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Basil 5:48 - This is a sad story about the deaths of two cats and the effect on their owners.
Basil died at 5:48 AM. I know because my fingertips were dug into his ribs at the moment his heartbeat died out. My hand had been on his chest for his last moments as I felt his breath falter and stop, then his heart fade in diminuendo until it fell silent. He gave a few kicks in protest then fell limp in my hands. Terry had watched in horror, as much at my intrusion into Basil's last moments as his understanding that our cat was dead.
I looked at the clock. I don't know why. I suppose I was mentally putting a capstone on his travel through my life. It was 5:48. Somehow that seemed important, … portentous, even, in some unknown way.
I lay him back in the chair and wept in Terry's arms for a long while before I extricated myself to go to the garage and get the shoe box I had set aside when it was clear my dear feline was not going to be with us much longer. I put the box on the round table in the back of the garden and went to fetch Basil's tiny frame. I cried more when I curled him into his final pose, and closed the cover. I opened it again and looked at my beloved pet whose death we could not forestall. He seemed so lonesome there. In some sense I did not fully understand, I wanted to go with him. But that was absurd, I wanted him to live through me whatever fabulous adventures remained to me. Just putting him in that box was so final, I needed a connection to link my spirit with his. Something to put in the coffin to connect us, some token of my affection for his pure little Zen spirit. I looked around for some natural object, a stone or a stick to put there beside him, but I soon realized that these objects from Nature had no connection to me, and could not link us.
I went back into the house in search of a votive with a more personal connection to me. In the kitchen I found it, a wishbone from my last meal. The night before, when Basil was failing sharply, but still living, I had taken long minutes to clean the bone with my teeth and tongue until it was a pristine thing, something to cleanly make a wish upon. I brought it back and laid it next to him. Yes, this will connect us now, I can let him go. Somehow this made losing him comprehensible.
I went on my routines very sad that day, but with few tears. I can't explain the connection I always had to Basil. He looked at me with a penetrating feline serenity. The look always reminded me that we were just two animals safe with each other, neither more important than the other, two spirits linked by trust.
The next day at the gym I tossed my bag on the bench in front of the locker I always took for my belongings. As if for the first time, I noticed the locker number and was transfixed. 1548. I had, of course, often seen that number tag on the locker I shared three days a week for many months past. It hadn't seemed significant in any way before now. Suddenly, it was laden with meaning. I knew when I glanced at the clock the day before as Basil sailed off into the abyss that 5:48 would always have a strong reference to me, but also it somehow had a more prosaic connection, I just could not remember where else 548 connected into my life. The wishbone had linked me to him, now I understood Locker 1548 linked him back to me. It was a mutual communication that told me he was all right.
I thought of the day we buried my mother in 1982. The funeral had been somehow just a formality, a convocation of mourners without much connection to my dead mother. Later as I sat in her lawn chair at the house, surrounded by my family suddenly grown quiet, I looked into the empty Arizona sky, so deep and blue that one could get lost in it forever. I became aware of a single tiny cloud racing across the great dome of the sky. "The desert air will soon take this evanescence puff of moisture," I thought. "How long can it last before it vanishes?" I wondered. I watched it sail intact across the firmament until the horizon ate it up, leaving the sky completely featureless, a cloudless void. Somehow I knew it was a message from mother, "I am on my way. Do not trouble about me any further, I am all right. Goodbye, my beloved."
After he died, at first she didn't seem to miss him. At least she didn't appear to be looking in vain for him. But she definitely sought us out more often, and came to sleep atop Terry's hip, or cradled in his arms. She wasn't moping that I could tell, and still ran around the house on her various missions. I never heard her leave the sleeping porch before I was up and out of bed, but by the time I sleepily made it to the kitchen, there she was looking up at me expectantly to do the right thing.
Basil's decline took months to fully manifest itself. Slowly his habits and the way he carried his body began to change. Before, he would jump up onto my armchair, and perch himself at my left like a sphinx. Then, he would stretch out his paw into my lap, preparing the way to curl up into a comma position on top of my legs. Mostly, this was lovely, and I welcomed him there but sometimes I became annoyed when I could not get at my notebooks or iPad. Terry was mostly too kinetic for a nap, and because I was less likely to jump up on some sudden impulse, Basil seemed to prefer my lap. Or maybe he had a closer affinity with my stillness. I could sit for hours lost in my researches. He was my little Zen cat, looking at me wisely, telling me his story while I worked out the life trajectory of one of my postcard authors.
Then he began to find more awkward places to perch himself. We would find him sitting on all fours on top of the vacuum cleaner for hours at a time. We would look for him and not find him anywhere, then he would just show up. When his long absences made Terry think he had slipped outside, a shake of the dry cat food container would bring him out in a hurry. But he began to lose weight. We took him to the Dr. Rossi and she found a profound bone-marrow suppression, but no cause. She prescribed Prednizone, but he hated it when we brought the towel out and enclosed him papoose-like. Mostly he spit out the medicine, but we kept at it.
He became a shadow of his former self, close to emaciation. He begged to be let out, but we kept him because the veterinarian said he might be at risk of feline leukemia or feline immunodeficiency virus. Tests were always negative, but why was he failing? One day he slipped through our legs and ran across the street, and we could not entice him back. Terry fretted all night and into the next day, finally bringing him back home after nearly a whole day. Terry was incredulous, "He was just sitting on top of the fence, and just sat there as I picked him up. He didn't try to get away."
But it was hopeless, and we could not keep the Angel of Death from taking him away at last. Now, barely weeks later, Zinnia was beginning to exhibit the same symptoms. We first took her to the vet on Friday, June 9th and only later realized that it was a month to the day after Basil died. After a few days, nothing seemed to change so we took her back on Tuesday, June 13th when the doctor tested her for Feline Immunodeficiency Virus and found she was positive. Now Basil's illness finally made sense. Although he was tested twice for FIV he was negative, but now it seemed cleat that these were probably false negative results. He was almost certainly infected with FIV as well, and both probably from birth. Their fate was sealed from the moment they were born, and when Terry picked them up at Barrio Antigua, they were already destined for shortened lives.
