kitty-less in kingwood

So here I sit, alone and lonely. My kitties are gone.

They left us for that great gig in the sky; Missy on January 26th and Bandit, just last week, on June 3rd. They were both young, as kitties go. Missy was 11 and Bandy was only 6. Both were fairly sudden, unexpected and shocking.

I grew up an only child so I'm very used to being alone. I suppose what I didn't realize is that I really had not been alone since I had them for company. They greeted me at the door when I came home. I was always talking to them and they back. Bandy was almost always by my side.

I miss them so much. I long to be back in the day when the house was full...

I called Bandy my "little guy" and "peanut". There was never a dull moment when he was around. Bandit loved and lived for playing with water:

The sink, bath tub, shower, your water glass, the dish under a potted plant, a vase with cut flowers, the bowl under the kitchen sink's leak, no matter......he'd find it. Then spill it. It started when he learned to splash with his water bowl. The wood floor in the kitchen near it began to warp. I moved the water bowl to the laundry room's tile floor.

Missy looked a little like an owl, sometimes scary, but she was the sweetest, gentlest thing. A real girlie, through and through..

Which was why it was so funny the time she went after Luke when he and I were arguing.....

My nickname for her was "Misita" and sometimes "Missy Misita." She was my little girl kitty although she never looked all that little with all the fur she had. Missy was very lovey and most content when either sitting on your lap or as close as catly possible right next to you. All she ever wanted was to be loved and petted. Over time with us, when asked for a kiss, she began to stick her nose in the air to rub noses with you. That's what Johnny's trying to do with her below. Note Bandit watching and getting ticked off. He was, afterall, top cat ...

:
Look at "the face"! but do NOT let it fool you. Bandit was my attack cat. He went after everyone who ever entered the house at one time or another. He swatted and he bit and he meant business. When he bit, he was out for blood. When I came across a little sign that read: WARNING: CRAZY CAT, I knew I had to have it. I put it on the side door but everyone thought it was a joke. haha. . . I'll tell you who had the last laugh. . .

Bandit took particular pride in guarding his stairs....or perhaps it was the whole upstairs where we slept that he was really watching over.

I remember Luke's friend, Nathaniel, telling me one day, "You know, he's real protective of those stairs!" Apparently, he used to go after the boys when they tried going up to his room.

Bandit never gave Misita any peace. He stalked her as a past time. He'd hide and pounce on her when she walked by. He'd lurk behind the couch, for example, and watch for her arrival by looking underneath it. She wasn't the brightest bulb and would never have thought to look under it as she was approaching to see if he was lying in wait. He got her every time.

He'd jump on her back and then fiercly bite her neck, one side and then the other....fast and furiously. The poor thing. It got to the point where she'd always be looking over her shoulder as she walked through the house.

A rare moment where they were touching and not fighting:

Bandit was one special kitty. He loved playing fetch. I'd stand in the downstairs hallway and toss one of his balls into the living room. He'd run after it, pick it up, bring it back to me, and drop it at my feet. Over and over. In the last couple of years he started bringing me the ball when I was sitting at the desk in the study at the top of the stairs. I'd toss it down the stairs and he'd bolt after it. He'd get down that whole staircase in three leaps. I remember the last time we played. It was about a month before his death. He must've brought me that bally twenty times. He hadn't chased that much in a long time. I couldn't believe all his energy. Here he is in the hallway downstairs bringing me back his purple ball...

I used to refer to Misita as "my dumb blonde" because while always content with her surroundings she often appeared oblivious to what was going on around her. However, in all fairness, she really wasn't so dumb after all....... she was actually paying close attention as we came to find out. Apparently she'd watch Bandit bringing me back the ball and getting heaps of praise for this act. She must've thought to herself, "Hey, I can do that, too!" So one day I'm sitting in the kitchen and I hear this muffled meowing coming from the distance but getting closer. All of a sudden, who turns the corner but Missy, meowing away with a ball in her mouth, strutting real proud. She brought it all the way to me at the kitchen table and dropped it at my feet and then scooted off, so proud of herself. : ) Now she did not use any of Bandit's three favorite balls (purple, yellow or blue) but, rather, another multi-colored one that he never played with because it was more oval and flat than round and didn't roll like the others when he batted it. This ball henceforth was referred to as "Missy's ball" and only she touched it. She was probably around 8 years old when she learned this and she brought it to me repeatedly over the years. She didn't fetch it or anything like he did, but bring it to me she did, and praise her for it I did. She always meowed the whole time it was in her mouth.

