Snowbrush's happy outing that ended disappointedly

I saw Satan today while eating a granola bar in front of Jerry’s Lumber Company (and, no, I’m not trying to fool you into thinking that pink taffy is a granola bar). He was a distinguished looking man of 70 in black pants, black shoes, a black coat, a black fedora, and carrying a black mug. I wanted to yell out the window, “Hey, Satan, is hell still under a heat advisory?” but was afraid it would embarrass him, what with it being commonly known that Satan is a shy demon. What did he look like? He looked like an open and cuddly version of Dick Cheney. (During the reign of GW Bush, I sometimes wondered if Satan was dyadic, with Bush being Dumb Transparent Satan, and Cheney being Sadistic Conniving Satan, and them both being bloodthirsty because they hate one another and take it out on us.)

Finished with my granola bar, I went into the store and specifically into the store’s male restroom where I sat down to rest with the hope (but not the prayer) that no one would come in and stink the place up. While I rested, I got to thinking as follows: Peggy has never let me teach her the first thing about managing her own finances…. Peggy’s refusal to learn about finances means that I control every penny Peggy has including her workplace retirement. Peggy can’t even get into her own accounts without my help…. My next blogpost will definitely say: “Hello from sunny Acapulco. I took Peggy’s money and ran away with a twenty-year-old blond called Taffy because her limbs are so charmingly flexible. ‘You couldn’t get a twenty year old,’ you say? Ha! With Peggy’s money and my drugs, I would say that I made-out okay. Hee, hee, hee.”

Done resting, I left the restroom and proceeded, first west, then north, and then west again into the main part of the store where I headed (as I always do, no matter what I’m really there for) down the indoor and the outdoor plant aisles, talking friendly-like to the plants while people stared admiringly. I don’t buy indoor plants anymore, because I don’t have room for the ones I already own, but I saw a Rex Begonia, and I just knew I was going to make an exception, and I was right (it’s a lucky plant that comes home with me, unless it dies).

When Rex and I got to the checkout, the 20-year-old blonde checker said that Rex Begonias are her favorite plant, and that’s when I heard the theme music from The Twilight Zone because I knew that her and me coming together like that had to be more than a coincidence, and I became a theist on the spot. Right away, I knew I should leave Peggy and marry that woman, but then I remembered Peggy’s money which I hadn’t stolen yet. Then, I got to wondering if maybe the woman’s name was Taffy. “Are you Taffy?” I asked. “No, but my boss calls me Daffy because customers often complain that I charged them twice for the same item.” Upon hearing this, I went back to being an atheist and drove home embittered.

I could rattle off stuff like the above constantly because it portrays how my brain actually operates as I overlay reality with imagination, something which I do all day long. 

Cat wars

The worst one was over food, and it lasted for seventeen months. Brewsky would start crying two hours before each of his three daily meals and keep it up almost nonstop (Peggy thinks he's starving despite his 14-pound (6.4 kg) weight and insists on feeding him three times a day). Naturally, I enjoyed chasing him through the house with a towel in one hand and a squirt bottle in the other while yelling profanities, but it was clearly too much of a good thing. Near the end of this period, Brewsky ended one such chase by rolling onto his back and squirming slowly from side-to-side the way he does when he wants to be petted. I was confounded and disarmed by this behavior, so I got down on the floor and petted him with the thought that he had just better not mistake my softness for defeat. As it turned out, the defeat was his. He might still cry a few times for his food, but when I look him in the eye and say, "No, it's too early," he takes my word for it. So ended the food war. The laundry room war had a different outcome.

We lock him in the laundry room each night so he won't wake us up by yowling like a demon, running through the house like a rhinoceros, and scavenging in the kitchen like a hyena. I prefer to keep the laundry room door shut the rest of the time too, and this means that I don't want him going in there until bedtime because I don't want to be forever having to let him back out. He resists my determination with conviction, at least partly because the laundry room contains doors to the garage and the patio, and he has an interest in each, but especially the garage where the bulk of the cat food and the dog food is stored. Another thing he likes about the garage is that it gives him access to the attic (just try getting him out of there when he's not hungry). He's so successful at getting into the laundry room, concealing himself, and then getting into the garage or onto the patio when the door is momentarily open, that mine and Peggy's combined efforts to keep him out amount to very little. I have concluded that he is capable of psychokinesis, and having gone that far into woo-woo land, I'm practically to the supernatural, and might be leaving any day now to become a prophet in the Judean desert after having found salvation through my cat. Surely, this doesn't happen very often and could put a lot of preachers out of business if it did. 

