the cat sitter

It is strange, but it seems that over the past week I've become a bit of a cat sitter. Last weekend a friend (Julie) who was taking care of another friend's cat (the Tanzies) asked me if I could take care of the cat (Calabaza) until Bekah (another friend) got home to take over. Bekah got home and was exhausted so I offered to continue the cat duty.

That was pretty uneventful. I fed the kitty, cleaned the litter box, played with the kitty a little, borrowed some books (which were gems), found some very old and moldy coffee that the nice people who stayed at their house while they were gone had left behind (most likely because it didn't cross their mind that in two weeks no one else would likely be making coffee and clean it out).

So, Bekah left yesterday to go visit a friend for a week. Her cat Bailey somehow got a virus of some sort and she took him to the vet yesterday only to find out that he was really sick. So we took him again today for a checkup and to get some blood tested. Fortunately my friend Beth and her little boy (a year old) Lucas went with us.

We arrived at Bekah and Bailey's house, which was a bit warm despite the two fans going. We tried to coax Bailey out from under the couch, but then had to lift the couch and pull him out all while trying to hang on to a one year old who wanted to stick his hand in the fan, pull over anything heavy, or basically head toward anything that yelled danger. In a one bedroom, little tiny apartment that is not baby-proof finding danger is quite easy. So we coax Bailey out, Beth (my friend) inspects the litter box and smells the clump there to make sure she knows what it is. Yuck. We try to get him to eat or drink something, but to no avail. We took off.

Of course the first thing Bailey did was pee in the carrying case which we had to carry about 10 blocks (not really that far). We got there and the vet recognized Bailey from yesterday, but seemed to think his name was Baby instead of Bailey. I tried to correct him, but it seemed unimportant and a fairly lost cause. Fortunately the vet was nice and explained everything he did and fortunately Beth was taking care of Bailey while I entertained Lucas.

First the vet said that Bailey was fairly dehydrated and that it looked bad. He showed us his yellow skin and teeth to verify that he was sick and dehydrated. Then it was time to take blood. So he put this horrible homemade looking tourniquet on (which as I said before, it was a good thing that he was nice and explaining things because it looked odd). It was a rubber band synched tight with a clamp of sorts. Since Bailey didn't seem to care, I relaxed a bit. Then he had to shave the hair off the arm to search for the vein. (I'm thinking in the States that the vet tends to do this without you standing there. But it has been a long time since I was last in a vet's office.) He filled two vials with blood and then gave Bailey a saline drip, a shot of antibiotics, something else, and B vitamins. Bailey didn't seem to notice.

He then gave me instructions and some special cat food (which he said he probably wouldn't eat) and told me to try to give him food every two hours. Fortunately I live right around the corner and since Bailey isn't actually eating and I do have other things to be doing, I did it a little less frequently.

Tonight as I went back over after giving Bekah an update on her kitty, he actually came out (unlike the rest of the day where I had to drag him out from under the couch only to put food in his face and water too, none of which he would touch. I rubbed him awhile and tried to leave about five times, but couldn't seem to do it since he looked so pathetically lethargic and would meow when I tried to leave. If I weren't actually allergic to him, I might have spent the night, which I'm hoping my roommate might actually do when she returns tomorrow.

So that is the saga of the kitties. Hopefully Bailey will get better soon and my stint as a cat sitter will soon be over. I do actually like cats, but much prefer the cats we had growing up, cats that are healthy, and cats that don't make my throat hurt. And I would much rather take care of a sick person than a sick animal.

a quiet sunday

I've been enjoying a few relaxing days after having had the stomach flu. And while I hate being sick, I love being forced to rest - completely. And since I had time (since I was supposed to be out of town) and didn't want to relapse, I did in fact rest well.

Since then I've been getting around to a few projects around the house, such as finally staining the dining room chairs to match the table - a dark walnut. The look very nice by the way. I've also gotten the desire to change a few things, to redecorate the living room and rearrange my room (which is going to be a challenge since everything presently fits perfectly like a jigsaw puzzle).

Some friend are out of town, so I'm feeding and taking care of their kitty. They have an amazing library, so I'm borrowing a few books. And since they return in a week, I need to get reading. One of the books I borrowed is a collection of C.S. Lewis writings, specifically The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Miracles, The Case for Christianity and Christian Behaviour. I just started the Screwtape Letters and was struck by a quote in the preface:

We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment. This, to begin with.

I'll probably add some more quotes here as I continue my way through these and several other books I have on loan from friends, or which I've been waiting way to long to read.

Another one from the preface, which by the way, is quite good:

Bad angels, like bad men, are entirely practical. They have two motives. THe first is fear of punishment... Their second motive is a kind of hunger. I feign that devils can, in a spiritual sense, eat one another; and us. Even in human life we have seen the passion to dominate, almost to digest, one's fellow; to make his whole intellectual an devotional life merely an extension of one's own -- to hate one's hatreds and resent one's grievances and indulge one's egoism through him as well as through oneself. HIs own little store of passion must of course be suppressed to make room for ours. If he resists this suppression he is being selfish.

Letter #3:

My dear Wormwood,
I am very pleased by what you tell me about this man's relations with his mother. But you must press your advantage. The Enemy will be working from the centre outwards, gradually bringing more and more of the patient's conduct under the new standard, and may reach his behaviour to the old lady at any moment. You want to get in first. Keep in close touch with our colleague Glubose who is in charge of the mother, and build up between you in that house a good settled habit of mutual annoyance; daily pinpricks. The following methods are useful.
1. Keep his mind on the inner life. He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his attention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the states of his own mind-- or rather to that very expurgated version of them which is all you should allow him to see. Encourage this. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.
2. It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very "spiritual", that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining. In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person, and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily less and less like the real mother - the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table. In time, you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling form his prayers for the imagined mother will ever flow over into his treatment of the real one. I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment's notice from impassioned prayer for a wife's or son's "soul" to beating or insulting the real wife or son without a qualm.
3. When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother's eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy - if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of that assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, that is easily managed
4. In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itslef by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but the tone of voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face. To keep this game up you and Glubose must see to it that each of these two fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother's utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. She must be encouraged to do the same to him. Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: "I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper." Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken....
Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape

In reading this letter, it is sad how close to reality this actually can be, in my life with roommates more often than i wish. Thank God that the Holy Spirit is present to bring truth to light and to bring about clarity of vision and conviction, so that while I am way too often blind, I do at some point see.