Tag Archives: cats

burn

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Noah gets up a half hour later than usual. I’m already in the living room sipping my first café latte. He pops his head out of his room and smiles.

Widely. Gloriously.

Ouaga, the cat, has been fretting, growling and miauling. She bumped her head against my closed door as I woke at 7. Unleashed a desperate “Arrrouuunnwww” and ran to her empty dish when I went to the bathroom.

“Sorry, fat cat, go wake the little guy. It’s his job.”

I swear, she slapped her forehead before swinging her fatness over to Noah’s darkened room. I heard a newly emphatic “Arrrounwww”.

For a full half hour she ran back and forth between the living room and the boy’s room, throwing meaning looks and singing her sad feline tune.

Finally, Noah is up… and smiling. The cat is beside herself with joy and anticipation, rubbing against his legs and cooing like a pigeon on four legs.

Noah and the cat bond in the bathroom. I hear them communicating. Noah is gentle and patient. The cat rolls it’s tongue in dulcet tones.

Noah leaps out of the bathroom and bounds on the futon beside me.

“Dad, I gave her like fresh water, too.”

“Great, she’s been waiting for you like a long lost friend.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, running back and forth and waiting for you to wake.”

“I love Ouaga, because, like even if she’s super hungry she lets me sleep, you know?”

Yeah, because she’s too busy banging her head against my door to wake me up, instead.

Noah settles in front of his six-berry muffin and tall glass of milk. He turns on the TV to his favorite show…Beyblade.

“Hey, Noah, it’s this morning that Subasa fights the last Beyblade battle and we find out who wins the semifinals.”

Noah throws me a perplexed look.

“Exactly.”

“I’m pumped. I hope Subasa wins. I like him, he’s been through a lot.”

“Yeah he had to … .”

He pauses, stares at his muffin, plucks out a massive blueberry which seems to have taken more steroids than Lance Armstrong. He rolls it around in his fingers before throwing it in his mouth and popping it with a loud noise.

“Uhm now that was one hell of blueberry.”

He turns to me, wide-eyed.

“Oops!”

“A heaven of a blueberry would make more sense.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t exist.”

“So make it up.”

“True.”

We go silent as the cartoon starts. Anime boys and girls with cool spiky hair and big eyes battle with spinning tops for honor and friendship.

“Dad, I’m afraid Subasa won’t win because like you know he’s had to fight the dark side.”

“But he defeated the darkness inside him, right? By accepting it and going into it rather than trying to deny it.”

Noah again throws me a look.

“Dad, you really do listen!”

“I sure do.”

We watch Subasa struggle to channel the darkness without being overwhelmed, all in extravagant cartoon style with yells and bravado.

“You know, Noah, I just realized that the core of Subasa’s struggle is the same as the protagonist in the film I’m going to shoot next month.”

“You mean Samuel Beckett?”

I nod in appreciation.

“Exactly. Wow, you really do listen?”

He turns, pleased, and does a ghetto move with slashing hands and three extended fingers.

“Burn!”

I wet my finger and touch it to his shoulder.

“Tssss.. hot.”

I pull my finger back as if scorched.

The cat has finished her gorging. She jumps on the futon and slides onto Noah’s narrow lap. She turns and twists, claws extended, until she settles down and falls instantly asleep.

“Ow,” says Noah, before scratching her between the ears.

On the TV, Subasa has turned it around and is about to win the battle and his dark side.

“It was clear that the darkness I had always struggled to keep under is, in reality, my most precious asset.” Samuel Beckett

Queens and guillotines

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Noah sneaks into my room.

I have my back to the door, but I hear him despite Adele roaring her despair in my headphones. I’ve been staring out the window, writing. Yes, yes, staring out the window is writing, even if the fingers aren’t moving across the keyboard. Most of my writing happens inside the walls of my being. Occasionally, some of it overflows into shareable words.

Occasionally.

Noah comes up to within a few inches of my back. I can feel his question.

Today is Monday. Two days left before the school year starts. He’s bored. I’m desperate. Wild horses run through me. So difficult to remember why I need to write except that when I don’t I feel worse.

Barely enough of a reason.

I slip my headphones off.

“Yes, Noah?”

He rubs his head against mine. Adults without children would scream “emotional manipulation, he wants something.”

Parents just scream.

Of course, he wants something. But the affection is real and his need to be reassured that it’s okay to want something even if he doesn’t get it, is also real.

Complex. And human. And fragile.And howlingly difficult to navigate.

“Are you working well, dad?”

