How to Hydrate a Cat

1. Have a cat actually in need of hydration, perhaps for kidney issues. One way to tell: his skin has taken on the elasticity of a prune’s.

2. Have the foresight to have married a vet or vet tech.

3. Absent that, try to get the cat to drink more liquids by spiking his water with clam juice.

4.When that fails (he’s no fool), try seafood stock.

5. When that fails (perhaps he’s watching his sodium intake), buy a bottle of electrolyte solution intended for hydrating infants. Try to hold the cat still while you shoot it down his throat with a syringe.

6. When that fails (and startles the hell out of him), spend $50 on a device that offers a constant flow of enticing, filtered water.

7. When that fails (the constant flow is accompanied by a constant unenticing electric hum), be thankful that your wife volunteers to go to the vet and learn how to administer subcutaneous injections.

8. Try not to express visible horror when she comes home with the kind of plastic drip bag that reminds you of your unfortunate trip to the hospital last summer, and a collection of needles.

9. Find a spot your cat enjoys and will be comfortable in during the procedure, like the bed, which is as much his as yours anyway. Lie down with him near your shoulder, and encourage him to be still and nuzzle your chin the way he loves to at 5:30 in the morning when you’re trying to sleep.

10. Secure the cat gently but firmly as he realizes that something sharp and pointed has entered his flesh.

11. Be supportive of your wife through her initial trial-and-error jabs -- some of which poke completely through the skin, others of which become dislodged and spray you and the bed -- keeping in mind that you didn’t have the guts to do the job yourself.

12. Stroke the cat’s head and face in a manner that says, This too shall pass. Try to remind yourself of the same thing.

13. When the process is completed in five minutes or so (trying to do it faster can result in a leaking cat), give him a treat of his very favorite canned food so he will have pleasant associations.

14. Give yourself a treat of your very favorite canned or bottled beverage, for the same reason.

15. Repeat Step 14 as needed.

The Art of Spar

In case you've never experienced the thrill of martial arts sparring, let me describe it to you based on my own first experience:
Punch. Miss.
Punch. Miss.
Punch punch (a combination!). Miss miss.
Punch. Miss.
WHAP!
Brain rattles inside head.
(Thought:)Where the hell did that come from?
And so on.
This was not the plan. My art is Jeet Kune Do: the way of the intercepting fist. If someone throws a punch at me, Sifu Dino says, the proper response is “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to hit you!”
And to hit him first.
Instead, it seemed as if my arms had suddenly grown shorter. Try as I might, I could not reach my opponent, Sergeant Steve.
Ha, he seemed to say, as he swatted my efforts aside - sometimes with this hand, sometimes with that one - or simply leaned slightly back to render them impotent. Puzzled but undaunted, I kept trying again.
WHAP!
I should mention we were both wearing headgear, which, as I discovered, seemed to function primarily not to cushion the blow but to spread the force around and amplify sound. In my mouth was a plastic piece designed to protect my teeth and keep me from biting off my tongue but which also made it next to impossible to swallow so my mouth filled with saliva and I felt like it was about to drool all over...
WHAP!
Geez.
Don’t get me wrong. Over the course of two opponents, I am dimly aware that I landed a punch or two of my own. But had either contest been a real confrontation I would probably have been a TKO victim at best. Which, the optimist in me says, just goes to show how much room there is for self-esteem-building improvement.
My next opportunity comes in two days. Maybe by then, my jaw will have returned to its proper alignment.

Of Mice and Zen

My wife has inadvertently confirmed that we share our house not only with two cats but also with an unknown quantity of mice who are apparently having a fine time.

“Isn’t it the cats’ job to address that?” you might ask. But at their age, they’re basically retired.

So we've begun to look into professional services. We've found businesses offering promises of eradication for various costs (none cheap) by assorted means, chief among them traps and bait.

For “bait,” read “poison.” One business - - the most expensive, as it turns out -- spurns that chemical approach, which it says creates the potential for walls filled with decomposing rodents.

But among the “traps” that eco-friendly exterminator employs is something known as a glue board, which offers the potential for slow starvation. Not exactly the kind of entry we want included on our karmic permanent record.

Nonprofessional advice has included setting our own conventional, spring-loaded traps. Supposed advantage: a quick, merciful demise. Obvious disadvantage: need for mouse carcass disposal.

Other advice is for a live trap. Advantage: clean karmic record. Obvious disadvantage: need for live mouse disposal.

But we have no more inclination for the de-mousing job than our cats do.

Instead of any of this, we would like to hire a guy to come along with some sort of hypnotic flute and lure our small visitors to a sylvan wood where they could live out their days in harmony with nature.

Applications accepted.

Where'd You Get That?

I don’t understand why so many people wear clothes that advertise the store they bought them from. Then again, they may not understand why I would wear a hat that advertises my choice in beer.

I believe that some sort of balancing force of the universe makes you take on the qualities you criticize in others. So I have decided to start criticizing people for their good looks.

A problem with listening to golden oldies radio stations is that after all the Beatles and Kinks and Dave Clark Five and Otis Redding and Simon & Garfunkel and such sooner or later you’re going to hear “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

Overheard wisdom from unseen philosopher in Penn Station men’s room: “EVERYbody has a song he can sing better than anybody else. EVERYbody has a song he can sing better than anybody else. EVERYbody...”
Overheard response from unseen critic: “Shut the FUCK up!”

Current favorite movie line:
“Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most.” Robert Duvall, “Secondhand Lions.”
Previous favorite:
“To the tables everyone, and stuff yourselves!” from “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (but not spoken by Errol Flynn)

Between Keats and Yeats I sometimes forget which to rhyme with Bates.

I don’t think my ego is looking out for my best interests.

I pretty much need a blood relationship not to find a talkative child annoying.

Disaster, Circa 1965

I was reading a New Yorker article about whether our brains are wired for mathematics (apparently, yes) when I came across a reference to “new math,” followed by the apposition “now widely thought to have been an educational disaster.”

I flashed back. I was a participant in this educational disaster, in the seventh grade.

I remember learning about number systems other than our so-called base 10, like base 2. We learned about set theory, including the empty (or null) set, and Venn diagrams, which could describe the overlapping (or intersection) of sets, and functions and properties and ...

I could go on, but I sense that you are falling asleep.

So imagine having that kind of stuff rattling around in your head at age 12, with the unspoken but clear implication from the teacher that if we Americans don’t all get this and get it pronto, the Russians are going to beat us to the moon.

The Russians, as you are aware, did not beat us to the moon.

But apparently the new math played no role in our success. And as well as I can remember, it was not in the curriculum beyond that one year.

Still, parts of it continue to rattle around in my head, though much closer to the back. For instance, this is how you would express my age in base 2: 110111. Base 3? 2001. Base 4? 313. While both addition and multiplication have commutative and associative properties, subtraction and division do not. And do you know what is the set of numbers overlapping two sets of prime factors, the first for 42, the second for 79?

Ha! This is a trick question! 79 is a prime number! There is no overlap (expressed by the null set, alternately {}, or the Greek letter ∅).

I could go on. But I’m falling asleep.

We Hardly Knew Me

(Inspired by assorted obituaries in The Mississippi Press.)


Friend, ex-husband, lapsed agnostic, middle-aged white guy, all these
words described Joe Rogers, who went home with the angels (perhaps while kicking and screaming) on [insert date here].

He was preceded in death by generations of ancestors he never could manage to trace on the Internet; pet cats Tiger, Penny, Son, Taco, Clouseau and others whose names became but misty memories, including one he backed over in the family car, for which he never forgave himself. Ever.

Mr. Rogers was born on June 28, near the middle of the 20th century,in Moss Point, Miss., and attended public schools there. The first three years he spent at Charlotte Hyatt Elementary (named for a teacher of his daddy’s); then to a middle school named for Dr. R. Carl Eley Sr., perhaps the oldest person he ever met; then junior high followed by high school, where he cut more classes than teachers (or his parents) ever knew but graduated without incident.

He gained admission to the University of Mississippi, where, despite pre-admission testing that indicated potential facility as an undertaker, he studied journalism. In that field he found gainful if unspectacular employment throughout his life, allowing him to indulge in his primary passions: Beatles trivia; Andy Griffith Show reruns; travel to Britain; competitive endeavors including tennis and pool; and the consumption and occasional manufacture of malt beverages.

He was a longtime member of the First Baptist Church of Moss Point, though,except to attend the first in his series of weddings, he basically stopped going at age 15 because of strong doubts about the existence of God. In his late 30s he renewed his association with a church, though not Baptist and while retaining strong doubts about the existence of God as a guy in the sky with a beard. Taoism became a guiding philosophy, despite its not-infrequent imagery of guys with beards.

Those left to cherish his memory [may] include a wife who is wondering whether he actually told anybody else that he wanted the nontraditional funeral she’d better be giving him. And the answer is that he meant to, so maybe he did.

Poetry Is Crap

Excuse the hyperbole of the headline. A more nearly accurate representation of my view would be something like Most Poetry Is Crap, or Contemporary Poetry Is Crap, but as you can see those lack the same punch.


This is not a new opinion but one that is reinforced every time I am so foolish as to read any of the poetry offerings in The New Yorker, my favorite magazine. I give you an example from the current issue, titled “Eh?”:

Eh he said and she
dreamed eh. It was
like that between them.

It goes on a good bit after that, and I invite you to read the rest, if you have masochistic tendencies or this is your religious season for self-flagellation.

Curiosity led me to check out the poetry of another poet, Elizabeth Alexander, selected by Barack Obama to compose an occasional poem for his inauguration. Here’s the start of her poem titled “Blues”:

I am lazy, the laziest
girl in the world. I sleep during
the day when I want to, 'til
my face is creased and swollen,
'til my lips are dry and hot. I
eat as I please: cookies and milk
after lunch, butter and sour cream
on my baked potato...

I don’t know about you, but to me that does not say “I am ready to follow in the footsteps of Robert Frost.” It says, “Here are my FaceBook ramblings for the day.”

If I must have poetry, give me the kind I read in college lit classes. Give me Pope, Auden, Thomas.

Short of that, at least make it rhyme.