I had always thought Zinnia would die before Basil. She was tiny, by comparison, barely bigger than a kitten. She was more of a long-haired tabby, whereas Basil was short haired. She was more dynamic than her brother, bouncing about, always focused on her mission, whatever that might be. "Got to get to the porch, hurry!" Or, "Litter box, now!" She was prone to skin abrasions and seemed to have an allergy to flea bites, and scratched vigorously even when the systemic flea-poison was newly administered.
She had a purr like a hummingbird, so soft it was hard to hear, but high-pitched and somehow rather insistent. She had an engaging way of standing on her hind legs, balancing herself with one front paw while reaching up with a the other toward your face, as if to caress your cheek. Then she would rub her head against your skull in a sort of Eskimo-like rubbing kiss with her snout.
As Basil lay dying in Terry's chair on the porch, she seemed unconcerned at first. I really didn't think she understood what was going on, but maybe she comprehended more than I thought. Near the end of Basil's life when he struggled to breathe, she seemed to stare at him from a few paces away, a curious expression crossing between her whiskers.
Now when Zinnia would sit beside the heart-shaped water bowl for extended periods, we knew what that meant. I tried to joke around and tell Terry, she was visiting "The Lake." She began to shed profusely, leaving bare patches on her legs and flank. She stopped grooming and clumps of hair clung to her sides. She left them there, but I pulled at them and tossed them in the trash. You could not touch her without having to wash the hair off later. Her face changed color dramatically, becoming dark as the lighter hair vanished from her cheeks. The look in her eyes was often vacant, but when we approached, the light came back into her eyes, and we knew she was still with us.
"Stoic," Chris said, "Cats will put up a brave face, and seem to be trying to look healthier than they are." Chris was our cat-whisperer, a plain-spoken woman who loved cats and to whom we had often turned to for cat advice. She didn't tell us outright what we already knew: Zinnia was dying. Our feline companion was stoic indeed, and kept up her daily routines like a good soldier, but she spent most of her time under the bed, where Terry placed a towel in case she peed. Basil had hidden out only a few feet away on the pile of clothes in the armoire, but his nest of clothes had long ago turned cold.
She said it was time. We knew from Basil that it was cruel to wait it out. We needed to act while she still had her dignity. We called the vet and asked her to come out to euthanize our Zinnia. She couldn't come until the next day. So we waited. Terry spent her last night mostly on the floor beside the bed, his arm stretched out to comfort her. I stepped in from time to time to check on the both of them, but Terry had it covered, and seemed to need this parting gesture.
Just six weeks and a day had elapsed since Basil died, and the vet and her assistant were at the door. I wanted to shoo them away, but knew that this hard thing must be done. I had stood by while Basil failed on his own, and I was resolved to give Zinnia a better death. Eu-thanasia. A true death, a good death. As a moral actor, this was far harder than being a dulled out bystander. It is one thing to stand by while Nature takes its inevitable course. It is entirely a different moral character to be the agent of death.
When I was about twelve we went camping on Lake Sheridan in The Black Hills of South Dakota. Ethel, my sister sixteen years older, came up from Texas bringing Luke, her husband, and the kids, Kay, Debbie Sue, Marty., and she was pregnant with Peggy. We spent a couple of weeks in midsummer nearly every year. The Texans needed relief from the scorching summer season in Midland, TX. Kay and I had found a magpie nestling fallen from the nest and abandoned by her mother. We adopted it and fed it the entrails from our fish catch. Kay and I were the official fish cleaners. It was an opportunity for me to do scientific explorations and report on what the fish were eating so Daddy and Luke could adjust the bait. The magpie got fat on our more than ample diet, and Kay and I thought we were giving life to a baby creature that would otherwise have starved to death. The magpie followed everybody around cheeping loudly for food. But one day somebody stepped on the bird and broke its neck. Daddy insisted that it "Would have to be put out of its misery." I cried out, "No," but Pappa took his fishing knife and cut the tiny thrashing bird's head off. I was devastated. I sulked for days, and would not speak to my father for the rest of the time on the lake. I was mean to Marty, who I blamed for stepping on our magpie, and even now he probably doesn't know why he doesn't like me. I eventually forgave my father, and accepted his wisdom if not his method of euthanasia.
Zinnia had hardly moved from Terry's knee for many hours, and she took up her position there on the floor of the bedroom for her final moments. The doctor had some trouble finding a vein for the sedative that prepare Zinnia for the coup-de-grace. A few minutes later she went slack, and the final shot administered. First she was quiet, and then she was still. The Doctor checked for a heartbeat and pronounced, "She is gone." I could not hold back the tears and fled to the porch. I found the clock under the chair, and saw that it was 12:51. How long was it since Zinnia died? Maybe three minutes, I thought. That means Zinnia died at 12:48. It hit me like a thunderbolt! Again the minute was marked at 48. Basil 5:48. Zinnia 12:48.
I returned to the bedroom, brought out the Paul Smith shoebox Terry had set aside, and the doctor's attendant gently helped me cradle Zinnia's lifeless body into the bed of soft white packing paper. I wondered if she noticed the wish bone I had put there that morning.
After the doctor left, Terry picked a bouquet of flowers while I removed the litter box to the garage, and brought the feeding and watering dishes there as well so he would not have to be the one who did this. Together we took the box to the hole beside the graves of Basil and Rufus, placed it in the bottom and shoveled the dirt down into the hole. Terry brought his vase of Zinnias and placed it on the grave.
Surrounded by the splendid garden that Terry had brought into existence, I said to him, "Here we are, two gay guys weeping over our dead pets. Somehow this seems very fitting. They are now forever in this garden they loved to watch over from the porch. I am so, so sad to see them gone, but so glad we had them in our lives. They were brought here, two foundling cats, born with FIV, so that two gay guys, living with HIV, would adopt them and and give them a good life nobody else would have done."
The Hotel Alex Johnson
The Alex Johnson Hotel logo
23 January 2013 was the 30th anniversary of my father's death. I still miss the guiding influence has had over my entire life; he was for me a barometer of what a man should be. He continues to have influence as a benevolent and loving voice I often hear when I am in doubt. "What would Father say?" is a question I still ponder. His voice was never stronger than I heard it on 16 July 2002.