Work? Oh, you mean my writing. I feel like a fraud, calling this work. I imagine the walls of my room blasting away, leaving me on a chair in midair with the blank screen.

“I’m trying, Noah.”

Of course if you gave me the hour in solitary that I’ve been asking for, something useful might actually happen.

‘The answer is no, Noah.”

“Whaaa……I didn’t even ask you anything.”

I feel like the guy on a game show that jumped the buzzer before the question Will he or will he not blow the answer?

“You were about to ask me for my IPhone so you could play.”

Noah looks sheepish. He’s still small enough that we’re at the same height only when I’m sitting and he’s standing.

Game show guy jumps in victory in my head, before he’s blown away by my rage at having to defend my shrunken space when I’m not even sure it’s worth it.

“Noah, I told you last night, you’re becoming addicted to TV, Nintendo, computer, Iphone to the point that you no longer know how to use your brain to read, write, draw.”

“But dad…”

“No, no. I need you to step out of the room, close my door and go get busy or bored, it’s up to you. But find something to do that reminds you you have a brain.”

Oh no! The slack jawed, “how can you be such an ass, dad” look… and he’s not leaving.

Waiting for a miracle? Like father, like son?

I wave him away and turn back to my screen. I crank the music to loud in my headphones. Blast my eardrums. Semi-deafness might actually improve my cohabitation skills. I wouldn’t hear the sigh and the door closing noisily behind me.

So, what is it exactly that is so important that I need ‘my space’? I sound like the juvenile ass I am.

The little old lady with the bitchy Pekingese across the street, comes out to sweep her balcony. She does it every morning, even though nobody ever dirties her entrance.

I write every morning even though it makes no sense.

A shimmering promise of an idea lifts in my mind as I watch the eddies of dust raised by her broom. There was dirt after all.

Suddenly, our fat black cat jumps on the sill outside my window. We’re three floors up, yet she shows no concern on the narrow ledge. She’s more afraid of me.Well, sort of.

“What the hell do you want now?”

She slips through the open window, throws me a look before rushing to my closed door to be let out.

“Really, geez.”

I let the bitch out. Damn that’s not even the right word! She’s female all right, but not a bloody dog. What was the right term, again? I remember knowing it.

I step out of my room. There is Noah lying down in front of the TV. The balcony door is closed. Which is why the cat was forced through my window.

“Really?”

The TV is so loud, he doesn’t hear. It’s Sccoby-doo. An episode I’ve seen him watch many times already.

“NOAH!” He jumps.

“Dad, you scared me. No need to scream like that.”

“I told you. No TV. And you closed the balcony door so the cat had to come in my room and bug me.”

“I didn’t think of it.”

“Because your brain has liquefied and poured into your underwear. Turn the damn thing off.”

He does so, so slowly, so reluctantly that if I was in any way a violent type, he would become a punching ball.

“Since, you have no idea how to entertain yourself, I will keep you busy. First, you take a shower. Then you clean up your room. And only when that is finished can you come see me. Is that clear?”

That look again! Tell you, man, this requires self-control beyond anything I’ve experienced.

“IS IT CLEAR?”

“Yeeeeeesssssss.” Dripping with ill will.

I step back into my room before I charge him.

Back at my window, the old lady has finished her job. Wish I could say the same. My cursor is blinking on an unfinished sentence. I erase the damn thing.

Had no promise anyways.

I look to my left. Shit. I didn’t mail the rent check. I chase the thought away. Must make space for that elusive brilliance.

The door behind me opens.

Again?

Noah walks in.

“Where do I put these, dad?”

He holds up a handful of hangers. The ones that hang on the shower rod, ready to take the clothes that come from the washer.

Adults without parents would say that he’s looking for trouble. That this needs to be dealt with once and for all.

Once is never for all with a kid. It’s over and over and over until they’re old enough to fuck off for good.

“Where do hangers generally hang?”

“Uh, closets?”

“And how many bloody closets are there outside of my room?

“Euh, three?”

“My brain is my brain, to be used, now and then, for my own thoughts. You have a brain of your own, or at least you did at birth. So use it. NOW. And don’t you dare bother me again. When I step out of this room is when you can talk to me. Not before. Now, get out!”

The little &%?$@ backs out so he can stare me down for longer. The door bangs shut.

I turn back to the screen.The cat has snuck into my room and is hiding under my desk.

Queen! That’s the term for a female cat. Where’s a guillotine when you need one?

I resist the urge to kick her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

sweet dreams?

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“Dad, are you getting up already?”

The clock on the stove reads 6:35 a.m.

The reflection in the hallway mirror reads puffy eyes, twisted pillow face and furrowed frown.

