Overly Verbal

So on Friday Mouse and I went to the vet, and Mouse didn’t get to come home with me. I’ve never made such a painful decision before, hope never to have to again, but I know what I did was right. Mouse led a good, long life, filled with every pleasure he could have desired, and he knew he was loved. I think that’s all you can ask out of life, heck, probably more than you can expect, and while my house is sort of empty now, after having had the best roommate of all time for some eleven years, it’s also filled with memories that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Like this one:

And I know that many of you knew and loved Mouse as well, having cat-sit for him, or lived with him, or just hung out on my couch with him, and I’m glad about that, but I’ve decided that after all the difficulty I’ve had in simply writing about this, reading stories about how well we all liked Mouse and how sad we are to see him gone will just make me cry, which is something I’ve been doing entirely too much of lately. So I’ve turned the comments off on this entry, even though some of you have offered to add something and I would certainly be touched by your kindness. I don’t mean to deny anyone, but sometimes saying nothing at all is the right thing to do.

In fact, I wish I could have said nothing at all about this now, but I miss him already, and my blog is going to be just that much less fun without him. Molly and I are asking that you bear with us as we adjust to our new situation, and promise to return again just as soon as we’re up to it.

This is the face Molly is going to make if she finds out that you didn’t vote:

See how she can’t even look at you? She doesn’t believe in persecution.

She deserves better than this.

I am seriously getting tired of doing everything myself. Therefore, I would like someone to:

• Think of a clever pun with which to respond to Randy’s last comment
• Do my laundry
• Find a watchband to fit my favorite watch before I just go ahead and buy an entirely new watch (same as the old watch)
• Answer all my e-mail
• Do the dishes
• Find my checkbook, an envelope, and a stamp (which would be ever so much easier if someone would also)
• Finish rearranging my living room for me, because there are baskets of yarn, assorted knickknacks, and at least 225 books stacked on the floor and every other available horizontal surface, and I am suffering from a motivation deficit (You know that person who once said something like “The perfect is the enemy of the good”? That person, whoever they were, can kiss my ass.)
• Decide once and for all whether the cats look better sleeping on the polka-dotted or the plaid side of the new reversible comforter,* because I’m a little bored with flipping it over again and again – here’s a visual aid:

Thank you in advance for your cooperation in these matters.

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* “They look equally adorable on each surface” is not an acceptable answer. I can get that sort of response just by doing things my own damned self, thank you very much.

This morning when I woke up there was a mouse in my bedroom. I think it was dead, and whoever killed it left its tiny broken body on the rug immediately in front of the cat litter box. I didn’t get a real good look at it, only glanced at it sideways, long enough to be about 75% sure that it was actually a dead mouse and not a cat toy. Then I went to make coffee while I considered the next steps. Sure, I could pick up the dead mouse and dispose of it, but I hadn’t looked closely enough at it to be certain that it was dead - if there’s something more distasteful than picking up a mouse your cat has killed it’s picking up a mouse your cat has not fully killed.

When Mouse and I lived in Harlem, we had these roommates. While they left much to be desired in the way of cleanliness, English language skills, and not being sort of frightening, they were always willing to pick up the mice that Mouse maimed, of which there were many. Sometimes they flushed the mice down the toilet, other times they threw the mice out the window into the courtyard below, but there were so many roommates that I almost never had to pick up my own dead or dying mice.

So just in the middle of my second cup of coffee, right about when I decided that the only rational thing to do was call each of the men who live near me in sequence until one of them valiantly offered to remove the mouse carcass from my home, Goethe called me. “I think there’s a dead mouse in my bedroom,” I said, and he rather reluctantly offered to come pick it up for me. He assured me that it was dead, picked it up with only some paper towels as a barrier, and only made a little fun of me because I had to call a boy to handle my domestic problems. In any event, now there is not a dead mouse in my bedroom, and about that I am glad.

I think it was Molly who killed it, because the other morning she was just sitting on the kitchen floor, fixated on the spot between the dishwasher and the wall. I thought maybe there was a spider back there, but it seems pretty obvious now that it was a mouse. (Also, times that Mouse has killed mice, he’s made much more of a show of it. I’m pretty sure he would have woken me up, meowing at the top of his lungs about his conquest. Subtlety is not one of his strong suits.)

