Dear Dominik

A Mountaintop Experience

Last year - well, 2010 - there was this Internet meme: some guy saw a double rainbow at the top of a mountain, and he raved and cried and carried on to an embarrassing degree. Of course the Internet's reaction was mockery: what drugs was he taking? What was the big deal? 

I have hiked up mountains and I can tell you that no matter what you see at the top, it's extraordinary and life-altering. Partly it's the exertion: a sunset when I'm bike riding is somehow more exciting than the one out my dining room window. And partly it's the clean, clear, thin air, which acts like a drug on the human body, setting the blood fizzing and the heart soaring. Euphoria is real. I can imagine how it might feel to reach the peak and see a double rainbow. I would be a sobbing, babbling idiot too.  

Alas, when I tried to argue this point with a Facebook Snarker, I got nowhere. "I saw a double rainbow over the Santa Fe Courthouse once," he said. "And I said, Huh." Yeah, I'll just bet you did. Seen a sunset on your television screen, seen 'em all. 

***

After the FH Idol competition, I didn't want to sing anymore. The video convinced me that I can't sing for shit. "I thought I sounded better than that!" I whined, and my sister - the card-carrying Musicians Union member - tried to reassure me that sound reproduction is a huge variable. But I had to come to grips with the idea that I'm not all that. Sure, I sang just fine (pat on the head): a child's drawing stuck to the refrigerator door, when I thought I was in the top five at the juried exhibition. 'Twas a blow.

But we had plans to sing the Messiah with the Southeast Iowa Symphony Orchestra - an official tradition, now that it's been accomplished three times. So I brushed up my Sheep and learned most of the Amens and agreed with myself that I would just sing.  (In my fantasy life, of course, I continue to wow audiences.)

I came in wrong in the Glorias, and I ran out of breath during the sixteenth-note runs, but I sang. We deliberately sat in the tenor section (and I think we were mildly scolded for it), but there were two more strong, confident altos behind us, and together we took every turn and climb and plunge that is Handel's Messiah. I had become familiar enough with the choruses to listen to the other parts as I sang mine, and once or twice I FELT my part twine with the others into a pattern of perfection. Exhilaration: part exertion and part giddiness from having to breathe properly for three hours. (Singing and chanting both bring the benefits of the Zen breath.)

***

Meanwhile, my other sister was singing a Christmas concert with the City Choir of Washington, a whole different level of performance. Later I asked a friend in the audience how that concert was. "A mountaintop experience," he replied.

That's how the Messiah Sing was for me. You know: just a double rainbow. 

Downton Abbey

UPDATE: Five episodes in, it occurs to me that this is just a really well written, well acted soap opera. And to my dismay, I'm hooked.

***

Recently I read a news story about some new agreement in the United Kingdom, whereby somebody's video catalog would be streamed on somebody's service. Only the good citizens of the U.K. were all upset because Downton Abbey wasn't to be included. 

That's everything I knew about Downton Abbey, but of course it sounded much higher class than, say, Real Housewives of New Jersey, if you were going to be fanatical about a TV show. So the next time I played with my Roku, I decided to watch Downton Abbey. 

Aside: Lady Mary is Susan Sto Helit! I can't help liking her!

Of course I love the show. I was hooked when I saw Elizabeth McGovern and Maggie Smith in the opening credits. So here I am, posting about a damn TV show. 

Two of them, actually: I think I should start watching Dr. Who. But the Classic Season 1 starts with Episode 27, which seems ... random, but maybe that's a good thing. I've never been big on reading books in order, so why should I watch a show (about TIME TRAVEL) in any particular order? 

Anyway, do you recommend the Classic or the 2005 series for a beginner? 

And if I start watching Dr. Who and going to game nights, will I become fluent in Nerdish? 

Also ... I've been sucked into the world of audiobooks by my scheming niece, who asked to listen to C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair on a long drive a couple of weeks ago. By the end of the trip, I wanted to continue listening to the story as read by Jeremy Northam. I was pretty sure I could find the Chronicles of Narnia, even at the Staunton Library of Romance and Westerns, but I didn't want to read it, I wanted to hear it. (Santa obliged, and I did get to hear the end of the story.) 

More Nerdishness, I guess. <refuses to resist>. Jeremy Northam has quite a list of audiobook credits, including some Henry James. Another new path beckons. 