This reminds me of something Bandit did when he was younger. He had a toy we referred to as "Mousie." He used to walk around the house carrying it in his mouth and he'd make a growling sound every time he did. He also had his own teddy bear which, when he was little, wasn't much smaller than he was. He used to carry that around in his mouth, too, bring it to different places and then attack it.

Bandit loved laying on clean laundry...

He'd find it, wherever it was. . .

But he'd pretty much sleep anywhere.....especially on things new and exciting like the package that delivered Christmas presents....

And the new witch doll that Mary Sue gave me...

Or on Grandma Vicky's laptop when she came down for a visit...

Or on the towels I set up in anticipation of Hurricane Ike who was about to come knocking at our door last September 13th....

He always could be found late afternoon in the back kitchen window sunning (baking!).....

And of course, he even slept on *his* bannister.....

The top of my old monitor was nice and warm, too....

Or how about wrapping up in the warm sheets I just washed and were putting back on the bed.....

Of course Johnny's suitcase was cozy as well, especially with nice clean, folded laundry in it.....

And here was one of his favorite places to hang......

Not to mention his home away from home, a bathroom sink.....

Then there was Luke's SAT Prep book that looked rather comfy....

He was a big fan of my catalog orders for one reason...

Then, on occasion, he'd check out the guest room bed....

Or a grocery bag....

These were taken in November 2008. I had a cat on each of the chair's arms. Little did I know at that time they'd be taken away from me shortly thereafter....

...and my Missy (with her tongue that always stuck out a little bit since she got some eye teeth pulled)....

First there was Zubo. When I lived at Arty's back on Long Island, I found him out on the front lawn. I fed him. He kept coming back. I had never had a kitty before hence knew nothing about their habits. In retrospect, perhaps he belonged to a neighbor but since he was always around, I figured he was homeless and took him in. Zubo was with me for sixteen years.

I had Zubo B.L. (that's Before Luke.) He was about 5 months old when I first came upon him. Or he upon me. When I was pregnant I set up the baby's room and came home from work one day to find Zubo sleeping in the crib. Another time, on the changing table. Hearing horror stories about cats smothering babies (old wive's tales, I'm sure), I was uneasy. Once baby Luke came home, however, Zubo was *no where near* that crib.

Zubo got to move with us to Texas. And back to NY. And back again to Texas. He lived with us in five different places; finally our current house for six years. It's a great house for a cat with windows and French doors all around and a foot wide window ledge on two sides of the kitchen table to bask in the sun.

Once Zubo was gone, I was done. No more pets.

It is six years ago today, June 14th, that Zubo left us.

Two months later Luke and I went to the SPCA. Just to look. We came home that day with a five year old long-haired Siamese mix. If you ever would have asked me if I'd take in an adult cat, the answer would have been an adamant, "NO!" But when I saw her in the cage, she reminded me of Zubo who was also a Siamese mix. When they brought her to me in the little room, I bent down and asked her for a kiss and she did exactly what Zubo did. She lifted her head so I could kiss the top of it. That sealed the deal.

Meanwhile, Luke was picking out a kitten. He chose the only one in the place that was hanging upside down from the top of his cage. I should've known right then and there that this one was going to be different from all the rest. He had to get neutered so he couldn't come home with us that day. We had to go back a couple of days later to pick him up.

Off we went with Missy in a cardboard box bound for home. Those two days before we went back and picked Bandit up were probably her only two days of peace in this house.

So here I sit now at my desk. To the right of me I can see down the staircase. Every now and then when sitting here, I hear a little noise and turn, expecting to see one of the cats.

But nothing's there.

my night with president clinton

So I got to meet a President.

energy to burn

So there's more bad news.

Someone who's fairly intelligent and well-read told me this past weekend (when I was mentioning to him Randy L's comments in my previous post here regarding peak oil, etc) that there really is no energy shortage; that what we have is an idea shortage. There's enough energy to go around. We just need to come up with economical ways to harness it. I suppose some will say there are none.

To that Randy L responds with:
That would seem to be the real problem. I'm no expert that's for sure, but from the studies I've been reading, the problem we're facing is a transition from an energy source that has the highest ERoEI (Energy Returned on EnergyInvested) quotient than any other substance discovered yet.

And the problem is two-fold: 1) None of the options (except hydrogen, but we are nowhere near being able to harness its potential, see next point) can come close to matching oil's ERoEI. In fact as oil becomes more difficult and expensive to find and extract, even its ERoEI will cancel itself out, so that some oil will necessarily be left in the ground. And 2) Retrofitting our industrial economy and society to run on other forms of energy will take several decades, as well as a cohesive and concerted effort on the part of EVERYBODY in order to pull it off in the short period of time we have before oil becomes prohibitively expensive and scarce. And there is the crunch. That's what some folks are trying to say.

Oil doesn't need to run out before the demand for it drives its cost into the stratosphere. And the technology and infrastructure we need to make a smooth transition to these other, more renewable, sources is simply not in place. And regardless, these latter sources will necessitate consuming less energy because they can only produce so much.

Do you hear any of the current candidates for the presidential office even hinting at any of this? It seems that only a World War can usually convince ordinary businesses and citizens to voluntarily cut back and make the sacrifices necessary for such a transition. Maybe that's what we're tryingto do in the Middle East. Cause once China wakes up to peak oil and realizes its dreams of joining the industrial utopia party are going to be severely curtailed, who knows what might go down?

In any case, our economic model for the last hundred and fifty years has been one of infinite growth and wealth on a finite planet, and the sheer number of human beings that this industrial oil bubble has allowed to exist will not be possible to sustain once we head down the other side of that bell curve. And that is a sobering thought.

As this whole thing unfolds, our lives will become more intensely and profoundly local.

long may you rust

So we’ve got a big problem.

We were reading about Neil’s latest project called Linc-Volt. He's currently having the engine in his '59 Lincoln Mark IV converted to bio-diesel and electric and he's documenting it all on film:

"The car, which will boast 100 mpg plus with diesel fuel, will utilize an electric engine and cross the country on less than 2 fill-ups. Linc Volt will also be a V2G (vehicle to grid) plug-in car that allows an easy commute to work and back without the need for any diesel fuel at all. Road tests begin in December.

"The vehicle will not have to stop to recharge on long journeys, said Shakey Pictures' Bernard Shakey. CNN is releasing an interview with Johnathan Goodwin and Neil Young, documenting the historic removal of the huge car's internal combustion engine. This is the first stage in the re-powering of the American dream, according to the interview."

Then Randy L. explained to us:
"I hate to break Neil's bubble but the days of "Happy Motoring" (J.H.Kunstler's phrase) are fading quickly and will soon be gone. There will be no way to "grow" enough fuel or to charge enough batteries to keep this nation's fleet of cars happy and on the road. Plus the car is mostly responsible for the suburban sprawl that has paved over so much farmland, created the trashy landscape of strip malls and Jiffy Lubes, and destroyed the heart of so many small towns across the country.

"All the cool rock and roll car songs notwithstanding, the sooner we wean ourselves off of them, the better. Automobiles will once again be the toys of the very wealthy, as will any airplane travel. This land's vast and extensive network of asphalt and concrete will be too expensive to repair and maintain.

"Trains, on the other hand, can run on just about anything and they can carry a few more folks per trip than a car. I'm not sure why Neil's pouring so much of his time and money into a dying horse(-less carriage) when he already has a fond spot in his heart for the very mode of transportation we desperately need to be working as a society to reclaim.

"[…] go pick up a copy of Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" or "The Party's Over" by Richard Heinberg, or visit Life After the Oil Crash if you want to get serious about what's about to go down."

I responded:
And then we can watch their entire related infrastructure go to ruin. We won't be able to reverse all it's done and bring back the small town and farmland though, will we?

What then?

To which Randy replied:
"sigh.

"Wondering how the cheap-energy-less future unfolds has got me all tied up in emotional knots too. Especially for our kids. The basic scenario that there will be less oil to meet an ever-growing demand, and that we missed the curve for developing other sources of energy so that we might make a smooth transition while we wean ourselves off cheap oil, well, it strikes me as being pretty realistic and inevitable now.

"All of the suggestions for preparing for what will now be a fairly rough and traumatic transition focus on returning to as locally-centered way of life as possible, which of course is what we should never have let get away from us, but hopefully isn't so far from our grasp as to be impossible to recover. I'm doubtful that we'll have the necessary fuel to run the big machines to break up the parking lots and the big box stores and return the land to fertility. I wonder how long it will take Mother Earth to do that work for us? It's crazy just thinking about it.

"When you think about the era in which we have lived as an "anomaly" in human history, a bubble in which we were allowed to let ourselves go wild with no thought of consequences, it is really sobering. Makes the wisdom of the First Americans rich and deep indeed. Of course, if the Christians who emigrated from Europe had been listening to their Lord and Savior a little more closely and faithfully, a different history may have been written. Alas, it was not to be.

"All right. Enough sermonizing. I have a "real" one to go preach now!! 8>) Thanks for listening."

I can only add:
Thank you, Randy, for your wisdom.

All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. --chief seattle

it's better to burn out than it is to run

So the price of gas continues to climb.

I despise what our society has evolved into. It's created a people full of stress, addictions, and unhappiness. Our family structure has all but disintegrated. I believe we were meant to live in groups of extended families or communes.

Is the automobile the cause of all this?

I believe the answer is yes.

bh

turn off the lights

So Neil may be everywhere but he doesn't know everything.

It was posted on Rust that this happened at a recent concert:
"Also, a few songs later [neil] went into a rambling discourse about the power grid, and how we have the power in the US, and the best power grid out there, and the electricity is always flowing, except in a brown out. He was saying that when you turn off the light, you aren't saving power because it's still there being generated. I'm not sure what Neil meant here, but this simply isn't true.

"Turning off lights and other load will cause generation to be backed off on the other side--generation and load must match at all times. The Eastern Interconnect--North America's grid east of the Rockies--is one of the largest machines in the world. Consuming less energy/power is the single most effective "demand / response" action anyone can do.

"Every time you turn on the lights, something dies."

- written by indydave

down here below

So this is the time of year when birds descend en masse to our part of the country. Migration is upon us. At times there are so many that they darken the sky.

This is the only time of year that we may have robin red breasts around. I say "may" because I haven't seen them every single year; at least not in my neighborhood. I don't even think they stay here for any extended period but, rather, just pass through on their journey further south. That's my theory anyway. I've never researched it though.

The peregrine falcon migrates in, too, and it has arrived. Just look at its beauty.

Peregrines are the world's fastest birds. They can tuck their wings and dive at speeds of about 200 mph. You cannot even believe the speed, the accuracy and the beauty of these birds in flight.

Once on the endangered list, they have recovered and continue to thrive. They are monogamous raptors at the top of their food chain and have adapted well to urban living. The city's structures are preferred haunts for hunting, flying and diving because they simulate canyon walls and mountain ranges. They've also adapted well to nesting in the sky scrapers.

This is great news for their survival but I find it so sad. Very disturbing.

Another hawk that does well in the urban environment is the Red-tailed hawk. The non-fiction book, Red-Tails in Love: A Wildlife Drama in Central Park (by Marie Winn) made Pale Male, a Red-tailed Hawk in New York, famous.

Now Steve Earle raises his infamy to a whole 'nother level by having a song about him entitled Down Here Below on his latest release, Washington Square Serenade:

Pale male, the famous redtail hawk, performs wingstands high above midtown Manhattan
Circles around for one last pass over the park
Got his eye on a fat squirrel down there and a couple of pigeons
They got no place to run, they got no place to hide

But pale male he’s cool, see ‘cause his breakfast ain’t goin’ nowhere
So he does a loop t loop for the tourists and the six o’clock news
Got him a penthouse view from the tip-top of the food chain, boys
He looks up and down on Fifth Avenue and says,
“God, I love this town.”