When cats become serial killers

Earlier this week there was a news segment on a study conducted by a university.  They attached little cameras onto domestic cats and tracked their activities.  The study said, basically, that cats are serial killers who kill just for the fun of it.  

I live in the country and depend on my cats to do just that.  If a mouse gets into my house, I expect them to dispatch the rodent posthaste.  That is why I gave them their own eBay account, as payment for services rendered.  

I would have thought Schooner would be the mouser, because he loves to play with toys, but both times (that I know about) there has been a rodent incident, it has been Hobiecat, not Schooner, who has committed the justifiable homicide.

I wondered why.  Hobie would rather sleep, while Schooner would rather play fetch with me, bat cat balls around in the middle of the night, drag toys all over the house, and hide them behind the piano.  So why doesn't he want to participate in the hunt and kill game most cats enjoy?

I watched him for a while and I think he may not be stealthy enough to hunt.  He thinks he is hidden when he isn't.  

Schooner thinks he is completely hidden

Schooner, wondering if I'll ever find him

The last couple of days I've been working with Schooner, trying to teach him how to hunt, so he can share in the fun of murdering helpless rodents.  After all, Hobie might want to take a vacation some day.  After a full day of training, with charts and grafts and flip charts and a pop quiz or two, Schooner was exhausted.

Schooner taking a rest on the sofa

 But now I'm beginning to think I made a mistake when I taught him how to hunt.

Schooner  (and why do I feel like prey?)

The Brigand Schooner

*******Update*******

All six of the cat toy balls with the bells inside--that were rescued from behind the piano last weekend--are missing (see previous post).

The Brigand Schooner

While doing laundry this evening, I decided to incarcerate the brigand, Schooner, in kitty jail until he gives up the location of the loot. 

His brother, Hobiecat, is not willing to be an informer.

Potential Informer, Hobiecat

King me

Piano with basket of cat toys on lower left

Today I decided to rearrange the furniture in the living room.  I don't do this very often because I have two pianos, a huge, old, walnut armoire, and the usual furniture. Everything is heavy and the cats do nothing to help.  In fact, they formed a rambunctious audience, I thought, until I pulled one of the pianos out from the wall and began to shove it across the room. It was then I realized the cats were anxious, as in Poe's Tell-Tale Heart.

Behind the piano (which I thought was flush against the wall to prevent creatures from gathering back there), I found six round cat balls with bells inside, the pit of an avocado, a balled aluminum foil wrapper from some confection, and eleven checkers.

I'm not pulling out the other piano.  I'm pretty sure that is where they have been hiding all the stuff they've been buying from eBay.

Christmas Reflections

Christmas Time

Time for frightful reflection

It is here again.  It is a time of joy, laughter, loving, giving, family, friends, the clink of eggnog and brandy cups, the smell of cinnamon, the blinking reds, greens, blues and yellows of sparkling lights lining the roofs and circling the branches of fragrant Nobel firs.  And it is a time of acute embarrassment.

At least for me.

This year.

It started on Monday.  I hate being late.  In college, Robert Barthol, my California Criminal Law teacher, made us sign in for each class.  He’d snatch up the clipboard the moment the big hand reached the twelve.  If we came in late, he’d give us an opportunity to explain.  If he thought it a good reason, he’d let us sign in.  At the end of the quarter, he told us those who were signed in for every class could use him as a job reference.  Since then, I’ve valued punctuality, so when I remembered my dental cleaning appointment on Monday, and glanced at my watch, I rushed to the car and floored it out of my driveway.  With my right foot on the brake, and my left foot thumping the floor, I waited behind school bus, after school bus, finally careening into the parking lot nine minutes late. 

“Do I have time to, ah, go use the little room over there?” I asked the woman at the front desk, waving my hand toward the far end of the lobby.

She made a show of glaring at me, moving her eyes to the large clock ticking on the wall, and back to me.  “I really don’t think so.  She’ll need the whole hour to do you.”

I was on her naughty list, but she’d not even give me a lump of coal if I didn’t make that stop first. 

 

“I’ll rush,” I said, and loped across the room.  When I came out, the hygienist stood at the front desk, holding a thick file, her eyes sweeping the waiting room.  “Melanie?”

“I’m here,” I said, and clipped past all the people in the lobby, past the disapproving receptionist and followed the hygienist past x-ray room, past all the dentist treatment rooms, and past other hygienist’s rooms. 