That summer my sister Mary organized our periodic family reunion to be held at Sylvan Lake in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It was to be something of a sentimental journey for me. I had lived in South Dakota from 1956-1963 while father worked at the Edgemont Uranium plant where he was the general manager. We often went to Sylvan Lake for summer vacations, and my sisters Ethel and Diane sometimes joined us there for weeks at a time. So Sylvan Lake was a per
The first leg of the journey involved a plane trip from Houston, Texas to Rapid City, South Dakota. I arrived at the airport quite fatigued. I had booked a departure from Houston at 7:40 AM, and spent the previous night trying in vain to sleep on a very hard bench at baggage claim. My plan was to spend the night inside the terminal, but I had failed to understand that only ticked passengers with a boarding pass could enter the security cordon protecting the comforts of the terminal proper. Ticket agents could not issue boarding passes until they opened at 5AM, so I was forced to find a spot to wait outside the security zone. I had not flown since before 9-11 when everything changed at airports in America.
The flight was uneventful, and far briefer than the time I had spent listening to passengers collect their luggage from red-eye flights in Houston. I had slept most all the way on the jet, aided by a dose of Zanax I had taken as we left the ground in Texas. The entire Rapid City airport could have been set down in one corner of baggage claim in Houston. Exhausted, I had a hard time collecting my thoughts as I disembarked. Energetic tourists in leisure clothes bustled about their hurried schedule, and crisp terminal workers had a casual look even when wearing the standard corporate uniform. Everyone was talking about the heat. There had been a heat wave, and the mid-afternoon temperature was hovering about 102 degrees. They spoke in an accent with a tempo and twang that I had forgotten. It sounded comforting and familiar, like suddenly meeting up with a childhood friend for the first time in many years. I ventured outside to catch a glimpse of the Black Hills, and the heat was palpable, so dry that it was not at all unpleasant. The smell of dried grass suffused the air and I took in deep breaths as I examined the low rise of dark hills to the west. This was not the stark, soaring of splendor of Colorado where we had gone for Mary's last reunion. It was gentler, more human and oh, so familiar to me.
Back inside, I loitered around the baggage claim area waiting for the bags to clear. Rather than wait at the revolving conveyor belt like all the other passengers, I wandered over to the advertising kiosks placed along the wall. The spired Alex Johnson Hotel advertised as the premier hotel in the town of Rapid City, looking very western with its cowboy-culture decor. The picture poked at me like a memory trying to gain re-entry into my mind. Was this the place I remembered from my early adolescence? An elderly lady jostled me in her aggressive haste to get at her bags, and my reverie was broken. I was in no hurry and did not want to jostle with those anxious to be gone, so I hung back. Though I would have been content to be the last to leave the baggage area, my bag was among the first to show. I reached over and removed it from in front of the impatient lady.
At the rental car booth I stated my reservation number and filled out the final forms. Directed to the parking lot, I found the car and settled into the seat. The impatient lady emerged from the building with a girl and young man and who carried her bags. They filled the trunk with her luggage while they expended a great deal of excited chatter. I felt tired from the sedative, and glad that I did not have to force myself to be conversational. I idled the car and made sure I knew where all the pedals and knobs were situated. I owned no car and seldom drove, so I had to acclimate myself to the alien terrain of the automobile. At length I was in motion and on the freeway into town. A bicycle would have been dangerous on this road with no shoulder. I wondered if anyone here in South Dakota preferred two wheeled transportation, and if that was even possible. The drive to the Motel Six where I had a reservation was mercifully brief, and once there I lay down on the bed to relax.
When I awoke two hours later, it was too early for dinner, and I was too restless to hang around the motel room. I remembered the historic Hotel Alex Johnson and resolved to go out in search of it to see why it seemed so familiar. I didn't look at the map, I just started driving, but somehow seemed to know what streets to take. As I approached the downtown district, I could easily see spires and distinctive, almost alpine roofline of the hotel - the tallest building in town. Though a regional urban center, there was little traffic of the kind I was used to in Houston, and I was easily able to park within a block of the compelling edifice. I pulled into a convenient parking space and got out to go over and get a closer look. I felt drawn there, somehow certain of my steps and intent upon my destination.
Rounding the corner, the first floor facade brought a flood of memories from so many years ago. Suddenly, I remembered being with Father who was in town on some business he had just concluded. Mother and my sisters were out shopping, so it was just me and father, four or five in the afternoon, and he says, "I want to take you out to a dinner at a special place." At the intrusion of this memory, I suddenly realized this was the same building where we had eaten so long ago. Would there still be a restaurant? "Unlikely," I thought, but I determined to perambulate the block to savor the experience before seeking out a Waffle House or some similar inexpensive eatery.
At the corner, though, I was stopped by an impressive entrance door. It was a carefully hewn of fine wood and obvious quality. This was a more expensive restaurant than I usually patronized. Stickers proclaimed affiliation with Diners Club, MasterCard, and American Express, so I would be able to charge the expense to my vacation. Certainly, there was still a restaurant here, but surely it could not be the same! That was forty years ago! I hesitated at the threshold. It was early for dinner, and a hotel restaurant might well be closed during mid-afternoon. Nevertheless, I tried the door. The handle was heavy and luxurious, and as I pulled to open the door, I was drawn into a veritable time machine. It was indeed the same as I remembered! My memories filled in the interior contours with complete accuracy. I couldn't believe it! The attractive young hostess approached me with cheery greeting, a menu, and a gesture into the dining room. I motioned to the other side, an aspect that seemed somehow most familiar.
"Can I sit there?"
"Yes, of course. Please, sit wherever you like."
She brought me into a narrow alcove with a banister which overlooked the hotel lobby. There were only three or four quite empty tables, and I requested the table at the end, the one with the best observation of the lobby. I took my seat and looked up at the wagon-wheel chandelier and Native American scrollwork. I slowly scrutinized the menu. Prime Rib, the most expensive dinner in the restaurant, beckoned forcibly from the pages, and suddenly I was flooded with emotion. I remembered father's dinner as if it was yesterday.
He said to me, "The food here is really good. The prime rib is excellent."
"I don't feel like bones."
