The Wheeze, Euphemistically

Euphemism:  The use of a word or phrase to replace another with one that is considered less offensive, blunt, or vulgar than the word or phrase that it replaces.  (Ed. Note: E.g., replacing the phrase "eat shit" with "I'm sorry but I'm not going to be able to do that.")

People form incredible bonds with their animals.  Lots of people seem to love their animals more than they love their humans.  I get this - animals are incredible and people are idiots.  People are the worst.  The thought of an animal dying is so distressing to me that I've been a lazy man's vegetarian for many years.  Vegetarian in that I don't often consume the flesh of a once living animal - lazy because I do eat meat from time to time.  What can I tell you - I'm ethical but flawed, a common argument to an unethical person trying to pass himself off as ethical.

I enjoyed the years we had The Wheeze but I learned more from the decline and death of that animal than I did from all the preceding years, as full of life as they were.  It was sad and it was poignant watching her fade into the black, into nothingness, into something else.  She wanted to go before we were ready to let her go - common in pet owners.  I hope that we didn't make her suffer unduly in our selfishness.  

Ed. Note:  I like the euphemisms people use to describe death.  "To Go" is particularly ridiculous.  The cat isn't going anywhere.  The location of the dead cat is the definition of a fixed position.  There is no locomotion involved, now or in the future, despite the huge body of locomotion work that occurred in the past.  I'm going to add one of my favorite death euphemisms because - as you can see - this is a topic that I could pursue right up to the Gates of Insanity or Death.  Here it is: "To assume room temperature."

You can be on your Death Bed or you can be on your Regular Bed.  If I die of a lingering illness and someone asks, in hushed tones, if I'm on my Death Bed, I hope the response is cheery: "No.  He's on his Regular Bed."  I have shopped for mattresses and I have yet to see "Death" featured in any of the advertising circulars.

"This weekend only!  Big President's Day discounts!!  Death Beds at 20! 30!! even 40% off!!!"

Part of the problem for an old animal was that we were in a transitional state of great flux - there was tremendous fluxing going on - during her last year.  She had to endure being stuffed into a cat carrier as we made a two day, eighteen hour trip to and from our vacation stay in - you got it - Vacation City.  I think this was stressful as hell on an old cat, as was adapting to new digs when we moved from vacation rental to hotel to vacation rental, and back again.  Then we stuffed her back in one more time for the final trip to our new home.  She lasted about a month here.  I wish it could have been longer because the sun shines, shines, shines, heaven for a cat who would have been staggering in ecstasy from one patch of heat to the next.

An indication of what was to come happened one night not long after we moved into our condo in The New City.  The cat had spent several stressful hours stuffed in a cat carrier stuffed under a seat stuffed into an airplane fuselage.  I have no idea what she made of all the noise and jolting around, the change in air pressure.  How does that affect a cat's ears?  Did she know to swallow or suck on a Tic Tac?  I had to take her out of her cat carrier to pass through airport security.  She seemed pretty calm while we made the transit - not a peep - but then again cats are famous for their poker faces.  She did not set off the metal detector.  She walked back into the carrier without prompting.  She hated to be embarrassed - I bet she was trying to convince everyone around her that she was a frequent flyer, used to first class and priority lounges.

Suddenly and without warning, The Wheeze jumped up and settled in at the foot of the bed.  This was beyond weird.  This was a cat that, if you picked her up and put her on the bed and held her down, would bolt the second the pressure was relieved.  Beginning that night and forevermore she made the move onto the bed.  We had to fix a sort of access ramp so that she could scramble up, having lost the ability to make the big jump on her own.  And once she settled in she settled in - you couldn't dislodge her from whatever position she assumed at the foot of the bed.  It was like having an iron anvil down there - I could kick and push but she wouldn't budge an inch, despite a stream of grumbling and huffing in what must have passed for feline cursing.

The Wheeze, Tormentor

A dog is a real pet.  A cat is an animal that you are feeding, bedding down for the night, and disappearing their feces.  If something bad happens to you a dog will take a crash course in human linguistics so that he can use a telephone to call 9-1-1.  A cat will keep an eye on your corpse.  Maybe.  If it's in the sun and she doesn't have to move.  Dogs are always happy to see you, they're very sorry when they do something wrong, and they never, ever hold a grudge.  Yesterday is here and gone and let's go for a walk!  A cat is merely tolerating your presence and with a pained expression on her face at that.

