The Grand Tour

When I was little, my godmother took me on an exclusive tour of the White House. I got to experience sights that people would not normally get to see on White House tours, she told me. I got to stand at the Meet the Press podium, grinning my gap-toothed smile. I got to see the entrance to the kitchen where the chef told me that Bill Clinton loved cheeseburgers more than anything.

This tour is going to be very underwhelming in comparison, I’m afraid. No former chef to former president Clinton makes an appearance in this tour – merely my kitten, Olive. Actually, Olive plays the role of tour guide; I, the role of photographer. Olive does not have the manual skill to operate a camera and lacks my steadiness of hand.

This tour is of my apartment, which is the basement of a house that is not white, but minty-green in color. A furious owl guards the property.

Our entrance is marked with a creaky screen door that blows open and closed in the wind. Beside the entrance is a smaller door which leads to a place that I have named “The Chokey.”

Olive laments her inability to turn the doorknob.

From the entrance, we have a delightful view of the mausoleum in the driveway, accompanied by its mistress the Guillotine, both of which seem to have been inching closer and closer to the door since our arrival. I hear that the landlords put on an extravagant show at Halloween.

You might notice a tiny guillotine to the  right of the mausoleum.

Inside the apartment, we have a wall of books and lots of anthropomorphic animal pictures by Michael Sowa and Louis Wain. The futon is rock-solid and the glass coffee table is a surface that Olive frequently attempts to dive through it, certain that it is a portal to another realm.

A construction worker once described this area as "groovy."

I write at a desk in the corner when Dave isn’t using the area to compose electronic music, but I couldn't take a single clear picture of it. Eventually, I intend to turn a closet in the kitchen into a writing nook where I can be a writing hermit. I also intend to install wall-to-wall Christmas lights on the ceiling pipes. Angelina the pitcher plant continues to thrive in the windowsill.

I finally have a bookcase large enough to contain my personal collection.

Olive has a cat-nook in the bookcase that she likes to think of as a treat depository. Her main goal in life is to acquire as many Greenies cat treats in her mouth as possible until her immaculate incisors fall out.

Olive sometimes sleeps here on her back with her legs straight up in the air.

I refer to this lamp as “the cocoon of the giant moth” or, alternatively, “the mummy.”

Olive has taken over many parts of the apartment, including the desk chair and the inside of the ceramic fruit bowl.

Olive territory.

Our kitchen is very utilitarian. Usually every surface is marred with borscht. Empty teacups and sticky, hollowed grapefruits are strewn across the counters. I tidied it up to give you an illusion, dear reader.

The fruit bowl, when not filled with browning bananas and granny smith apples, also serves as a container for Olive’s body. It has become her favorite cat bed, the only bed she can’t rip with her teeth. She cowers in the fruit bowl when we try to remove her from the kitchen table by the scruff.

This is our bathroom, complete with an unconventionally placed mirror-cabinet.

Sorry if I'm being invasive.

Alas, I have run out of apartment.

Communicating With Cats

I love you, but I also want to eat you.

I once read that cats have the I.Q. of a two-year-old child. That’s fine with me until they begin acting like a two-year-old child. Like many toddlers, my kitten Olive tends to think that all attention is good attention and all repetitive actions are a game. We’re trying to train Olive not to jump on the table when we are cooking and eating, not to bite, and not to claw the tiny ottoman into to a pile of glistening, red polyester fibers.

Yesterday morning when Dave got out of the shower, Olive latched onto his ankle with the force of a small, furry predator. Innocent, zealous ankle-licking quickly transformed into an impulse to devour Dave’s flesh. Claws and teeth were unleashed and Dave gave her a stern talking-to. For some reason, a freshly-showered Dave really whets her appetite. Perhaps she has the archetypical paradox of loving us, yet wanting to eat us.

Shortly after, we found ourselves huddling around my laptop asking the Google how to train cats. This led to a Wiki-How or Ask.Com page about communicating with cats, complete with a how-to video. (Not that we aren't experts in speaking cat.) Soon we were immersed in the world of translating meows with a phrasebook and deciphering meaningful feline body language.

We learned that a low, deep MRRRRooooowww is a sign of displeasure and a high Rrrrrooooowww! is an expression of terror. Subtle differences in the angles and movements of the tail may reveal anxiety, excitement, and aggression.

The subject of clawing and biting was most important to us, so we scrolled down. The article informed us that “a cat will drive his/her claws in and out of you as a sign of happiness or playfulness.” It continued to say, “Either way your cat knows and loves you.” The phrase “drives his/her claws in and out of you” brings to mind more of a stabbing motion with adamantium claws. I’m actually quite glad that my cat doesn’t know and love me that much. I considered editing the article so that it would be less stupid, but then I realized that ninety people already did.

