That Darn Cat

Hello World,

Happy Autumn! Believe it or not, we find ourselves poised precariously at the final weekend in September already, and don't look now, but next Friday will actually be the first day of October. They tell me that the autumnal equinox was on Wednesday, so we've officially entered the fall season, although why our old nemesis Comrade Mischka picked this week to blast us with days in the high 80's, I'm sure I'll never know. Of course, that wasn't the least of it, not by a long shot, as we have our Russkie pals and their infernal weather machine to thank for some of the wildest conditions that have befallen us all year, and that's saying something. Although the hurricanes skirted us, the area was hit with bands of dangerous thunderstorms, some of which included tornadoes that touched down in Queens and Nassau, and about as welcome there as your average Russian spy at the Pentagon, which is to say, not much. Meanwhile, another band of storms with violent winds knocked down a swath of trees that landed on the Long Island Railroad tracks, and literally stopped the train service out of Penn Station, in its tracks as it were (get it?!) and stranding thousands of commuters on the spot. It got to the point that the terminal was so over-crowded with people who couldn't leave the city, that the MTA closed the station so that no one was allowed in from the outside. I'm thinking there's a reason that they don't still use that dusty old slogan from the heyday of yesteryear: "Traffic a pain? Relax on the train!"

On the home front, for reasons known only to themselves and their diabolical little minds, three of our cats have taken to perching on the edge of an old and wobbly 3-legged table in the living room, and regularly tipping it over, and it goes without saying, thank you so very much not. Luckily it has nothing on top of it except stacks of empty paper plates, so nothing gets damaged when it falls over, but it's true that the plates go flying in every direction, and it becomes someone's job to pick them all up again, as well as the table, and apparently the cats take no responsibility for the cleanup, because I've yet to see them do it. For the first time since before I went on vacation, I have reason to thank the furry varmints who chewed into my camping supplies, because now that the stuff is all still piled in the corner of the living room, instead of being packed away in the attic like it should be, it truly was a useful thing to have bungee cords so fortuitously close at hand when I needed them. I didn't have to run up two flights of stairs after them like I normally would, I just grabbed a bunch of them right in the living room, and secured the wobbly table to the piano leg behind it, and solved that problem in one fell swoop. Now my concern is that after being thwarted their disorderly schemes, our feline delinquents will bring in reinforcements from outside, and find a way to tip over the wobbly table as well as the piano behind it, and then we'll really have a catastrophic mess on our hands, sort of like Penn Station last week, except with a lot more little wooden hammers all over the floor.

We get this from an alert reader (thanks, Arlene!) after hearing the story about the unfortunate refrigerator hose calamity -

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Call me crazy but I can't help but wonder
why you keep all those cats on the payroll
if at the very least you can't get them to keep
the vermin at bay. Perhaps a cut in pay or rations
would get them a bit motivated.
Please, explain to those cats what their job is!
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Now, our cats don't need me to spring to their defense, heaven knows, and they would no doubt strenuously object, even if I did. But the truth is that over the last couple of years, the alarming rate of attrition has taken its toll around here, and what used to be a menagerie of "all those cats" has now dwindled down to a precious few, such as this house hasn't seen since we've been married. Of the tattered remnant, two of the cats only stay upstairs, and perhaps it is their very presence that deters the furry varmints from that floor, although I would tend to doubt it, since it's pretty much all they can do to catch their own Fancy Feast on their own plates, and that doesn't have much in the way of moves, believe me. The other cats patrol the living room and den downstairs, and here again, there's not a varmint anywhere in sight, either because of their diligence, or more likely, because the varmints know better and keep out of their way. We don't let the cats in the attic or the basement, which is where the varmints did their damage, thanks not, so we don't want to cast aspersions on our cats' deterrent capabilities or motivations. Although now could certainly be the time to rethink that policy, especially if it means protecting my collection of macaroni necklaces from their ravages. I said to Bill that the funny part is that we used to hide our treasured belongings away from some of our more rambunctious kitties in the past, by putting the items in rooms where the cats weren't allowed, so they wouldn't get knocked over, broken or worse - and now we're doing exactly the opposite, and moving our things into areas where the cats are, to keep them away from the varmints instead. It's like the animal version of a foreign-language espionage movie, where it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Hey, put down that macaroni necklace!

And speaking of having animals on the brain, that's the only explanation I have for this next story from work. Yesterday I had contacted one of our vendors, and was trying to straighten out a problem with an order where the wrong items had been received, compared to what we had originally ordered. I had to read a catalogue number over the phone, and I actually heard myself saying, "That's 'S' like Sam, 'K' for cat ... " There was more than one item with the same sort of part number, and I went ahead and said the same thing both times, and it took a while for the realization to sink in, when I suddenly burst out laughing, and pointed out that I had used that description as if "cat" was spelled with a "k" instead of a "c," or was so new to the language that I didn't know the difference. The lady on the phone was very empathetic, and said she understood what I meant anyway, and wrote down "k" in spite of me saying "cat," like I was some sort of illiterate moron who couldn't even spell the simplest word that any pre-schooler would know better than that. I said it was easy to see what kind of day I was having at work, when I was so alphabet-challenged that I couldn't even come up with a word that starts with "k" when I needed to, and it's just a wonder that I didn't come up with "knight" instead.

While we're on the subject of things that make no sense, we have Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys fame, who decided to release a new album called "Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin," and here again, for reasons known only to himself, one supposes. It begins with an a cappella rendering of the opening to the Rhapsody in Blue that is very interesting, and touches on many of the composer's classics, like "Someone to Watch Over Me," "I Got Rhythm," and "Our Love is Here to Stay." I'm not exactly sure that the world was clamoring for the Brian Wilson version of "I Loves You Porgy" or "It Ain't Necessarily So," but they're done in an earnest way that is respectful and charming in its own awkward style. I said to Bill that my absolute favorite from the album was "They Can't Take That Away From Me," in which I'm sure the late and great Ira Gershwin never would have expected to hear the words “boogedy-boogedy-boogedy-boogedy-shoop” or “wop-bop-bop-wop-bop-ba-dada-dada” anywhere near his impeccable lyrics, even this long after he was dead, and that's not just a lot of ramma-lamma-ding-dong, believe me. And poor George Gershwin, even more so, who didn't live to see the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boys, much less the Beach Boys, heaven knows. Personally, I give it a "K" for "Celebrated."

Elle