Finger Lickin' Good

Monday I celebrated my 100th post with a little dance and an astonishing ginger pumpkin mousse made by the excellent chef at Lake Parlin Lodge.  Last night, Kiwi, our cat celebrated my milestone by catching a mouse in our living room and gnawing on it for 15 minutes until its faint shrieks prompted me to snatch it away from my then-fanatical feline and chuck it out the front door with a pitcher.  This morning, Kiwi attempted to rouse me by burrowing her face near my neck and filling my air supply with her nasty rodent breath before attempting to clean me with a mouth that I had last seen with a tiny foot and tail poking out the front.  I know that licking the area around my nose is her love language, but considering the circumstances, you can imagine how it went this morning.  She flew.

It's important to know a few things about our cat.  This is only the second mouse that she has apprehended in our 5 year history together.  In all truth, you could probably consider it the first, because Kiwi is what C and I like to call "lazy and totally infantile".  The only other time she's had the opportunity (that I'm aware of) to catch a field mouse was in a small cabin we lived in for the first year and a half of her adopted life.  It was a nice grey box nestled into a wooded hill, which probably made it an easy case for a pack of Italian Job forest creatures small enough to dig into the floorboards and walls.  It took place, as last night, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, and in similar fashion,  I awoke to Kiwi scrambling about, tearing her claws into the carpet, only on that occasion the crime scene was our bedroom.  It was as pleasant as it sounds.

So the scenario played out in roughly the same fashion as last night's event, barring the fact that our vicious cat with razor blades for fingernails was totally unable to catch her prey.  She looked like a blind gorilla playing whack-a-mole, throwing her hairy arms wildly in every direction, smashing the blue carpet with more spit and vigor than I'd ever seen her demonstrate anywhere.  This is the cat, that when the vet needs to use the rectal thermometer to read her temperature, responds by purring loudly and rubbing her chin along the latex gloves of the lab tech holding her in place, which is a totally needless assistant in this particular instance, might I add.

Crackers are another strong love language for our fish-breath angel.

5 years ago, when C finally relented to my pleading and reluctantly accompanied me to the nearest Humane Society, it didn't take long for us to find our special friend.  This was a remarkably well designed and beautifully maintained facility, and there were a number of glass-walled cat rooms for us to visit, including the unusual chamber we found Little Miss Einstein in.  Going into the process, I was already leaning toward adopting a black cat or kitten.  I'm not entirely sure what went into my decision, but considering my overwhelming reputation for donning predominantly obsidian apparel, it's probably due to something that happened to me as a child.   So not surprisingly, I entered into a small room that was filled exclusively with black cats.  I'm not certain of what message this particular establishment was trying to send, or if there was actually some kind of evidence-based motivation for this state of segregated affairs, but there they were, with every pair of lime green eyes flashing in our direction.  The only exception to the color palate was a single mostly-white calico cat that was hiding under a chair, hissing wildly.  It was hard not to read anything into the scene.

I knelt down onto the pale linoleum tile and waited.  I was there for maybe a full minute before I was greeted, no - accosted by this one small, ratty-looking animal that was suddenly mounting my chest and summiting my shoulder.  Within seconds, the tiny beast was smearing drool onto the side of my face and working it into the crevices of my left ear.  I don't even think I was holding her up as she clung to my chest like a magnet on a refrigerator.  Instantly, I knew that the search was over.  This was my kind of animal.

As I should have suspected, there was more to this package than tattered fur and dual fountains of saliva and love.  As we filled out paperwork at the front desk, the employee helping us explained that, "all of the volunteers adore her", and that they take turns bringing her home on the weekends.  This is a good sign, I thought. "There is one thing you should probably be aware of, though", said the young fellow as he proceeded to inform me of her condition.  You see, something went wrong when our hairy ray of sunshine was a kitten.  She wasn't weaned long enough, or perhaps it was that she was weaned too long, but either way, she developed a certain coping mechanism to deal with stress.  She suckled.

She what?

Suckled.  As in, finds the nearest finger and latches on like a newborn.  Well, I thought as we signed the papers, how bad could it be?

BAD.  REAL BAD.  

5 years later she still does it, sniffing through the bed sheets like a pig searching for truffles and nosing around in your sweatshirt for the hands you've crammed into your kangaroo pocket.  She will find them, and she will not relent until she has done it. We've been worn into giving up pretty easily, but I think we're going to start keeping a pair of deer-hide mittens on the coffee table, just so we don't have to scramble around like we've entered a game of capitol-punishment Twister where you're playing against ten rottweilers and your hands are made of bacon.

