Jewish. I hate those god damn anti-semetic dogs.

Can you caption this photo? The winner gets a year supply of pisupo* and the undying admiration of your peers.

*since no one should eat pisupo, a year's supply consititues zero cans

I don't know if the Pope defecates in the woods (probably not with his bad back), but my kittens have taken to shitting in the potted palms of my new, and ever-patient, housemates.

They have a clean litter box and they have used it in the past, so they know what the deal is. I think they are so used to being outdoor cats, both in Samoa and in Sedona that being snowbound has caused them to seek out any patch of soil and befoul it. Of course, it stinks and it's disgusting, and I'm embarrassed because Lilla and Roy have already accomodated me and my charges excessively.

What can I do about this?

He's mine and he's paid for (unlike the car).

Once again I got a call from a stranger this morning claiming to have my cat. And once again it turned out that they did have my cat, my wayward cat Fil. This time it was even further away, at 780 Sunshine which is down the way along Arrowhead, a street that deadends right across from the house.

Now, what the fuck is she doing? I have my theories. Here are the top ten:

10. She's thinking about making a run for city council and needs to press the flesh.

9. She's jealous of Toonces and is looking for a car to drive.

8. She's canvassing the neighborhood looking for suspicious characters and activity as one would under the current threat levels as outlined by the United States Department of Homeland Security. (She might be a Samoan national, but she's as patriotic as any new emigre).

7. She's trying to induce cardiac arrest in her human.

6. She's looking for the Northwest Passage.

5. She's making a run for the mall in Flagstaff before the after Christmas sales come to an end.

4. She's not thrilled with the carb levels Meow Mix and wants to go back on the Atkins Diet.

3. She's not happy about the prospect of spending a rocking New Year's Eve with Dick Clark.

2. She just wants me to get to know the neighbors.

And the number one reason Fil is Trying to Escape...

Not once today, but twice the phone rang and on the other end was someone saying, um, do you own a cat named "Fil"?

Uh, why, yes I do. What seems to be the problem?

The first time it was the neighbor across the street. This is to be expected. It makes me incredibly nervous depsite the relative lack of traffic around these parts, but I've seen Fil cross the street on innumerable occasions. The second call was from someone half a block down Arrowhead street about 500 meters away from the house. This makes me worry.

I love the fact that Fil likes to explore. What else would you expect from such a cosmopolitan, jet-setting kitten? However two calls in one day and the second coming from so far away make me think that I need to put her under house arrest. I don't want to kill her spirit, but I can't think how I would feel If I lost her. I do have some idea.

When I went to pick up Fil from the the second neighbor, a woman named Tanya, she told me that one of her cats had died the other day and that Fil was just like an angel. Then she started crying. I felt horrible. I didn't know what to do or say. I fully empathized with her. And Fil is, indeed, an angel. But what can one say in that situation?

I was playing with Mak this afternoon and he was being his normal affectionate self. Then his ears perked up. His head was still. His eyes were glued on one of the trees down below the deck. He took off running after something, down through the trees and across the arroyo.

I saw him standing on the opposite side of the arroyo stalwartly chasing off the big long haired gray cat that lives across the way and whom I often see slinking around the property trying to get at Mak and Fil's food supply. I was shocked that Mak who is normally so mild mannered and silly could be so aggressive, at least towards another cat. I've seen him take swipes at the occasional dog, but almost all cats do that. It was nice to see him so protective of the property.

I recently went up to Flagstaff, about 45 minutes north and 2000 feet above Sedona. I discovered this incredible pet shop called Animal Kingdom. They have puppy Weimaraners and Schnauzers and Boxers and Huskies and a probably a dozen other pure breds. Beautiful dogs, all.

I fell in love with this Akita. I've always had a special place for Akitas, but I had never seen a puppy before. This little guy was black and white, with coal black eyes and the cute pointy ears. The manager got him out the cage and let me play around with the pup for as long as I wanted. He was so friendly and so soft. Immediately, I started thinking about how the kittens would deal with a new friend, but this thought was summarily ended during a quick discussion I had with the manager after play time was over.

We were talking a little about Akitas. He said he owned two and they were fantastic pets, which I firmly believed. Then I asked him about the price tag. All it says on each on the cages on a yellow sticker that indicates the breed, is a monthly price you can pay for each dog. As in, you can have this doberman for as little as 45 dollars a month. It doesn't say how many months you'll be paying. (Probably the rest of your life, as it turns out).

The price tag on the Akita was a mere 1500 bucks. Ouch. I guess Mak and Fil were not going to get a new plaything until I get a job or win the lottery. To the credit of Animal Kingdom, that sum includes vet visits for 4 years and something akin to doggie insurance that says that if anything (genetic) happens to the dog, you can get a replacement, free of charge. I wonder if they can treat co-dependency?

You ever see those shows on the Discovery Channel or Nature on PBS where biologists are tracking animals using radio collars? I saw one recently about Jaguars in the so-called "Necklace" in Central and South America. This one biologist, Alan Rubenstein, a jewish guy from New York City of all places, was working diligently with national governments in the area to create a protected area for the Jaguars.

Part of his long time study was to keep track of the migration patterns of the big cats to better understand their environment. He did this with radio collars. He would go out with a team of trackers, they would find a large cat, shoot it with a tranquilizer and afix one of these collars.

Naturally, I'm thinking, I want to do this to my cats. Not because I want to tranquilize them. I've done that before. It's not much fun. But because I would love to see where they go when they're not around. I'm so curious how wide their meanderings take them.

This curiousity is intesntified whenever Fil doesn't come home at sunset and I have to go out looking for her, which is often. With a radio collar, I could pin her down in no time flat.