His body language indicates that he knows and loves you.

As far as disciplining a fighting, biting kitten goes, we were advised to shake cans of pennies at her, squirt her with a spray bottle of water, and pick her up by the scruff of her neck and growl in her face like a bear. I have many spray bottles lying around but they are all full of caustic vinegar. “That’ll show her,” thought I.

The idea behind the penny can and spray bottle is that you sneak up on your criminal kitty, catch her in the act, and assault her with loud noises and a shower. We don’t have any cans to put pennies in, but we do have a huge glass fish full of spare change that is Olive's best friend. We considered turning the fish against her and shaking it in her face when she claws the desk chair.

Since the fish is always in the room, whenever she considers leaping onto the table to knock off a plate of poached eggs, she would look back and think, “I can’t do this now. The fish is watching me. The fish is always watching me…”

Today we dropped her into her cardboard carrier and brought her to the veterinarian. The entire car ride was accompanied by the seething sounds of a screaming kitten. At the office, we scooped her out onto a cold steel table. The veterinarian stuck things in her ears and poked around her eyes. He told us that our kitten has conjunctivitis and that there’s only a 95% chance of recovery. Then he said that some cats get a strain of the virus that never goes away and they walk around for fifteen years with trailing eye mucus behind them like hairy snails.

“Any tips for teaching a kitten not to bite?” I asked.

“You’re not encouraging it, are you?” he asked. “My brother used to play tug-of-war with his cat, and now the cat is insane.”

“I don’t think so,” I answered.

“I would pick her up by the scruff of her neck,” the vet said, snatching Olive up by the neck-skin. “And I would shake her and say, ‘Good kitties don’t bite' in a sterner voice than I’m speaking in now. Because that’s what a mother cat would do if Olive bit. The mother would pick her up by the neck... and throw her.”

The vet decided that today Olive would get a rabies shot. Olive panicked and looked for an emergency exit as the veterinarian produced an enormous syringe and wiped an alcohol pad across her back. She desperately moved towards the carrier, probably trying to communicate something to us through meows and body language: “Okay guys, I’ll get in the carrier! I love the carrier! Look at me! I want to get inside of the carrier now…”

The vet called in his assistant, who grabbed Olive by the scruff of her neck and, once again, began to shake her.

“The kitten might cry a little,” the veterinarian said as he plunged the syringe into her back. Once again, the kitten screamed. I quite nearly screamed myself.

When the vet and assistant released her, Olive stumbled towards Dave. He lifted her carefully into the cardboard carrier. I comforted her with my shrill female voice that cats love all the way to the apartment. “We’re almost home. Far away from that bad, bad man who kept shaking you and sticking needles into your skin. What a bad, mean-spirited person.”

Giant Mountain

Perhaps it was a bad idea, but I can’t say no to an adventure. Sometimes they can be so hard to come by. For three days I walked like an elderly cripple, dragging myself up the stairs by the railing, complaining loudly on behalf of my speechless, withered quadriceps. Having never hiked a single high peak before, I ascended two in one day. My meaty ex-gymnast thighs were caught completely unawares.

But why would I accept such a seemingly impossible task? I don’t even own the appropriate footwear. Perhaps it was the tremendously encouraging song in my head, repeating, “Do it! Just do it! Don’t think about it! Do it!” So I didn’t think about it. I did it.

Surely I must be manic.

My friends and I began climbing at eleven in the morning. Chipper from wholesome breakfasts, we ascended Giant Mountain and enjoyed excellent views of mountains. I won’t put you to sleep with the dozens of pictures of mountains that I took. One, I think, will suffice.

Someone once told me that when you are hiking you unknowingly walk under bears all the time, quietly hugging the tree trunks like Velcro monkeys. You don’t see them because they don’t want you to see them. Now that I know this, my eyes scan the canopy looking for a badly camouflaged bear. Someday one of them may lose its grip and crush an unfortunate hiker and that hiker will not be me.

It seems to be a tradition for hikers to leave symbolic piles of rocks on the paths and the summits. There is a name for them, but googling “symbolic piles of rocks” only brought up Jewish burial traditions. I, too, leave my mark on the summit, but not a pile of rocks. Mine is the result of drinking a liter of water in two hours. After bolstering my ego with some narcissistic photographs, I strayed from the path to find a quiet place to christen the Giant.

