+1 skill point

All the doorknobs in my apartment look like this.



The apartment is old and the building's foundation has shifted enough times that most of the doors don't actually latch when you close them.

Jack has caught on to this and has made it his mission to figure out how to open the doors around here, many of which stay "closed" but not quite closed.

His technique? Standing on his hind legs, stretching as far as he can, and hooking one singular claw into a vacant keyhole, letting his weight and gravity do the rest until the door swings open. He's surprisingly effective at this, and when I catch him trying to do this to the doors that actually do latch, I can't help but laugh because the doors don't budge, which means he just gets stuck there, his one little claw extended to its limit, his weight baring down so that he can't retract it. He tries to fake it like, Oh, hey man. I was just ... hanging around. Pretty nice day out. Saw some dustbunnies float past a minute ago and I just heard you fill up the food bowl. But I'm hanging out here for a while. Sniffing the breeze. Catch you later, man.

But I know. Dumbass.

100 percent less pukey

I've been asked by a couple of people how Jack's doing since his copious-vomiting incident last week ... or whenever it was.

See for yourself:



I persisted in giving him his antibiotics for two days, at which point it became clear that he didn't need any medicine; he had just needed to barf up everything in his stomach and start all over. He's totally fine and back to destroying any and all paper items he encounters, including this large and moderately expensive Christmas bag I had stored in my closet but removed briefly so I could retrieve something stored beneath it. One second I'm rooting through a musty cardboard box, and before I know it, I hear the startling explosion of a cat entering a giant paper sack at full speed, fast enough to bust through the bottom and attack the ragged edges, leaving spit-soaked paper shreds in his wake.

Right now he's wrestling the shit out of Sally and she is making her bitchface at him as he bites her neck.

So, yeah. He's good as new.

Uh, yeah, me neither

Do you ever wonder if your cats are reincarnated versions of your dead relatives?

Obligatory cat digestion update

Jack and I just got back from the vet. The clinic on Central and East Parkway was kind enough to squeeze us in even though we're not regulars. I've still got a bad taste in my mouth from the last time I dealt with Eastgate, so I am happy there's a clinic closer to my apartment than way out east. Plus, four or five blocks of mewling vs. twenty minutes of it? I don't even have to explain. Also, gas prices. Etc.

Anyway, Dr. Mitchell peered in Jack's mouth, felt him up, and stuck a thermometer in his butt. I described the barf-capades and the bit of rubber and was told that even an x-ray might not show if there are any little bits of rubber in his stomach, because rubber just doesn't show up on x-rays very well. We'd have to do something fancy with barium, which is very unpleasant for everyone involved, apparently, so that would be a last resort if he keeps technicolor yawning (yes, I plan to run through every vomit euphemism in the language).

So in the meantime, we're on antibiotics to clear up any lingering yuckiness (he really enjoyed the two shots he got; they made him dance with rapture) and I've got to shove pills down his throat twice a day. I also can't feed him until late tonight. That should be the most fun part of this challenge. He just stares at me with those hungry yellow eyes. I am weak.

Something's up with Jack

That's not cat hair all over my comforter. It's just a fancy comforter made of expensive fur from endangered animals.

I woke up this morning to find a lovely grapefruit-sized splatter of cat puke on my beloved brown and darker brown hallway rug (the one KHall and Jimmy gave Phil and me as a going-away present when we moved to Memphis). It was thick and chunky like clam chowder and I decided quickly not to bother cleaning it out of the rug, which is of the shag persuasion. I mean, that rug has had a good go of it and is filthy and urine-stained and full of ferret smells. But there's no way I can possibly clean cat puke out of it. I don't have my own washer and dryer and therefore don't feel comfortable putting my cat's puke in a communal device, even for $1.50.

Anyway, I wouldn't normally be worried about a little cat pukage (I know it's normal, but I had entirely dodged the cat-puke bullet until now), but I witnessed Jack heave three more times in the early afternoon — all gooky foodstuff puke and not mucusy hairball puke — and then came home in the late evening to some crusty semi-fresh food puke in my bedroom (and on my shorts), and then just now I watched as he horked up still more internal goodness (this time a little less chunky with food and a little more watery, because I didn't feed him at his usual time because of this puking problem we're having).

What makes me worry is this: I found a little pen cap-sized bit of rubber in one of the puke pools. It's rubber from my rubber computer-chair mat, the one he has taken to chewing lately. I knew he was chewing on it but I never imagined he would actually swallow the bits. I give him too much credit, I know.