The other night, she didn't come home. Mak was inside with me. At about 9 o'clock I see this little face pop up at my window. It's her. I quickly go outside and snatch her out of the cold. As soon as I pick her up, I realize something is wrong. For one thing, she's growling at me, which she never does. For another thing, she's got all these rough spots on her tail which is normally smooth as silk.

As soon as I get her in the room I do a full inspection. She's got burrs and prickly things sticking out all over her body. The poor thing must have fallen into a cactus or something equally nefarious. I started pulling the burrs out of her body (there was a horrible one right at the base of her tail) and she continues to growl at me until I get them all out and then goes to skulk over in the corner and becomes very anti-social, which she has been ever since. She's never around during the day and the sleeps alone in the top of the garage at night, refusing to come down even with the offer of treats.

I feel horrible, because I think she's angry with me because I "caused" her so much pain by removing the burrs, but what could I do?

Last night, Mak come in from the cold at the usual time, just before sunset, but there was no sign of Fil. This didn't surprise me or worry me. She's always been more independent and adventurous. Worrying about her does me little good anyway. She has always come home. But last night she didn't.

Even though it was about 20 degrees, I kept going outside, whistling for her until I felt like my lips were going to fall off and then back inside to watch Monday Night Football and warm up with a cup of tea. I thought I heard her in the bushes, but it was just a few javelinas, these wild pigs that live in the neighborhood and like to rustle around in my mom's pansies.

At halftime, I ventured further out. I heard a meow coming from across the arroyo behind the house, but I figured it was the neighbor's cat responding to my whistle. I grabbed the flash light anyway, hiked across the arroyo and through the bush to the neighbor's place and there was Fil, on top of a post on the stairs, well above the growling llhasa opsos below and obviously scared out of her wits. The neighbor came out, went up the stairs and snatched Fil from her perch.

I don't know how Fil even got into her yard because there's a protective angled fence around the whole thing to keep her animals in away from the coyotes that live alongside the javelinas.

When I woke up this morning and saw Fil moving around, I saw that she was favoring her left hind leg. I don't think she was attacked. She must have just injured herself climbing around. Poor little thing.

My mom dragged me down to the neighboring hamlet of Cottonwood so that we could pick up a new DVD player for the den at the Walmart. I've got her hooked on movies, signed up for Netflix and all that.

I was wandering around the cat toy aisles, as I'm wont to do now that I'm back in the good ‘ole USA, and I spied this toy that I couldn't live without. It's a long wand, about 20 inches long attached to a longer piece of leopard print felt with a piece at the end that looks like a gigantic fly fishing lure with feathers and such.

The cats go crazy for it. Insane, really. They are on a mission to kill it. I can get Mak running around in circle until he nearly passes out from exhaustion, such is his devotion to annihilate this little toy. Both Mak and Fil perform mighty aerobatics in attempt to bring it down out of the sky when I flutter it above their heads. Oh, what fun we have.

It's far and away the best four dollars I have ever spent in my life.

(if you're interested, you can find out more information about the SmartyKat™ WildStreak™ Wand here)

Sedona is a paradise for kittens, at least my mom's well landscaped house is. Other than the chilly night time temperatures, I'm happy to report that the kids are doing great here. They can't however, come inside the house, which is a constant source of trouble, especially with Mak, who always wants to be where the action is. Plus, he's so handy around the kitchen. He just wants to help out. he really does.

While I was away in New York and DC, my mom and her handy friend Ray built a huge cage in the garage. When I say huge, I mean fucking huge. You can walk into the thing. It's more of a habitat or an enclosure than a cage. It's got tables and a scratching post and a covered litter box and toys and lots of stuff to play with. This is where the kittens were hanging out during an adjustment period, both for them and for my mom, who hasn't had a pet in over ten years.

During the day, they run around, chasing leaves and butterflies and each other without any of those pesky dogs to interrupt their fun. Fil is climber and often has to be coaxed down out of trees. I've only had to rescue her from the roof a few times in the last 4 or days. Mak is too protective of his own skin (he's a coward) so I don't have to worry about him much.

At night Fil and Mak now have the whole run of the garage, which is like a great obstacle course/irrestible challenge for cats. Threre are beams and shelves and it's full of stuff tucked away into corners which the little ones explore with abandon. They mostly stay out of trouble, because they're good cats. Mostly.

We've rigged up some heating pads and a light in their enclosure with a timer that comes on about 30 minutes before the sun sets and it starts to get really cold. We could leave them out. I don't really have a problem with it, but my mom is worried about the coyotes. Personally I think the kittens are so self-protective after dealing with Samoan dogs that coyotes will be nothing to them. In the meantime, you can find the kids, the most coddled pair of kittens in the Southwest, huddled together on their heating pads at night, with a perfect view of their 22.5 bag of Meow Mix.

Meow Mix. I used to be able to get Meow Mix back in Samoa, way back when, and the kitties used to slurp the shit up. But it only came in these tiny (and expensive) boxes.

So, of course, when I saw this massive bag and saw the price tag ($8.44), I had to have it. God bless America. If only there was a Walmart in Samoa.

Right next to the shelves with the cat food sits Walmar's impressive "gun store". I probably should have picked up a shotgun or two while I was in "America's Superstore". You can never be too safe these days, and, I mean, let's face it, guns are fun.

And I thought I had bad breath

Hey Dad?

How did it go today ?