Peggy had her own food war with Brewsky. It wasn't as bad as mine because I feed him most of the time. However, she generally puts him to bed at night, and she got into the habit of giving him a midnight snack to assuage her guilt for locking him up. He so looked forward to his snack that he took to biting her calves to hurry it along. Peggy has a hard time discipling pets because she thinks it's "mean." This results in them treating her like an equal, and in her and me getting into an occasional fight over her perception that I'm sometimes too mean. Anyway, her propensity toward "kindness" resulted in Brewsky's nightly bites getting progressively harder until one night he nailed her good. I lay in bed laughing as I listened to her chasing him through the house with threats and profanity. When she afterwards came to me for comfort, I accused her of being mean to her "dear, sweet, starving kitty who loves you dearly and never meant you any harm." This made her mad at me too, but he hasn't bitten her since, at least not until today. She came home this morning with the smell of a strange dog on her legs, and Brewsky sunk his teeth into one of her calves. I must confess that he once bit me too, but it was only once. He will sometimes grab my finger gently with his teeth when he's getting tired of being petted but doesn't want to get up, and I'll stop immediately, but it's even rare when this happens. He and I have come to a position of respect for one another's limits, so we don't run into problems much anymore. As much as it makes sense, I show him the same courtesies that I would show another person, although I think he probably deserves them more. 

When I finally put away the towel and the squirt bottle, I had the thought that if had I ever been as stern with a dog as I have been with that little cat, then I would have to agree with Peggy that it was overkill because it would have ruined a dog. I have often come down hard on Brewsky only to see him do the very same thing right before my eyes three minutes later, and every three minutes thereafter until we were both worn out. If there's a dog with that degree of stubbornness, I'm glad I haven't run into him, but if a person can't feel some respect for such determination in cat, he probably shouldn't have one. The problem with a dog being that way, though, would be that you couldn't take him anywhere, and he would probably be destructive at home. 

Yet, for all my sternness, Brewsky was never afraid of me except when I was actually chasing him. This was the opposite of how I thought a cat would behave, having imagined that they were skittish creatures that you had to tiptoe around and handle delicately. He is skittish in that he startles easily, but he's hardly delicate. I can pet him firmly, flip him onto his back and rub his belly, hold him under his front legs like a sack of potatoes, lift him above my head so that he's brushing the ceiling, and even roughhouse to a small extent. I don't know how people tolerate all these neurotic cats that have a flair for the dramatic if not the downright vicious, including the ones that are so timid that they hide everytime there's a knock on the door. If Brewsky is awake, he'll go to see who's at the door (he would open it if he could). Otherwise, he'll continue sleeping even if they sit down beside him. Now, that's a good cat. You've got to admit it. 

I don't know how much credit I deserve for the way he turned out, but I think it was a case of him liking what I will call manly roughness and of me wanting just such a cat. I've had a lifetime of dogs, and it would be hard to give up some doggy characteristics, and with Brewsky I don't have to. I handle him no less delicately than I would a dog his size. I do hope he will become lap friendly over time, and I would guess that he will because he seems to be leaning a little in that direction. For example, Peggy can hold him in her lap each night and brush his fur, and he has gotten to where he likes to lie in bed with us, as long as it's her bed. She thinks it's cute for him to like in my twin bed with me while I'm reading, so she'll often put him there, but he won't stay (maybe he's homophobic), and she seems exasperated by this. I don't really care if he stays or not, which is just as well because he would have to be shackled, and I can't imagine anything more pathetic than shackling my cat to pet him. I haven't mentioned this possibility to Brewsky, but I have laughed about it to myself.  

Sometimes, he seems more like a considerate roommate than a cat due to his seeming intuition about how to get along with people. What he does is basically this: he gives them almost nothing, and they go bonkers over him anyway (unless they don't like cats). I wish I could pull that off because I often think that being liked is just too much work due to the faults of the people I want to be liked by (meaning all of them). I often suspect that most people are on the fringe of insanity. Then I look at Brewsky and he looks at me, and we both realize that we're pretty sane, at least.

Photo courtesy of Jeff De Boer.

How to Keep a Lid on Your Pussy in Twelve Easy Steps

When I got Brewsky 18 months ago, I resolved to rid him of those failings that are so regrettably common to both cats and women, things like vanity, aloofness, selfishness, disloyalty, obsessive grooming, and a perverse refusal to obey simple commands. In short, I resolved to do with him what I have failed to do with Peggy after 42 years of unrelenting effort—I resolved to make him into a good dog in the hope that he would serve as an inspiration to her.

