More on Cats

Seven years ago I invited a cat into my home; a sincere invitation at that. The first few years the cat and I lived a friendly existence. The cat played, rolled over on command, and became an enjoyable companion.

I like cats. They are an interesting species. The question often is, "What do they do?" Dogs hunt, herd sheep, find fugitives, and many other useful things. Of course, there are some breeds of dogs I cannot bear. They usually fall into the Chihuahua category. They yap noisily, become domineering, and are, to me, generally unpleasant animals. Also useful are horses, the other domesticated species people respond. They can pull things, carry people or other loads on their backs, race around an oval (we can bet which one will win and make lots of money—that is useful). But cats, they do not do anything. They do not herd, hunt, carry things on their back, or race. Generally, cats sleep, eat, puke up hair balls, and use a litter box (if they are kept in a home). I do not think I have ever seen a cat do anything useful. I know there are exceptions. There is a cat that knows when people are about to die. Occasionally a cat will warn sleeping house occupants that their home is about to go up in flames, but I think that is rare.

Well, anyway, the cat that came into my home seven years ago at least rolled over on command. Not anymore, however. The cat does nothing on command. In fact it is the other way around. I can hear the animal meowing loudly when the cat thinks it is time to eat, which is all the time. The cat, these days, makes all sorts of demands and sees me as an interloper. That is the part that bothers me the most. Rejection has been a principal part of my life. In high school I think I held the record for being told to take a hike when I asked a girl for a date. In my life I think I have sent out over one hundred resumes and curriculum vita in search of meaningful employment. Most of them did not generate a response. Some generated a polite letter of rejection. I can understand all that and it is a part of my past I do not need to dwell on. What I cannot understand is how it is possible for the cat I have invited into my home, the cat I feed, and the cat that shares the comforts I provide can reject me.

That is exactly what this ungrateful cat does. Every time I entered into the cat's space it leaves the room. All I have to do is look at it and the return look says, "Who are you and why are you here?" Now I ask, "How would feel?" Or, let me ask this, "Is this the ultimate rejection; being told by a cat to get out of my space?" Alas, I think the cat has trained me and herded me into a corner. Maybe that is what cats do.

The Handy Man

I looked out of the upstairs back window one afternoon to see a man working on his pickup truck in the snow. Fully exposed to the weather, he wore a t-shirt and heavy trousers. The temperature was about ten degrees and the snow was a couple of inches with the threat of more to come. The man and the truck were not on the side of the street but in a large grassy area behind the house. He had to be working on this truck in these conditions because of necessity. Certainly, he did not choose to be out in those conditions for the thrill of working on a truck.

Nevertheless, I admired the man for having the personal strength, skill, and shaking aside the rigors of a cold day. Now for me the truck would have stayed there until spring in its present condition. Not because I am not inured to the cold and snow, which I am not, but because I have no skill with anything mechanical. Owning tools such as a hammer, pliers, wrenches, and screw drivers is a waste of money. I own those things but every time I attempt to use them the project ends in failure and often with words that indicate a loss of religion.

But, there was that man out there in the snow and cold working hard to get his truck back to working order. Maybe he needs it for his work, or he needs to move it to someone who has purchased it. I do not know, but I know that truck was important to him.

There are things important to me that need making, repairing, or adjusting. However, they are better turned over to someone who knows how to fix things or to make things. How did it turn out this way? Men are supposed to be handy by tradition. Most of the men I know can do just about anything with a hand or power tool. If I turned on a table saw and tried to pass a plank through it, a destroyed piece of wood comes out the other end. I think the problem goes back to childhood. I wanted to make things, help my father fix things, or even invent some things, but abject failure characterized every effort I made. Finally, the decision was clear; I would not do anything that embarrasses me.

Yet, here I am writing about failure and now as I realize what I have done I am embarrassed. I only wish I could work on a truck in the cold and snow and fix things with ease. It is too late now, I am old guy and all I want to do is stay in and avoid the weather.

The Golden Globe Awards

I am not a good movie critic; in fact I am probably one of the worst. For example, I watched a German film the other night; it was on DVD and called the "White Ribbon" in English. This film, even though it won the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival will never (and I emphasize never) be shown in the local six-plex. However, I liked it. The filming was interesting, the story strange and unresolved, the actors put you in the time and place of the film (the years just before World War I in rural Germany). Because my taste for films usually does not include most of the films at the six-plex these days I am not too interested in the Hollywood crowd.

In fact, I find many of them shallow and vapid. I am not too interested in the fact that they choose to have children without the benefit of marriage, or that they find nothing too terrible by frying their brains with drugs. Some of them are very talented and attractive, but I want only to see them in character and not in their real lives.