Game Nite

And I could have done so many things, Baby
If I could only stop my mind
From wondrin' what I left behind
And from worrying 'bout this wasted time
 ~ The Eagles, “Wasted Time,” Hotel California 

In retrospect, it felt like wasted time, which just means I wasn’t doing something I was passionate about.  Maybe I wasn’t passionate about THAT game, and maybe I would be if I gave it more time, or maybe I would be more engaged with a different game. Or a different set of people.  All of these variables change from night to night, I know. And part of it is feeling uncomfortable – not knowing what I’m doing, not feeling like I belong – so I go away thinking it wasn’t really my thing.

I should probably give it another try. 

 ***

You walk into Game Nite in Webster Groves and it looks like every other game store: people looking at displays, people talking about games, friendly merchants offering advice. In the back are a lot of long tables with folding chairs, and a couple of smallish groups of people. Later it will be explained that RPGers meet at the very back, while the board gamers take up a couple of the tables nearer the merchandise.

I wondered at first whether it was okay to bring my bottle of water in with me, but when the role players arrived with a pizza and two quarts of soda, I decided I was okay. Only one of the RPGers was in costume – or maybe he always dresses that way – it’s a little hard to tell.  He had on a red felt hat, flat-crowned with a fairly wide brim, and blue inflatables on both wrists. I kept thinking they were weights, but I’m not sure.

The board gamers were quite ordinary looking, mostly in their late 30s, I would guess, not much in the way of facial piercings or flamboyance. I was running late, worried that tardiness was an unforgivable breach of etiquette – “Let the games begin!” – but no. They were still waiting for more people to show up and decide what to play. They made me welcome and then hit me with The Question:

 What kind of games do you like to play?

 “I … don’t,” I blurted, delivering a garbled explanation of the game I had received for Christmas and the need to find players. The two men at the table embarked on a discussion of Discworld board games and which game “those ladies” (not currently present) like to play. They finally decided it was “the Ankh-Morpork one,” while my game is “the other one.” This would have seemed very friendly if any of it had been addressed to me, but it wasn't - it was Insiders talking over the Outsider's head.

We played Ticket to Ride, European version, in which the object is to connect cities (Smolensk to Bucharest, Barcelona to Berlin) via train routes, by placing little tiny plastic train cars on the tracks. “What happens if someone is already occupying my route?” I asked. “Do I get to derail them?”

 “No,” replied my hostess, matter-of-factly, “but I like the way you think.” She reminded me of Rosie O’Donnell – not in obnoxious voice, but in quick, self-assured comebacks and mock hostility laid over genuine kindness. When I protested that I didn’t want to hold people back because of my own lack of skill, she countered that SHE was afraid I wouldn’t ask questions and therefore wouldn’t enjoy myself.

 Another knot of board gamers showed up a little later and played at another table. There was very little interaction between the two groups, except that a new guy named Zen had been observing Ticket to Ride for a little while. Kathleen, the hostess (asst. organizer of the Meetup group), interrogated him on his game preferences, then hollered to the other table. “PATRICK! Have you met Zen! He likes the same kinds of games you do!” Matchmaking in Gamer World.

 ***

It was fun, but I felt a little empty. For one thing, there was almost no conversation that didn’t relate to the game. I mean, there was a little banter, some posturing and teasing. The guy who owned the game made a point of telling me that he “let” me have that one route because I’m new (“Next time, go ahead and be a dick,” I replied), and Kathleen offered to look at my cards and not use the knowledge to humiliate me TOO badly. But there wasn’t much bonding or bullshitting, no real conversation.

I suppose this is not unlike sports, in which the conversation all has to do with the game, and then the people who actually like one another all go out for drinks afterward. I was not invited for drinks afterward, but I didn’t stay for a second game. The Meetup is scheduled for 6 to 10, and usually they get in two games in that time. I left at 8, when the first game concluded (I lost, as expected), claiming I wanted to ease my way in and not fry my brain with too many new games at once. Which is partly true.

***

 So you can get on with your search, Baby,
And I can get on with mine
And maybe someday we will find
That it wasn't really wasted time.

 

Infiltrating the subculture

Someone gave me the board game "Guards! Guards!" for Christmas. It was shipped from the vendor, possibly by Santa Claus, and it's a great gift, based on the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett.