Ed Note: Why are dogs male in my mind and cats female?  Conspiracy?  Check this out later.

So one really fascinating thing about cats is that they sense who doesn't like them, then use this intuition to torment that person.  A good example is my mother who professed to be allergic to cats - I remain dubious that this was the case but that's a matter for another day.  Mom didn't like to come to our house - no drinking and no grand kids - so she played the cat allergy card all the time, slapping it down like she was filling an inside flush - my sister's two cats, standing between mom and her granddaughters, didn't seem to have the same effect.  The point here is that as soon as mom took a seat The Wheeze would be on her lap in a flash.  I didn't care that much one way or another where the cat sat - Mr. Antsy prefers to be free to get up and move around at will - so she sought me out as the next warm refuge, and she wouldn't jump up on her own, either, preferring to sit at my feet and stare at me until I reached down and picked her up.  What a princess. 

My wife who wanted a cat to sit in her lap and purr?  She couldn't hold the cat down even if she employed a Full Nelson.  When SuperK wanted to take a nap The Wheeze - always in search of some good heat and my wife is a human furnace - would jump up and lay on her lower legs, just out of reach of any grabby hands. 

"User," my wife would mutter.  It wasn't that The Wheeze didn't want to be touched.  It was that she wanted everything to be on her terms.  Man, cats must all be alcoholics.

The Wheeze would remain in my office all day, lying in the sun in the summer and wedged underneath the radiator in the winter.  The Wheeze would saunter in to my wife's office, look around with a bored expression on her face, and then saunter back out.  It was almost mean-spirited.  It was almost malevolent.  You love me?  Tough shit.

That cat could purr when she was content which she almost never was.  That cat never spoke unless she was annoyed - which was often - and then she screamed.  She shrieked, she howled.  If she saw another cat walking through the yard she would throw herself against the window, yelling like a banshee.  Originally I thought this was the bravado of an animal talking shit from a position of safety until I saw her get outside a couple of times and chase the offending animal away.

The Dark

Death:   The cessation of life and all associated processes; the end of an organism's existence as an entity independent from its environment and its return to an inert, nonliving state.   

Die: To stop living; to become dead; to undergo death.

I confess to owning a highly developed dark side.  I protest when it's pointed out that I'm all dark side, but I don't protest too much.  I can see the dark.  I can see into the dark.  I can see the dark up ahead.

My favorite movie is "Apocalypse Now."  My high school required that each student complete a huge research paper - the dreaded "Junior Paper" - prior to moving on to Senior year.  My research topic was "The Effects of Allied Bombing on Nazi Germany In WWII."  I was 17 when I chose this topic.  Who knows why this I did this - I could have chosen any topic under the sun?  No, seriously, I'm asking if anyone knows why I did and why I do this?

I'm sure I've got some hard-wiring that predisposes me to the dark.  I'm sure I absorbed some of the general dark theory that my mom and dad dished out.  I'm sure that all of the unfavorable outcomes that arose from my drinking and drug use caused me to trend dark. But it's not like I ever had anything really crappy happen to me that would warp a naturally sunny disposition to one that ponders instead All That Could Go Wrong.

We talk in The Fellowship about the efficacy of the Gratitude List.  We are encouraged to write  down all the shit that we should be grateful for and then read what we've written regularly, lest we forget to be grateful.  When someone leading a meeting suggests the topic of gratitude an audible groan is heard.  In The Fellowship we try to discuss The Solution and not wallow in The Problem but it sure is a lot more fun talking about what's going wrong instead of what needs to be done to fix it. 

So I guess I'm not alone.

I'm going to step outside for a moment - the sunset is incredible.

Hunter Cat

Hunt: To chase down prey and (usually) kill it.

Again I apologize for the written version of what passes for a cat video presentation.  I'm supposed to do this writing and, frankly, this animal had as big an impact on my life as any human ever has.  Pet lovers, animal lovers will understand this.  

Two more games that fall more in the Hunting category than in the Warring category: The Strafe and The Tag.