So I'm worried that he's got a bunch of rubber nonsense floating around in his belly that's going to require surgery to remove. I'm not sure what else could be making him puke up his food so suddenly and so often. This is not a hairball issue. This puke is for real.

Obviously we're going to the vet tomorrow.

Guess who's a year old today

Freckleface and Gingerballs, that's who. I tried a to put hats on them but it turned out as you might have predicted.

Let's see ... in cat years, this makes me eighty.

Here's to many more years and many more pieces of furniture that will need re-upholstering.

I thought it went without saying, but I had to say it anyway

Me: [to Sally, who has her face planted in Jack's ass] What are you doing? No! We don't lick butts in this house!

Jack: Meow! (translation: and why the hell not?!)

Smashed

I broke one of my great-grandmother's awesome striped drinking glasses Friday night. That makes two of the total stash that have fallen victim to the hardness of my floors. I didn't break the other one myself, but it's still just as broken. My own clumsiness is going to turn me into one of those people who always subconsciously looks for glasses just like these when she goes to flea markets and yard sales, and will end up paying an exorbitant amount for similar glassware as long as it evokes the same kind of fuzzy feelings.

Saturday morning the cats decided they needed to perch on the kitchen windowsill like mountain goats, and knocked off the little cordial carafe my sister gave me one year for Christmas. It smashed into a billion pieces on the counter. You may recall that my cats also broke the Galileo thermometer she gave me for Christmas one year. She's going to start thinking that I'm using "my cats broke it" as an excuse for why I don't have any of her gifts anymore. Effing cats.

I'm reminded of what Virginia Woolf said about every woman needing a padded room of her own. That was Virginia Woolf, right?

My water skillz, let me show you them

My water skillz, let me show you them from Lindsey Turner on Vimeo.

My cats can be unusually cruel

I settled in last night for an evening of getting acquainted with 30 Rock and/or Lost, both of which arrived yesterday in their little red Netflix envelopes. People have been raving to me about both these shows and I've never seen either. I had a bottle of wine and the whole evening alone, so it was time to get some serious TV-watching done.

So I pop 30 Rock in my PS2 (my only means of watching DVDs) and notice that for some reason the TV screen's still blue. And then I realize that's because MY CAT (JACK) HAS CHEWED THROUGH THE A/V CABLES COMPLETELY. Yellow is barely hanging by a wire and white is MIA, probably bathing in the acid in his fat fucking gut.

Sigh.

A Caturday question

He's thinking about food and she's entertaining a million conflicting crazy thoughts, some of which are about bugs and ghosts and doorknobs and newspaper shreds, but most of which are about creative ways to bust into the bedroom at 6 a.m. during my second REM cycle.

Is it possible that cats can be born without the gene that allows them to learn how to drink out of a water bowl? Or is that just called "being a cat"? I only ask because my cats cannot drink out of a water bowl. They can't do it. I hear them constantly scooting the damn thing along the kitchen floor with their paws (they're doing it right now!!!), spilling water everywhere, stepping in the water, and then licking that water off their paws. That's how they freaking drink water. That or they jump into the shower once I'm out, and lap up the water off the bottom of the tub. Or jump into the sink and lap up whatever nastiness is in there.

But they can't just stick their heads into a water bowl and drink water like a normal animal. Like Tigers drinking out of streams or some shit. Can't do it. Will not do it.

It might be worth noting that their mother — my mom's cat Sophie — only drinks from a running tap. In fact, here's a picture of her doing just that. Is it possible that my cats were born with only the desire to drink water out of a freaking running tap? (They never actually drank out of a tap when they lived with their mother; they were outdoor kitties.)

Because otherwise I'm going to have to confront the fact that they may be too dumb to use a bowl.

Weirdness

• I watched the Superbowl last night, probably for the first time (intentionally) ever. It was boring as shit until the last quarter, when I actually found myself emoting over football, and getting happy when Eli Manning did his little anti-sack dance and threw that awesome pass that turned the game around. Could have been the bottle of bubbly, could have been all the food, could have been the company I kept, but whatever it was, it was neat.

• Everyone always makes such a big to-do about Superbowl commercials, but last night's were remarkably lame. Naomi Campbell dancing to "Thriller" with CGI lizards? Talking babies? What is this, 1998? The best commercial — hands down — was the talking stain. Yes, a talking stain. It was funny because that's exactly how it feels to have a stain on your shirt. I also laughed at the man in the rat suit. Don't judge me.

• I worked out today until my face went numb. There is only one other thing on the planet that makes my face go numb and it and working out aren't even in the same league. Odd.