But the cats probably won't play it with me. My daughter and son-outlaw did, for several hours on Christmas Day, and I'm very grateful, but I can't imagine I'll see them often enough to get the hang of this game. So I asked how I can meet ... <pause> ... gamers. Eel suggested I try the college, or local game stores. I feel weird about this - these people have their own games! - so I looked for a Meetup group, and (no surprise) there are several in the area.

And one of them meets tonight! I don't have my game with me (I live too far from St. Louis to go home and get it), but it should be worth it to go meet some people and see what kinds of games they play. According to their profiles, some of them are into war/strategy games, some like word/number puzzles (one guy says he's at "Fiendish" level on Sudoku). The really specific ones are a foreign language to me:

Talisman
Agricola
Last Night on Earth
Small World
Race for the Galaxy
Galaxy Trucker Last Night on Earth
Settlers of Catan (We've got all the expansions and most of the variants)
Battleship Galaxies
Cut Throat
Heroscape (Cross between Risk/MTG/Chess, Got built a Ultra large collection over the years, I only know 2 people with more then me in the US)
Starcraft
Arkham Horror
Summoner Wars

Mmkay. So I am nervous about what I'm getting into, but at the same time I have some anthropological curiosity. Certainly this subculture has its own etiquette, language, behaviors, codes ... and I know none of them. Jon cautions me, "They'll be mostly guys. And socially awkward." But one woman from the Adventure Group has RSVP'd for tonight, and she's the least socially awkward person I've ever met. She's so polished I feel like a big dork just riding bicycles with her. <firmly wipes away stereotypes>

Anyway, surely it would be good manners to come play other people's games before I bring on my own, right? (Again, Jon says gamers are always excited about new games and eager to get their hands on them, so I could find myself the center of the Terry Pratchett sub-subculture.)

No doubt infiltrating the subculture means that it is also infiltrating me. I shall embrace my inner (board) Gamer!

All the noise, noise, noise, noise

I got a Roku for Christmas. It might change my life. Again.

I don't watch TV, partly because I don't have a signal. I don't have a signal because I don't watch TV, so I'm not going to pay for cable or satellite. It's kind of a chicken/egg thing. If I had the option, I might watch TV now and then (although it seems to me every time I tried, Legally Blond was all I could find). I gave up on Netflix because I was never in the mood for what I had ordered earlier - although I might have kept it for the streaming, if they hadn't pulled a Netflix on everyone.

Anway, I figure Roku will let me find something to watch (even Legally Blond) when I'm in the mood, without having to go rent a movie at the quick shop. Amazon Prime gives me all kinds of stuff to stream for free or for a video-on-demand fee, and really that pretty much suits my lifestyle. 

***

My house is quiet. It's been quiet ever since Dale moved to the nursing home and I turned the TV off. After 26 years of TV around the clock, I like the quiet. But sometimes I find it enervating. If there were background noise, I might be more motivated to get up and accomplish something. When it's quiet, I just want to curl up with a book.

Today I realized why that is. For a wife and mom who works outside the home, it can be hard to find time to oneself. My Kay Time was when Dale was away or asleep - when I could turn off the TV and have a little time to myself. So the silence of the house makes me want to crawl into my private space, ignore all the demands on my time, read and daydream. 

He's been gone three years. I think I can change my habits and accept that it's ALL my time now.

***

So, Roku. My son-outlaw set it up for me and showed me how to work it, and we tested it on How the Grinch Stole Christmas (in my Amazon video library). Freaking amazing video quality, color and clarity. Further testing: how about a feature-length movie? How bad will the buffering be? I tried The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (and developed a crush on her). Again, amazingly sharp, vivid picture - and no buffering. And rewind! I didn't think you could rewind on streaming! I haven't finished watching it because I forgot to pay attention to the subtitles and lost track of the plot. 

Today I looked for something else I might be in the mood for, and settled on Cats Don't Dance, a Warner Brothers animation from 1997 that I'd never heard of. It had Randy Newman listed as the top credit, and I had just been bragging to the newlyweds about how great Randy Newman's songs are. (I think that listing was misleading; I can't find him at all in IMDB credits, and on screen I only saw that he did the words to the songs.) And it rated highly on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer. 

AND ... it stars an orange cat. (Voice by Scott Bakula.)