At the end of the hall, she pointed to a doorway. “In here.” 

I brushed by her and laid my pocketbook on the counter. 

“Um,” the hygienist said, and moved closer to me, whispering in my ear, “you, ah, have a streamer.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, a couple of days later I couldn’t get warm at my house. I packed up my computer and drove to a Starbucks.  Once I had my latte, I leaned back in my chair, drew in the scent of brewing coffee, stretched my legs in front of me and took a sip of the steamy liquid.  But out of the corner of my eyes, I saw my navy blue socks clashing with the black pants and black shoes.  I downed the drink and walked stiff-legged out the door.

Tonight, I wanted to place a couple of Christmas CDs in my ancient stereo system, but couldn’t find the correct remote.  Every remote I found did nothing to turn on the stereo.  Honestly, I don’t even have that much in the way of electronic equipment.  I don’t even have cable, so what the heck do all these remotes operate, I thought.

I rocked back on my heels and sucked in a panicked breath.   Heat lit my face like a Christmas tree. 

 

I’m old.

That is the embarrassing conclusion.  There is no other explanation.  When you can’t figure out what each remote is for, that is the time you have to ask your children to come over and label everything for you, with detailed, pictured instructions.  And they should check your fire alarm batteries.  The week makes sense now.

  

Merry Christmas.  It is Christmas, right?

And Then I Was in Traction

Hidden Rhetorical Questions

and how to handle them

Years ago I quit a job to take a promotion at another facility.  After several months I attended a sporting event where both companies were in attendance.  As I strolled along in front of the bleachers, clutching a diet cola and fixing the shoulder-strap of my purse on my shoulder, I greeted old friends and smiled at new ones. A woman I had known for several years waved me over.  “Melanie, Melanie, how are you?”

“I’m fine, Phyllis.  How are things going with you?”

“Fine, fine.”  She leaned forward and lowered her voice into a conspiratorial stage whisper.  “Tell me all about your new job.  Have you had any problems?”

It was a pretty dicey job, so it didn't surprise me she'd ask that question.  As it happened, I'd had big problems my second day.  Enough where I'd wondered if I'd made a mistake in taking the job.  “Well, it is going pretty well.  My second day there--”

“Frank,” Phyllis looked past me.  “Frank, how are you doing?”

I paused, not sure if her question had been rhetorical or not.  Perhaps she was just greeting everyone as they ambled past, and really didn't want an answer.

“Hey Phyllis, nice to see you,” Frank called.

Phyllis returned her attention to me.  “Your second day?”

With that encouragement, I continued. “Oh my second day,” I began, but her eyes glazed over and refocused somewhere behind me. 

“Wendy, how is everything with you?” she called.

There were people sitting all around Phyllis and I could feel my cheeks burn as they witnessed the snub.  Trying to cover the cut direct, I continued as if Phyllis were actually listening.  Perhaps the people wouldn’t realize how unimportant I was.  “Yes, my second day I got into a big fight, trying to protect my co-worker.”

Someone stopped behind me momentarily.  “I’m fine, Phyllis.  And you?”  Must have been Wendy.

This happened to me too often to be coincidence.  People would ask me a question and my answers were so uninteresting they could not be bothered to listen to them.  It made me feel small, like an ant in the shadow of an elephant’s footstep.  I straightened my shoulders and continued, “The person grabbed hold of my co-worker’s hair, took her down to the floor, and started snapping her head back and forth.  I jumped on top of the bad-guy and the fight was on.”

“I’m great, Wendy.” Phyllis grinned past me, occasionally flicking her eyes to mine to encourage me to go on.  “It is nice to see you and your kids.  They’ve really grown.”

“Yup,” I explained calmly.  “It took three deputies to break up the fight.”

Wendy and her kids must have moved along because Phyllis glanced at me again.  “Oh?”

“It was a rude beginning to my new job,” I said.

“Oh, I can imagine.” Her gaze slid past me again.  “Bill, how the heck are you?”

“When they pulled us apart, there was blood everywhere," I continued just to be obstinate.  "and a big wad of my co-worker's hair.  They rushed me to the hospital,” I added as an afterthought.  No reaction from Phyllis.  “And then I was in traction for a month.”