He laughed good-naturedly, "Prime rib doesn't have any bones! Order it medium rare and it should be very tender and juicy." I felt embarrassed by my ignorance, but father was not making fun of me. He probably had a martini earlier, that usually put him in an expansive mood. He had finished with a business meeting earlier in the day, and it must have gone well as he was feeling generous. I remember father as he stretched out his legs and admired the ceiling. Strange that he has been dead for twenty years now, yet in my memory he is as alive and full of character as if he were in front of me. Mirroring father's gesture, I looked up at the painted ceiling of today. The paint seemed fresh enough, perhaps at least a few years old, maybe more. Was it the same as what my father saw? The waitress came back to see what I would have.
"Have you decided what you want?"
"Do you have Prime Rib tonight?"
"Let me have that, medium rare."
"Baked Potato?"
"Yes." It had been a long time since I had baked potato with all the fixings, too much saturated fat is bad for my cholesterol.
"Salad Dressing?"
"Blue Cheese." I won't be worried about cholesterol for once.
She retired to leave me to my solitary musings. Separating the restaurant from the hotel proper was a half-wall with etched glass. The lobby was small and intimate, a few heavily stuffed leather chairs placed casually here and there for hotel guests. My memory was becoming sharp. The decor had not really changed at all. I pulled out my notebook and sketched the A-J-H logo from the back of the custom-made chair opposite.
My father's presence became palpable, almost as if he were looking over my shoulder. My eyes filled with tears. 'Good god, get a grip,' I thought, 'Don't start crying here!' The waitress returned with the salad and placed it in front of me. I hoped she hadn't noticed that my eyes were moist. I savored each forkful of lettuce, lingered over the blue cheese. Suddenly, I realized that I was not sad at all, there was no need for tears here. This was a precious chance to commune with my father and with my past.
I visualized my father sitting opposite. I could make out his senatorial profile, the languorous command he always had over his large-framed body. In my mind he turned to me, as if to answer a question. I was always asking him for advice. He seemed to know what people could be counted on to do. 'Am I on the right track?' was my silent question.
'Yes, you are doing fine. Your life has been harder than I had thought it would be, but you've done okay. You had more happiness than you might have had.'
'What about my being gay. Are you all right with that? We never had a chance to talk about that.'
'Remember, your mother was only sixteen when she got pregnant, so you should understand that in my youth, I was driven by sex as much as you were. Neither of us were thinking about consequences, and although your choices were ruinous for your health, my choices had far reaching consequences as well. From my perspective in the hereafter, your brand of sex is not so very different.' His tone switched to the fatherly mode he adopted when about to give advice, 'We are just two souls now, son. While I was alive I didn't understand gay sex because I never knew anyone who was queer. Everyone thought homosexuality was perversion, and I would not have wanted a pervert for a son. I see things more clearly now. Because nobody ever talked about it, I had the sense that sex was something dirty. You never had that kind of "hang-up," as your generation calls it. You led a very promiscuous life compared to me, and I suspect that kind of promiscuity must have been very seductive. It offered temptations any man would have found attractive. I can appreciate that now that I'm dead. You are not so strange to me as you have been thinking for so long.'
In his living form, father was quite a prude, and any kind of sexual talk would have embarrassed him to the point of blushing. He didn't live long enough for the two of us to have an adult conversation about sexuality, neither heterosexual nor homosexual. All the same, I always had a sense that he knew what lust was all about. Unfortunately, in life he could no more have spoken about it to me than he could have discussed it with his parents. Of course, my relationship with my father didn't end when he died, and having this conversation was very soothing to me, even if I was inventing both halves of the dialogue.
My prime rib arrived, and I set aside my conversation with Father. I picked up my fork and savored the tender meat. I lathered three pats of butter onto the baked potato and heaped it with bacon pieces, cheese and chives, like I was a kid again. No child myself now, I had turned fifty four just ten days earlier. How long ago was that first dinner here? It must have been the summer before we went to Texas. That was in 1963, so Dad's prime rib dinner would have been in 1962. I seem to remember some vestige of snow on the streets outside, so it must have been early in the year. Since I was born in 1948, I would have turned fourteen the summer of 1962, so I would still have been thirteen then, right on the verge of manhood.
How old was father when I had the prime rib dinner at the Alex Johnson? He was born in 1907, let's see, ... In the spring of 1962, he would have been fifty four. My God! A chill went down my spine, and tears came to my eyes. I just turned fifty four! I am at the same age now that father was then!
Father smiled back at me knowingly. A visitation indeed. Thank you father.
Kitty Webb
Kitty drinking from a puddle of rain
14 January 2013: I picked up Kitty's ashes today. The smoothly finished wooden box was surprisingly light as I turned it over in my hands. On the underside was a round plastic plug, but when I tried to lift it out, it was so tightly wedged I didn't get a look at her ashes. Back home I placed it on her chair where she slept most nights through this winter.
I don't remember precisely when Kitty chose to adopt me. The first time I saw her was a marvelous Spring day . She was asleep on the back porch, and when I opened the door, she scurried off down the steps. Full-grown, I thought she probably belonged to one of my neighbors. The next day she was back sunning herself on the second-story vantage point where she could keep an eye out for approaching dangers. When I peered out at her through the window in the door, she looked up at me with a little less alarm. I opened the door, and she again fled down the steps, this time pausing to look back at me to see if I was in pursuit. Within a couple of days she only seemed a little annoyed at my intrusions, and began to hold her ground, loath to leave her comfortable spot.
After I saw her drinking rain water on the carport, I began leaving water in a bowl on the porch, which she drank with un-cat-like abandon. Before the week was out I had gone across the street and purchased a box of cat food. This she ate with great vigor, so it seemed clear she was currently without a caretaker. What I found strangely endearing was her meow, more of a throaty screech than a feline meow, halfway between a growl and a purr. Whether she was born with this aberration or acquired it through some trauma, I never could learn. Her vocalization explained why, soon after she started hanging around, the little boy in the next building knocked on my door, breathless with an urgent message of warning, "My mom, she says the cat has a disease and you shouldn't touch her." His mother was overcautious, I thought, or perhaps she didn't want a straggler cat underfoot or made up a rationalization to keep him from getting too emotionally connected to a pet she would not let him keep. I was apparently second choice from the beginning.