Luck

Someday I'm gonna murder the bugler,
Someday they're gonna find him dead:
I'll mutilate his reveille, I'll stamp upon it heavily
And spend the rest of my life in bed;
And then I'll get the other pup,
The one who gets the bugler up,
And spend the rest of my life in bed.
~ Dad's Dishwashing Song

One assumes it was actually a "Dad's Army Song," but I didn't know Dad when he was in the Army, so to me it's a Dishwashing Song.

***

Something awakened me. Possibly the orange cat burrowing in my neck, rubbing his head against my jaw. Anyway, I awoke and rolled out of bed, stepping squarely into fresh, cold, wet, cat puke. 

Laughing and limping to the bathroom, I switched on the light. Oh. My. Yikes. There, in the mirror: a face only a mother could love.

"Lucky for me," I said aloud, "I AM a mother."

Next I hauled the garbage out to the garage*, only to discover it had rained: the porch was wet and I was still barefoot. So maybe it'll rinse off any residual cat vomit, right?

By now the Bad Kitty, Myfanwy, who has been banished to the basement, had begun her song. It really is an awful song, nothing at all like "Meow." More like "BrrrrrrrrrWAAAAHHHH! BrrrrrrrWAAAAHHHH!" So what could I do but burst into song myself:

Someday I'm gonna murder the kitteh
Someday they're gonna find her dead.

 

 *Two words that don't rhyme

Tattoo You

The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath
The drums will shake the castle walls - the Ringwraiths ride out in black
(Oh, sing as you raise your bow; shoot straighter than before)
~ Led Zeppelin, "The Battle of Evermore," ZOSO (generally known as IV*)

On my way home from the vet I stopped and got a tattoo.

Not in this reality, but in some reality somewhere. It was the first time I had ever noticed the Evermore Gallery was actually open when I was driving by, and I thought, hey! I could stop in and get a tattoo! Except I don't really WANT a tattoo. But I could SAY I got a tattoo. What shall my imaginary tattoo be?

Probably not this. (Yeah, I know. Discredited. Fake. Still funny.)

Evermore Gallery. The first several times I passed it, I thought it was a fine art gallery - which it may be, in its own way, but there isn't a lot of stuff hanging on the walls. Also I noted that the proprietor was probably a Led Zep head.  Tolkien. Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention.

Anyone who was able to follow that (fairly straightforward) train of thought will understand my dismay when the "Dinosaur Rock" (Classic Rock) category at the recent Trailnet trivia night turned out to be questions about Journey, Chicago and the Beatles. (Kelly the Hairdresser: "Did you ask what they're doing with all that candy-ass shit?!") The hardest one - and the only one we got wrong - was "In what order are the four Beatles walking, left to right, as they cross the road on a famous album cover?" No freaking idea, and I thought they were crossing from right to left, so I stepped out of that fray. 

There, I flipped it so I could be RIGHT, because that's really important to me.

In fact, I had expected Dinosaur Rock to be the only category at which I would excel. Other categories included Dinosaurs Rock (Paleontology), Health and Fitness, Vegetables, the St. Louis Cardinals ... "Nope," I said, as encouraging people tried to convince me I knew anything about, say, Health and Fitness. "Sex, drugs and rock & roll, that's about it." Ad Taglines, which I was sure would baffle me, turned out to be remarkably easy because they were OLD taglines - and I saved my team from turning in "FedEx" as the answer to "Your World. Delivered." 

And there was one bizarrely worded question about five paintings, stolen from a Paris museum, by Matisse, Braque, etc. We couldn't figure out what the question was asking: what museum? What school did the artists belong to? After my teammates settled on the latter and agreed it was Impressionists, the loudmouth jerk at our table said, "Where's the art history major?" I waved a friendly little hand. (I was actually an art major, not art history, but art history classes are a huge part of the required curriculum.) "Did we get it right?!" he demanded. I said yes, although privately wondering, weren't Matisse and Braque actually POST-Impressionists? Braque was a Cubist. Matisse was ... Matisse. 

The answer, it turned out, was "(John) Milton." Uproar ensued, until the officiating judge stepped up to the mike and said, "Everyone gets question 4 right. It's my fault. I thought the original question was too hard and substituted a different one, but we didn't get the answers synced up." 

