Buddy

One of my cats died late Saturday night, Buddy the big fat guy who was a big asshole sometimes but had charm up the yingyang.  

Maybe four months ago he appeared to be on death's doorstep when I took him to the vet's, but because of covid they wouldn't let me go in with him, though later they let me sit in an empty room, and that's when they told me they were giving him oxygen, and I thought maybe that had something to do with me not being with him and I did not want him to die alone in that strange place.  And they kind of shrugged but gave him a shot and gave him back to me, and I was standing on a street corner trying to hail a cab and he was sitting in his carrier on the sidewalk on that cold windy day where it took close to half an hour to catch a cab, and who can tell but looking back at him and his dark eyes it looked like as bad as it was sitting in that carrier by the busy street, he knew that I was with him, and he trusted me to take care of him.

When I got him home he didn't seem to be any better, moped around in the front room hardly eating or drinking or anything, but a couple days later when I woke up in the morning and made a little ruckus getting up he came running in like a newborn kitty.

Of course I have been a cat man all of my life, though I don't know about the dawgs, and they just have all this charm.  I remember when I first got him and his sister Sweetie, and that night he came cuddling into bed with me, and I was like Buddy, don't you know we are both guys.  Afterwards I would tell people that I was straight as an arrow but I was bi curious for Buddy and I didn't care who knew it.

Cats don't do all that much.  They would never run for help if they saw you fall down a well.  They just lounge around and sleep and eat and piss and shit, and it is up to you to provide the food and clean the litter box, and they never show any gratitude or any sign that they are sorry when they make they make a mess.

But they frolic sometimes and they do dumb stuff that makes you laugh, and maybe they don't love you like humans love each other but they are always glad to have you around.  They trust you to take care of them, like Buddy did that wintry day by the curb when I was trying to hail a cab.

After my last cat died I wanted to have two cats and rather than get them separately and worry about them getting along, I decided to pick a pair at the anti cruelty.  My previous cat, Annie, had been a classic tabby, so my rule was one of the cats had to be a classic tabby and the other could be whatever.  And there was my classic tabby right there in that cage in the corner, but the other cat was this big fat lump, with a blotchy coat of mostly white.  It was a disappointment, but I knew if I wanted her I had to take him.

They put them into cardboard carriers and I stood on the corner hailing a cab hoping they would not be able to break out.  But they were good kitties and didn't even try.  When I set the carriers down in the front room and opened them up, they each took their own tours and decided this would do just fine and that the butler seemed like a nice enough chap.

That was eleven years ago.  They were very good years.  Every morning I would wake up and if my kitties weren't in bed with me I would call out their names and within ten seconds I would see them round the corner and come running in with their tails standing up, which I have heard is the sign of a happy cat.  Sweetie would get a tussle and Buddy would get a belly rub, and then straight to the kitchen where their food and waterbowls would be filled.  I soon discovered that Buddy liked yogurt and every morning I would spoon a bit onto that little foil top they have and give it to him and it would make his sun rise in the morning.  He only liked one kind of yogurt and when the Jewel stopped stocking it I would walk four or five extra blocks to Whole Foods to get it.  I had just bought sixteen of them Saturday afternoon and carried them back thinking of him.

He had had his last yogurt Saturday morning.  He had not been well,  Instead of him coming right to the kitchen like he did every morning he stayed in the bed, and I had to carry it out to him and tempt him to waddle into the kitchen to eat it.

He was moping most of the day.  Well he had been doing that a lot these last few days and then he would snap out of it a little and I was hoping for that.  That evening he was lying on the tiles of the kitchen floor and I picked him up and carried him to the futon which I thought must be more comfortable.  What looks more comfortable than a cat stretched out on a bed?  I was watching my Saturday night movies and everytime I went to the bathroom I would walk into the bedroom and pet him and rub his belly.  Normally this would bring on a purr, he purred like a diesel engine, but I only got one short purr out of him.

When I went to bed he was by my side and moving a little.  I normally get up a half dozen times a night to pee and at one point I noticed that his breathing was ragged, and the next time I woke he was still.  I still slept with him, and I left him lying there in state as it were until the afternoon when I put him into a pillowcase and that into a large tote back.

I'm pretty sure the vet will take him and send him off to be cremated, I want the ashes, and then I can pick him up there and put them on the shelf next to my previous cat, Annie, who was the tabby who was the reason I took him home from the Anti Cruelty.  They won't be open until nine this morning, and I'll haul him over there.

