the Indignity of cat accessories

Being broke in a city blows.

Let me start again. Being broke sucks. When you're spending a fortune to live in a place full of things to do, it becomes that much more Vivid because you can't do Any of It. This weekend, Kat and I were reduced to people watching and park wandering for thrills. When it became too hot and bothersome to stand outdoors any longer, we retreated to the apartment and undertook our other cheap thrill - cat harnessing.

Kat has a dream. It is a dream of one day taking our cats with us on camping and road trips instead of leaving them stuck at home. We agreed that the best, first step was to get them to use a leash. That way, we wouldn't have to keep them trapped in a cat carrier or tent all the time. Plus, there was no better time to introduce our cats to harnesses than when they're still kittens. I was not, however, prepared for the ordeal that lay upon the horizon.

My pet experience has been generally limited to dogs. With a dog, you put on a collar (or harness), they scratch at it, bite at it, rub it against the floor and furniture, then accept it. Sam and Pippin, however, look upon the harness as The Humiliation Too Great to Endure. The first time we wrapped these light, loose-fitting straps around their necks and bodies, it caused a complete rewiring of all cat motor control - kittens were flying everywhere. They were moonwalking across the floor, jumping 2 feet vertically in the air, and sprinting sideways down the hall until crashing into walls and my bike. No cats were physically injured, although Kat suffered some lingering abdominal pain from the laughter.

The second time we strapped them in, we got the Slithering and Abject Humiliation Show. Pippin crawled on his belly across the living room carpet and eventually found a corner where he could die peacefully. Sam's harness had the unique effect of rendering his rear legs completely useless. He was willing to play with his favorite balls of paper, but only if he could reach them by dragging himself across the floor with his front claws. I was ready to throw in the towel, but Kat had remembered a kitten book we'd purchased last December - Amy Shojai's Complete Kitten Care. The book is a bit cutsey and I find the author's association with Purina to be unsavory, but she did help a dog-centric being (me) understand the psychology of cats a little better. In the book, Amy assured us that we could readily-train our cats to wear harnesses, but it would require three, 5-minute sessions, for three straight days, with loads of play, petting and followed by treats (bribery) to seal the deal.

Well, we've done two days of harness therapy, and I am happy to report that the cats Love the salmon-flavored, organic treats... but not the harnesses. Sam likes to play, but only within a one foot radius and only if he can perform such actions from a stretched-out, prone position. Pippin lies on his side like a fallen martyr, waiting for his 5 minutes to expire.

I have no future as a cult brainwasher.

...but the dream lives on, much to their dismay.

while Waiting for Macy's

Fucking cats...

On Wednesday, our Holy Mattress and Box Spring of Lower-Back Redemption was scheduled to arrive. I had stood our old, tenderized mattress up against the dresser and cleared out the shoes, electronics, packing Styrofoam, assorted, storage bins and life-sized, dust bunnies. Pippin and Sam (our 9-month-old kittens) scrambled from one end of the cave to the other. Their hideout had been un-hid and they were now Exposed to any cat-crisis that might surface. Kat headed off to work while I settled in to a long day. I launched into the blogosphere and began blogging like I never blogged before. Actually, I performed the extended Prologue to blogging - a ritual of virtual-procrastination via re-organizing MP3 files, naming digital photographs that I took 8 months ago and checking out porn websites (But that's just between you and me. Shhhhhhhh!) .

An hour into the Blog-Zone, I noticed that Pippin had been running and pet-flopping solo for the last 5 minutes which, in Blog-Zone time, meant at least a half hour. Where was Sam? I served up breakfast for the cats, taking care to make nice, loud noises with the food dishes. Still... no Sam. I have learned that it's important to play it cool when dealing with cats. If you acted like you needed them, whe-he-hell... that sounds like a good reason to hide. So... I sauntered. Into the living room. Not there. Kitchen? Not there. Bathroom? Hallway? Bedroom?

"Sam?" No! Composure, Deckard! Composure!

I checked beneath the dresser. Under the desk. Behind the doors. In the closets. In the shower. Behind the toilet. Behind the refrigerator-

Suddenly, I struck on an idea - toys! Wondrous, loud, freakout-inducing toys! Now, the toys will no longer service the Boredom of others! They shall service me! (this extended Cat Expedition had deprived me of coffee Sustenance well beyond acceptable limits) I scrambled to every corner of the cave, retrieving every toilet-paper roll, wadded piece of paper, dowel rod, ribbon fragment and jangly, fuzz-ball I could find. I kicked them from one end of the apartment into the other. I was the frigging Dick Van Dyke/One-Man-Band of dowel rods, jingly balls (watch the comments, bub) and paper wads. Pippin had planted himself in the bathroom doorway, watch the parade go by and sit this Adventure out. I reached the bedroom with still no sign of Sam.

"Sam," I barked. "Sam!" Fuck it. He'll come. Oh yes, he will come.