The whole experience - my third Trivia Night this year, and the third in my lifetime - made it clear how hard it is to write trivia questions. Either your questions are so obscure ("Who is the female vocalist on Led Zeppelin's 'Battle of Evermore?'") that your players get frustrated, or they're so easy ("What is the name of the female villain in Disney's '101 Dalmations?'") that EVERYONE knows them, and we keepers of Truly Useless Infomation are forlorn because no one asked about the treasures we've been hoarding.

So Kelly the Hairdresser suggests that in my declining years, I just start blurting out random statements like "Sandy Denny was with Fairport Convention, and she sings the countermelody in 'Battle of Evermore.'" Not that I don't already do this, but it's funnier if you think of me at age 80, talking nonsense.  

***

I think I've finally settled on a tiger for my imaginary tattoo. But head or full body? What color ink? Where on my skin, and how big? There are so many DECISIONS in bringing fantasy to life!

***

*Wasn't this in The Client, where the kid tests Susan Sarandon's fitness to be his lawyer by asking her the names of the first four Led Zeppelin albums? I can't find it on YouTube.

Danse

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
~ L. Cohen, "Dance Me to the End of Love"

The St. Louis Symphony is celebrating a 100-year anniversary of the Ballets Russes with a dance-heavy program this season - mostly just dance music, although there are some actual dance performances. (I have my ticket for the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago event in February.)  There was a nice insert in my symphony program all about the Ballets Russes taking Paris by storm, Diaghilev and Nijinsky and Fokine, Stravinsky and Debussy ... and Ravel.

The night's feature was Ravel's "Daphnis et Chloé," which Nijinsky commissioned when he was more or less fired from the Ballets Russes and started his own production season in Paris. It's the story of a shepherd and the girl he loves. The girl is abducted by pirates when she brings flowers to a statue of three Nymphs; Daphnis complains bitterly that offerings to the gods are to no avail, and then dreams that the Nymphs step down from their pedestals to intervene. Satyrs take over the pirates' camp and drive them away, and Pan Himself returns Chloe to Daphnis.

What a great tale! Young love, pirates, magic - and even Pan! And lots of dancing: dancing in honor of the nymphs, dancing to win the love of the lady, Chloe's dance for the pirate captain; and it ends in a swirling "Bachanale"  involving all the rejoicing peasantry. I was pretty psyched, especially after SLSO Chorus Director Amy Kaiser's introductory remarks about the unusual orchestration. Lots of different flutes, of course, for the panpipes; but also four different bassoons playing together in a "grotesque" dance (the losing suitor), as well as a range of clarinets including the baby E-flat.

First, though, we heard Schumann's Piano Concerto in A Minor, performed by Eric Le Sage, who has just finished recording 19 CDs worth of Schumann and therefore could be considered an expert. "Regularly praised for his very subtle sound and his real sense of structure and poetic phrasing," read the program notes. I found his sound very ... blended. Not so much individual notes coming together, but a shimmering blur of constantlly shifting colors. It was very beautiful but somehow didn't sound like a live performance.

***

Guest conductor Stéphane Denève introduced the Ravel. First he explained that Schumann's "Selections from Carnaval," which opened the performance, was chosen for this concert because it was written for piano and supposedly orchestrated by Ravel - thereby tying the Schumann and Ravel pieces together. But in the next breath he cast doubt on the Ravel connection, so that was odd. He did admit that it had a very Gallic sound, though, making me wonder what makes orchestration sound Gallic as opposed to Germanic or Russian or whatever. I shall have to fine tune my ear. Anyway, I enjoyed his accent (both aigu and grave). He did not sound like Inspector Clouseau.

And the dance began. The translated lyrics were projected on a screen over the orchestra's heads, which had surprised Maestro L'Accent but also gratified him because it made it easier for the audience to follow the story. What it did for me was provide unintended entertainment. I was sitting very far forward (11th row) on the outside aisle, and there was a young couple several rows ahead of me, sitting at the feet of the bass violins. The young woman could NOT see the screen around the standing bass players, and she was quite acrobatic in her attempts. Everytime a new phrase appeared on the screen, she dodged left and right, raised her butt up out of her seat and practically crawled into her companion's lap. It wasn't very balletic, but it was entertaining.