My beloved Buddy, my beer-drinking buddy who didn't drink beer, who was my pal these eleven years and always looked up to me with his dark eyes to take care of him, and now he is just a stiff thing in a bag.

Well so it goes, so it goes.  He wasn't that good a cat because he sometimes thought outside the box.  He did that sometimes when he was younger and he found some nook or some piece of plastic bag which was just too tempting.  The last year he had largely just stopped even thinking it about it.  I have tried this and that, a lower box, absorbent pads, newspapers, to only half-assed use, and the place, my beautiful condo overlooking where the river runs into the lake has stunk pretty bad at times.  Last week I went out and got a portable rug shampooer at a cost of eighty bucks but I haven't yet got around to using it.

And I have sometimes thought, well he likely won't be around that much longer. so I just sort of put up with it, because, you know, I loved the guy.  So there it is.

His sister, the tabby, is the most catlike of the two, Buddy was more doglike, which is more like a human being.  But the two of them were the best of pals.  When I first got them they would have these mock fights and even though Buddy was way stronger I swear sometimes he let her win, just to be a good guy I assumed.

And they always cuddled a lot, especially lying in my lap, licking each other's faces, that was the sweetest thing.  Often though they would get into some little spat, I always assumed Buddy had done something to start it.  They were fixed of course, but sometimes Buddy would mount her, and she would go along with it until it passed some point and she would snarl at him and run away and he would chase her, but she was faster, and sometimes I would put him into the bedroom and close the door on him and he would do his time, about half an hour, and he would rejoin society as a good citizen again.

But lately they have not been cuddling as much.  He was a little smelly and I think she just didn't like him as much.  They kind of went there separate ways.  She didn't show much curiosity when he was lying in state and she was lying just a couple of feet from him, and now I don't know what she feels.

So there it is, so it goes.  I will call the vets in about half an hour, and then I will carry him down to LaSalle and Chicago.  I just tested it and it is pretty heavy, but of course not really, he is my brother.

My buddy.

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

 Our phone started acting glitchy a couple weeks ago.  On Thursday, July 8 I decided to call the problem in before we lost service altogether, which we did shortly thereafter.  The last time this happened was 12 years ago, although that was only for five days, and this time the phone lady said it would be six days before they could get somebody to us.  On the seventh day, with no sign of help, I bought a cheap cell phone at Walmart, the kind where you buy a card with pre-paid minutes on it.  This is what I did 12 years ago, and they came out and fixed our regular phone the same day, before I even had a chance to call them about it, so I figured it was worth a shot.  Well it didn't work this time.  Not only did they not fix our regular phone that day, but I was up half the night trying to activate the new cell phone.  Funny, I don't remember it being that difficult the last time.

On the eighth day I was preparing to take the new phone back to Walmart to find out what I was doing wrong when we got a call on the regular phone from a telemarketer-scammer.  After I greeted him with my usual, "Shut up and leave me alone!" and hung up the phone, my wife picked it back up and reported getting a dial tone.  Not knowing if the fix was permanent, I called the phone company back to inquire about the status of my previous complaint.  After checking her computer, the phone lady reported that they were still working on the problem and that they would get somebody out to our house sooner or later.  Nobody has come to our house yet, but the phone has been working ever since.

Meanwhile, I took the new phone back to Walmart to find out what I was doing wrong anyway because, like I said, I didn't know whether or not the fix on the old phone was permanent.  The first thing I found out was the cheap phones of today have way more features on them than they did 12 years ago.  I asked the guy if there was any way to by-pass all that useless crap and just make a phone call.  He said that there was and graciously showed me how to do it.  I took another look at the instructions the next day, and now I think I know how to escape the useless crap mode if I ever stumble into it again.  The next thing I learned is, the proper tool for scratching off the number on the back of the prepaid minutes card is a coin, not a fingernail, not a house key, and certainly not a pocket knife.  The nice boy even replaced my damaged card for free, even though I admitted that it was probably my fault.

The last time I bought one of those cheap cell phones, I never used it for six months and ended up giving it to my grand daughter, who promised to use up the minutes before they expired.  This time, though, I think I'll keep it.  The deal they have now is, although the unused minutes are set to expire after 90 days, they carry over if you buy more minutes before the expiration date.  That comes out to $80 a year, which is cheaper than any other phone rates that I know of.  As old as we are, and living in the country as we do, we really should have a working back up phone in case of emergency.  As one of my army buddy's grandmother used to say, "It's good if you never use it."

Anti-vaxxers

 I don't know what to say about those anti-vaxxers.  There is a certain amount of risk involved with any medical procedure but, when the risk of getting sick or dying from the disease is way greater than the risk of getting sick or dying from the vaccine, it would seem to be a no brainer.  Maybe that's their problem, no brains.  