We are fine... & say Hi. We slept most of the way from LA to Sedona on 1/4 mg of stuff that someone 'stuffed down us. Yesterday eve (we got here right at 8) after stopping at Wal-Mart for kitty liter, box, scoop, food, treats, harnesses and leashes, we were kindly put up by hostess Linda in her bathroom where she only had to move out all her plants - that viney thing that was growing all over the west wall looked like a bit of a bear, and then the large mirror that is leaning against the east wall that we just love to go behind and the smaller mirror leaning in front of it, and the lamp, and tray of perfumes, and jewelry. My god she has a lot of stuff on the counters. Then good thing she wasn't fully asleep when that other large thing that was sitting on a ledge full of bottles of more stuff just slipped out from under us and crashed into the tub. So much for kitty proofing. She put a nice pad for us in the shower which we like ,and put our taxi in the tub with more towels for that cozy feeling. We only tore up the carpet a little bit (little v shaped pieces, nothing serious) trying to paw under the closed door. You know how that is. Slept well even after sleeping all day. Amazing.

I knew traveling with the kittens was never going to be any fun. I was going to be as tough and stressful on me as it was on them. Maybe even more so more. The pain and suffering started well before the journey. Importing cats from Samoa to the US is a relatively simple procedure.

I say simple because there is no quarantine period in the States and everything is fairly straightforward. The only problem is that you need a certified letter from Samoa giving the cats a clean bill of health. And there is only one veterinarian in the entire country who is allowed to certify cats to leave. Her name is Sina.

Sina is impossible to get a hold of. Or, at least she was in the ten days or so prior to my departure from Samoa when I was calling her office every day to find her. When I couldn't track her down at her office, I found her home number. No one answered.

I had been dealing with Henry from Summit Cargo about transporting the cats. Every time I would try to call Sina and not get her on the line, I would immediately call Henry. He said not to worry. Everything would be taken care of.

When Sarah left Samoa for Indiana, she gave me this beautiful "sleeping mat" interwoven with purple and orange dyed stands. I didn't have room for it on the floor, so I placed it on top of my bookcase, stacked so high that I didn't think my kittens would be able to get up there. But you should never underestimate a kitten and it's desire to get at anything new and precious.

One afternoon, I came home to my fale to find that one of the kittens, probably Fil, who is a great leaper (Mak is a little too lazy), somehow got up there and ripped the the mat down from its heights. Both kittens were sleeping away on it peacefully. This is rare, because usually when I come home, they zip out the door, tails twitching in excitement to see me, or to get fed, I haven't decided which yet.

The mat has since become Fil's favorite place to sleep. Mak ocassionally joins her, but he usually prefers to sleep on top of me, my clothes, or in my box full of packing corn.

* * *

Because my wife likes them, cats are also part of my life, and, for many years, as a thoroughly pragmatic and practical man who prefers lint to cat hair and dust to cat litter, I've been seeking a rationale that will allow me to live happily with three cats (not to mention two dogs) while also justifying the expense of cat food, neutering bills, feline toys, claw-trimming bills, carrying cases, and yet more vet bills.

Well, thanks to a fascinating article that I printed out (but forgot to read until recently) way back in the 18 March 2001 edition of the UK's Electronic Telegraph, I think I'll now start house-sitting cats gladly because they may well contribute to longevity and skeletal health.

You see, researchers have discovered that cat purrs are the secrets to their nine lives. And if the purrs are healing our feline friends, then those wonderful little sound engines that turn on so nicely when a cat snuggles into a lap must also be sending good healing vibes into the bodies of those who pet and hold them.

Jen and I went to Matareva Beach on the south side of Upolu. We grabbed a beach fale and were quickly adopted by a perfect little tuxedo kitty we named Laulaufaiva which means "tongue" in Samoan.

Laulau almost always had her tongue hanging out her mouth like a dog. Somebody must have been treating her really well, because she was really clean and incredibly affectionate. Really a nice cat.

Lila's puppies are growing up quickly and moving around all over the place. It's becoming increasingly difficult for me not to want to adopt one of them. I've even named one of them, the little girl in the top left. Her name is Esi, which means "papaya".

I brought her into the house to how the kittens would react to her. Suffice it to say, they weren't thrilled. They sat wide-eyed and stared at this little, harmless quivering puppy like it was the anti-christ. If Esi moved to close to either of the kittens, they would his at her as if she meant to do them harm, or was capable of doing them harm. In truth I'm having to keep the cats away because I'm worried one of them night scratch her with their razor sharp claws.

I suppose it's going to take some time to acclimate the kittens who are wary of all dogs, and thankfully so, since it makes me worry much less about them when they are outside and dogs are howling away. I know the cats won't get close to them.

They must be afraid of Esi because, depsite her pint size, she smells like a dog. To me, she smells incredibly sweet and is so soft. I don't know if I can handle a dog at the moment, but I could take one, it would definately be her.

This might come as a big surprise you to many, but I, well, have this thing for cats. See, I love them. I can't help it. I just do it.

On Wednesday this past week, I went to Coconuts Beach Resort. Ostensibly it was for the swearing in ceremony for the latest group of Peace Corps volunteers. The real reason (don't tell anybody I told you) is that I wanted to photograph this cat.

She's really incredible. She probably weighs close to 30 pounds and looks like something out of the Pliestocene. I don't know what breed she is or what her owners are feeding her (Cat Growth Hormone?). All I know is you could strap it up and it could plow your taro fields or pull your chariot. She just wouldn't be so thrilled about it.

Look at those thumpers!

Jake seems to be doing really well. I've been giving her antibiotics everyday and though she loves to spit it out, with patience, I eventually get her swallow the pill. She has no signs of infection, which is amazing considering she lives outdoors and has no real way to keep her face, which has considerable damage, clean and tidy.

I've also been feeding her. I've been saving the scraps that I normally chuck outside to the dogs and instead bring them down to work to feed Jake. She doesn't seem to mind getting the leftovers. In fact, she's downright thrilled. It's a nice change from dealing with my ingrate little kittens.