The Strafe was most memorable on the wood flooring in our last house.  When The Wheeze executed The Strafe she sounded like a freight train.  I honestly don't know how an animal that probably didn't weigh five pounds could make that much noise.  It was frightening.  It sounded like there was a tornado approaching.  It sounded like she was stomping around in heavy boots.  

The Strafe occurred when a person entered a room - The Wheeze would blast out of some hiding place and streak by right in front of you, so close that you had to resort to a stutter step to avoid running into her.  It surprised me and made me laugh every time.  She thought she was in an F-16 doing a fly-by.  I believe that she broke the speed of sound a few times.

The Tag was in the same family as The Strafe but with more sinister implications.  The Tag was a strafe from the rear - as The Wheeze blew by she'd throw up a paw to give the back of your leg a whack.  Sometimes she'd stop and throw her feet around your legs and bite a calf or ankle.  She didn't use her teeth often and never with evil intent but she wasn't above sinking an incisor into flesh on occasion.  The damage that occurred came from my attempts to avoid the teeth - she'd have a light chomp going on as I was trying to extract a body part from the area.  It was more of a shredding than a biting.

Still . . . blood.

Warrior Cat

For some reason I began calling her Wheezer which morphed into The Wheeze, as in: "Where's The Wheeze?"

We always had an alarm system in the homes that we owned while The Wheeze was alive - this was because our shit was so compelling, so amazing, that thieves were lined up on both sides of the street waiting for the opportunity to break in and take it all away.  These were good, professional thieves, too - they wore black turtlenecks and black sock caps.  That's how you could tell they were good.  I'd drive by them and think: "Man, am I glad I have an alarm system so the thieves can't get in and steal my shit."

These alarm systems had motion detectors that detected motion.  When we would leave the house we'd have to lock The Wheeze in the basement, lest she set off the alarm.  It's not as bad as it sounds - we had perfectly comfortable, cat-friendly basements full of old furniture and dark hiding spaces that she could skulk around in.  The problem, of course, was that she didn't always want to go into the basement, preferring the more comfortable new furniture we had throughout the house.  We solved this problem by purchasing little tins of cat treats and we'd signal that it was time for a treat by rattling the can.  I'm not sure what the manufacturers put in those treats but they had the same effect on The Wheeze that heroin has on an addict.

I got good at flinging the little bouncing treats way down into the basement so that she'd go scuttling after them right fast.  That is on the times that she deigned to actually come when the can was rattled.  Often we were forced to hunt her down in whatever room she was currently sleeping in.  When she was discovered she'd sit there with a blank expression on her face: "I heard you fine - just didn't feel like coming."

I'd stand over her yelling: "Let's go let's go let's go!" like a drill sergeant.  She went, in a hurry, but exuding a sullen satisfaction, glad to be one up on The Human.  "You got me but I made you work for it."

Some of her favorite games:
Sitting at the bottom of our steps, watching me peek around the edge of the door on the second floor, before blasting upward to try to catch me unawares.  She came up those stairs like a freight train.

Stretching out along a wall and slowly scrabbling down the hallway as I patted her haunches, making grumbling sounds during the entire transit.  When we reached the end of the hall she'd change direction and we'd repeat the operation until we reached the original starting point at which point she'd shriek and lunge for my hand, clearly interested in drawing blood.

Tangling herself up in the legs of a sitting chair, screaming bloody murder, as I tried to weave my hands around the legs to grab her feet.  I got bit a few times playing this game, usually when she got teeth on flesh as I was pulling quickly away in a futile escape attempt.  I was careful but she was quick.  More blood.

All fighting games.  All warrior games.  All games which stated blatantly: "I'm not afraid of shit."

The Wheeze

Wheeze:  A piping or whistling sound caused by difficult respiration.

My therapist is really pushing the concept that my dead cat is not getting enough credit as a trigger for my recent anxiety troubles or The Troubles, as I call them.  This probably doesn't make the folks of Ireland happy but what can you do?  It is, as you know, all about me.

"But my father died,"  I point out.  "My mother died."

"Eh, what's the big deal," she says.  "Everyone dies.  Get over it.  Quit whining.  But losing a cat, that's some heavy shit."