And since I think it was Molly, I told her to brush her teeth:

(And from now on, we can all refer to Molly as “Killer”, which is a much better nickname than others she has earned, like “Droolie” and “Peanut Brain”.)

And now if you’ll pardon me, I have to figure out how the mouse got in, and how to prevent his friends and family from following him, because I really don’t think I can take much more of this. (And no, I did not take a picture of the dead mouse to post here, because I couldn’t bring myself to look at it, let alone focus on it long enough to take a picture. Although whichever cat was involved and the mouse were simply fulfilling their biological destinies, an endeavor in which there is much dignity, I think it’s simply more respectful to not post pictures of this mouse whose young life was brought to an early halt through no fault of his own.)

I like your idea, Will, about tackling the childhood issue here. And since I know you like pictures, I thought, well, I’ll just take some pictures of things that were important to me in my childhood, and then write about them. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Started out well:

Then, Molly tried to eat Gumby:

And even though Molly’s eating Gumby makes me sad, this makes me happy: from the Wikipedia entry - “Gumby is a dark green clay humanoid figure . . .”

Thank goodness I am easily amused!

In other news, I have just decided that I am envious of people who have small children. Sure, I can justify crayons, for times when I need them to draw a picture or something. But I have no Legos, and I really need to rectify that situation soon. (Will, do you have any Legos I can borrow?)

I’m not sure I’ve ever had cause to think of the phrase “indignant beauty” before. I’m sure it’s in a book somewhere, but Molly seems to have transcended mere words, and is actually embodying the phrase:

I love her madly, and I really hope that next year, right about the time we experience weather that gives cats asthma attacks, instead of living in a ghetto with air conditioning that is going to die any minute, and carpeting that is older than both cats combined, we live instead in a charming, hardwood-floored prefab container house. Or one of these little gems.

A girl can dream.

So this is apparently what happens if my phone rings while I am emptying the dishwasher:

We know I didn’t stage this picture because people with OCD do not actually allow their cats on the dinner plates, let alone deliberately put them there. What’s shocking to me is that even after I rather sternly said “Molly!”, she just sat there until I went into the living room, found the camera, and took a picture. She then continued to sit there for a while longer, but I’m not sure why. A smarter cat would have, I don’t know, jumped down and pretended like they weren’t in the cabinet at all?

If this is any indication as to how the rest of my weekend is going to go, I suppose I can take some small consolation in the fact that at least my life is unpredictable.

Cat, in a basket, with yarn. It’s two cliches for the price of one!

I’m sort of digging this whole new camera thing, and if it means that I spend less time outside my home interacting with humanity, and more time inside interacting with my cats, well, you know, it’s probably better to embrace your destiny while you’re young, instead of growing up with some imagined future that you will never fulfill, being left bitter and disappointed. Problem is, now that Molly has asthma, the double-wide trailer thing is totally out of the question. What’s the moral equivalent of a double-wide trailer, but without all of the airway-restricting petrochemicals?

Anyone?

So I finally broke down and bought a new camera. It took me a while, because I had to make sure this new camera was sleek and stylish enough to suit me - I’m a little broken up about having to break up with my old camera, which, while beautiful, was just not doing the job anymore.* So I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that future pictures of the shopping carts in my neighborhood will be much more focused. It hasn’t been my photography skills that have failed you - it was the equipment I was using. To wit:

Old camera:

New camera:

And I couldn’t resist these, because if there is something more lovely than the noses of my cats in extreme close-up, you’re going to have to tell me what it is.

In other news, oh what a pleasant weekend I have had. I’ve got a new 7-11 story to tell you later, I met a new person and before I even knew it he’d taught me a new word,** and I had a glorious nap - this whole new camera thing is just icing. I’d like to say that you can expect an actually interesting entry soon, but I wouldn’t like to lie. (It’s really taking all the energy I’ve got not to wake the cats up and make them make adorable noises so I can capture that digitally and share it with you.)

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* I think the one thing we can all agree has been missing from this blog is video of the cats, but you may now rest assured that videos (with sound!) are forthcoming.

** Micaceous - might come in handy for Scrabble, don’t you think?