“Hey, Phyllis,” Bill barked.  “I’m the heck fine.  Glad to see you here.”

“Then they released me to one of those convalescent hospitals where I underwent extensive physical therapy,” I went on, folding my arms across my chest, juggling the cola, and jutting my chin.

“Glad to see you too, Bill,” Phyllis gushed.

Really warming to my subject, I plowed on, “I only just regained the use of my legs. 
The entire medical staff was amazed.”

“Where’s your wife, Bill?”

“Considering they were thinking I’d lose a kidney.”

“She’s working,” Bill answered, his voice distant now, as if he’d kept walking.

“But they think if I’m really careful I should retain my sight.”

“Bummer,” Phyllis called to Bill.

“But other than that, everything is going well,” I finished, sending her a friendly smile.

Phyllis returned her gaze to me.  “Wonderful,” she said.  “Glad everything’s going well.”

As I walked away, I heard snickering from the row behind Phyllis, and a few guffaws.  I felt a thrill of victory.  Someone had been interested, even if it was a stranger.  It gave me a new sense of confidence. I started my first novel shortly after. 

A scream in the night

I'm still shivering and my hair is wet.

This evening I was returning from a writing event, speeding past farms and dairies, not quite out as far as the wildlife refuge (my house), when I spotted in the headlight beams what looked like some eyes beside the road.  Then they were gone.  Ever vigilant for the crafty black tailed deer who wait until they see my car coming and then merrily dash out to scare the living daylights out of me, I braked.  Hard.  As the car slid to a stop, I saw the swish of a long, dark tail, and a head lift briefly before going back to grazing.  This was no deer.  It was a horse.

Study of Wild Horses--Albert Bierstadt  1830-1902

Scenes of chasing my neighbor's rambunctious horses in the middle of the night in my youth flashed through my mind.  There are no street lights out in the wilds of the Vancouver hills and people travel in excess of 55 MPH.  Not me, of course, but others  I.turned on my emergency flashers and pulled into the next driveway, leaving my car near the road, and walked back toward the horse, cooing sweet horse nothings.  The beast turned his rear toward me and trotted ten feet away.  Yup, I thought.  This is going to be a problem.

The gravel crunched as I picked my way up the driveway to the house.  It was nearly 9 PM, but I could see  light through the windows.  I rang the bell.  Rang it again, stamping to keep out the cold.  No one came to the door and I could hear a car screaming down the road.  I jogged back down to the pavement and tried to wave to the driver to slow down but I was wearing all black and I know they couldn't see me.  I squeezed my eyes closed and hunched my shoulders as it flew past, dreading the thud of 900 lbs of horse meeting the bumper of a vehicle traveling at 60 MPH.

No impact, and the car careened away, unimpeded.

I crossed in the darkness and found another driveway.  It was misting, and I hugged my rain jacket against me in the 45 degree air.  A fire burned cheerfully in the fireplace and several lights were on in the back rooms.  I pounded on the door.  Seven times.  A doberman's face appeared on the other side of the glass in the door, but the wild barking did not bring anyone to investigate.  I knocked again.  Nothing, except the dog, teeth bared and frantic barking.

I walked back to the street, crossed and searched for the horse, but didn't see it.  Back in the car, I retraced my route, turned around about a quarter of a mile away and returned.  The horse was back beside the road, grazing again.  I pulled into a new driveway, lights flashing, got out and groped my way up to the door.  A light came one.  The door opened.

"Sorry to bother you but there is a horse loose beside the street and I know if it were mine, I'd want to be told--"

"Oh my God.  A horse?  Just one?  Where?"

I pointed down the road.  We couldn't see it, but her light was shining into a paddock beside her house, where a white horse pranced back and forth, tail high, and whickered nervously.  "Oh my God, it's mine.  Two of them are out."

She leaped off the porch, yelping out names.  "Where are they? Where are they?" she called to me.

I jogged back to the road, and make out the silhouette of one, its head up, ears pricked forward.  It started dancing away from me.  "Over there,  It is over there."  I pointed, but it was too dark to see.  "Here, here, this way." I called.

Then I saw headlights coming.   In each direction.  She saw them too.  Her voice rose an octave as she hollered for her horses.  The loose horse started to canter across the street.  The horse in the paddock paraded  back and forth along the fence, whinnying and snorting.  Out of nowhere a second dark, shape bounded past into the street.  The headlights closed in from both directions.  The woman bellowed, her arms windmilling in the light beams, "Look out! Look out!  Slow down."