I didn't get my annual flu shot for decades because I had read somewhere that more people die from the shot than from the flu.  Then I got the flu a few years ago, it wasn't the same flu we used to get as kids, and I have been getting my annual flu shot ever since.  At some point I looked it up and found that there was indeed one year that more people died from the shot than from the flu, but that was only one year and it never happened again.  I suppose I didn't pay a lot of attention to the news in those days and, of course there was no internet.  Catching a dose of the modern flu in my old age, however, made a believer out of me.

1976 swine flu outbreak - Wikipedia

I've got nothing to say about those Trumpists that I haven't already said, namely that, if the Republicans don't purge them from the party ranks, they're going to wind up on the ash heap of history.  Hopefully a new conservative party will rise up out of the ashes. 

Uncle Ken's stories are fine, I just haven't thought up anything specific to say about them yet.  I've been preoccupied lately with my telephone problems anyway, but that's a whole nother story.

great wall 3

 Was watching the local news last night and there was The Ravenswood.  Kind of a big deal I guess, a hip new joint for those of us thinking about hip replacements.  They had several shots of what appeared to be common rooms.  I think one of them was a library or a reading room, all looked pretty good.  I am looking forward to hearing how he is doing up there and maybe tales of interesting blokes and blokettes that he may run into.

But I am worried about Beagles.  Haven't heard from him all week, and at our age it is not nice to not at least check in at least once a week.

I was even thinking of putting in some political stuff to get his blood boiling.

There is the matter of the Trumpists backing away from their agreement over the bipartisan infrastructure deal.  Oh they are always looking for ways to back out of anything, but this time the point that they are turning up their noses at is the money for the IRS so that it can audit tax cheats so that they have to pay their fair share.  Of course they have always been the party of tax cuts for the very rich, but that apparently is not enough for them and now they want to insure that they can cheat on their taxes with impunity.

Remember when they were crying about the shutdowns because they were bad for business?  Well now that we have a vaccine that can end the pandemic and bring the country back to normalcy and get business humming again, they have become anti vaxxers.  Here is a scourge on the country causing deep illness and death and costing piles of money and they are all for it.

Beagles and I have been kumbaya-ing of late so I am not sure if he would disagree on me on both these points, but anyway wishing him the best and eager to hear from him.

And now a little more of the current story.

I didn’t finish clearing off the bar until lunch was over.  I felt a little better with that mess gone, the bar shining good as new, rows of sparkling glasses, a clean ashtray positioned in front of every other bar stool, everything ready for another night just like the night before.

“Hey Sailor,” Dawn said jumping onto a stool and pounding one of her heroic little fists on the bar, “What’s a gal got to do to get a drink around here?”  She startled me so that I jumped and then she laughed.

She wasn’t laughing at me though, she was laughing at herself, the absurdity of her, little Dawn, bellying up to the bar and doing that ‘Hey Sailor’ thing.  It was a phrase her father had taught her when she was a little girl, sitting in front of her oatmeal in the breakfast nook and asking for her orange juice.  It always got a laugh out of her folks.  Seeing the bar and the empty stools, she thought she’d try it out.

I went over to her and poured her an orange juice. I lifted the vodka bottle teasingly and she spread her hands and shook her head in mock horror.  No, no, she didn’t drink at all.

Sam had brought in a handful of empty one-ounce scotch bottles from his flight.  In cleaning up the bar I had set them aside, and now they were standing at attention in a little line on the ledge of the bar in front of Dawn who picked up their leader and squinted her eyes at his tiny label.

“Glenlivet,” she read,  “That’s the kind of scotch my dad drank,” then she went down the line turning each little bottle so that the label faced her.  “What are you going to do with these?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said, a little embarrassed now that I hadn’t pitched them with the rest of last night’s debris.

“Can I have them then?” she asked and I nodded and she picked up each one and dropped them carefully into her purse.

“It’s just that they remind me of my dad,” she explained.  “He used to call me Princess Winterspringsummerfall.  That always made me smile. Oh, when I skinned my knee or bumped my head, or any of those things kids do all the time you know that end up with them crying, he would say,” and then she paused trying to remember.  “Shrug it off.”

“Shrug it off,” I repeated, looking down at her, confused and amused.