All the Samoans, the security guards, the people who run the food stand, and others hanging around behind the elevators at the government building probably think I'm insane. But what's another insane palagi? They think we're all valea anyway.

For the last several mornings, I've been hearing the yelping of puppies that sound like they are being restrained or something. I could only take it for so long. Then I would walk outside to try to find out what the fuck was going on, and it would stop.

This morning I heard it again. I walked down towards the next house where I thought it was coming from, but didn't hear a thing. Then, as I headed back towards my place, I could hear the canine cries coming front right in front of my house.

Inside a large tree stump about 10 feet from my front door were 4 spanking new puppies. The mother is the dog who bit me on my first night at my house (she is scared to death of my camera). I've forgiven her indiscretion and starting feeding her scraps that my kittens won't eat. She now wags her tail with anticipation when I get off the bus or arrive on my bike and protects my house from strangers. Not a bad deal.

So now she's got this litter of puppies. It will interesting to see how long they last. Samoans love puppies. A few have been stolen from Peace Corps volunteers and I doubt these little guys will be around for long. I'd like one, but I don't really need another mouth to feed and the kittens would probably beat the crap out of the toughest of the lot.

Of all the things to find left in the "free" box in the Peace Corps, I discovered a little plastic container of cat nip. I quickly nabbed it and brought it to home to drug the kittens.

I was worried it might have lost it's potency because it says on the label, "store in a cool, dry place" and Samoa is anything but cool and dry. However, as I opened the top, the cats were all over it like a junkie in heroin den.

They were fighting to get there little faces into the tub and Fil reached in with her paw and dumped a load of nip on the floor, then proceeded to roll all over it. It's good kitty fun.

I met the vet from the APS (Animal Protection Society) at the government building to see about poor Jake. The vet, a volunteer from Japan named Kazuo, de-wormed her (I found out he is a she) and gave me antibiotics to make sure her wounds don't get infected. He also removed a large piece of fur/skin that was hanging dangerously from her nose to the top of her head. It was painful for her, but I think it's for the best.

I'd like to take her in, but my house is already a crazy managerie with my two kittens. And I don't know how they'd take to her. I'm going to try to find her a new home, but if I can't, I will consider adopting her, but only if I move to a larger place.

I brought her some food today (stuff my kittens didn't want to eat) and she was grateful she was purring the whole time she stuffed her faced. It was so cute.

"Jake" is the tabby who hangs out behind the government building where I work. I hadn't seen him in while. Then yesterday he was sitting in the shade, as usual, but he looked like he just went 10 rounds with Rocky Marciano (hence the name).

He was missing his left paw and his face was all bloody and smashed up. Who knows what happened. He might have been hit by a car. He might have had a run in with a dog. He might have had a run in with Samoan children.

I called the APS (Animal Protection Society) to come have a look at him and make sure he doesn't get a nasty infection. Poor little guy. Jake is going to tough it out. He's a bad little mutherfuka.

MD's Big Fresh is out of kitty litter (they tell me they are getting a shipment at the end of the month), so I'm having to experiment with dirt in the litter box. There are noteworthy advantages and disadvantages.

The best advantage, of course, is while litter at MD's costs 29 tala a box and I go through a box a month, dirt is free and readily available in Samoa. Litter is also heavy and a pain in the ass to drag up to my house. Dirt is right out front. That's about it for the advantages, actually.

The disadvantages are strong. There's no doubt about it. The dirt fucking stinks. My little shack now smells like a New York City alley. With the litter, you couldn't smell a thing. The cats don't seem to mind, though they go outside more these days in the real dirt anyway. The dirt also doesn't clump so it's harder to clean the box and the cats little white paws get so damn dirty. On top of that, they track it all over the house.

All in all, I'd have to give dirt a big thumbs down.

When your blender explodes, spraying your strawberry milk concoction all over the living room floor, the cats not only will lap it all up, but they will do it with enthusiasm and ask for more.

Look at the little guys go! You have to admire their desire to keep my place neat and tidy.

Wherever I go, cats inevitably follow, which I suppose is nice considering how much I like their company.

My surprise guest this weekend at Jane's Beach Fales was a wizened female tabby who took a liking to me and starting hanging around the balcony and sleeping on the mat inside the room.

This cat was a funny one. She would follow me down to beach (only a few feet away from my doorstep, but still adorable). When I put her outside she would climb back in through one the windows (you couldn't close them). She was insistent that sleep inside the room (I had to admire that). She was so old that when she opened her mouth to meow nothing would come out. It was very cute.

This afternoon I swam with turtles. It was amazing.

There is a small, unfunded, family-run conservation project in the village of Seta'olepai on the north coast of Savai'i. The family buys turtles, mostly green turtles and hawksbills, off fishermen (who would otherwise eat them) and keep them in a large fresh water pool. They have even built a sandy beach in the the enclosure to compel the turtles to them to lay eggs.

The setting is so serene. Nothing but palm trees, traditional wooden fales for resting and few well designed fresh ponds that have the feel of water gardens. The place is few hundred meters off the main road so there's there's no one around, no cars whooshing by and it's blessedly quiet.

There are something like 15 turtles at the moment. They are so incongruously graceful as they float around their pool. I wish I had an underwater camera. The view under the water was surreal. The dust from the bottom hung like a mist from the turtles would emerge like some kind of beneficient prehistoric beast. I was entranced.

I swam with them for about half an hour in the cool waters of the enclosure. Then I sat by the edge of the pool, taking photos as they would glide by or breach to breathe and check me out. This is one of the best things I've seen in Samoa.

About 30 seconds ago, a large, ugly, red centipede came streaming in from the bathoom as I sat on my bed.