He is only influenced by immediate punishment, and even then the effects only last two or three minutes, after which he returns to doing the same thing for which he was punished. This is where technology is useful. For example, I installed an alarm system to keep him off the kitchen countertop. When I leave the room, I flick a switch and if he jumps up on the counter while I’m away, three diesel-strength airhorns emit 185 decibels of sound simultaneously. Except for urine on the countertop, cabinet doors, and sometimes the ceiling, this works amazingly well because he knows he can’t wear down technology the way he wears down flesh and blood people who have more to do in life than control a recidivistic cat.

Breaking him from burying his shit has proven to be a greater challenge. As I observed him in his toilet one morning, I reflected upon how pointless it was for him to bury that which I would have to dig up anyway, so I resolved to cure him of the habit. To accomplish this, I began carrying his litter box to whatever part of the house I was in, and when he would start to bury his poop, I would run at him screaming while using my Deluge-a-Kitty Water Cannon™  to knock him right out of the box and into whatever wall, chair, or table was within his line of travel. Now, he only shits in his litter box when I’m asleep or away from home. The rest of the time, he shits on my pillow. On the one hand, I have been largely successful in preventing him from burying his poop, but on the other, things haven’t worked out quite like I planned.  

I have also had excellent results in getting him to sleep during the night instead of keeping me awake by miaowing loudly while running full-tilt throughout the house (after which which he would sleep all day while I stumbled drowsily into walls). My method consists basically of locking him in a room with a vacuum cleaner everyday (he’s terrified of vacuums), and connecting the vacuum to a timer so that it will turn on for a few moments every fifteen minutes. Now, he’s the one who stumbles drowsily into walls, only he does so at night while I'm sleeping peacefully.

These are just a few examples of the kind of work I have done with him and the outstanding success I have achieved. If you would like further ideas, feel free to buy my $30 book How to Keep a Lid on Your Pussy in Twelve Easy Steps. You will find it anywhere good books are sold, which basically means that if you'll send me a check (certified only, please), I’ll send you a link to a Word document.

In closing, I feel it only fair to inform you that Brewsky appears to be losing his mind, as you might have guessed from his haunted expression. He cries piteously for hours, drools, refuses to eat or groom himself, and spends his every waking moment staring in transfixed horror at the same empty spot on Peggy’s bed. I suspect that the problem is hereditary, but since he was a shelter cat (I wanted a dog, but Brewksy was half-price so I got him instead), I have no idea who his parents were, so this is mostly conjecture based upon the absence of environmental stressors.

“Cowardly little atheist finds God 20 minutes after being told he’s dying”

I know. You saw it coming, but you haven't heard the details, so here goes. I made the following to-do list when my second PSA came back:

1) Run in circles while screaming and flailing my chest with my fists.

2) Find God so I check item number one off the list.

While I was still on number one, Peggy said, “You’ve done this same stupid running amuck display for years now, but am I imagining it, or is this the enhanced version? Also, did it ever occur to you that the reason your shoulders hurt all the time is that you’re forever swinging your arms?”

So it was that with my dear wife's gentle encouragement, I moved on to item two—I found God. I found two gods in fact, one male and one female (the Wiccans taught me that deities come in the same genders as people). Their names are Aphelandra (top) and Aglaonema (bottom), and I can’t tell for sure, but I think Aphelandra is the goddess because she’s shorter and because Aglaonema's stem is big and erect.

My first houseplant was a Spathiphyllum (peace lily) that my father left when he died in 1994. I didn’t want a houseplant, but it was a living celebration of him, and it was also evidence of a love for beauty that he seldom displayed. I saw caring for it as an extension of caring for him. Besides, I asked myself, how long could a houseplant live anyway. It’s now 19, and I wouldn't be surprised but what it survives me--after which Peggy will probably kill it with love, aka too much water. 

My Aglaonema is simply too beautiful for words, and despite its look of fragility, we get along famously (I don't do high-maintenance plants). I’ve even been looking for another Aglaonema (one called Silver Queen) for a year now and am starting to think I might have to drive to Portland for it… 

If I were rich, I would live in a conservatory. The beauty of plants inspires in me the desire to make my own life beautiful, and their presence fills me with joy. 