She laughed again, her modest embarrassed little laugh.  “Sounds silly doesn’t it?  ‘Shrug it off’ what kind of advice is that to give a little girl?  But I didn’t know any better.  I guess it was like ‘no use crying over spilt milk,’ ‘don’t look back,’ ‘get on with life.’  I’d be kneeling on the sidewalk, maybe I’d fallen off my roller skates or something, and remember how bright and red your blood looked when you were a kid, and he’d kind of give me a little punch in the shoulder, and say ‘Shrug it off,’ and I would, and I’d feel better.”

I stood there in silence looking down at her blushing face, and then she added, looking straight ahead and past me, “And then he died.”

Couldn’t shrug that one off, I was going to say, but I’m glad that I didn’t.  Conversation kind of dropped off after that though.  She emptied her orange juice and then she slipped away to Annette’s table.

great wall 2

My mother used to live in The Bethany, a retirement home about a mile north of the Ten Cat.  It was a pretty nice place, and I was wondering if that is the kind of place Old Dog was moving into.  She had a kitchen, and she had kind of taken pride in her cooking, but she never used it.  Cooking was work and she wanted no more to do with it, which was fine because along with room came board, and they had a big dining room, and I think the chow was pretty good.

From what Old Dog is saying I am guessing board does not come with the room, and I am thinking maybe there is a difference between senior living and retirement homes. The Bethany also used to have things like bingo nights and they brought in entertainment sometimes, I remember an Elvis impersonator and they had a nice little Christmas/Hanukahs/something vaguely Buddhist celebration.  I wonder if the folks at the Ravenswood have something like that.  Are there any common areas?  I know Old Dog likes to spin a yarn, and you can't do that properly without an audience, of course then you have to listen to their yarns, but that can be pretty entertaining too.

At 700 sq ft is about the same size as my condo.  I remember when I moved here I was surprised at all the room I had.  Plenty of room to put all my stuff neatly into their own place, but sloth and clutter took up the slack pretty quickly.

I do almost all my cooking by microwave.  The only thing I use my burners for is making hard-boiled eggs, and I had a cooking spree a few years back and made my favorite food of my youth Rice-a-Roni which was as good as I remembered it, and broccoli and cheddar soup which was also excellent, but after that not so much.  

I was hoping to get some comment on Beacon, but failing that I will provide my own.  See I was thinking the reader would be transported to a high school auditorium (how much time have we spent in those?) and then this whole outrageous Are you from Beacon thing would play out, and tucked into the middle of it was his slipping his arm around Mary O'Connor's waist, the love interest.  And then it goes on a bit until the whole stupid auditorium is blasting it out.

And later he is summing things up,  He never had a chance with Mary, well don't we all have lost loves in our pasts, and now that is in the past, and all he has to remember is that stupid song.  Well so goes life huh?  Kind of a funny story with that extravaganza, but with a little sadness tucked in.  

That's my take but if you have a different one, that is fine too.

And here is the second installment of The Great Wall:

And in between the scotch and the food and the wine and even the cigars, were the cigarettes, the maggots in the remains of the good time, bent and stained, nestled into the gristle, floating bloated in half empty glasses, squashed on the bare wood of the bar at the end of a smear of ash.

I felt a little sick looking at it and sat down on a stool facing away from the bar, into the side room.

The sound system was back there.  Mostly nobody bothered, but Dawn, the new girl, the Heroine Who Led the Way, looked through the tapes and set aside the Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis to play one of the mysterious cassettes with Chinese characters ball-pointed onto the scotch-taped labels and the restaurant rang with the sound of Chinese Opera.

Which seemed to suit her just fine as she bustled about to the music, getting that steam thing under control, filling the mustards and the sweet and sours, setting out the fortune cookies on their little plates.  She was wreathed with the remnants of the steam cloud like streamers and she was dancing like a character from The Red Detachment of Women.

Elbow on the bar, head aching, I watched her.  I had a job where I really didn’t have to do much and it paid the rent and I could get drunk every night.  I had it made.  But she was so happy.  Maybe I was missing something.

Movin' on up

Uncle Ken is going to spoil us with all of his stories; is this the first time they are seeing the light of day?  With all of the craziness that we can't avoid it is a blessing to read these little gems.  I'm liking them, a lot.

-----

It's been more than ten years since I moved into my cozy little studio apartment, and it was an ordeal, humping all my crap the quarter mile down the alley to the new place.  It was a solo effort, just me and my hand truck, and I vowed I would never move again.  You can see where this is going.

More than a year ago my sister told me about this senior housing development going up in a former hospital, located only a couple of hundred yards from my current digs.  She even called the alderman's office to get me on the "list."  I wasn't crazy about the idea but I went along with it, taking the path of least resistance.  Nothing seemed to be happening but then I got a phone call and the ball started rolling and I entered the paperwork hell of government housing.  So, now I'm in the process of moving and I'm taking it easy this time.  The end of August sounds about right.