I kicked the jingly balls and paper balls against the wall for a couple of minutes then finally ground to a halt. Hot and cold flashes of adrenaline flooded my caffeine-deficient system. What if Sam got out the front door? What if he was wandering through the Wilderness of New York or, worse, had been abducted and forced to sell bootleg DVDs on Canal Street? I pivoted towards the bedroom door, ready race to the front door and Save my Endangered cat!

Then, something caught my eye... high above me and to my left. Comfortably nestled at the top of the old mattresses. I had an Audience... a hideously-Cute and Innocent audience.



Bastard.

Five hours after their scheduled "Window for Delivery", my new mattress arrived...

the collective experience of snow

Though it was touch-and-go for a while, I have miraculously survived the cataclysmic event known as BLIZZARD 2005. For hour upon hour, New Yorkers (as well as virtually everyone in the northeast) had the ability to watch the snow come down on no less than 6 network stations. It just feels so much more real when you can watch the white stuff coming down on network (and cable) television in addition to the event happening only feet away. Every channel had roving 'reporters' who pointed out the fact that it wasn't JUST snowing outside our window, but all over the New York/New Jersey area. I watched one reporter as he took a plastic ruler, walked over to a snow-plowed drift and announced that the snow was so deep he could lose his ruler trying to measure it... Then he stuck it in the snowbank and lost it.

A news report on the weather is the easiest slam-dunk-of-a-news-report on TV. Older people love to obsess over the weather both because the risk of falling is greatly heightened and... well, they just love it. My grandmother saved all of her calendars because she liked to record the high and low temperatures every day. For outdoors men, the weather is a big deal. My dad hunts and is constantly buzzing around his rural property so knowing the next day's weather can be a good idea. In addition, my parents live in the the middle of nowhere so a moderate snow storm can mean 24 (perhaps even 36) hours of inconvenience. People who might live on a remote mountaintop in Colorado can get stuck for weeks. Hey, I've seen The Shining - I know that extended snow storms can result in a dangerous bout of cabin fever. This, however, is NYC. Doing an investigate report in Chelsea to report on how 'disrupted' people feel is a management choice that, from a reporter's standpoint, should be reserved for public-access television (along with extended diatribes regarding Star Wars memorabilia and/or corporate police-states).

As the hours of live, satellite coverage began to pile upon one another, it became evident to me that something far different than the average news report was being conducted. I wanted to call it narcissism, but that felt simplistic. It isn't solely about being seen on the tube. If a neighborhood robbery, murder, or fire makes it to the local news, the entire neighborhood can feel validated. Events gain a reality. There's something about being near an event that gains attention outside the community. A person might show up for work the next day and when somebody mentions that they saw it on the news, an immediate street credibility goes to anybody who can claim relations. He can can say that he was there (or at least in the vicinity of 'there'), present during or around the time of the event. When a local event reaches the national news, you hit the Big Time on the Validity List. Friends and enemies from across the country learn of the event and relate it to you because you were THERE... or at least in the vicinity of 'there'.

What an inane report like the Chelsea incovenience report does is give a significance to life. That restaurant you went to 3 months ago is sitting in the background of the shot. That weird guy who works at the newspaper stand gets 2 sentences of fame as he talks about how pretty the snow looks. Your life experiences connect up with some larger, macro-experience that every schlump watching the local news might relate to and, thus, confirm.

I'm as guilty as any other American. When a student shooting happened in my college, science building, I raced home like every other soul and glued myself to the local and national news to see my moment in time get validated all across the country. I would sit in those dorm hall groups, talking about the incident and try to manufacture some story that might put myself somehow closer to the danger of the event. 'I just saw that student in the hall the week before.' 'I was supposed to have a discussion class on the second floor that night but our T.A. cancelled it at the last minute.' Never mind that I had never met the student in my life or that my discussion class was on Thursday and not Tuesday, when the incident occurred. The important thing was that I was CLOSE to it.

Why do we do it? Why do we watch ourselves? Is it because we just can't get enough of the things we've seen before or which never directly affect us? I keep thinking of a quote from Joseph Campbell on his PBS series The Power of Myth.

People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive... so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

With all the media I take in every day, I feel as if I am swimming through an manufactured reality. I have this constructed atmosphere of music I carry around with me. My computer games render abstracted realities of sports and first-person shooters. Film and television allow me to watch other people engage life in clearly-defined, tangible trails of narration. How can a person expect to process events of his/her life in any sort of present fashion? With jobs, debts, expectations, career tracks, and relationship commitments, how many rapturous moments of life do I experience? On the other hand, hundreds of times a year I vicariously experience it through rock n' roll, movies, games, and televised sporting events.

For those of us not listening to ourselves our fulfilling our needs, how unnatural is it to need our experiences to be confirmed and re-lived on T.V. - perhaps the primary place of our simulated raptures?

Pippin enjoys his First Snow