I did wish for the ballet. The orchestra was as marvelous as I expected, and the choir even more so. But the composition itself is so narrative that, by itself, it reminded me of a movie soundtrack. The movements were very distinct and very clearly portraying action and emotion - almost too clearly, like a nice rousing speech as opposed to poetry. (This might be partly due to the words on the screen, which I could see without doing my own little chair dance.) Ballet dancers might have given me more of an abstract translation to ponder. Or maybe I should have read it in French, since I don't know much French. "Daphnis does ... something," I would tell myself. "And the peasants rejoice."

(Also I kept wondering what happened to Daphnis' sheep while he was dancing with maidens and dreaming of nymphs. I kept hoping for a Sheep Dance, gone astray.)

***

There was more dance and more Ravel on Thanksgiving weekend: "Bolero" and a Spanish guitarist, and reportedly even a flamenco dancer. But the Fates (or Nymphs) conspired to prevent my attendance. Timing was just off. So instead, I saw The Muppets. <belly laughing> "Mademoiselle Cochonée" supplied both the French and the dance.

The Thing That Should Not Be

Drain you of your sanity
Face the Thing That Should Not Be
~ Metallica

 One cat was yawning; the other was grooming.  Between them on the porch stood a baffled exterminator. "You have two cats?" he said. "And you have a problem with MICE?!"

Alas, no. I have no problem with mice, except that they nest in the tractor over the winter. Otherwise the cats are very good with mice. And moles, voles, baby birds, bunnies; Zissou even brought me a baby squirrel one day. But as I explained to the nice exterminator, there was a Thing in my basement that the cats couldn't handle. I heard it one day. The cats galloped down the stairs. I heard chittering and wondered, is it a bird? But no, that was SQUEAKING.

Cats came up all nonchalant and empty-pawed. I had nightmares. I rented Ratatouille. It didn't help.

***

So I investigated poisons and traps and such. Dale always used D Con, but someone told me that would be bad for the cats. (Although none of our cats have ever been adversely affected.) The farmers swear by "Just One Bite," but again, it's poison, and what about the cats?

Believe it or not, I found a website that was actually helpful (!) - a message board forum all about this topic. It turns out that it takes so little D Con to kill a mouse that a cat would have to eat 20 of them even to get a tummy-ache. D Con isn't going to hurt the cats, even if they were inclined to play with dead rodents, which they're not.

But there was a lot of other information about how the poisons work (one of them dehydrates, so you'll find your mice aiming for any water sources) and what makes them poisons. An amazingly reasonable individual explained that lots of things can be poisonous to various species, and the word "poison" doesn't necessarily mean it's an evil thing for humans and pets. Look at the skull and crossbones on your cleaning supplies. These too are poisons ...

Still, among all the good advice this guy shared, my favorite was this: "I'm a professional exterminator." My Aha moment: I could PAY somebody to come take care of this. So I did.

***

After explaining to the nice exterminator about the critter the cats haven't caught, and showing him the dirt that has been kicked into the basement by a tunneling animal, I warned him, "We're giong to call it a ground squirrel, okay?" A couple of times he almost said "ra ..." but I reminded him this was a ground squirrel we were after. He set traps indoors and out, explaining to me that the cats wouldn't be able to get into them, and that they were baited with poison.

"Okay," I said.

Four weeks later he came back to check, but had caught nothing indoors. Some time after that, I heard the chittering in the basmeent again. <sigh>

***

Yesterday Gordon came and patched the hole where the critter had tunneled and gnawed its way from outdoors straight into my basement. He put up a 2 x 4 and cleaned up all the insulation and soil, and warned me that it's temporary - we'll need to repair that board more permanently next summer. But at least the entryway is blocked for the winter.

And guess what I found on the basement floor when I went to admire his handiwork?

That's right. It's a dead GROUND SQUIRREL! Woo hoooo!

Gordon denies killing it. Maybe Myfanwy finally had her moment of glory!

 

Z Cat

Orange Cat has his own ring tone because there was a song written about him. Something about how he's going to jump out the window someday. I would use it as my opening quote, but I don't know the song.

Zissou, His Lordship, His Royal Orangeness, the Orange Cat, was shot on Thursday. Not shot dead, but shot in his right front leg, with multiple fractures to the ulna. I've been posting updates on Facebook but here's the story.