It's a strange experience to see all these geezers; I'm not used to seeing folks my own age.  Instead of a 400 sq. ft. studio I'm now in a 700 sq. ft. one bedroom.  More space than I know what to do with, and all of the stuff is brand-spanking new.  My only critical observation thus far is that there is no gas range; everything is electric.  Maybe Uncle Ken can give me some tips about working with the glowing red coils.

I'm slowly adjusting to this new way of living, taking elevators instead of stairs.  The view isn't bad, facing south with a direct line of sight to the downtown TV transmitters.  I'm on the fifth floor, the lowest available for us "independent living" types.  The lower floors are for assisted living residents and they have their own entrance; we're not connected.

This should be an adventure; all the food and kitchen crap is in place, leaving me with nothing but instant coffee in the old crib.  Slow and steady will win this race and there is a long way to go; lots of books, vinyl albums, tools and gadgets have got to make the trip and they are all heavy.  Oh, my aching back!

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/7/6/22559807/ravenswood-hospital-refurbished-senior-tenants-cha-evergreen-real-estate-group

 

 

great wall 1

 This one is not as long as Catfish, but is set in the same place.

It was four blocks through white and wind and sneaker-soaking drifts with a Loch Ness monster scotch hangover to The Great Wall, but today was Leon’s birthday and I had to show up for that.  I pulled the door open and it banged shut behind me with a blast of blizzard.

Annette ran down from the head of the stairs to see who was coming in and she was a little disappointed that it was just me, the bartender, and not the new girl, just hired yesterday afternoon, who lived clear across town, and was already late.  And if she didn’t show then who would wait tables?

“It’s not going to be me, I’ll tell you that.” she assured me, though of course it would be.  She had climbed her way up from waitress to head waitress to managing the waitresses, and her tray toting days were over thank you very much.

I shrugged, tried to give her a sympathetic look, as if I gave a shit, and brushed on past her to the side room to punch in and hang up my coat.  Against a wall were the tea urns already fired up warm and moist and inviting after the white and wind as I poured myself a cup.  But maybe they were steaming a little too much.  The room was filling with fog so maybe something needed to be turned down.  I wandered back towards the cash register to tell Annette.

And just then the front door slammed open and shut again and Annette squealed like a schoolgirl.  Dawn, the new girl had arrived, and Annette’s dignity was saved.  Through my steam-fogged glasses I could barely make out two figures looming towards me from the dark dining room.  Annette had Dawn by the elbow and was guiding her back to the side room because Dawn had walked clear across town in the blizzard to get here and now her eyes were frozen shut.

“All the way from Vine Street,” Annette was saying, “Walked clear here in the storm with her eyes frozen shut” and she led her past me into the side room. By the time I got back Dawn’s dark hair was a nest of snowflakes, ice crystals glistened in her eyelashes, melted in the steam from the tea urns, damped her rosy cheeks, and allowed her to open her now unfrozen eyes.  Shrugging off her coat shyly, revealing her red Great Wall waitress uniform with the gold Chinese characters down the side, she looked like the heroine in one of those old Red China propaganda posters, The Peasant Girl Who Saved Her Village.  

I was just the bartender and I would be serving no food to the hungry villagers and I was no hero. I left the giggling Annette and the smiling modestly shrugging heroine, and went to my province, the bar, with its thick layer of detritus, the scene of the crime last night, the wages of sin.

Leon’s younger brother, Sam, had flown in last night for Leon’s birthday.  He had a restaurant in San Francisco and was worldlier than Leon, here in Decatur Illinois.  He’d strutted in waving a cigar like a baton while Leon had sat punching filter-tipped cigarettes out in a plastic ashtray. 

Leon had put a smile on his face and brought out this dark bottle of scotch made especially for the King of Scotland or something, the main point being it was incredibly expensive.  He poured Sam and himself a generous portion, and then because I was standing there, and the high cost of this scotch meant nothing to a man such as Leon, he poured me a generous portion also.   Normally I get in enough trouble just drinking beer, but I knew I was going to have to drink this one for Leon.

And the one that followed, and the one that followed that.  Then there were the fat black cigars, the steaks, the pricey wines, and then there was another bottle of The King’s Own Nectar.  I didn’t understand a word that was said, but the three of us had a great time.  From the looks of the bar, the good times had continued after I’d left early, decapitated by the King of Scotland.