The sun is barely up and he’s already ensconced on the futon, laptop heating up his little chicken legs and blaring video game challenges at full volume.

6:35 a.m. This conversation will not be profitable.

“No, just going for a pee.”

“Oh good! Not because I don’t like when we spend time together, you know dad, but I like having my mornings. You understand?”

“I understand.” I head for the bathroom.

I concentrate and aim for the porcelain. In this early morning fog, the quality of my day hangs in the balance. The last thing I want is to be wiping my urine off the walls. Just at the critical moment of flow, the cat sticks her head between my legs and stands there, eyes blinking with the splash of the toilet. I can’t move to chase her for fear of misdirecting what is still evacuating.

“Stupid cat, get the hell out of there.”

“What dad? I didn’t hear you,” screams Noah from the living room, over the clicking cacophony of his game.

“Was talking to the cat.” I scream back from the bathroom, over the noise of my downpour.

“What?”

Going back to bed is fading as an option.

The cat meows, wipes my pee splatter off her head by rubbing against my leg. I resist the urge to just kick her to the bejesus and back. Instead I wash my hands.

As I step out of the bathroom I run straight into Noah.

“Look, dad, look how much I blew out.”

He’s holding out two handfuls of snot filled paper towels. Ready for inspection.

“Tons of it, huh? Yeah, that’s why I feel soooo much better, it’s like I was never, it’s like I never, you know had fever. Look in my throat, you’ll see.”

He drops the snot rags on the table and hands me my cheap glasses and a flashlight.

My eyes look back at me from the mirror. Barely slits, certainly not willing to be useful.

I put on the glasses and click on the flashlight and twist Noah’s head back.

“Say aaaaaahhhhh!”

He says aaaaaaahhhhh.

I focus light and eyes and brain on the back of his throat.

Clean. Healthy. Pink. No Babylonian hanging gardens of mucus.

“All clean.”

“Told you, hunh.”

“Yeah. Good news.”

“So what are we doing today, dad?”

I slip off the glasses and try to refocus on mid range objects. There’s the bloody cat standing beside her empty dish with a ‘What the fuck are you waiting for?’ look.

“Did you feed your monsters, Noah? The noisy fat one and the silent finny one.”  We have a cat and a fish.

‘It’s too early, dad, like, then they’ll be hungry at the wrong times and like I can’t be here to feed them all the time, you know?”

I nod. How he forgets that when it involves his snacking desires.

“Dad, what’s for breakfast? I’m like sorta hungry. Because you know I’m not sick anymore.”

“Noah did you even look?”

“Where?”

“Where I always lay out your breakfast.”

He looks around as if it could be floating tantalizingly in mid air.

“I don’t see it.”

I used to think that he did it on purpose. Now I know how blind and dumb they can be. Alternating with ‘all-knowing’ and ‘all-seeing’.

“The table.”

A splendid cherry danish sits under it’s delightfully sticky icing.

“Oh!” says my wonder.

He heads for the fridge and pulls out the glass of milk that always waits to accompany the pastry. He sips while walking, threatening a spill.

I keep my peace.

He sits, almost dropping the glass as he places it by the danish.Then he remembers something.

“Dad, why don’t you go back to bed? Like, it’s really early for you.”

Yeah, why don’t I go to bed. I nod.

“Later Noah.”  I wave and head to my room. I hear Noah wishing me sweet dreams.

I drop on my bed, push the door shut with my foot. I turn this way, turn that way. I hear the cat bang its head against my door. Literally. Just in case, she meows and bangs again.

Sweet dreams. Sure. Maybe if I wake up now … The kid will be at school, the cat will be fed and some delightfully naked lady will be making pancakes with lots of maple syrup which we will feed each other before falling into sticky lovemaking.

The door cracks open.

“Are you asleep, dad?”

“Yes.”

Old joke but it always works.

“Hahaha, good one dad. It’s just like, the cat, she puked everywhere, and it’s really gross.”

Sweet dreams, he had said.

I swing my legs over the edge of my bed. If it were a ledge I would jump. But with my luck I would probably end up quadriplegic, sucking through a straw and pissing into a bag.

So I jump off my bed.

“Dad, I know what we could do today.”

“Pick up the puke?”

“After that…”

“Feed her so she can puke some more?”

“Daaaaaadddd.”

“Noooaaaaaaaaaahhhh.”

I step out of my room and straight into a furry mucky puddle of cat vomit. Noah starts laughing like the dork he is.

I dart a look at the mirror. There’s Annie Lennox.