When I got home from work, I heard him crying. Usually he keeps up that crying as he trots up to the garage, letting me know he's here and he's hungry. This time, he didn't come. I had to go looking, and finally found him across the road by the llama pasture. He limped to me on three legs for a few steps, then stopped. He didn't like me carrying him, but he did eat with a hearty appetite, so I wasn't sure I should take him to the vet - until I saw blood on the floor. And in fact I still didn't see the damage (it's right at a joint, one of those knee/shoulder type joints that are backwards in four-legged critters) until I got him to the emergency room.

We assumed he'd tangled with another animal, and the wound would  be cleaned, sutured and dressed. Because there was another injury ahead of him and a car accident victim on its way, they suggested I go home and watch the World Series and they would call. The first call was to ask me to authorize X-rays because the doctor thought there might be a fracture. The second call was the doctor, saying she thought he was shot: there were metal fragments and multiple fractures. She would debride as much as she could, wouldn't be able to suture, would splint for now but we "might have to discuss amputation somewhere down the road."

<eyes stinging> Why Zissou, the joy of my life? Well, because Zissou goes outside and runs around and gets into things. One of the things I dislike about Myfanwy is that she's always here! Like the best houseguests, Zissou drops in to eat, is appreciative, and then vanishes.

I went through several stages of grief that night, including blinding red anger and revenge fantasies. Who shot my cat? But in reality I knew: I will never know who shot my cat, or why. And despite the disbelief I keep running into, I find it pretty easy to believe. There are shotguns fired around here ALL THE TIME. I live in Farm Country, Flyover Land, Shotgun-and-Pickup Territory. Farms are divided by belts of woodland, and everybody hunts. Meanwhile, cats (and dogs) roam and get into things. I have often fantasized about fixing my shotgun sights on that hound that barks all night - not to mention Myfanwy - and I can easily imagine lots of scenarios that make sense. Maybe he was up a tree and a trigger-happy hunter thought he was a squirrel, or a raccoon. Maybe he was chasing chickens. Who knows?

Truly, it does no good to think bad thoughts about people. I think the shock and disblief comes mostly from suburban folks who maybe picture someone shooting their pet on their concrete stoop? This cat has a wide territory, and I don't know what he gets up to all day. I'm sure he's been in the woods. Hunters can mistakenly shoot ONE ANOTHER! (Should I start dressing him in bright orange? Wait, he IS orange!)

Anyway, if an animal had fought with him, we wouldn't blame the animal. Somehow he tangled with an armed human, but made his way home.

... Where he is supposed to stay crated or in a small room where he can't jump up onto - or, worse, down from - anything, jarring that joint. The first night, I lay on the floor with him, thinking he was hurting too bad to try any foolish jumping. We curled up and watched the Cardinals win the World Series on my BlackBerry; he burrowed in my armpit; and as soon as I got comfortable, he climbed up onto the bed. Climbing, not jumping, and he is splinted, and I don't think it did any damage, but so much for trusting that cat. He has to be confined.

He's pretty mad about it. First I had him in the bathroom but I had all kinds of visions of him jumping onto the toilet or the vanity, so I bought a dog crate. And a pet bed, and a shallow litter pan. He hated the pet bed and trashed the joint until I got the message - he prefers a blanket. And he prefers the freedom to roam around. He still hasn't quite gotten the hang of walking because his leg is splinted DOWNWARD, not out front where he would hold it - it gets in his way. So to compensate, he takes off with a spring from the hind legs that propels him pretty far, pretty fast. Then he uses the wall for balance. But he finds all of this exhausting, and this afternoon I let him crawl UNDER the bed and hide.

It's pretty exhausting for me, too, just worrying about that silly cat. He'll go back in two weeks to have his dressing removed, and then two weeks after that we'll have new X rays to see how the mending is going. That's when I'm worried she'll start talking about amputation again.

I do appreciate all the help (advice, suggestions) and humor we've received. My son-in-law (!) suggested I report the incident to the sheriff, in case there are teenagers or somebody running around taking shots at domestic animals, so I did. The deputy was very kind, and noted all my vet bills in his notebok in case they do find anybody, but I felt foolish and said so. "For all I know, they thought he was a possum and said, 'I'm gonna get that sumbitch!'" I told him. He laughed and agreed.

Twelve to sixteen WEEKS.