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Gracie update 6: The visit

Posted on October 19th, 2006 at 10:02 pm by Meryl Yourish.

Filed under: Cats

I went to see Gracie before the vet closed tonight. She looked pretty miserable. She has an IV in her front paw, and she threw up while I was there. She’s still doing that every few hours—that was the fourth time today.

I tried to get her interested in a Junior Mints box that I brought along. Spearmint is from the catnip family and has the same effect on cats, and she’s always gone nuts for the box when I give it to her. She was utterly uninterested.

But she did blink at me when I called her name, and asked her who was my girl. Kitty kisses. And she definitely enjoyed the ear- and chin-scratches, miserable as she was. No purr, but I can’t blame her for that.

I am hoping very, very hard that tomorrow, the vet finds the world’s most expensive hairball. Or at least, the most expensive hairball I’ve ever had to pay for. My friend Heidi, who is a nurse, is of the opinion that it’s some kind of blockage. She said it came up too quickly to be cancer.

I hope she’s right.

We’ll know tomorrow morning. The vet opens at 8. I’m not sure when Gracie is scheduled, but I’ll be getting a call sometime in the morning. And Gracie is in good hands. While I was there, the tech cleaned out her cage and put in fresh towels after I told her that Gracie had thrown up on the newspaper. And the vet was confident and reassuring. Gracie’s seen all three of the vets at the practice now.

It’s a good thing I didn’t get much sleep last night. I’m going to sleep the sleep of the exhausted and hope Tig doesn’t decide he needs to be petted at 6 a.m. again.

Princess Gracie

Posted on October 19th, 2006 at 12:30 pm by Meryl Yourish.

Filed under: Cats

I met her on Easter Sunday in 1997. She was just a few weeks old. Someone had left her and nine other ten-day-old kittens at the Clifton (NJ) animal shelter, and the shelter fostered them out to various vets in the area. My downstairs neighbor’s daughter was working for one of them, and she took two kittens home to foster: An all-orange, fluffy male, and an orange-and-white striped female. She gave them incredibly stupid names, like Nargle and something equally dumb (I’m not kidding; they’re on the adoption certificates buried somewhere in my papers). The female was ratty-looking and dirty, covered in milk and crying. The male was cute and fluffy and bouncy, and I decided straight off that I’d take him. Didn’t want the female. Two cats were too much for a small apartment. Two cats would be annoying. Sibling rivalries in cats? Ridiculously annoying. No, I’d just take the male cat to replace the orange male tabby I’d lost the month before.

Princess GracieBy the end of the afternoon, I had guilted myself into taking them both. I realized they’d be together for another six weeks, and I’d feel awful about tearing them apart, since they’d already been taken from their mother at too young an age. So I called my neighbor’s daughter and told her I’d take them both.

I don’t believe in naming cats right away. I wait and see what their name is before I give it to them. Well, except I was pretty sure I was going to name Tigger Tigger, because that was the name of the cat I had lost, and I was desperately trying to replace him in my life. But for a while, I pretended I wasn’t, and because I couldn’t call them “Male and Female” or “Hey you,” and because there was no way in hell I was going to call a cat Nargle or Urgle or whatever stupid name the girl had given them, I called them George and Gracie until I could figure out what their names were.

Tig became Tig relatively quickly. But Gracie? She was a puzzle. She was gorgeous, and sweet, and sensitive. She was timid. She ran if you moved too quickly in her direction. She frightened easily. I discovered early on what a crybaby she was when I heard her screaming like she was being savaged, and went quickly into the living room to see what big brother was doing. He was trying to play with Gracie, but he hadn’t even touched her. He was literally in midair, and she was crying before he landed. She ultimately stopped doing that, but boy, when Tig bothers her now, she growls like he’s tearing her leg off, even if all he’s doing is scratching on the kitty condo because she’s lying in the tube and he wants to bug her.