This animal came into our lives in the mid-1990s, rescued from an animal shelter in a small rural town near our home in The Old City.  SuperK selected her because she sat in my wife's lap and seemed to be happy doing it.  My wife always wanted an affectionate lap kitten.  Alas, the animal was sick, not docile - she became a rampaging bitch once she shook off her illness. This has been a great source of amusement for me over the years.

I was really opposed to getting this kitten.  Frankly, I was jealous for a while because SuperK took a great deal more pleasure out of her company than she did from mine, and this was fairly early in our marriage when we were getting along a good sight better than we are now.  SuperK was still at the point where she found all of my annoying control freak shit sort of endearing.

This was a grey tiger kitten with a weird pattern of black stripes running from her head down the center of her back.  Frankly, she looked like she was decked out with the kind of landing beacons placed on an aircraft carrier to guide supersonic fighter jets attempting to land on a stormy sea, at night.  So we called her The Lizard, although SuperK used Lizzie in polite company.  I insisted on The Lizard.  I liked the fact that we added "The" to her name, too.  It was necessary.  Like The Edge or Pele or "Here's Johnny!" she didn't need a stinking proper name.

Wheeze:  (slang) Something very humorous or laughable.

As The Wheeze grew older she did not grow larger.  She was a very small cat.  Runt-like.  And like many small creatures she feared nothing.  She was not afraid of other, larger cats.  She was not afraid of dogs.  She was not afraid of loud noises.  She would sit in the living room with a slightly annoyed, vaguely alarmed look on her face as I blasted Black Sabbath.  She did not run from the vacuum cleaner.  In fact, she would refuse to move as the roaring vacuum cleaner approached.  I could bump into her in an attempt to make her move, and she would not move.  It was like "get that thing the fuck outta here.  I'm not going anywhere."  On a couple of occasions she got outside when other, larger cats were around, cats with claws, cats weighing twice as much as she did, and she would throw herself at these animals.  I never saw one of them take a swipe at her.  It was as if they were so stunned by the chutzpah of this tiny animal that they were paralyzed into inaction.

I'm sorry, Cat People, but I'm supposed to do this writing.

The Ackerman Effect

I saw a buddy at the morning meeting today for the first time in a few weeks.  We chatted for a while and he walked with me down to see my Very Expensive Car.  He was parked in the other direction so he hopped in and let me drive him to his car which - coincidentally - is a Nice Car, but not a Very Expensive Car.  This means I was top dog this morning in the car department.  I was feeling pretty good about that until I realized that this is why most people loathe owners of Very Expensive Cars.  Thus my rationale for parking a couple of blocks away from the meeting for the first couple of months.  I'm not a people pleaser even though what other people think of me is very important.  I'm dying for your affection and attention while sneering down at you in disdain.  It's not easy but I think I pull it off.

My friend is a real car guy - someone who understands how cars work and so on and so forth - not a shallow poseur like me who still doesn't know where the fuck the engine is.  In fact, he works at an auto parts store.  He's the real deal.

I pulled a quick U-turn so that I could get back to his car without stressing myself unduly by driving around the block.  I had to get this task done fast.  I have noticed that when I make a very sharp turn at low speeds - especially when the car is still warming up in the awful, distressing 65 degree weather that passes for winter here in Vacation City - that my car makes a weird thumping or clunking noise.  It's all "thunk thunk thunk" for a little while.  I have noticed this noise before and I'm not happy about it.  My solution is usually to really turn up the Black Sabbath.  If I can't here it then it doesn't exist.

This dude says: "Whoa.  What's that noise?"

If you want to cut a guy with a Very Expensive Car down to size that is an excellent opening line.  He then suggested that I "might want to get that checked out."  He assured me that it was probably normal but that it wouldn't hurt to investigate it further.

As you might imagine I had an unpleasant drive home, imagining Very Expensive Repairs, the major bane of owning a Very Expensive Car.  I was wondering why I sold my perfectly reasonable older car to put myself in this position.  Again.

It all worked out.  I did some research and found that this was a normal noise for my kind of car in those very specific situations.  In fact it has a name: The Ackerman Effect.  I shit you not - look it up.

If your car is subject to The Ackerman Effect you should sell that car immediately.