At first she wasn't too interested in coming inside. I would leave the kitchen door open, and she would saunter in and inspect the kitchen, sniffing curiously here and there. I had a swinging door between the kitchen and the living room which made a great "swish" when I would push through. The first time she witnessed this strange phenomena she was quite alarmed and retreated back onto the porch. For days if the swinging door was open, she would approach it with care as she peered into the living room. One day she confidently pushed past and into the rooms beyond. I waited for several long minutes without following her, because I didn't want her to feel like I was making a trap. "You approve of your new lodgings?" I asked her when she returned to the safety of the kitchen. She made some cat response that I took to mean, "It will do, I guess."
From the first she did not like to be touched. It was several weeks before she would lay on her back in a cat's version of "I trust you" and allow me to touch her. The fur on her stomach had been recently shaved, a fading remnant from some surgical procedure, I supposed, most probably she had been recently spayed. I could not understand why an owner would abandon her after taking the trouble of spaying her, and speculated that she had run away from masters she no longer trusted. Further supporting this hypothesis, she did not like to be petted, and would usually pull away after a few strokes. If I persisted, she would gently bite my hand in warning, then harder if I did not get the hint. She was a poor groomer, and frequently had hairballs on her side from her lack of attention. When I tried to comb these out, she would growl, and then bite. I left her alone for the most part, though eventually I felt a bit shamed that she looked so ratty. She looked so derelict, I thought it would be a good idea if she had a collar to demonstrate she was cared for and not an abandoned cat to be picked up and exterminated by animal control agents. I brought home a nice flexible velcro collar, and thought it would be a struggle to get her used to it. I planned to put it on her neck for only a couple of minutes at first, then take it off and repeat the next day for a longer period until she became accustomed. But when I wrapped it around her neck, she took to it immediately like she had always worn one. I never took it off again, and she lost it only a few months before her death and I never had a chance to replace it.
She became comfortable in the apartment, but always seemed to prefer the outside. The apartment complex where I lived, Wilshire Village, was on a cul-de-sac, so there was very little traffic. She was a street-wise cat, and knew enough about the dangers of cars to avoid them when they were operating, so I did not fear she would be run over. I provided her with a litter box under the table for emergencies, but she seldom had to utilize it. For such a ratty feline, she was curiously fastidious about her litter box. If there was anything remaining from last time, she wouldn't use it, preferring instead the rug in the kitchen or living room. I had to keep the box scrupulously clean when when she was confined inside for any length of time. If she made a mistake on the floor, I would push her face toward the pile of feces and bellow, "No, Kitty!" but she was immune to my discipline and eventually I gave up attempts at training.
When it was cold, she became an inside cat. On frigid winter days she would lay in front of the gas space heater in the living room for hours at a stretch. At night she would sleep on my bed, down near the foot out of the way of my thrashing. She had a fondness for my pappa san chair in the living room, and I would sometimes have to push her aside to sit in it. I always got the sense that she tolerated me only because I was too big to evict.
She had a weird preference for native water. If it rained, she drank from the pools on the carport. If there was heavy dew on car windshields, she would lick it off clean. Neighbors complained how her tongue marks made it hard to see until they used the washer to clean it off. She would leave little tracks on the car hood as she tongued the glass, so her culpability was always apparent. Her tongue was so rough it tickled, like a tiny wet brush. I could hardly bear it when she offered to lick me, something that came seldom and unpredictably.
When Wilshire Village was condemned by the city in 2009 and all the tenants were evicted, I worried she would not be able to adapt to a new situation. In the first few weeks at my new location on Crocker Street nearer downtown, I scrupulously kept her inside as we settled in. The apartment was a converted house, with psychologists offices on half of the first floor and all of the second floor, my small efficiency on the first floor seemed irrelevant to the function of the house. In the back there was a patio and a real back yard, although a parking lot infringed on half of it. Upstairs above the patio was a second story deck, and it was there she came to prefer to hang out, upstairs like the old place, where she could keep a look out. As she entered old age, she became more sedentary and seemed to spend most of her time outside in nap mode.
One day I noticed a lump behind her ear. I thought it was a tick at first, but it was some kind of watery tumor. Over the next few weeks it grew by steady increments. I packed her up in the "Pet Taxi," placed the carrier on the handlebars of my bike, and pedaled off down the street to the closest veterinarian. From the moment I placed her in the carrier, she growled loudly and did not stop throughout the entire examination. The vet took a sample and diagnosed a non-malignant tumor. I could have it removed for $900, but she said it was largely a cosmetic issue. I really didn't have the $900 so Kitty lived with the flopping tumor for the next two years. Eventually, she tolerated the watery tumor the size of a Kumquat behind her right ear and a couple of smaller ones behind her left ear. Sometimes she would shake her head as if to dislodge them, but mostly she ignored them altogether.
She stopped grooming by 2012, and began to look more and more like an abandoned street cat. Through the summer she stayed outside nearly all the time, mostly napping on the upstairs porch. She would come down only when it was time to eat, at night she slept under the building next door. In the Fall I noticed that her breathing was heavy. For weeks I postponed taking her to the vet, making excuses that it was too hard to get her to the vet on my bike, that I could not afford to have her tumors cut off.
Then I noticed her breathing was labored, and I could not postpone it any longer. I persuaded a friend to take me to an inexpensive vet on the north loop and they discovered a mass in her throat that was presumably cancer. The external tumors were the least of her problems, they said. There was nothing I could do but make her last days as pleasant as possible. At night she wheezed so loud that I had to wear earplugs. At first still she was still getting some quality time on the upstairs porch, but the weather turned cold and she was trapped inside most of the time. With her confined to the apartment, I had a chance to check her more often. I began to notice her eyes were widely dilated most of the time. Chris said that meant she was in a lot of pain. Kitty would sleep for a while, then get up and stand in the middle of the room wheezing, then get back in the chair and sit there staring off at nothing. I anguished over putting her down, but my friend Chris told me it was strictly my decision. When I finally said it was time, she concurred. She knows a lot about cats.
