What to do with a catatonic cat

Peggy and I took Brewsky to the vet last week for the free check-up that we were promised when we adopted him. We had to wait a long time for the vet to finish his cigarette break, and when he finally did come in, we were practically in tears. He asked what the hell could be wrong since he hadn’t even done anything yet, and we said that he had recently euthanized our cat-hating old dog in the same room that he was about to examine our dog-hating young cat. He started laughing like a man who had positively lost his mind. Peggy and I were just a little completely outraged by this display of inappropriate jollity, so we sat with our arms folded and glared at him hatefully.

After what seemed like a half hour but was probably no more than twenty-seven minutes, we looked at one another, and we could each see in the other’s eyes that we too thought it was pretty funny—in a weird kind of way—so we started laughing with him, and in no time all three of us were laughing so hard that we were crying. It turned out to be a really great vet visit, partly because nobody had to be killed but mostly because it was free. I had much rather go home with a dead animal than to go home with a hundred dollar charge on my credit card.

When we told the vet that we were virtual virgins when it came to owning a cat, he took it upon himself to help us understand how cats think, but he used a lot of technical jargon about feline sexual fantasies, and we couldn’t follow it any too well, so he finally summed up everything he had said by telling us that all we really need to remember is that cats are sexual perverts, and that there’s no point in even trying to understand them. He suggested that we write this down for future reference, but neither of us had a pencil, so we just repeated it in our heads until we had memorized it.

He asked how things were going with our new cat, and we told him that we were having two problems. He said that he needed a smoke, so he would only have time for one of them, so while he trimmed his fingernails, we told him that Brewsky was keeping us up all night every night only to sleep all day—when we had to be up. The vet said that this served as a case in point for what he had said about how sexually obsessed cats are, but that we didn’t have to put up with Brewsky’s selfishness. He suggested that we embark upon what he called Feline Sleep Re-Programization (it goes by the acronym FELINESLEEPREROGRAMIZATION).

Basically what we’re supposed to do is to keep one or more battery operated squirt bottles in every room plus the garage, attic, crawlspace, front porch, back porch, front yard, backyard, vegetable garden, and flower beds. We said that we only needed nine bottles because Brewsky stays indoors, but the vet insisted on selling us 34 bottles plus 102 gallons of tap water just to be on the safe side. The brand name for these bottles is Deluge-A-Kitty, and they each have a gallon tank that’s good for two squirts. They also have a strobe light and an air horn (it’s not quite as loud as a train whistle) that come on automatically when you squeeze the trigger. What we’re supposed to do is to tiptoe all over the house and yard (the vet said that we might as well look everywhere since we own so many bottles) twice every hour, and when we catch Brewsky napping, let him have it. When we asked the vet if all that water isn’t a little tough on furniture, sheetrock, knickknacks, electronics, wall-hangings, carpeting, clothing, woodwork, books, elderly dogs, and so forth, he sold us a gasoline-powered blow dryer that can hit 650 degrees Fahrenheit on high.

We’ve only been using the bottles for three days, and Brewsky is already staying awake all day. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he’s staying awake all night too. He has also stopped eating and playing (he did drink a little water day before yesterday), and he will only shit in our shoes. Mostly, he just sits in the corner while staring at the floor and trembling. We’re starting to worry that he might have some hereditary psychological problem, because we can’t understand why else he would start acting screwy just when he’s showing progress toward staying awake during normal, healthy daylight hours. I’m not saying that we’ve given up hope yet because we’re more patient than most people, but if he doesn’t snap out of it in the next two days, we’re going to have him euthanized, and we’re going to ask the vet to do it in the same room he used for Baxter. Then, when we get another new cat, we’re going to have him examined in that room so we can see the vet laugh like that again. This was Peggy’s idea, and when I asked her why she was so enamored of laughing vets, she said it was because our laughing vet has a tight ass and nice dimples. Peggy might be old, but she’s not completely dead, I guess.

What the U.S. government is doing to destroy a legally operating entity—the short list

Federal employees and contractors—including the Dept of Homeland Security!—have been ordered to stay away from the WikiLeaks’ site and from documents made available by WikiLeaks. This prohibition includes the home use of newspapers and personal computers.

The U.S. Army, the FBI, and the Justice Department are threatening to prosecute WikiLeaks for “encouraging the theft of government property.”

The feds have teams of lawyers on the lookout for a pretext to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act. The government has not shown a similar interest in prosecuting the scores of right-wing bloggers who have publicly called for his murder.

The Obama administration has asked (intimidated?) Britain, Germany, Australia, and other countries to find ways to prosecute WikiLeaks and its founder.

The Library of Congress has blocked access to WikiLeaks on its computers.

The feds have threatened to prosecute newspapers and websites that have published or posted documents made available by WikiLeaks.

The U.S. State Department has warned Columbia University that diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks are “still considered classified,” and that knowledge of them would “call into question students’ ability to deal with confidential information” should they apply for a job with that agency. (How would the government know that a private citizen had accessed such documents?)

Private people and entities that the U.S. government might have influenced in its war on WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks’ founder is on bail in Sweden after being charged with raping two women. Because there is no better way to discredit an organization than by charging its founder with sex crimes, and because the U.S. government appears to be doing all it can, short of murder, to destroy WikiLeaks, a scenario in which private citizens were paid to make false accusations appears conceivable.