All I know is that after last night, I will do whatever is necessary to keep that dirty mouth from finding one of my fingers.  And please, whatever you do, don't come over today.

I won't be able to open the door after I tape these Cheerio boxes to my arms.

Let Me Count The Ways

Today is DoesThisParkaMakeMyButtLookBig's 100th post!  It's a good thing you aren't here to see my happy dance, because despite the scientific advances of the 21st century, you still can't erase something like that from your memory, even if you desperately want to.  It's better this way.

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At this particular time of year, there are some things that I miss about our old neighborhood.  

I miss scampering through the local corn maze with my sister, cackling loudly as we race through the crisp fall air and trick small, rosy-faced children into marching down dead ends. I yearn for my kitchen, with its sharp knives, miraculous dishwasher and double sink.  Here, when I load the sink with dirty dishes and greasy pans, I don’t have a second bowl to fill my coffeepot in, and rearranging the mountains of glass and knives is like a kitchen version of running the gauntlet  – one of these days, I am going to reach in, flail about, and emerge not with ten fingers, but with two fists of what appears to be ground meat.  I long for the vegetable stand a mile up the road, with its locally-made ginger and eggnog ice creams and perfectly inspired cherry tomatoes that almost never lasted the 3-minute drive home.  I crave a yoga class, a match with my volleyball team, my washer and dryer, and the company of my parents.   I even sort of miss the way the local McDonald’s employees recognized my face as I drove through for yet another vanilla ice cream cone.  I’d try not to frequent the same franchise more than once per day, but there were times when I cared less about my reputation and more for my craving.  They probably had a nickname for me, and rightfully so.  

But despite the wonder of NPR, wireless internet, and comprehensive fitness centers, there are also a few things that I don’t miss.  For example, I don’t miss traffic.  For you friends who doubt the existence of traffic in the neighborhood, boy do I have news for you.  I can identify between 40 and 50% of the vehicles driven in our current town.  The other half is made up of either Canadians or logging trucks.  The last time I had to stop behind a car was about a week ago.  It was on the 3-mile dirt road to camp, and was because we all knew each other and were stopping to have a chat. 

Traffic.

I also don’t miss shopping.  C and I have developed a very brief retail half-life, which seems ironic since before the move, I worked in that industry.  Perhaps it was always this way, but I suspect that making our direct purchases almost exclusively at convenience and grocery stores for the last nine months has exacerbated our impatience.  The only exception I make to the above statement is that I have retained an insatiable love for shopping with my sister, which categorically falls somewhere between Halloween-costume hunting and raiding a candy store, and is perhaps better known as the eternal quest for the most revolting frock.

Lastly, among the things that I have gladly left behind me are traffic circles.  If you believe in such a place, I am convinced that these, friends, are what Limbo is made of: circle after badly engineered circle of misery and anguish and panic.  I dread them.  There is a special, particularly abysmal roundabout near our old house that was recently re-designed, which means that they decided after a dozen years or more to abruptly change the traffic pattern.  I completely agree with the decision, because the vehicle interactions were backwards and inside out for years (inside out, I tell you!), but this is exactly the problem with traffic circles: there seems to be no universal way of constructing them.  Another loop I know of has two lanes – two lanes­ – something that simply cannot produce a safe or predictable traffic pattern.  I am certain that a preschooler somewhere took red crayon and drew a set of fiery concentric circles, then crammed the paper into her city planner/mommy’s briefcase, only for it to slide out onto the office floor and get pushed through approval and funding by some recently-promoted department intern.  It's particularly infuriating considering that the circles were probably drawn to be a giant apple, or maybe Buzz Lightyear.  Bottom line: a two-lane roundabout is ridiculous. 

Just try to get out of this inside circle without reaching for your Paxil.  Kiss your sanity goodbye. 

Mercifully, I haven’t driven in a circle in months, hardly ever see a stoplight, and buy my gifts online.  This softens the blow of not being able to watch my sister kill a bag of 75%-off Halloween candy or nosh on my mom’s salsa while listening to Simon & Garfunkel with Dad at the dining room table.  It’s is a good thing, because life without the joy of those two events has the potential to really bring me down. 

But no traffic circle Limbo?  This just might be worth it.