Hooves pounded down the street, horses whinnied, engines roared, the woman screamed. Panic lit the night as the two cars screamed past, finally seeing us when they were nearly on top of us, slamming on their brakes, skidding.  The horses, at full gallop, sped away until they were out of headlight beams and only their hooves flying over the pavement could be heard.

A man's voice shouted in question.  "Horses loose," I called as I jogged back to my car and backed out onto the road, the flashers still going.  "They went that way, I shouted, pointing and hoping he could see.  I inched down the road and caught a glimpse of horses and the woman running, running, and I knew there was a corner ahead and could see headlights approaching it.

The horses veered off the main road down a dirt one, the woman still chasing.  I angled my car across the junction, still with the flashers going, and jumped out, prepared to head them off if they turned around, to prevent them from getting back onto the road.   A car sneaked by me, the man holding ropes.  Another neighbor jogged down the street.  "What is going on?"

"Horses loose," I shouted.  I could just make him out as he got closer.  "Wait," I said, and fished my warm jacket out of my car.  "The horse owner has no jacket on."  I held it out.  He grabbed it on the way past.

Another car pulled up.  The driver rolled down the passenger window.  "Horses loose." I called.

She threw the car into park and leaped out.  "How many?" she asked as she hurdled past.

"Two," I said. "And they disappeared to the right about twenty yards in front of you."

Then all was quiet.  The cold seeped into my light raincoat.  Mist coated my hair.  For ten minutes I paced in the blinking yellow light of my car's flashers and wondered how long it would be before my battery suffered, stamping my feet, and blowing warm air on my hands, alert for the sounds of hooves.  Another ten minutes later a car slowly approached, and stopped at the side of the road, his beams spotlighting me.  I advanced and could just barely make out a light bar on the roof.

"Horses loose," I warned.

"Yeah, I know.  I got the call.  How many?"

"Two, and there are about five people out chasing them.  They took off to the right about twenty yards down this road."

"Okay, I'm going to go take a look," he said.

"Can you get around me?  I'm trying to block them from getting back onto the main road if they come back this way."

"Yeah, I can get by."

He squeezed past in his car and inched his way down the dirt road.

I was shivering now, hugging my jacket to me and wishing I'd worn a warmer one.  About five minutes later a white apparition materialized behind me, giving me a start until I realized it was a woman in a white ski parka.  "Where are they?"

I repeated the directions to her, but just as she started down the road, we heard the steady clopping of horses at a sedate walk.  Then we saw them come out from behind some bushes, and there were definitely two-legged shapes beside each horse.  As they got closer, I saw the owner, her hand gripping the rope around one horse and the other hand gripping my jacket.

"You didn't need the jacket?" I asked.

"No.  But thanks.  Before someone brought ropes I thought I could use it to rope one of them."  She held it out.  "I'm Denise."

"I'm Melanie." I took the jacket.

"Thank you so much for stopping.  I'm sure they'd be dead by now if you hadn't."

I followed them back a quarter of a mile, with my flashers going until they were safe in the paddock.

"Merry Christmas," I called as I did a three-point-turn in the driveway of the first house I had tried.

"And to you too," echoed out of the dark.

Can I list this as volunteer work on my resume?

Defying Death

Defying Death

I was talking with one of our suppliers the other day, and she told me she is going to Maine on her vacation.  This caused my mouth to go dry, and sweat to bead on my upper lip.  Visions jumbled into my head of the time I spent in Maine, on/in the Kennebec River the summer my older sister (who shall remain nameless)  tried to kill me.

I had traveled back to Massachusetts to visit family, and my older sister asked if I'd like to do some kayaking.  That sounded good.  I had kayaked on the stoic, flat waters of pristine lakes under the watchful eye of Mt. Hood in Oregon, and paddled down the meandering, innocent waters of the Lewis and Cowlitz rivers that feed from Mt. Saint Helens in Washington. It was relaxing and peaceful and allowed up-close interaction with Great Blue Herons and Osprey.

 "That sounds great," I said, "as long as it is an easy paddle."  She booked a trip down the Kennebec, insisting the brochure said the level was for "anyone."