• My apartment building has shifted and settled or something. Our outside door is nearly impossible to open and close, and suddenly neither of my bedroom doors will latch, which means I have to barricade myself in there every night — stacking laundry baskets and clothing and cat houses in front of them — so the cats don't breach the fortress and pounce on my eyelids all night while I try to sleep.

Adulthood

The worst part about being a grownup has got to be the paperwork. A constant stream of it, coming from store clerks and bank tellers and the mailman, pouring in, day after day, filling every pocket, every purse, every drawer, every shelf — paper everywhere.

And I've even opted in to paperless billing and opted out of credit-card offers and whatnot. Still, the stuff overwhelms me.

I had a frantic ten minutes today when I realized I'd forgotten to pay my student loan yesterday, and ripped around the apartment, looking for the current statement or an old statement — any freaking statement — so I could call and make my payment over the phone. (My particular loan cannot be paid online, which is so stupid I can hardly stand it.) I pilfered through drawer after drawer and stack after stack and couldn't put my hands on a single old statement, even though I know I've saved lots.

(Those of you readying lectures in your head about how I need to have that information organized and/or written down in an easily accessible place can just feel bask in the notion that you are a better adult than I am. I'm not ashamed.)

Finally, after making up roughly seven new curse words and squawking them all, I found a statement from November under the tray on my coffee table. I made the call, paid the bill, and then cut out the account number and taped it to the fridge. Because that's the only fucking way I will not lose it again.

I surveyed the paper carnage left in the wake of my hissy fit, and decided it was time to get rid of some shit. And how cathartic it is to excavate drawers full of old bills and statements and mail not even meant for you, and stand there, ripping each and every piece of piece of paper and tossing it to the ground in a symbolic fuck-you to the clutter of meticulously documented adulthood.

Granted, I probably didn't rip diligently enough to thwart the identity thieves who pilfer through our dumpster every week, but, luckily, I have a very professional shredder on retainer.

Broken

The cats, in an attempt to prove once and for all that the sun orbits the Earth and Galileo was a punk-a$$ chump, just broke the Galileo thermometer my sister gave to me for Christmas a few years ago.

They were playing and one of them — probably Sally — was getting all monkey with it and climbing on the bookshelf and probably jumped off, making the shelf rock and sending the thermometer to the ground. At least, that's my theory. I didn't actually see what happened.

Luckily, it hit an area rug and not the hardwood, or it would have completely shattered. As is, it just broke off the little reservoir tip and leaked paraffin all into the rug. (This whole time I thought it was water in there. Good to know that it's really effing flammable!) And into the hardwood below. I scrubbed as best I could, but I'm sure it's going to leave a smelly stain. On the rug and the floor. And now it smells like paraffin in the whole apartment, which is making me have flashbacks to the ice storm of '94 (I think) when my family lived in our basement for two weeks, heated only by a kerosene heater and lit only by hurricane lamps. That was nuts.

So now, because I can't just throw this thing away, I've got to figure out something to do with the little temperature bulbs.

I have been living alone for way too long

Actual conversation that just occurred between me and my cats as I arrived home from work:

Cats: Meow!

Me: Oh my god, kitties, it is cold as balls outside! Do you know how cold that is?

Cats: Meow!

Me: Actually, balls aren't cold at all.

Cats: Meow!

Me: It's a figure of speech.

If you get the reference, you are my new best friend*

Jack has a new nickname: Gingerballs.

*And if you don't get the reference, you can just look at the tags.

The untold dangers of wearing a hoodie

Your cat might bound up out of nowhere and box the shit out of your left boob because that's where the drawstring happens to be sitting, motionless, yet somehow taunting him.

Because I can

blog (n.) an online repository for endless bitching, bad poetry, and pictures of cats that are, on average, never as cute as your own.

Empty threat

Me, to Jack, who was eyeing the new phone cord I just installed:

"If you so much as put that cord in your mouth, I will pull out your teeth and make a necklace of them and wear it in front of you so you'll be sad."

Christmas Eve Liveblogextravaganzazomg

I was invited to a party tonight, but I've ended up frittering away my evening at home, sort of half paying attention to VH1's "I Love The '90s" marathon, sipping Korbel, and wrapping the rest of my presents. Man, Patrice Oneal cracks me up. I think I could just sit and listen to him laugh for hours.

My cats have probably eaten five feet of sparkly ribbon by now. Note to self: In the future, try to wrap gifts in a padlocked room so that your delightfully curious animals don't pounce each freshly wrapped gift and tear the cheap paper open so that you have to patch your gifts like they're some random hobo's pants or something. Yeesh.