Why she turned out like she did, I just don't know

My pet name for Peggy is Fluffy after a squirrel that was in a Little Golden Book that my aunt got me when I was four. I personally hated the book and loathed the squirrel (I wanted to cut its tail off and hang it from a car antenna), and I even told Peggy this, but she said I had damned well better call her Fluffy (she says it reminds her of how cute she is), so naturally I call her Fluffy in order to make her shut-up already. If she’s looking the other way when I say it, I sneer at the back of her head in order to prove that I’m not some little woozy-man who’s going to let a woman push him around. I have to be careful that she’s not looking at me in a mirror when I sneer because she often stares at me through mirrors as if she thinks I’m too stupid to notice. It’s like she can never let me out of her sight. I don’t think she trusts me, probably because she has a guilty conscience. You’re no doubt wondering how she got this way. I'll tell you what I know, but it's not much.

After Peggy and I got married in 1971, everything went great for about two weeks. After those two weeks, I noticed that Peggy would still do what I told her to do, but that she wasn’t doing it with any enthusiasm. At first, I figured she was just sick, but I didn’t say anything to her about her sickness because it weakens a woman to give her sympathy—or appreciation, for that matter. It also encourages her to pretend she’s sick when she’s not sick in order to get out of work and to force you to treat her nice. Women are devious that way, so it’s best to play it safe and only talk to them when they screw-up.

After another two weeks, Peggy’s behavior was no better, but it was a lot worse. She had deteriorated to the point that she wasn’t just slow about getting things done, she wasn’t even doing them. It was like I had married a really sweet and sensuous dog (an Afghan maybe), but then a mongrel cat from Planet Bad-Ass had crawled into the dog’s brain through its nostrils. It got to where I would tell Peggy to fetch me another beer, and she would look at me like, “Yeah, right, when hell freezes over.”

I finally spoke to her about how I was the husband, and she was the wife, and the wife is supposed to do what the husband tells her to do because it says so in the Bible. When I said this, she got really mad, so I never brought it up again, and I finally gave up trying to make her do anything—her or the cat for that matter because I knew they weren’t going to do it anyway. Now that the dog is deaf, blind, arthritic, and hard to wake-up, I don’t even get the satisfaction of telling her what to do, although, god knows, she would obey me if she could. I feel like a captain whose ship sailed right out from under him in shark-infested waters.

When Peggy and the cat sleep until noon (which is pretty much every day), she makes me bring them breakfast in bed along with a small vase of yellow roses and a large vase of fresh catnip. I hate doing it, but I hate it worse when she yells at me. We’ve been married for forty years, and I don’t know how much longer I should give her to get her act together.

Peggy becomes ever more unreasonable

Peggy went to bed before I did last night because she had a migraine, so I put the dogs out to go potty just before I went to bed. I forgot to let them back in because I’m not used to letting them out, and they froze to death. Of course, I didn’t know this because I was asleep. Anyway, Peggy got up first—having gone to bed first—and couldn’t find the dogs. After she had looked all over the house, it finally occurred to her to look outside, and there they were, two little pupsicles, right by the front door.

Since I could hardly bring them back to life anyway, and since I certainly don’t believe in the “power of prayer,” she could have let me sleep, but, no, not Peggy. She was upset, so, by god, she wanted me to be upset too. Putting that aside, I tried to comfort her in my usual compassionate manner by pointing out that they were old and sickly anyway, so their deaths probably saved us a lot of vet bills and carpet cleanings, but that just seemed to make her madder. I’m really tired of Peggy getting pissed-off over every little thing. To hear her tell it, she never makes mistakes. Yeah, right, when she’s asleep.

That was our second fight this week. The first occurred when she found out that I had invited my EOAWSGI group (Embittered Old Atheists Who Spit on God and Innocence) over to smoke dope and watch porn the same night that her VYCWEEEV group (Voluptuous Young Christians Who Eschew Evil and Embrace Virtue) was supposed to come over to bake brownies and look at pictures of a church they built in Haiti last summer so that all those starving people would have a place to pray for food.

I suggested that we bake the brownies with the dope inside and then watch the porn together, but she said that my idea was asinine because my atheist friends are all foul-mouth jerks who only want to make god-fearing Christians look stupid. She then said that my friends are all idiots, just like me; to which I replied that it takes one to know one and that all her friends are all idiots twice over, just like her. Things went downhill from there. I don’t know why Peggy can’t treat me the way she did when we had our first date in 1971. When you get married, you don’t expect your spouse to go all to hell this way.