The Golden Globe Awards Ceremony on Sunday made me think of this. I did not watch much of it and the little I saw was about as interesting as watching grass grow; in fact, that may be more interesting. These people dressed to kill, as they say, chatted away, gave each other awards for doing their jobs, and told unpleasant jokes. Their acceptance speech, I think that is what they are called, only reveal that they do work hard, but so does the plumber that comes to the house, or the letter carrier that drops off direct sales mail in my mail box every day. Yes, they get paid for their labors, but we do not sit eagerly on Sunday evening watching them congratulate each other for doing their work.

Finally, I have not enjoyed the humor of the emcee, a comedian that often performs in HBO series. Getting laughs at the expense of another person by insulting words is playground stuff. Maybe that is the problem; those people have not matured well and are the victims of arrested development.

Hyphenated American

Returning from the "big city" after a medical procedure and listening to the car radio there was a discussion concerning hyphenated Americans. One listener called in asking if it would be possible to drop the hyphens and everyone just be American. I think that regardless of the hyphen, everyone who is a citizen is an American.

But that made me think of my heritage. I suppose I could be hyphenated as an European-American.  But what part of Europe best defines me? My family name is French, and I have enjoyed going to France and learning about my French background. However, as I continue my study of my origins and the gene pools from which I sprang, I have learned that I am English, Welsh, French Huguenot, and German. I have never thought about being Welsh, French Huguenot, and German. But there they are, my ancestors who have given me my genes and my DNA.

In the process of tracing family origins I have found that there are knights and dames in my family tree. There are Oxford dons and people noted for writing scholastic or academic treatise. Taking no particular pride in all this, I suspect some of the knights were rascals. All of them seemed to wear out their ladies by making them bear up to twenty children.

Well, not only have I been to France, I have also been to England. My maternal heritage is English. In fact, my maternal great-grandfather emigrated from England. When in England, notably London, I felt at home. I suppose being English is more of me than being French. On my paternal side almost all the antecedents I have found are English who came to North America as early as the seventeenth century. On my mother's side there are antecedents who were part of the early Massachusetts Colony, presumably Puritans, or what are later known as Congregationalists. I remember my mother using that word a few times.

All of that history, however, does not change the fact that I am an American, not a European. If I can trace my family history back to seventeenth century in Massachusetts, Virginia, and Maryland, and if my family has a history in Mississippi, Iowa, and Minnesota, there is no European left in me. The hyphen does not work for me. But, I can understand why people who trace their ancestry to the dark times of involuntary servitude and second-class citizenship want to identify themselves by race and ancestry. I respect all that. However, I served in both the Marine Corps and the Army with many men of various ethnicities, and I never thought of them less than comrades who served the American people.

Squirrels in the Attic

Once, outside my front door, there was red maple tree. In the tree lived a nest or nests of squirrels. They could live there at various levels up and down the tree and enjoyed life mostly (sometimes the squirrels ended up in the street squashed, but generally they had a good life in that hollow tree.

The tree was deemed dangerous, because of its hollowness, and had to be cut down. Cutting down such an old tree is sad, but wind, lightening, and general old age made it a tree that was doomed to collapse. The potential collapse could mean that it would smash a passing car, bring down power, telephone, and television cable lines, and worst of all, smash into my house. I did not need any of that.

Of course there are always unintentional consequences to everything we do; the squirrels needed a new home and they found one. They relocated to the attic of my house.  Now squirrels are cute little guys up in the trees and out in the wild. People in nearby homes put out little platforms with ears of corn on them to feed the squirrels.  Nonetheless, I do not admire such generosity. I think wild animals, no matter how cute and fuzzy their tails, should be wild and kept wild.

Further, squirrels are rodents; you know rats with fuzzy tails. We do not want rats, or mice, in our homes, why then is it good to have squirrels in one's attic? It is not good, but I cannot find a single pest control company that will come to the house to get the squirrels out of the attic. If I said we had rats in the attic, or mice running about the house, they would be out in a flash, but squirrels are too cute and fuzzy to think of as pests.

Nevertheless, squirrels in my attic are pests. I can hear them running about up there. They have destroyed several vents and screens placed to prevent them from getting in, and recently they have gnawed a hole in the ceiling of one of my upstairs rooms. But they are not suitable pests for pest control.

One solution I have considered is to plant a new red maple tree, but that will take fifty years or more to be as tall and as hollow as the tree I had taken down. Then I thought I would build a replica of a hollow red maple tree, but I am not crafty and handy enough to do that. What is the solution to evicting the squirrels from my attic? Someone suggested that we shoot them and make squirrel stew. The shooting part may be a good idea, but the stew part does not work for me. However, I think there is an ordinance against shooting fire arms in the city. Another solution may be to trap them and move the little colony out to the woods somewhere, but requires more patience than I have and probably would mean I would have to climb up into the attic. My attic is a no-man's land, just like my basement is a dungeon. Further, my very old house means the attic is really up quite a distance from the ground.

I suppose now I have no solutions to squirrels in the attic. Maybe they are an indication of end-times when small mute animals will take over the world.