Chris agreed to come with me to the vet one final time. In the waiting room she chattered away the whole time, distracting me from the process unfolding before my senses. Time was racing too fast. Although I knew it was the humane thing to do, I did not want to go through with this barbarous act to "euthanize" Kitty. Strange term, euthanize: "Eu" for good or true, "thanatos" for death; was this anything like a good death? In the examination room they asked me to bring Kitty out of the carrier. She was limp at the bottom of the Pet Taxi as I brought her out in my arms. She had not made a sound since I had put her in the carrier at the house, no growling, no complaining whatsoever. As I held her she stared off in space, her eyes huge like saucers. They brought out an electric razor, "You're not going to shave her?" I reacted in alarm. Somehow I imagined a barbaric body shaving resembling the shaming treatment rendered to Nazi Collaborators while jeering crowds pushed toward the offenders.
"No," Chris said, "they need a clear view of the vein so they can insert a needle." As the electric razor buzzed off a patch of fur about the size of a half dollar, I thought of when I discovered her shaven stomach in our first days together. Odd that this act of being shaved bracketed our time together. As her execution proceeded, time seemed so very laden with kitty's last seconds. My sense of time was a paradox, at once seeming to slow ponderously while at he same moment speeding by far too fast to embrace thoughts of a time without Kitty. Then the needle was in her vein and it was over. Kitty's huge lifeless eyes stared out into the universe. I could hardly keep my composure, I wanted to weep, but felt that if I started it would be too hard to stop. They asked me if I wanted a few minutes alone with her, and I said no, but they could see that I needed it and left me with Chris anyway. She consoled me with assurances that I had done the right thing, and at the right time. It seemed right, it seemed a ... a good death, a true death. She was the first creature I cared about that I watched the life drain out of.
Until my dying day I will miss that crotchety old girl. Perhaps I will be thinking of her then.
Kitty asleep at the foot of my bed, motionless through a 12 minute exposure
Picturesque, isn't it?
I looked down on him unobserved from the balcony, so he didn't see me until I called out.
"Picturesque, Isn't it?"
He peered up at me, suddenly alert. Apparently, he hadn't counted on any of the residents remaining on the property. He looked a lot like Sam Jaffe, the actor who played the Einstein-like professor in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Dressed as I was, barefoot and clad only in a thin t-shirt and shorts, he clearly saw I was no threat to him, and his alarmed expression gave way to curiosity. Still, he didn't say anything. It was my dream, after all, not his. He turned to face me, looking up expectantly, and the great arms of the old oak seemingly embraced him. I loved that old tree whose shade had cooled the environs of the otherwise austere landscaping.
Suddenly, I felt a little precarious. At my back I could feel an eerie vacancy, but didn't turn around out of fear that my apartment had already been cut away from the building to leave me suspended on ungrounded masonry. I reached out to steady myself by grasping the handrail, but my hand tore at at empty air. I looked down and saw that the demolition men had cut the banister off my back porch in preparation for the eviction. All that was left was a series of short little square pedestals not quite flush with the concrete.
Feeling quite giddy, I might have tripped and gone over the edge, but instead I lowered myself carefully and sat down on the top step. I cradled my cup of morning tea in my hands and took a sip while surveying my domain as I had done so many times before. I wondered at the intruder's purpose in being there, and was about to initiate a conversation with him to determine his reason to be on the property.
Yes, I was back at Wilshire Village once again, caught in a dream and returned to the place I spent so many years as resident.
These midnight returns to Xanadu are less frequent now. It has been thirty eight months since I was forced to abandon my squalid refuge in the heart of the Montrose. All that squalor is gone now, replaced by a trendy new HEB that has been built on the site of my former address. I had gone there a few days before my dream to purchase some sushi for my final semester critique in printmaking. I cycled through the expansive parking lot, and paused to examine the health of the grand old oak that used to be "mine." She seemed a bit weakened, a few tiny branch-tips appeared to be dead, but overall there was an abundance of leafy growth from the Spring season just ending. Was this the first sign of weakness? Trees take a long time to die, several years for this aged centenarian, and death starts at the fingertips and works its way to the heart.
I passed a red-haired grounds keeper talking to a couple of suited executives, perhaps relaying a status report. The suits moved off and I stopped and inquired, "Taking care of the trees?" He assented vaguely, and before I could stop myself, I added by way of explaining my interest, "I lived here for 25 years under the shade of this tree."
"Oh" he answered, "In the old apartments they tore down?"
"Yes, until they evicted me a couple of years ago." It was evident he had little knowledge of the world that had been erased here. He was glad to have a job, and certainly preferred the grounds now to any that might have existed on the grounds some irrelevant time ago.
"Well, take good care of her. I miss her."
He muttered something not disagreeable as he turned his attention to the plants at his feet. I wheeled my bicycle around past the suits and tied up at the lockup area in the front. Near the sinusoidal curve of pipe to accommodate two-wheeled patrons the management had tethered a set of repair tools and an air pump: they were going for a progressive urban neighborhood crowd. I locked up my bicycle and re-situated my bag from the back fender to my shoulder.
When I was still angry at having to move from Wilshire Village Apartments, I thought I would never patronize whatever replaced my old world. As the electric doors slid silently open, I felt a sense of trepidation and almost turned around and exited. Instead I charged ahead and came into the wide high-ceilinged interior. There was an abundance of customers pushing their heavily laden carts filled with produce and packaged items. As I picked up my sushi the Asian ladies greeted me with a salutation, "Thank you!" in a Japanese accent corrupted by years spent here in the States. In the cheese section a woman in a garish white hair net sliced her product, oblivious of the distractions all around her. A slim young man with blonde hair tried to cajole me into a bite of free chocolate confectionery, seemingly a little puzzled by my refusal of this tidbit.
I was the inconsequential man who knew the secret behind the curtain no one was interested in peering through. Everyone was there carrying out their business, feeling quite at home in their secure routines. This place was their favorite grocery store, perhaps, the place they shopped now instead of Fiesta across the street. Or this was their job and they felt comfort and security in the familiarity of their tasks. No person beside myself in this large space cared anything for what once was here. Everyone but me considered it a vast improvement over the derelict old buildings that were pushed aside to make way for progress.
I pushed my cart to the cashier, waited for my turn, then paid with a debit card and was on my way. I had broken my vow to never shop at the store that so changed my life. I'll be back, of that I am sure.