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree
I travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for something

Sweet dreams are made of this? A challenge!

“Sorry dad, it’s just too funny.”

And I’m the punchline. Despite my best efforts, a smile cracks across my face as I go for the paper towels and spray cleaner.

 

goblins, pavlov…

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…and cats

“You know why the cat spends the whole night with me dad?”

He’s bouncing this morning. Clearly rested.

“Yeah, last night and the night before too. When i went to bed, she was like hanging around outside my room. You know the way cats just sit and stare. Yeah, when I was a kid it would drive me crazy she like never listened to me. Yeah, so I told her that there were goblins in the house and that my room was protected, you know dad that thing, uhm, that we hung there, you know that Indian thing…”

“…the dream catcher that traps bad dreams?”

“Yeah, yeah, I told Ouaga that it stopped the goblins from coming in my room and she just rushed in and jumped on my bed and never left. Cool huh?”

“That you scared her into submission? I don’t know.”

“I didn’t scare her….I motivated her.”

“‘Mmmm…”

“You do that to me all the time. Motivate. Listen, don’t interrupt, dad…just joking dad, just joking, it’s funny, I like sounding like you sound, you know?”

Little dork.

“So, yeah, I motivated her because like she loves being with me but it’s like if I scratch on the covers and call her she doesn’t come, even if she wants to. Weird huh? So I’m forced to motivate her. You know?”

“So you would want me to motivate you by scaring the bejesus out of you?”

“You already do that, dad. I don’t want to hurt your feelings but, you know when I get a bad note in my agenda or something, I’m like waiting for when I have to show it to you and I’m all ‘oh no, I don’t want him to get mad at me’. So yeah.”

“Does it work?”

“Oh yeah.”

Interesting. Particularly interesting that I’ve reached a moment in my life where the conversation is not about whether or not the cat can understand about goblins… that goes without saying.

Kids and cats share a common language. They both understand everything but hear nothing of what you’re asking of them. They want food, shelter, clean litter and caresses but….on their own terms.

And kids and cats both give you that tired, heavy-lidded look of “Huh!?! what is it you want?”

“You slept all night again….”

“Not really dad. I woke like at 1h30 and then I went back to bed and didn’t fall asleep all night.”

So unlikely that he spent the night awake while I slept. I would have heard him….I hear everything since I’ve become a MaPa.

“Whether or not you slept…you stayed in bed and rested.”

“Yeah, you know dad, since you huh said I could have Eternal Computer Time everyday I let you sleep all night long, it’s like I want it so bad that I stay in bed. Even if I like feel like coughing, or my stomach hurts, like last night, I say nothing.”

“It’s called motivation.”

A quick celebratory run on the drums… a mental tadah!!

“Dad. Can I go on the computer tomorrow morning, like if I don’t wake you again all night tonight?”

“That’s the deal.”

“Sweet!”

I’m using an old Russian trick…Pavlov’s dog, where they rang a bell and showed the dog food simultaneously. They did this often enough, that eventually the sound of the bell alone would make the dog salivate. Eventually, Noah will sleep all night, even if I reduce  his Eternal Computer Time to something less.

Bait and switch. After all, sleeping all night is something he wants, but somehow resists.

Kids and cats. Gotta learn to talk to them.

 

pillow…

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…talks

He pees. I wake up. It’s 6:15 a.m.

Lately, I’ve been waking slowly, emerging from pleasant imaginings. The dream feeling is delicious. The waking feels like ripping away from someone I love.

The delicious is instantly replaced by the deleterious.

I have a full bladder so I verticalize and stumble to the bathroom to join my liquid gold to Noah’s. The cat meows beside her empty dish. It’s a mere two feet from the toilet bowl, so I wonder whether urine and food have become wonderfully connected in her pea-brain. Like people, who eat shit and like it, metaphorically.

Noah is back in bed, wide awake and pretending to sleep. I join him, snuggle under the covers of his narrow bed. He fakes sleep, closed eyes, open mouth. Until the cat rushes to join us.

Whenever Noah and I huddle together, bed or futon or whatever, the cat will hurry to push her big butt into us. She turns and turns and purrs and purrs and generally settles her full weight on Noah.

The cat jumps on the bed and the boy.

“Ouuuufff, she’s got her claws out.” He’s forgotten to pretend-sleep.

The cat is in fact flexing the pads on her paws, claws in full extension, softening the spot before dropping down and going instantly to sleep.

“Push her off, Noah.”

“No, I like it when she does that. Even if it hurts it’s because she loves me. Little-bitty-cutey pie, you love me too eh, Ouagaaaaaa.”