But no name came to me for weeks, and one of my coworkers of the time started to chastise me. “You have to name her, ” she said. “It’s not right to name one but not the other.” She accused me of favoritism. I started thinking, and finally, the reason I couldn’t name Gracie came to me: I’d already found her name. She was Grace itself.

Gracie is a Cat with a capital C. She is poised. She is graceful. She doesn’t walk, she places her feet carefully in position, slipping quietly through the house. She doesn’t sit, she poses. She is breathtakingly beautiful. She is royalty. One of her names is Princess Gracie. Another of her names is Sweetness. I have plenty of scars from Tig. Gracie has never once scratched me in the nine-plus years I’ve had her. Tig will roll over and let just about anyone rub his belly. Gracie will permit you to pet her, if she decides you are worthy. She’s gotten friendlier and sweeter in the last few years—she lets Sarah’s twins pet her, which is huge—she’s normally afraid of children. She’s taken to Sarah in a big way lately, too.

Our morning routine has developed to the point where Gracie waits anxiously outside the bathroom door while I shower, and meows as soon as the water goes off. She wants me to come into the bedroom, where she’ll leap on the bed for her morning chin-scratches and petting, with perhaps a bellyrub thrown in. It’s our time, the morning. Her purrs are deep and throaty, and she kneads her paws in contentment, especially when I ask, “Who’s my girl? Are you my girl?”

I said those words over and over again on the day I watched her fight for every breath, while she was recovering from a seizure brought on by a severe asthmatic attack. Even though she was in a plastic case with oxygen feeding into it, she kneaded her paws, purring, as I said those words. They’re her words, and she knows it.

My girl is going into surgery tomorrow morning, and she may not come out of it. There is possibly some kind of mass in her intestinal tract. I am hoping beyond hope that it’s a mass of fur and grass and other objects that she simply can’t pass, or, failing that, that it’s an operable tumor. Because nine and a half years is not long enough with my Sweetness.

R’fuah shlema, Sweetness. Come back to me tomorrow.

On British diplomatic ingenuity

Posted on October 19th, 2006 at 12:00 pm by SnoopyTheGoon.

Filed under: Miscellaneous, Satire

Stuff of legends, that British ability to resolve anything using nothing but diplomatic wit and savvy. The Sun, under a rather shrilly headline Brave heroes hounded out, displays a shining example of that famous British tradition. Tragicomedy in 3 acts:

Act 1: the roots of the problem

Four young Household Cavalry officers (same unit where Prince Harry serves, incidentally) return home after a tour of duty in Afghanistan. They decide to rent a house together, to have some R&R after after months risking their lives on the frontline.

Their choice falls upon £3,000-a-month detached home in picturesque Datchet, Berks, less than a mile from Windsor Castle. They visit the home, everything is to their liking and the deal is struck.

Act 2: The incident

Some neighbors do not like the fact that the British army officers are going to inhabit the house, and two days after the officers’ visit the house had bricks thrown through windows and was daubed with messages of hate. The perpetrators happen to be, according to The Sun, “Muslim yobs”.

Sources inside Windsor’s Combermere Barracks - where the officers are based - confirmed Muslims had made calls threatening the men.

To those who lost the plot because of the length of this post, a reminder: this happened in United Kingdom, very close to the Queen’s Windsor Castle.

There is some outrage by the vandalism, for example:

Last night furious Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said: “This is a shocking development.”

Colleagues of the officers branded the vandalism a “disgrace”. A source at the regiment said: “These guys have done nothing but bravely serve their country -— yet they can’’t even live where they want in their own country.”

A Household Cavalry insider said of the Muslims’ insult to Britain’s heroes: “Everyone in the regiment is really upset. It’s one thing coming under attack in Helmand in Afghanistan but quite another getting this abuse in England.”

BUT:

Act 3: The solution

They [the four young officers] were yesterday forced to look elsewhere to live - after top brass warned them against inflaming racial violence near the Queen’’s Windsor Castle home.