Here lies Carl, crushed by bears.

As I stood in the hidden overgrowth of ferns and wondered if I would later discover them to be poisonous, I noticed there was a middle-aged woman peering down through the trees above me, watching. So much for privacy.

We descended down the other side of Giant Mountain, a slippery mudslide of Death. Passing hikers in suspiciously pristine sneakers consistently lied about the difficulty of the descent and the amount of time it would take. In a moment of mental absence, I tumbled down a rock face and bashed open my leg. Sliding down vertical slopes on the seat of one’s pants was often necessary to prevent fatal injuries. I clung to tree branches like railings and plunged into the nearby bushes despite my efforts. I used up two of the four communal Band-Aids.

The path to Rocky Peak Ridge was tamer and riddled with enormous sheepdogs and mastiffs. Hikers were teased with unripe blueberries reaching into the paths and imposter blueberries that probably should not be ingested. From the summit we could see Lake Champlain and more symbolic piles of rocks marking the journeys of other hikers. I also marked my territory on Rocky Peak Ridge under the cover of an idyllic patch of Christmas trees.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon and we still had to climb down Rocky Peak Ridge, clamber up the dreaded mudslide, and down Giant again before sundown. It is hard to race a celestial body like the sun; it has so many unfair advantages. The mountain was growing darker by the second and we were still stumbling and butt-sliding down the path. It was eight at night. A glimmer of hope came in the form of a man in a miner hat climbing the mountain with his daughter. “I know, we’re crazy,” my friend said, and he replied, “You’re not crazy. In an hour, you’d be crazy.”

Shortly after, we emerged at the highway. I’ve never been so thrilled to see a dark stretch of pavement and a slew of headlights in my life. Ice cream was in order. My legs will probably never be the same.

My Future Illustrating Career

My senior project is becoming an ugly comic book. During my last senior project meeting, my adviser suggested that I draw an image for the cover. "I'll get to work on some stick figures," I said. "Whatever you want," she said. After advising me for several months and watching me turn my original project into an extensive series of sex jokes, she no longer expects me to be serious. This is for the best.

The following cartoons are illustrations,from my short story collection (with one dramatic work), "Grownups." Once again, I have resorted to the impressive technology of photographing them with my digital camera and shamelessly posting them on the internet. Please talk me out of using them.

Cover?

The Diary of Stanley Amadeus Pope

Babymaking

Magic Tricks

Grownups (The play)

or

or...

Perhaps I won't be an illustrator when I grow up after all.

The Wisdom of Youth

While de-cluttering my living space I found a drawer of my early journals among the plush snowmen and worn out pairs of sneakers. Sitting cross-legged between a burlap sack of old shoes and a pair of lime green Rollerblades I flipped eagerly through the notebooks discovering early traces of my brilliance. I believe this journal, from 1996, to be a key moment in my personal and professional development. I share my findings here in hopes that my prodigious wisdom will progress mankind as a whole.

February 5, 1996

I ate a Banana a couple of times.

February 6, 1996

I cleaned my rome and I hid it under my bed.

February 7, 1996

I am a happy tooth because I get flost every day.

February 13, 1996

Gess wut song is stuc in my hed

Mow mow mow mow mow mow mow mow mow mow mow mow

February 16, 1996

On vacation, I am going to Mikdonalds.

February 28, 1996

I am a sad tooth because I bo not flos. I bo not brush. I bo not ete good food. I ete candey.

March 4, 1996
Over the weekend I played with Sara. I played with babby sistar Kely. I played with another babby sistar Kely.

March 14, 1996
If I were a kite I would fly the rest of my life.

March 15, 1996
I wish shamrocks were a food.

March 19, 1996
My fren Sara gets happy at me sumtimes.

Merch 21, 1996
If I were a raddit I could hop withowt falling. I could ete caris. I wont haff to ete Foods.

April 15, 1996
If I were the sun I could live in the sky.
I wuod be yellow.
I wuod get very hot.
I could turn into the moon.

April 29, 1996
I throw up.

May 2, 1996
My mother is a special person. She is special to me because she pulls my teeth out.

June 3, 1996
Saras sistr throw a big rock at me.

June 4, 1996
Were going on a feeld trip. I think I’m going to see Bears.

June 27, 1996
I’ve ben akting like a horse.

The second notebook, produced two years later in Mrs. Porter’s third grade class, was from a far less prolific period. I sketched the blueprints of an automatic flyswatter, somewhat resembling a catapult with wheels. I also expressed a desire to own a dog that is half Maltese and half macaroni and cheese.