He’s scratching her behind the ear. She’s contorting and purring, pushing against his fingers for maximum effect. Her claws are dancing a slow number on his chest.

Damn…. sounds like soft porn. Gotta stop.

“Look dad, even Crounsey wants to join in.”

The Siamese fighting fish on Noah’s night table does seem to be staring through the fish bowl at the family follies.

“Crounsey has become a good friend, dad. He’s part of the family now. And what’s really cool is that, you know, when I feed him? Yeah, we talk. And like I tell him everything, dad. Yeah, it’s because Crounsey is really good with secrets.”

“How about the cat?”

“Naaaaahhhh….shes gossipy, talks all the time. Meeeowww, wow-meeewwwwowww. She never stops.”

“Yeah, but it’s cat talk.”

“Soooo !?!. When she goes on the balcony, there’s like cats everywhere and they communicate, dad.”

“Sure, but I think they talk about poo and food and birds. They don’t care who you’re dating.”

“Dad, I’m nine! I don’t date. I just have a crush, it’s reeeeaaalllyyy not the same. Dad, did you ever like have a crush, on like a girl.”

“Oh, yeah, hundreds!”

“Hundreds! Wow, I’ve only like had four. And two of them were for the same girl.”

“You had a crush twice on the same girl? How’s that possible?”

“Easy. I had a crush on, remember in daycare, when I was like, how old?”

“5.”

“Yeah, five, I had a crush on Ludi. Then I went to school and she went to another school and like I forgot all about her.”

New chicks everywhere in Grade One.

“Yeah and then we like went to the park in summer and remember we like met her again and BOUM, I was crushed again.”

I crush, you crush, we all get crushed!!

“Yeah, it’s like that, dad.”

A moment of silence. He winces as the cat plants her claws a little deeper. She stretches in purrrfect delight. The fish looks on, pokerfaced.

“Dad, when I’m old like you I want to like get married and have kids. But you know when I get married it won’t like be because I’m crushed. That’s for kids. I’ll be an adult. Owww….Ouaga, not the jewels.”

He moves out from under the cat whose claws have strayed to vulnerable areas.

“I’ll need those if I want kids, right dad? Hah, that’s a good one.”

The cat jumps out of bed, the kid follows. I join the movement. I look over the shoulder. The fish is crawling out of its bowl.

We’re all rushing to be crushed.

 

 

signify…

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…insignify

“Dad, I’ll be sad when Ouaga dies.” Ouaga is our cat.

“Me, too.”

He’s in my bed, frozen feet warming on my belly. This morning he woke early and rushed to join me.

Happily, since I woke even earlier and was fighting a mounting sense of panicked emptiness.

“Really? But you kick her all the time.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

Strangely reassuring this tit for tat with no significance. After spending a lifetime questing for meaning, tracking signs, I now will endeavor to Insignify: to make nonsense not meaning.

Yes, its an invented word and no, I don’t care.

“She’s still young, you know, Noah. She’s nowhere close to dying. Right now she’s like a large but healthy middle-aged woman. Like your principal.”

“Noooooo…she’s nasty. Ouaga is nice. She loves me! Dad? Do you think she loves me more than you, because like… you kick her.”

“But I feed her.”

My mind reflexively casts for patterns… for… for… for MEANING!!. Oh no!

“Dad, where will we like bury her when she’s dead?”

Insignify!

“We have no land, maybe we could stuff her and keep her by your bed.”

“Oh, gross!!”

“That’s true, she would pick up too much dust.”

“Daddy, we have to respect her so that she you know, travels to somewhere that is like cat heaven.  You know? Do you believe in a cat heaven, dad?”

Metaphysics is dead, Noah! After having destroyed generations of thinkers in ceaseless, useless searches for deeper meaning outside of themselves, I declare it dead!

“Nah, I don’t.”

“Really?”

That gives him pause. He turns and kicks me in the origins of his life.

“Ouuuff.”

“Sorry dad. Are you ok?”

I grimace and play dead.

“Hah…is that what they called face contortions on TV yesterday?”

I say nothing and continue playing dead.

“Dad, stop, you’re freaking me out now.”

I’m freaking myself out, too. Too easy to imagine the moment of my death.

Insignify! Insignify!

I roll onto him and smother him. He laughs, giggles, hollers.

Its infectious.

Beats being afraid of death…or feeling that the meaning has gone out of my life because people and things and long-held beliefs are disappearing. What’s the point of decades of living if nothing remains?

Oh no!

Insignify! Insignify! Insignify!