Moneybookers and Paypal, sites that handled donations to WikiLeaks, have ended their affiliation with WikiLeaks.

Visa and Mastercard have stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks.

Amazon.com has cancelled its web-hosting contract with WikiLeaks.

Several of the above companies violated their contracts with their users and with Wikileaks when they cancelled their services.


However much you dislike WikiLeaks, please remember that it has never been charged with any crime (it is a felony to steal government documents, not to print them), and that the government’s many threats of prosecution of WikiLeaks, its founder, and those who reproduced material that WikiLeaks provided; as well as its attempt to encourage other nations to prosecute WikiLeaks or its founder can best be understood as harassment. Even if the feds can’t throw anyone in jail, they can discredit them or break them financially, and if they are willing to destroy one law-abiding person or entity today, is it unrealistic to worry they might go after another tomorrow?

Support WikiLeaks. Support it against the tyranny of the U.S. government and its lackeys. Support it if for no other reason than that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Support it because no government that uses its vast resources to destroy a law-abiding person or organization is ever your friend. http://213.251.145.96/

How America honors the birth of God Incarnate and all that he stood for

America is the most populous Christian nation on earth, so it might well be asked by those of you in heathen lands how we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus, who was renowned for his unremitting opposition to greed, wealth, and consumerism; and his insistence on generosity, not to those who are able to be generous in return, but precisely to those who are unable to be generous in return.

First, we show our respect for the penitential season leading up to Christmas by only gaining eight to twelve pounds, which isn’t bad considering how much we weighed going into it.

On November 26 (the day after a major pig-out celebration known as Thanksgiving), we open our stores at 2:00 a.m. so the benefactors of the poor can get an early start on their Christmas gift buying at “Mark Down Prices.” Eager to take advantage of the “Early Bird Specials,” American Christians literally bring sleeping bags and stand—or rather lie—in line hours in advance. You can best understand this seemingly degrading ritual by comparing it to another revered religious practice known as self-flagellation.

The dedication of our citizenry to helping the poor is so intense in the weeks leading up to Jesus’ birthday, that there is a veritable shopping frenzy that continues until the night of Christmas Eve, when most stores close so their employees can go to church in order to be in the right frame of mind for distributing all of those colorfully wrapped packages to the poor on Christmas morning. “Ah,” you ask, “America is a rich country, is it not, so who are these poor people of whom you speak?” Well, sad to say, but America has many who lay claim to Christian Christmas generosity. They consist primarily of one’s spouse, children, parents, siblings, in-laws, friends, employer, and, of course, oneself.

When the holiday finally arrives, some impoverished children are so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of presents left by Santa, Mommy, Daddy, two grandmas, two grandpas, and assorted aunts and uncles, that they cry in frustration at opening them all. Truly, material excess requires some getting used to. Once all the poor people have gratefully received their holiday bounty, American Christians are so moved by the joy they brought into all those impoverished lives with the latest in Communist manufactured electronic gadgetry, that they just naturally want to go out bright and early on December 26, and give it another go. To help with this, the stores—which are understandably eager to support such a noble crusade—open in the wee hours yet again. This means that store employees have to miss out on time with their families in order to go to work in the middle of the night following two major holidays in a row, but they are only too happy to do it.

“Do American Christians observe Christmas in other ways?”

Oh, yes! Although buying gifts for indigent family, friends, and oneself most assuredly accounts for nearly all of the money spent, many churches do observe Christmas in other ways. For example, in most churches a colorfully robed choir sings happy holiday hymns amidst scores of potted poinsettias. A church near my house features a “living nativity” in which teenage girls and boys dress-up like angels, wise men, and shepherds, and take turns standing mutely around a manger that contains a fluorescently lit doll. Other churches “adopt” an entire poor family and drop gifts off at their house or apartment. Still others cook a turkey dinner for the indigent. And while most churches don’t meet on Christmas Day (making it one of the few birthday parties during which the guest of honor isn’t actually honored by his assembled friends), nearly all congregations listen to an Advent sermon in which they are reminded that “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” (at least since the church converted or murdered all those solstice celebrating heathens). They are also told that they really need to give up at least a little of their accustomed holiday avarice, if not this year, then next year for sure. After all, if America’s way of honoring Christ’s birth doesn’t represent the true nature and depth of its religious piety, what does?

The manner of his burial

We brought Baxter’s body home on Friday, December 10, and buried him that Saturday. He lay on his chair for most of Friday, but Peggy put him in a cardboard box with a couple of his toys and moved him to the garage when his body began to smell.

Six of us attended his funeral, but no words were spoken. I took him out of the box, and lowered him into his grave by means of the tablecloth on which Peggy had laid him. I then tucked the tablecloth over his body, and Josh brought buckets of earth that I had stored under the eave of the house because of the rain. I emptied these buckets into his grave and tamped the dirt with a shovel.

I don’t know to what extent getting Brewsky so soon after Baxter’s death has enabled me to avoid—or at least postpone—grieving, nor do I know how much having another dog has helped. I do know that every time I lose a loved one to death, my own desire to live becomes that much less. Of course, I still have a lot to live for.