The kittens started following it, but I gathered them up, locked them in the bathroom and Mortein'ed the shit out of it.

Mortein is a bug killer. It's a heavy neurotoxin. As soon as you spray it, the bug starts quivering maniacally. It's very satisfying. I guess I'll never make much of Buddhist.

It's amazing how frightening it is to see one of these prehistoric monsters in your living room. It's not that they can kill you--they can give a nasty, incredibly painful bite. They are just fucking awful, slithering forth with all the legs moving and the mandibles waiting to bite anything that gets in its path. Gives me the Heebie-Jeebies.

3 volunteers in my group have been bitten so far. That's 25% in less than 9 months. I aim to keep on the side of the "not yet bitten".

The other day, I was taking a shower, and out my window I could hear faint dsitress meows. I quickly toweled off and found that my male kitten Makelani had gotten up on the roof of the car port.

Now, if it was Filemu, the female, I wouldn't have been worried a bit. She's incredibly dexterous. Mak, on the other hand, is a notorious clutz. It's hard to believe they came out of the same womb.

Mak is up there crying and rubbing himself against the sheet metal roof as if I'm going to come up there and play with him. I knew he could get down, but it required some coaxing. Eventually he used a banana tree as a bridge and made his way down to terra firma.

I know, it's not a very interesting story, but I needed an excuse to post this picture. I love the eyes.

A couple of PCVs returned from stateside this weekend bringing back for me two boxes of Kitten and one box of Meow Mix (I like chicken, I like liver...). My cats are in heaven.

I went down to one of the local markets, MD's Big Fresh, and they are going to try to order Kitten Chow for me and stock it in the store. If they can, I'll be thrilled. There's very few things as rewarding as well-fed, happy kittens.

This morning I woke up at dawn, around 6am. I don’t know why. I should be sleeping in. It’s Saturday. But it was six and I was up. I let the kittens out and sat down at my desk to do some writing.

Around 5 minutes later Fil comes running past the door in a howling blur followed very closely by one of my neighbor’s boorish dogs, Opium. I ran outside as fast as I could. I wasn’t that worried because Fil can take care of herself.

If it was Mak, I’d be worried. Mak is more concerned with taking inventory of my fridge than protecting himself against the local ruffian dogs. Fortunately he’s scared of his shadow so he rarely ventures too far outside.

Fil is a different story. She’s a very adventurous cat. I found her high up in a banana tree, with all the dogs milling around below. I had to coax her down gingerly, because she was freaked out, but all her cute parts were in one piece, and she recovered from the fright before the morning was over.

This morning I had a rare pleasure. Filemu, my 7 month old female kitten sidled up to me and fell asleep on my chest. I think this might be the second

time in the 6 or so months that we’ve been together that she has done this. The only other time was just after she was attacked by three or four dogs and she needed some attention. She’s incredibly independent, unlike my other kitten, her brother Makelani who is severely codependent.

I like to think of him as a special needs kitten. She’s affectionate, and she’s always “kneading” with her sharp claws, but she usually prefers to sleep on something more stable than my body.

While Fil was fast asleep, I grabbed my camera a took a few shots. They mostly came out really dark because I didn’t want to use the flash and I couldn’t get up to let some of the nice morning light in through the windows. This was the best of the lot.

Today was a rough day at the fale in Fagali'i. Both of my kittens went under the knife and were de-sexed this morning. It was a horrible ordeal for them and pretty terrible for me as well.

I got a last minute request to feed Van's cat. I'm serious when I say last minute. By the time I found out about it, she was already in Siumu. She left me her cell phone, the key to her flat and 10 bucks.

I was sort of bummed about having to make the trip up to Vaivase Uta because I was really looking forward to two straight days of doing nothing but tafao in my fale. But in truth, I needed the exercise and I was getting a little stir crazy on Easter Sunday.

I was doing my laundry this morning, listening to some great techno MP3's that were sent to me by my good friend Jon Taylor. One of my cats, Filemu, was at the door and wanted to come in. She was panting heavily which could only mean one thing. She was eating the fucking grass.

This was a first for her. Usually it's Makelani who's the prime offender, but he's, well, not so bright. I had more faith in Filemu.

Within a few minutes of her return to the house, she was spewing her guts all over my floor. Lovely. And guess who gets to clean that shit up? It ain't the maid.

I have a good idea. Here's an approximation of a conversation we might have upon my return to the house after a long day on the job:

"What's up, bitch? Let's see some food on the table."

"Can you wait a sec while I put my bags down and get settled?"

"You don't have a minute, sucker. You get some food out for us right now or we're going to puke on your mat. In fact, we might puke on your mat even if bring you food out right now. We like to keep you guessing that way."

"And you best make sure it's something we like. And none of this, oh, it's been in the fridge for two days, but the cats won't mind, bullshit. We want something fresh. Else, we're going to relieve our bladders on your mattress."

"Um, ok."

That's my cats, folks.

My house in Fagali'i is a regular menagerie of critters these days, most of them, sadly, are uninvited guests. Fortunately, the two critters that do the most bumping in the wee hours, are my little felines, Filemu and Makelani.

Just in case you were wondering, the kittens, or as I like to call them, "The Weapons of Mass Destruction", are doing great. They're good eaters (especially Mak) and are very healthy. No fleas. No ticks. No nothing. They also kill just about anything that moves. Unfortunately, there is always serious collateral damage.

The "Weapons" sleep about 20 hours a day. They spend another 3 hours in sort of a heat-index induced narcoleptic daze. With their remaining time, they either kill intruders, chase each other around the flat or urinate on possessions I hold dear.

Rarely a day goes by that I don't come home to a host of new dead creatures or corners that smell like a homeless shelter in Port-au-Prince. But that's why man invented Pine Sol.