Tahini and Proust
Proust is famous for his lengthy ode to his memories of a pastry from his childhood. For the famous author, each time he tasted "petite madeleine" he was instantly brought back to his grandmother's house in Combray and his childhood there. I have my own madeline memory, though its origins are far murkier and took most of my adult life to properly identify.
At first, when I was in grade school, it was more like a smell that would waft through the back of my throat, followed by a hint of a taste. It resembled peanut butter, at least that taste is close to what most people would recognize. More accurately, it resembled a strange concoction made of sesame seeds that my mother would sometimes acquire from the foreign gourmet section of the grocery store in Rapid City. We lived in Edgemont, a town of some 2500 souls then, but now a nearly abandoned relic of 774 idle stragglers. Rapid City was the closest thing to a city in the western half of South Dakota of 1958, a couple of hours drive through prairie lands where once grazed millions of bison. Rapid City had a population 40,000 then (and even now only 70,000), and seemed quite altogether a city.
Mother called it "helva" and she had tasted it when the family lived in Türkiye when I was an infant. I remember the first time she saw it in the supermarket she cried out in surprise at finding it in America.
"I haven't had helva since we left Turkey," she exclaimed when she saw the can in the meagre import section. "I must have this!" she said as she placed several cans in her shopping cart. About ten years before the family had lived in the back woods of Turkey, where father was a consultant to the government of Turkey. Mother took the mystery cans home and hoarded them carefully for special occasions or particular guests, but I knew where the stash was and found the mixture strangely compelling. Among the ranching folk of Edgemont, my parents were considered cosmopolitan because they had lived in a foreign county, and this constituted proof of their elite status, for me and for the community.
The ground sesame seeds evoked for me a strange sensation. It reminded me of some similar but distinct taste from my earliest memories. I tried to concentrate on how that mystery food from so long ago tasted, but I couldn't quite wrap my mind around it. I would let the candy-like fibrous mass slowly melt in my mouth and try to squeeze from it the memory of what it reminded me of. At ten, I was no longer a baby, and was beginning to develop a sense of nostalgia. I begged my mother to buy "Pablum" for breakfast cereal, even though it was marketed for infants. To adults, I suppose, it signified "something that is trite, insipid, or simplistic," but I had a tangible and sentimental attraction to Pablum. The mild cereal taste and soft pasty structure brought me into a feeling of being coddled, like having my back scratched. This emotional space was situated somewhere near the dawn of my conscious mind.
Helva scratched away at a deeper part of my subconscious mind, a time even before Pablum. With the Helva, I couldn't get all the way there, there was some intermediary that Helva reminded me of, but I didn't have a name for that deeper morsel of the ultimate comfort food. If I closed my eyes as a the dollop of Helva dissolved into fluidity on my tongue, I could almost get there to grasp the taste of what I craved. Once the Turkish treat had all been eaten, I found that I could conjure the taste of the secret unknown potion purely from my memory. That memory would come to me throughout the years that followed, often unpredictably. I would be sitting there in an idle moment, midpoint between my last intake of victuals and the one to come. Astride memory and anticipation, their corrupting influence was minimal when that taste would once again begin in the back of my throat and linger there taunting me with questions of its identity. Sometimes months would pass between the intrusions of these sensory memories, but they never actually left me. The solution to its identity came slowly, mediated by a protein shake.
In Houston there has been a significant Middle Eastern here presence for decades. When I first came to town I shopped at Antone's Deli where I would find "Halvah" as the imported bilingual label spelled its product. I would eat falafel there from time to time, or gyro sandwiches. Later a student of mine from Lebanon introduced me to Baba Ghanoush and Hummus, and in a few more years these could be found at the Whole Foods grocery store. Eventually, I learned that hummus was easy to make and I resolved to try my hand at the recipe. It was a simple set of ingredients: lemon juice, garbanzo beans, tahini and garlic. I became fond of hummus and thus tahini became a staple in my refrigerator. Like Halvah, it is made from sesame seeds, but tahini is far different in texture. Halvah is like the inside of a Butterfinger candy bar, but less dense and more fibrous. Tahini is more like runny smooth peanut butter. There is no sugar added, so it can't be mistaken for candy. Helvah can be spooned up and eaten like a confection, but tahini seems to be reserved for recipe concoctions or spread on toast like its American cousin.
Then one morning I was out of the walnuts that had been my healthy-fat contribution to the protein shake I had been having for breakfast. I substituted tahini and was pleased with the taste of the new additive. It soon became a staple for my shakes, even when I had walnuts on hand. Some subtle flavor in the mix was strangely soothing, familiar and comforting. As I made these morning shakes, it became my habit to lick the tahini spoon of the remnants remaining after I allowed the spoonful to slide onto the blueberry-apple-banana-oat mixture. Gradually, I came to realize that the tahini was the mysterious taste from my childhood I had been looking for. The realization was slow, and depended on changing brands from Biladi to Joyva, the latter roasted with a nuttier flavor. The mysterious taste reached deep into my childhood and lingered on my palate, infusing the back of my throat with a distinctive roasted nutty flavor. Eureka!
But why tahini? I moved to Turkey when I was just beginning to walk. I suppose I was eating baby food, probably made from fresh ingredients pureed through a Foley Mill, a strange kitchen implement used to make applesauce. I still have that same Foley Mill my mother must have used in Turkey; I use it to strain cranberries for my cranberry-kumquat compote. Mother considered the Turks rather primitive, and eating in Turkey for her was a dangerous international adventure. I doubt there was any peanut butter there, and in those days peanut butter was one of the first solid foods brought into a toddler's diet. I suspect that tahini was substituted for peanut butter and may have been my first favorite food. So now it is back, and my early childhood is now brought into my geriatric present.
As from the poem by T. S. Eliot:
... the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
Race Pimp Czar
Here is a Facebook posting that cost me a friendship of a dozen years.
The link was from The Right of Way, a right wing website authored by "The Compassionate Conservative" with a tagline: "Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end." LMAO, I learned, is: "Laughing My Ass Off," but this corny, juvenile humor is not very funny to me, tinged as it is with a clear sense of meanness. The site is full of rather sophomoric jibes at Democrats and finger-pokes at Obama in particular.