When we got to the river, it turned out the first part of the trip was in a white water raft.  This concerned me because "white-water" and "kayaking" are not two terms I like to put together, but she insisted the rafting part of the trip was just the first part, and once through the rapids, we'd board the kayaks.  I had been white-water rafting on the Stanislaus River, in California, the Rio Grande, in New Mexico, and the Deschutes River in Oregon and it had been fun.  The Deschutes has one or two Class 4 rapids, depending on the water level, and before shooting them, everyone gets out and climbs over the rocks to stare at it, and plan the attack.  The guide tells the crew exactly what to expect, and how to paddle it. It is all very organized.  The rest of the Deschutes trip consists of several Class 3 rapids, and a lot of swift current that is fun in a raft, but nothing I'd want to do in a kayak.

"Okay," I said.  "Sounds good."  We got to the put-in place and my sister and I climbed into the front of the raft.

The guide shot me an assessing look.  "You are going to sit there?"

I was on the port side of the bow, and looked around me to see if there was something saying it wasn't a proper place to be.  On the Deschutes, people had always sat in the bow.  "Is there a reason why I shouldn't?"

He quirked an eyebrow.  "No reason at all."

The rest of the people crowded into the raft and we shoved off.  Within moments I heard a roaring, similar to the sound when you stand at the base of Multnomah Falls in the Columbia Gorge.  "What's that?"

It turns out that the Kennebec rafting portion is a perilous white-water trip through three miles of continuous, life-threatening Class 4 rapids.  At one point the churning waters swamped the raft as we dropped into a hole, and as we came up, I was swept overboard, sucked below the surface even though strapped into a very buoyant life-vest.  My first thought was "hang onto the paddle."  No one wants to be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.  My second thought was, "Why am I still below the surface?"  My life-vest still surrounded me, but with the force of Class 4 rapids it does not necessarily keep you on top of the water.  I fought my way toward the light, lungs burning, and gulped in a huge breath.  The rapids sucked me down again, and again, and each time I'd surface I'd only have time for a quick breath before being swamped again.  I laid on my back and kept my feet downriver, as were the instructions we'd been given at the beginning of the trip.

Coming up out of the Hole, Kennebec River

By the time they caught up to me, and dragged my nearly lifeless body into the bottom of the raft, I understood what a fish must feel after loosing a battle with a fishing line.  Except I was too exhausted to flap around.  I remained sprawled, still gripping the paddle, through two or three more treacherous death-drops, squeezing my eyes shut against the walls of spray bounding over the boat.  After several minutes of shameful cowardice, I crawled over the other passengers to my place in the bow while the craft plunged through more hurling rapids.

A short time later (a way, way too short time later, in my opinion) the guide headed to a rocky bank under the shade of birch and oak branches.  Two kayaks rested on shore.  Two.  One for me, and one for my nameless older sister.  Apparently we were the only two foolish enough to sign up for the kayaking.  With knees still shaking, I wobbled my way out of the raft and climbed onto the sit-upon blue plastic kayak, which the guide pulled into the water.  They pried the rafting paddle out of my fist and slid a kayaking paddle into it, then the guide splashed back to the raft and shoved off.  All around me the waters roared.  This was no meandering river.  As far as the eye could see, the power of the river screamed with miles of Class 3 rapids, before emptying into a more placid part of the Kennebec for the last four miles to the take-out point.

I don't remember much of kayaking the three miles of Class 3 rapids.  My mind shut down all non-essential thought and all I remember is terror and frantic paddling to keep from overturning.

When we got to the take-out place, my hands snaked to my hips and my chin jutted.  I lazered the guide with my gaze.  "How could they possibly list this journey as an "anyone can do it" trip?" I accused.

"Anyone can do it," he said, with a shrug.  "It is just that they may not be able to do it while still remaining in the boat," came the alarming reply.  Did my sister know this when she booked?  I say yes.  My mother insists she probably didn't.  I'd go along with my mother if it weren't for the fact my sister had scheduled a white-water kayaking lesson for "us" the day after our kayaking trip, on a tributary to the Kennebec.  Wouldn't you think she would have scheduled the class the day before the trip if she didn't have mayhem in mind?  And is it just me, or does anyone else find it a little too coincidental that the tributary on which the lesson was to be held, is called the Dead River?

Too late to save myself, Kennebec River

Yeah, me too.