Despite their faults, you just have to love them. I mean, look at them, they are adorable.

Here's a sampling of the other things that go Feto'ai in the night:

THE ANTS
Recently I was chatting with Patrick, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer and the former resident of my flat. We were joking about the varied array of animals that make their way into and around the apartment. Patrick would say something like, "Ah, the slugs. Can't do anything about them. HA HA HA" or, alternately, "Ah, the ants. Can't do anything about them. HA HA HA." He seemed to have a far greater calm about the critters than I am able to muster. Perhaps that's because he doesn't live here anymore.

Like Patrick says, you certainly can't do anything about the ants. You could drive yourself manic and try to kill them whenever they show up, but that's a pointless exercise. They always come back and in far greater numbers. Well, that's not really true, but it sounds dramatic. They come back in the same numbers, but they always, I mean, ALWAYS, come back.

To test this point, I left a piece of dried cheese on the counter. Within a few minutes, it was swarming with ants. I slid the cheese over and sponged the ants to a watery death in the sink. Within a few minutes, they were back. I killed them all again. Within a few minutes, they came back. This goes on until either the ants have carried all the cheese away, bit by tiny bit, or you are driven insane (possibly, both). If ants had a PR firm working for them, their slogan would be, "Kill all you want, we'll make more."

The only real problem I have with the ants is when they get into the fridge. I don't know how they do it, but they get in there somehow. They get into the freezer too, but judging by the frozen ant carcasses buried in the permafrost, I think they quickly come to regret that decision.

Where I come from, the fridge is strictly an ant-free zone. Apparently the ants in Samoa didn't get the memo. There are very few things worse than dreaming of a quesadilla on the bus ride home only to return and discover that the ants have laid claim to your cheese.

Sometimes having the ants can be a bonus, such as when one of the "Weapons" pukes in the middle of the night. By the time I wake up, the ants are already hard at work, making my place nice and clean for me. Awfully considerate of them, isn't it?

THE MOSQUITOES
Anyone who has been following my travels over the last several years can tell you how passionately I feel about killing mosquitoes. It's kind of a hobby of mine. The skeeters in Fagali'i must have gotten some sort of advance notice of my arrival since I rarely see them flittering about. I'm lucky; I don't have to sleep with a mosquito net. I just light the occasional coil after it rains.

Thankfully, there is no malaria here in Samoa. We do have Dengue Fever though. There seems to be an outbreak of Dengue in the islands about once every 5 years. Last year around 20 or so volunteers came down with the disease. Bad luck for them, but it looks like Group 69 is in the clear. (That said, one of our members turned up sick last week and the initial blood test revealed a possibility of Dengue).

Classic dengue, known for its low mortality but very uncomfortable symptoms, has become more serious, both in frequency and mortality, in recent years. The carrier is the Aedes mosquito which, unlike its malarial cousin Anopheles, bites during daylight hours.

Also unlike malaria, there is no prophylactic for Dengue, so you just have to avoid getting bitten. While my house is relatively mosquito free, I can't say the same for my office. Oh, my office. Can't do anything about that. HA HA HA.

THE GECKOS

When I first arrived, there was an a enormous lizard hanging out in my kitchen behind the fridge. I named him Norbert. He would usually come out at night and sneak around. Then the cats noticed Norbert and I didn't see him for weeks.

A few days ago when I saw him in the corner of my room above my bed. His was back was all scrapped up and I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I'm guessing Filemu had a little fun with him. Sadly, Norbert probably went off somewhere cat-free.

THE COCKROACHES
When I first moved in, there were roaches a plenty in the house. Big surprise there. The "Weapons" loved this because roaches are the perfect cat toy. Let me explain.

First of all, cockroaches come darting at high speed along the floor. The kittens are great at picking up any movement and they quickly pounce on the unsuspecting insects. Well, Filemu pounces. Mak kinda follows along.

Fil will grab the roach in her mouth, move over to one of the corners, let it go and begin the chase all over again. Because roaches are fairly durable, this can last several hours until either the insect has no limbs or Fil tires of the chase, at which point, it's chow time. Roaches are like french fries to a cat. A kitten couldn't ask for anything more.

I hardly ever see roaches in the house these days.

THE TERMITES
When I was growing up in LA, we had termites. I thought it was the coolest thing. First they threw a circus tent over our house. Then we got to spend the weekend at our grandparents. Now, I'm having second thoughts.

Here's an interesting fact about termites that you probably didn't know. Worker termites need a high humidity to survive and will carry mud up into the wood where feeding to maintain a 97 percent relative humidity. Incidentally, that's the exact humidity in my apartment at this very moment. This place is like Gstaad for termites.

Termites also have the ability to move their colony up and down in the soil to find the optimal temperature and moisture conditions. Smart little suckers, aren't they?

Termites have descended on Samoa like a biblical plague. Almost every house is made of wood and few houses are spared this scourge. The real issue for me, as a temporary resident in a government flat, is not the long-term damage to the house, about which I can do nothing (all literature on prevention starts with, "reduce humidity". yeah, right). It is the filth that the termites leave behind as they feast on anything wooden in the apartment that is the issue.

As they burrow into my walls and my furniture, the termites leave behind a little something I like to call "termite excrement." Every day I come home to piles of dust and shit, under the table, in the shower, along the walls, beside my bed. You get the point.

To combat this, I bid for and won an auction on eBay for a Dirt Devil. Unfortunately the guy I won it from is a lazy ass and hasn't given me the shipping total although it's been over a month since the auction closed. So, in the meantime, I sweep.

THE SPIDERS
Sure I got spiders. Mostly there are the daddy long legs variety that hang innocently in the corners of the bathroom. I tend to leave those guys alone since they hoover up the insects. It's the big, hairy freaky spiders that I have to watch out for.