Well, I took offense.
Some history here. My friend and I met at an art school 12 years ago. She seemed intelligent and well informed, and we could talk for hours on end without tiring of the conversation. She truly listened and was a great conversationalist. She was very well read, and I trusted her insights into human nature. Her politics became clear early on when she vigorously defended George Bush after some careless remark I made against him, and after that we seemed to make a mutual decision to avoid topics of a political nature. We had lots in common to talk about: botany, history, cemeteries, genealogy, art, travel, cinema, books, photography, cooking.
The 2000 election of George Bush became the first thorn in our friendship. I felt that the presidency was stolen from Al Gore by the Supreme Court, and couldn't understand how America could have elected such an inarticulate president. 9-11 shocked us both, but our opinions on the Bush entry into Iraq were diametrically opposite. She was not a person to change her mind, and I had learned not to argue against Bush. Throughout eight long years of the Bush presidency, I bit my tongue whenever politics was mentioned, however tangentially. My only lapse was when we made a bet that there would be no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. She never paid this off, and kept insisting that they would be found eventually; she may still believe this myth. Gradually she bought into the various pieces of the Bush anti-science agenda. Our mutual agreement to avoid political discussions expanded to exclude all mention of: Billy Carter; Bill Clinton; Al Gore; Dick Cheney; George Bush; Global Warming, Public transportation; Urban density; Free Market economics; Health care in America.
Then Obama was elected. I expected she would have the same respect for me that I had shown her, and she would avoid railing against our president in our exchanges, but this was a mistake. Soon, I was cautioned that Obama was ruining America, that he was a Socialist, and could not be re-elected. By this time Facebook was everyone's social media, and her posts were a countdown to the end of the Obama administration and the election of a Republican president. Hardly a day went by that there was not a picture of Obama with a mean-spirited and small-minded message of disapproval. For a time her profile picture was Obama with numerous cigarettes dripping from his mouth in a mockery I did not quite understand.
But on April 16th 2012 with the above posting, I had finally had enough. First, I unfriended her; then I reported her to Facebook for posting offensive material. I didn't have long to wait for a response. She claimed her post was "satire," that defriending was serious and held implications. Despite my defense that I did not think Facebook was a place for that kind of vitriol, she blocked my emails and phone calls and said our friendship had run its course.
Well, now I really miss her. She was in some ways a beacon, my closest friend yet a Republican. As long as we were friends there was hope that Americans could co-exist with radically polarized politics. It used to be that political affiliation was no barrier to communication, compromise was the touchstone of politics, but no longer. Congress has became unable to act, unwilling to bend. And now my friend is an epitome of that confrontation. If we can no longer talk, what will happen to America?
I can't apologise for unfriending her. It would set a brand on our friendship that would be untenable. An apology would constitute de facto approval of her postings; I would forever relinquish any right to protest her jabbing pokes at Obama in particular and liberal politics in general. I wish things would go back to the way they were before I unfriended her. Maybe I should have simply blocked her messages like many of her liberal friends may have already done and to pretended our friendship was still strong. But it wasn't; and now it is over. I'm very sad about that. I will miss her, but at least for me Facebook is a far friendlier place now. No doubt I am being spared such postings as those below from the same "satirical" website:
By the way: This is satire.
I'm a sixty something old codger retired from an all-to-brief career as a scientist and educator. No longer bound by the constraints of having to make a living, I have turned to the arts to amuse myself. My work consists of "works on paper" including prints and photographs, as well as letterpress and book arts. I write for myself and read whatever I find interesting from Proust to Melville.
I lead a simple life, some would say monastic. I have no car, preferring to commute by bicycle. This restricts me to a very tight geographical zone scarcely five miles in radius centered on an area just southwest of downtown Houston.
Though a full-fledged city-dweller, the scale and pace of my life is more rural than urban. I like the slow tempo my restrictions cast upon my life. As I move about my zone of activity, I like to interact with my environment as much as possible. I am moving slow by modern fast-paced standards, and can stop whenever something interesting crosses my path.
My interests include: art, science, history, literature, philosophy, evolution, genetics, ecology, languages.


text:
Paraguay's crypto framework one step away from becoming law
July 17, 2022 Amy Jimenez
On July 14, the Paraguayan Senate approved a bill that established a tax and regulatory framework to support businesses in the cryptocurrency mining and crypto-currency sectors.
The bill was introduced by Senator Fernando Silva Facetti last July and passed Congress in May, before reaching the Senate. It calls for the creation of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to supervise service providers in the crypto industry. President Mario Abdo Benitez is just one step away to ratify the bill as law.
In May, Congress sent a notice stating that the bill specifically addresses crypto mining, commercialization and intermediation.
ABC News reported that crypto-related companies would be treated in the same way as other securities traders on July 14. Accordingly, the Undersecretary for State for Taxation will exempt them from paying a Value Added Tax. However, they will still be subject to the income tax regime.
PARAGUAY: Newly approved bill exempts #Bitcoin companies from VAT
— Bitcoin Archive (@BTC_Archive), July 16, 2022
According to reports, the bill will address how crypto miners should interact and cooperate with local power providers. Prospective mining operations will have to report their energy consumption schedules to the National Electricity Administration (ANDE), Paraguay's national electricity regime. ANDE can cut off electricity supply to miners if they are found to be using more electricity than expected.
The bill states that miners will receive a subsidy for their energy costs, but they will still have to pay 15% more than other industries.
According to reports Senator Faceti stated that modifications to the bill made over the past year "improved" the original project.
Senator Enrique Bacchetta, one of the bill's detractors, stated that although regulation of the crypto industry would increase profits, it would not create any jobs for his fellow citizens. Senator Esperanza Martnez echoed Senator Baccetta's concern, claiming that miners consume far more energy than the jobs they create.
Related: USD stablecoin premiums rise in Argentina after resignation of Argentina's economy minister
Paraguay is now the latest LATAM country to make a significant leap in crypto regulation and adoption. El Salvador adopted Bitcoin (BTC), which was made legal in 2021. The governments of Panama, Argentina, Brazil and Panama are also working on crypto legislation.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl