On The Contrariness Of Cats and Oscars

About a month ago we inherited a never-used sofa bed and matching recliner chair. Nice, neutral in style and colour, comfy, and miles more attractive and less uncomfortable than the tiny 30 year old sofa bed we’d picked up at a garage sale a few years ago. That sofa bed was being used as a scratching post by our three fluffy hellions, so we’ve been keeping an eye on them when they’re in the living room with the new set. If we’re in the apartment and hear that tell-tale “skrr skrr skrr pop” we yell, clap our hands sharply, or smack the offending puss on the rear (depends how persistent they’re being). Well, you can’t watch them all day, so when we noticed a thread or two hanging off the arm rest of the sofa we decided to cut further damage off at the pass.

We brought home a board wrapped in heavy jute rope and screwed it to one of our doorframes.

All three cats ignored it.

I rubbed some catnip on it. They rolled around on the floor in front of it on the bits that fell off.

One by one, I picked each of them up and carried them over to the scratching board, put them down, picked up their front paws and made little scratchy movements against the rope. They pulled their paws out of my hands and gave me injured looks.

I gave up. Another terrific idea, down the drain.

A couple of days ago, I was in the bedroom and heard the “skrr skrr skrr pop” sound. I yelled; the sound didn’t stop. I walked into the living room ready to dish out hell, and there was Maggie, on her back legs, back curved, her front claws locked in the rope, looking at me like I was an idiot human who was contradicting myself again.

Ahem.

She’s the only one who uses it, though. The other two haven’t figured it out yet. Either that, or they’ve tried and she’s defended it, having decided it’s her personal scratchy spot. My money’s on Maggie telling the other two that it’s really better for them if they use the sofa to sharpen their claws, and she’s no longer using it to give them more opportunities.

Oscar Review:

I haven’t watched the Oscars in years, namely because I’ve been so disinterested in what the world of film has had to offer. Last night we watched the back-to-back Enterprise episodes, then tuned in to the Academy Awards in time to watch Sidney Poitier receive his honorary Oscar. I missed all the LoTR awards, but by checking out the web site I’m very pleased to see that Howard Shore got a statue for his incredible score which rarely leaves slot no. 3 in our CD tray. I did have the fortune to see Randy Newman win for Best Song, however, which was long overdue.

Overall, I’m pleasantly surprised to see films like Gosford Park and A Beautiful Mind be honoured. These are films which I was excited about when I heard they were being released, then got swamped by the general raving hullabaloo once they came out and lost any desire to see them. Guess I’ll be fixing the oversight soon. Maybe I’ll rent Moulin Rouge so I can finally see that as well. Oh, and why not see LoTR again while I’m at it.

Movies I’m looking forward to this year: Possession (scheduled for July 2002, based on the novel by A.S. Byatt, which is one of my Desert Island books and one of the three focal points of my M.A. thesis – although apparently this film ruins the whole turning point of the novel by making the scholars American!), The Importance Of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde rides again!), Star Wars: Episode Two (I refuse to call it by the lame, lame title – we’ll all call it Ep2 anyway), Spider-Man, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (a title which can’t be changed for American audiences, thanks the gods), and of course, The Two Towers. Most of which are likely to be ignored this time next year.

Missing The Point (But They Were Delicious)

So it was Ostara a couple of days ago – Vernal Equinox to most of you. Spring arrived in Montreal and brought another ten to fifteen centimeters of snow with it. This is funny because all winter we had practically no accumulation. In the past week we’ve seen about five to six times more accumulation than we have since winter began. Mother Nature – she’s so wacky.

Anyway, one of the things about the Vernal Equinox is that it’s one of the two times per year that everything about the Earth is so balanced (axis, gravity, blah blah blah), you can stand a raw egg in the shell on its end.

At work, we didn’t have any real eggs, but we still wanted to experiment. So we tried using Easter Creme Eggs. They didn’t work very well.

So we ate them.

There’s always the Autumnal Equinox…

On Sudden Death

What is it about hearing about someone’s death?

I think it’s the finality. It’s done; it’s over.

I’ve lived through two sudden deaths of people I knew – one a very close friend, one a gaming acquaintance – and both times it was the shock of hearing that undid me. It’s the sudden reversal of reality, the unreality of the statement “he is dead” when you saw him just a couple of days ago, that sounds a sour note.

Now there’s another. One of my best (and definitely my oldest) friends — my maid of honour at my wedding — lost her dad to a sudden heart attack last night. Completely out of the blue. I’ve known this man since I was thirteen. He’s jovial, educated, a musician. My parents’ age. Nowhere near the age you start preparing for maybe, just possibly, expecting to lose someone.

Or, he was.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s the is/was problem. It’s all so fresh, so new, that in your mind a person simultaneously exists and does not exist. You crumble little by little as you try to impose the new reality of the death upon the X years of life you’ve experienced with this person. On top of it all, the news about the death throws that person’s reality into sharp relief, making it harder to wrap your mind around the fact that they’ve died.

I heard someone say once that no parent should outlive a child. At the same time, though, I think that the most traumatic thing most children live through is losing their parents. How do you accept the loss of someone who birthed you, guided you, supported you, from day one?

When it’s someone else, you’re all at sea in a different way. Death hits us all pretty hard. Apart from coping yourself, and looking at your own family in a different light, there’s dealing with the bereaved. (Bereaved. What a word. Where does it come from? Riven? Be-riven? Bereft?) You love them desperately, and you want to express your own sorrow, but words just don’t cut it. Especially when someone is torn from you like that. When was the last time they spoke? Was it quick, superficial, both assuming they’d see one another again, that there would be a next time?

Death is part of the whole life experience, not a sudden stop, or an intrusion. It’s an essential part of the cycle. So many people fear it. I don’t think I do; it’s the loss of everyone else that I worry about. The change of pace, as it were. It’s the change that I’m uncertain of. Fear of the unknown, I suppose, which is understandable. We’re creatures of habit. Being Pagan means I accept that cycles continue and that existence transforms into another dimension, maybe this one over again if there’s more to learn, maybe another, maybe back to the beginning to grow young again in the underworld until my essence is prepared for a rebirth to do more good. None of that means I’ll go joyfully to my death – or accept anyone else’s death, family, husband, friends – easily. We all have to deal with loss. We grieve for ourselves, for others. Our freshly riven minds must heal. Our hearts must mend. Our tears must dry. I do still cry for my maternal grandfather each Easter, a gentle man who I knew for all of eleven or twelve years. However, I grieve for not knowing him better. Perhaps we grieve for lost chances, opportunities we’ll never have. So often we don’t rejoice in the good times, laugh at the joy the deceased brought. Death encompasses us all. It brings us freedom. However, at the same time, it cuts us off. Another dichotomy we can’t hold concurrently in our bruised minds.

Death means holding two truth simultaneously: the truth of the shining soul we knew, alive forever, in our hearts and elsewhere; and our crushing loss for which there are no words.

Go gently, Eric.

Life Imitating Art

I walked into the living room last night where my husband was watching the late news, and he said, “The Alliance has a new leader.”

“What?” I said. I’m a Star Wars fan. I’m currently in the beginning of a kick-ass Star Wars RPG campaign that’s the sequel to another kick-ass three-year campaign. I was trying to figure out, in my sluggish, I-worked-all-day-then-fought-with-Bizet-and-treble-clef brain, what political coup someone could have pulled off to have seized control of the New Republic, and why my husband was telling me in the middle of a news broadcast. Was it being reported on local TV?

Oh. He meant the national political party.

I need more sleep. I also apparently need to stop thinking about this campaign so much.

Freedom!

I am free!!

Yes, the claddagh ring finally came off.

And, may I state here and now how much I hate Bizet’s L’Arlesienne Suite. Treble clef. They want me to sight-read treble clef.

Osteo Update

I had a pretty awful day back-wise yesterday – couldn’t sit at the computer, couldn’t sit on a couch, had to keep lying down on the floor staring up at the ceiling. This is not conducive to data entry, which is my at-home work on Tuesdays. It’s frustrating, because it’s a constant low-level pain that feels like it’s been spread over your back with a knife like peanut butter. So when the clinic called with a 7:30 AM cancellation opening for my osteopath, I said yes.

We found more trouble spots, in my lumbar region. She bent me and stretched me and I’m going to be sensitive today, and pretty stiff tomorrow. I keep telling myself that it’s worth it. It is; I want to be able to move easily. Turning my head from side to side is a new development for me. I like discovering what else my body is supposed to be able to do.