Rather than describe them, I going to give you a snippet of the Instant Message conversation I had with my brother the day after the first of these spiders showed up in my place (that would be the 22nd of January at 1:21AM, in case you were curious):

hechtic1: last night
hechtic1: im trying to go to sleep
hechtic1: it's about 130
hechtic1: makelani is sleeping on me
hechtic1: i can hear filemu
hechtic1: making sounds like she's chasing a critter
hechtic1: that she cant get to
hechtic1: i turn on the lights
hechtic1: she's sitting on the armrest of my wooden chair
hechtic1: looking up at the ceiling
hechtic1: i look up
hechtic1: there's a huge fucking spider
hechtic1: like the size of my palm
hechtic1: and there's something under it's belly
brianhecht: arachnophobia
hechtic1: i take a closer look
hechtic1: it's an egg sack
hechtic1: it's bigger than her
hechtic1: i took a few digital shots
hechtic1: then i got out the bug spray
hechtic1: i fired a quick burst
hechtic1: she starts to move
hechtic1: and a few little spiders run out of the egg sack
hechtic1: I'm thinking, holy shit, I'm going to have spiders all over this place
hechtic1: i let loose with the bug spray
hechtic1: she falls to the floor
hechtic1: the egg sack falls the floor
hechtic1: I'm trying to keep the cats away
hechtic1: hundreds of little spiders burst forth from the sack
hechtic1: she limps under the chair
hechtic1: I'm spraying like a madman after i sequester the cats in the bathroom
hechtic1: i search for the spider
hechtic1: can't see it
hechtic1: then I see her crawling towards the kitchen
hechtic1: i grab the dust broom
hechtic1: and scoop her ass and the egg sack out the door
hechtic1: frightening
brianhecht: do you have any good books?
brianhecht: are you reading something?
brianhecht: and how's the social life?
brianhecht: do the volunteers go out a lot?
brianhecht: are there places to go out?
hechtic1: sorry, there's a paper jam
hechtic1: brb
brianhecht: no worries

Clearly, my brother lost interest in the end, but it freaked me out and it continues to freak me out whenever I see one of these of these hairy monsters roaming the walls. Fortunately, they make good eating for the "Weapons" who find them simply delicious.

THE BEES
Normally a couple of bees a night find their way into the house from the massive hive behind my carport. They bounce around the fluorescent lights for a while and when they crash down to earth, the cats bat them around some for kicks. No big deal.

THE CENTIPEDES
Centipedes have to be amongst the most foul creatures that crawl on the face of the earth. How foul, you say? Did anyone out there see the first Lord of the Rings movie? (if you didn't, do yourself a favor and go rent it). Without giving anything away, when Frodo et al. first encounter a Ring Wraith on the road to Bree, the hobbits take cover under the root of a large tree. When the wraith dismounts, what creature should come slithering out? None other than a nasty, brown centipede. That's how foul.

Centipedes are not insects, but are more closely related to lobsters, crayfish and shrimp. Centipede Scapmi? I don't think so. With their segmented bodies and vice-grip jaws, they look like the sort of vile monster that only someone like H.P. Lovecraft could invent.

They are most often found in moist habitats or areas of high humidity, such as, for example, my apartment. Depending on the species, centipedes can vary in length from one to 12 or more inches when mature. The little ones are more dangerous, but the big ones are, well, foul.

Fortunately the "Weapons" usually alert me to their presence before the centipedes do something crazy, like bite me. Centipedes normally feed on insects, chomping on them with their powerful jaws and then killing with an injection of venom. Unfortunately, unsuspecting humans get in the way, as two members of our training group found out in Matâutu.

Generally the bite is no worse than a bee sting and can be treated with an antihistamine, like Benadryl. People who are allergic to insect venoms and other toxins may suffer severe reactions to the venom of a centipede. However, it's not the bite that has me worried--it's having one of these foul creatures on me.

THE MILLIPEDES
I don't know what purpose millipedes serve on this planet. They don't seem to do anyone any bit of good. You touch them, they curl up into a little ball and you flick them under the door. End of story.

THE RATS
Nary a night goes by that I don't hear the rats scurrying around in the crawl space above my ceiling. I haven't seen too many signs of them in my place, because the "Weapons" hone in on them like heat seekers.

Two of my neighbors actually borrowed Filemu to chase down an offending mouse in their adjacent flats. She caught up with the mouse, but toyed with it too much and it escaped.

She had better luck yesterday afternoon. She caught a little rat and snapped it's neck. Apparently she didn't know it was dead because she played with it for the better part of an hour.

Patrick tells me that the rats occasionally die in the walls and the crawl space. I'll know it by the smell. Ah, the smell. Can't do anything about that. HA HA HA.

Interestingly, during this time, there won't be any ants in the apartment. All their forces are mustered to dismantle the deceased rat. Within a day or two, the smell is gone and the ants are back.

So it goes in Fagali'i.

Sure I got spiders. Mostly there are the daddy long legs variety that hang innocently in the corners of the bathroom. I tend to leave those guys alone since they hoover up the insects. It's the big, hairy freaky spiders that I have to watch out for.

Rather than describe them, I going to give you a snippet of the Instant Message conversation I had with my brother the day after the first of these spiders showed in my place (that would be the 22nd of January at 1:21AM, in case you were curious):

Fanau (pronounced fah-now) is one of those interesting words that is uniquely Samoan. It means children, but it only refers to the children of someone in particular. The word for children in general is tamaiti (tah-mite-tee). If you're just talking about those kids over there, you use tamaiti. If you're talking about someone's kids or to someone about their children, you use fanau. It's interesting to note for what it's worth that for men when talking about their own children, fanau is an O noun, while for women it's an A noun .

