Tiger Whitestockings -- FAIL!

The experiment of bringing Tiger Whitestockings into the house was already going south (see post: "The Whitestockings Case"), but last night it crashed and burned spectacularly.

I woke up in the middle of the night to Whitestockings picking and scratching on my comforter. Then I caught the dreadful pong of urine. She had gone to the bathroom on my bed, right next to me!

Any cat that urinates in the same place that it sleeps (not to mention IN MY BED) is too wild to bring indoors.

So I was up at 5:00 AM doing a complete change of the linen, and scrubbing the mattress. After that chore was done I was so wide awake that I knew I would never get to sleep without a drink to relax me. I shouldn't have done it, but I did.

This morning she went outside. She went willingly, even happily, even though it was cold. When I brought out her breakfast, she was on the other side of the yard, sniffing the leaves on the bushes with her tail in the air. She came running for her food, and I haven't seen her looking so contented since I brought her in.

Some things just are what they are. I hope she can adjust to a new yard.

-- Freder.

A Theatrical Epic

Clocking in at just over three hours -- an almost unheard-of runtime for a picture made in the middle '30s -- and splashed with truckloads of sequins, The Great Ziegfeld is both a zestful discovery and an ordeal.

It's like getting two pictures in one: the first is a pretty good, fun biopic chock full of familiar faces; the second is almost a documentary re-creation of some of Ziegfeld's great shows.

William Powell is always worth watching, and here he delivers an engaging characterization of the great theatrical impresario, warts and all. Although second-billed, Myrna Loy doesn't appear until well into the final third of the film, as Ziegfeld's second wife Billie Burke, she of the quavering voice, Topper and the land of Oz. Without trying to imitate Burke, Loy evokes her splendidly, and grounds the movie so well that the billing is deserved.

But the whole cast is wonderful, really -- we get a much larger taste of Frank Morgan than in The Wizard of Oz, we get Will Rogers and Fannie Brice and Ray Bolger not just playing themselves, but recreating the very acts that attracted Hollywood to them; and it's all contained by a solid drama that Ziegfeld himself created as surely as he created his own shows.

The man was financially irresponsible to say the least, too fond of the female exterior, and too shallow to produce works of any depth. He was all surface, and so were his shows. "More steps!" Powell whispers as a cadre of Ziegfeld angels guide him out of this life. "I've got to have more steps!"

The musical numbers are indeed as spectacular as any ever filmed, but after a while, much like pornography, their sameness becomes apparent and they begin to become monotonous. Another cluster of girls arranged artfully on another spectacular set, not doing much of anything other than standing there and letting the light play over their sequin-studded costumes.

This was made and marketed as a "spectacular," and oh, how it tries. From an extravagant opening in an idealized sideshow to its final scene with Ziegfeld dying in a tiny room while the lights of his own theater glitter through the windows like a Heaven that's just out of reach, it marshals all of MGM's considerable resources to throw glamour at the screen by the trough-full. The Great Ziegfeld isn't -- not quite. But it has a lot to offer, and for the most part it rewards the endurance required to sit through it.

-- Freder.

Falling Apart

This morning a huge chunk of ceiling plaster fell in the front room. I swept the rubble aside, no time to clean it up properly. Now there's a gaping grey hole there, with the floorboards visible from the room above. When are the blows going to stop?

It's almost as if my mother was the glue holding this place together, and as soon as she died it began falling apart, like the tower of Barad-Dur in Lord of the Rings. With the home inspector coming sometime soon to check the place out, I'm a little concerned that this could kill the deal.

Still and all, it made me feel better about signing the Purchase Agreement on the new house, which I did today on the way in to work.

It's official. If the mortgage comes through I will be moving into a nice two-story Victorian sometime midwinter. It feels like the right decision, and the right house, but it's too bad I'm being pushed so hard by my father, my sister, and even the house itself.

Want to talk about feeling overwhelmed? I'm there. I'm trying to think out the logistics of the move, but sometimes I despair of managing it all by myself.

Meanwhile, I had Quat Warfare last night in my end of the house. Tiger Whitestockings decided that she liked the comforter on my bed even better than she liked the quilts of the sofa. I warned her that she was treading on thin ground, but did she listen to me?

The upstairs, especially including my bedroom, is Honey's Domain, and she guards it fiercely. I was typing an email at the computer when I heard a shriek and the rumbling of feet. The two cats shot down the stairs and between my feet, moving so quickly I didn't even see them. All of a sudden I heard them behind me, and then Whitestockings shot back upstairs with Honey in hot pursuit, fur flying.

I found Whitestockings cowering on my bed, with Honey looming over her, getting really aggressive, ready to pounce. You can bet I broke that one up! I carried Whitestockings back downstairs, put her on the quilts and told her, "It's best you stay down here."

I wonder how Honey is going to react  to the move. All of a sudden she won't have Her Dominion anymore, she'll be on even footing with all the others, in a strange new world.

The Whitestockings Case, Readying for Winter, and More Navel-Gazing

Tiger Whitestockings has decided that there are some virtues and benefits to being an inside cat, especially this time of year. I had to hunt for the longest time, but I finally found her in what my mother used to call the Horse Room: the pickers had piled up a whole bunch of rugs, throws and quilts on top of the sofa, and there she was, snoozing happily, just like the Princess and the Pea.

She’s made a couple of “mistakes,” but that’s not too bad for the amount of time she’s been in the house. I keep showing her the cat trays and hoping that she’s catching on.

The larger problem is that she isn’t even trying to interact with the other cats, has sequestered herself in one end of the house, and won’t even walk through the living room / dining room to get to the kitchen where the food is. For two days, I carried her out there, but that’s got to stop. This morning I tried to force her to walk in there. I know better than this: you don’t force a cat to do anything.