There is some other word that describes that fit of diplomatic ingenuity, but I have forgotten it at the moment. I am sure it will come to me later, though, so please stay in touch…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Via J of Justify This.

News snarks

Posted on October 19th, 2006 at 11:00 am by Meryl Yourish.

Filed under: Hamas, Israel

Reuters is reporting, well, news: Ohmigod! Reuters is reporting that Hezbullah used cluster bombs on Israeli civilians. Quick, write this down in your diary; you’ll never see its like again. Of course, the article spends about 90% of its words accusing Israel of doing the same, but it’s a start.

Gee, it’s not like he was kidnapped or anything like that: The palestinians are complaining because—get this—Israel wants them to return Cpl. Gilad Shalit, whom they kidnapped after killing several of his comrades—for nothing. Because, like, well, kidnapping is simply a legal tactic, right? Everyone does it to get what they want, right?

Siam implied that the implementation of the deal failed because of Israel , and said that “the deal failed or was halted because there are those who want to release the Israeli soldier for nothing.”

The story also says that Iran paid Hamas $50 million not to let Shalit go. Wow. One Jew is worth $50 million? I knew we were pretty valuable, but wow.

I wonder how much I’m worth on the open market?

We told you so: Say, remember all those worried about how when Israel left the Philadelphi Corridor, Hamas would start smuggling weapons into Gaza? Well, guess what? They did.

TEL AVIV — The Israeli army announced Wednesday that it had uncovered nine tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Egypt in a sweep designed to prevent Palestinian militants from smuggling in the types of advanced weapons used by Hezbollah in the recent conflict in Lebanon.

Of course, the Times uses a lot of weasel words “Israel believes,” “Israel says”—when referring to why those tunnels exist (here’s a hint: Weapons, weapons, weapons). But it’s more than the AP has done, which won’t even use the words “smuggling” and “tunnel” in the headline to their story about the smuggling tunnels. The headline?


Israel Kills 2 Palestinians in Gaza

No, there’s no bias here.

Vote for me for the Virginia Senate seat

Posted on October 19th, 2006 at 7:00 am by Meryl Yourish.

Filed under: Politics

I’ve decided that I want no part of either George Allen or Jim Webb. Or the independent candidate. And talking to some of my friends, we discovered we feel about the same.

So I’m announcing my write-in candidacy for the U.S. Senate position in Virginia.

That’s right. Vote for me. I’m fairly honest, haven’t got any skeletons in my closet that I can think of (other than a few embarrassing facts about what I did during college and immediate post-college years). I think we need to tighten up our policies on illegal immigration while revamping our entire outlook on legal immigration (there, there’s your national issue). I am totally against that stupid marriage amendment, because I don’t have a problem with gay marriage. I support the war against terrorism, and as my readers know, am a staunch proponent of Israel.

And I am definitely not in favor of excessive taxation—particularly when I look at my paycheck every Friday.

Let’s see: I’m also pro-choice, in favor of Affirmative Action, an unabashed feminist, in favor of the fence along our southern border, pro-death penalty in most cases, but in favor of strict rules of evidence to make sure we’re not executing the wrong person.

So there, I’m sort of a mix between the two candidates without the added baggage of being a career politician. And I promise to serve two terms and let someone else have a chance, because in twelve years I’ll be—wow, twelve years older. Never mind, don’t ask, but I’ll still look better than Hillary will by that time. Hell, I look better than her now.

As for PAC money and soft money funds: Um, do they take Paypal?

By the way, nope, not kidding. I’m writing myself in come Election Day, and I think I just convinced Sarah and Larry to vote for me, too.

If you don’t want to vote for the two goofballs running on the party tickets, then vote for me. At least you know I’d be an honest goofball.

Thanks

Posted on October 19th, 2006 at 12:58 am by Meryl Yourish.

Filed under: Life

Thanks to those of you who have hit the tipjars this past week. It’s been a big help, and Gracie’s bills are piling up.

So are the rest of the bills, come to think of it.

Good thing I get paid every week.