I'm lucky enough to have acquired two beautiful kittens in the village. I guess you could they say they were part of my mealofa gift.

I didn't really want kittens. I wanted a dog to keep my house secure. However this one cute tabby, about 4 weeks old, showed up at our fale one day and to keep my nephew Timo from torturing it to death, I asked if I could adopt him. I named him Makelani, the Samoan name for Magellan.

Then one morning a few days later, another kitten shows up. This one is beautiful. She's a tabby, but with golden calico markings. She's incredibly sweet, hardly makes a sound and I name her Filemu Suamalie, which means Sweet Silence.

A third kitten was brought to our fale by another trainee, Mele, who thought it was Makelani. They looked so much alike, even I thought it was Makelani until I saw him bounding across the floor. I didn't want to name this cat because I didn't want more than two and I didn't want to get attached. Plus it was crying all the time with a screeching meow that could drive even the most patient person crazy.

During breakfast one morning I was having a conversation with my sister Vani and she told me that Makelani was dead. But she said it so casually, that I thought at first I misunderstood her. So I asked her, you mean the cat is dead? Yes, she said. He was pecked to death by chickens early this morning. That was December 9th.

Makelani was never quite right. I think he must have suffered some brain damage at the hands of Timo, who was always thrusting him at dogs and throwing him around the fale. He never bathed himself. He always slept awkwardly. There was something distinctly uncatlike about him, as if all the cat-ness had been shook out him by my malevolent nephew.

Still, it was sad news and I was morose for most of the day. Makelani was buried in the backyard. I adopted the third kitten and named him Makelani II.

Filemu and Makelani could easily be brother and sister, but I can't be sure. They have similar tabby markings with matching white paws and a white chin. They take care of each other like siblings. They bathe each other and when they get the kitty crazies, they run around the house and duke it out. They're adorable. Especially when they're sleeping, often in tandem.

KEEPING KITTENS IN SAMOA

It's been something of a chore to get my fanau out of the village and into my place. For the last few weeks in the village, I was constantly paranoid that they would get snatched, be killed or simply disappear. Just getting them into the departing van was a major relief, especially since I had to say goodbye to everyone in the village while holding onto a box ready to explode with anxious kittens.

Back in Apia, we had to stay in the hotel for a few more days before we moved to our sites. My roommate Kolisi, who had a puppy and a kitten of his own, and I drew the smallest room. There was no litter box and despite our best efforts, our place smelled like a barnyard.

When I finally moved to my place in Fagali'i I had to contend with the dogs and the ants. The dogs were a huge problem. My cats were terrified inside the house, and I couldn't let them out unsupervised for fear they would end up as dog food. I almost ended up as dog food.

The ants here are another thing entirely. I've never been in a country where the ants are faster at getting to food. You can put down an orange peel anywhere in the country and it will be crawling with ants within seconds.

In my house, the floor is tiled with this black and white warping faux linoleum, but the floor wasn't laid well and there's no grout between the tiles. The resulting little black groove is like a transcontinental superhighway for ants. You can't see them. Then all of sudden they appear in swarms like magic.

The first time I put food out for the cats, I put it on the floor and the ants were all over it in seconds. Then I wised up and made a cat bowl moat using two pieces of tupperware, but one cat or the other would eventually push the two pieces together and that was all the ants needed to get across. I switched to a frisbee as the moat dish, which was better because of the lower sidewall, but still the cats would push the dish to the edge.

Finally I ant-proofed a table that was given to me by putting cans of water under each leg. This seems to be the best solution. But even so, some ants still make it up onto the table. I don't know how. Maybe they swim for it. But at least it's manageable.

THE SHITHEADS

Because the kittens can't really go outside, they have to use the a litter box. You can't buy a litter box in Samoa, so I'm using a plastic oval serving dish that I picked up at one of the shops in town for a buck. Unfortunately the cats don't like to use it as often as recommended by their human, especially when I go away for the night.

They also have this habit of urinating on my bed and my bags. I'm told this is a sign of affection and they are just marking my stuff. I think I'd prefer if they hated me or they had a more socially acceptable way of showing affection. It wouldn't be as a big a problem if I had access to a laundromat, but since I have to wash everything by hand, I don't really appreciate the gesture. Unfortunately there's no good way to communicate that, other than to refer to my cats as "Shitheads". They don't understand, but it makes me feel better at any rate.

Then there's Makelani, who is a charmer, but only when's he sleeping. Awake, he is a complete terror. He's always screeching about something. Of course it's nonspecific. He's cries to go outside. So I put him outside. Then he cries to come in immediately, so I bring him in. His tastes change daily. One day he wants to eat fish. The next day not. One day, he's good with dry food. The next day it's a problem. He pushes Filemu out of the way at meal time. He pushes her out of the way to get closer to me. He sleeps on her. I like to think of him as a special needs cat. Hopefully Filemu's calming influence will rub off on him and if that doesn't work, perhaps he'll mellow when he's snipped in about 3 month's time. If that doesn't happen I'm going to change his name to Masani Tagi, Always Crying.

Despite all these problems I can't help but love my fanau. They are very affectiate. Filemu is fond of bathing me. They purr like machines (it's telling that there's no word in Samoan for "purr"). They kill roaches with enthusiasm, which is more than I can say for myself. I can watch them play for hours on end. I don't know if I could make it here without them. Today they got their first shots and they were both so good. Well, that's a lie. Filemu was a champ, but Makelani screamed like a banshee the whole time. I have learned to expect nothing less.

Both cats have developed a fondness for walking across my laptop when I'm working and when I send this email, this will be the first published work of Makelani:

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