I wish I wasn’t trying this as winter sets in. If she ultimately fails the test, how can I put her out into the cold?

In the meantime, there have been lots of things to do and think about.

I put the yard to bed for the winter: moved aside the big white rocks, carried all the lawn ornaments into the barn, covered the basement doors with a tarp and some bricks, put on one storm door and all the storm windows. This has always a sad time, and this year I can't help but realize that this was the last time I’d ever do this at this house.

It was also another big weekend for laundry, and just eyeing the things in the house, mulling over a moving plan.

I’ve never done this before, can you tell? Any advice appreciated!

I wanted to do some real writing, too -- but, again, that didn’t happen. On at least one level, this blog is not working out the way I had hoped. The habit of writing is coming back, and that is all well and good, but I still feel unable to take on any more significant project.

Not to get all high-flown, but your spirit has to be at ease in order to write anything worthwhile. Mine is not.

I used to be able to simulate a state of ease with alcohol. I wrote very well under the influence of one or two drinks; more than that, not so well.

I have to re-learn how to write sober. It’s not going to be easy. Even with the Prozac, I am never exactly at ease. Ideas need to flow from a place far down in the subconscious swamplands, and the way is barred. I don’t remember my dreams anymore.

It’s probably too much to ask, to just get right back into the swing of things, when I’m in such a complicated transition, literally ending one life and beginning another.

But if I’m ever to know what that new life is going to contain, I’ve got to get busy and discover what it’s going to be made out of.

Where Quats Come from: Remember B. Kliban?

I use the word "quat" a lot here and on Facebook. Most of you already know this, but just in case you really were born yesterday, I didn't make it up. The late B. Kliban did.

He once said, "I like cats all right. I just don't like drawing them."

In that case, what a curse it must have been, making pots and piles and truckloads of money from his drawings of Quats!

I'm sure he derived more satisfaction from being a Playboy cartoonist, and Hefner paid better than anyone in the business. There's one particular Playboy cartoon that I remember that combines Kliban's interests: two male Kliban Quats are standing on the street, watching a fetching female Kliban Quat go by, and one quat says to the other, "There goes a heckova nice pussy."

When I tell my little Honey that she's a heckova nice pussy, she pirouettes and swishes her fluffy tail around as if it was a boa.

-- Freder

Paris in Polychrome

An American in Paris really is just like a straight-up shot of Happiness. The songs are among Gershwin’s best, the design and settings are so vibrant and full of life (if unrealistic -- the final ballet makes it clear that Mr. Minnelli isn’t making any attempt to show us Paris; rather, he’s putting us into an Impressionist painting of the city); this really is the way color should be utilized in cinema.

Gene Kelly is such a cool cat that I can’t even hate him for being such a cool cat. Leslie Caron is possibly my favorite movie musical leading lady (why in God’s name can’t they get Lili out on DVD? That, my friends, is one of the best ever). And Oscar Levant is a hoot essentially playing a milder version of himself.

Kelly’s choreography is free and easy and full-blooded. Unlike Astaire, whose style is so light and airy that it’s almost other-worldly, Kelly is earthy, flaunting his physicality and his All-American enthusiasm.

The story? Feh. It’s just boy meets girl. But what a boy meeting what a girl in what a place, in dazzling clothes against dazzling backdrops, in dances that caress, collide and withdraw.

Kelly even comes with his own personal spotlight: that big, unending smile. An American in Paris is just infectious, and it accomplishes that which modern cinema seems to have forgotten how to do, even with all the bells, whistles and computers at its command: It charms.

P.S. – Y’know, I never thought of it this way, but if Fred Astaire is Air, and Gene Kelly is Earth, then Cyd Charisse is definitely Fire and Ginger Rogers has got to be smooth, flowing Water. The four elements of Movie Dance!

-- Freder.

Introducing Quats of the Duck House, part one

This is my little Honey. I love her so much.

She was a spring kitten born to the outdoor "feral" cats. Early on she contracted a terrible eye infection. Long, long ago, we had decided that caring for the indoor cats was enough, and that the outdoor cats would get food, milk and water -- but beyond that they were on their own.

So this little kitty, who did not even have a name, was condemned to a summer of terrible suffering.

She kept to herself, or was ostracized, and lived all alone under the bushes in front of the house. The eye infection was advanced and a terrible and pathetic thing to behold. I didn't even like to see her. I wanted to take her to the vet to be put out of her misery, but somehow that never happened.

Then, as summer drew along to an end, her eye infection began to heal. In a relatively short time for something so horrible, it cleared up entirely. She was obviously blind in that eye, but it didn't appear to trouble her and we agreed that she was quite cute.

But we didn't bring her in. We had enough indoors cats to last a while!

One morning in November, my mother didn't make her rounds as normal. I found her in the kitchen, in terrible pain from her right leg and foot. After two visits to the doctor who had done the bypass in in both of her legs, and a round of tests and X-Rays, Dr. B_______ told us that my mother's right leg would have to be amputated.

My mother was very brave. I don't believe that she ever cried in front of me. She came home and tolerated the pain as long as she could. In December, just at Christmastime, she went into the hospital.

She did not come home for three months, and I spent the winter alone in the house. Every morning and afternoon I visited my mother (usually bringing food!), and every night I came home and fed the cats indoors and out. The little kitten who was blind in one eye was always out there, alone. She never went to the barn or tried to find real shelter. She sat behind a drift of snow, as much out of the wind as possible, close to the house, waiting.

One night I could not stand it anymore. I held the door open for her. If she came in of her own volition, she could stay.

She came in.

I set up a cat tray in my bathroom and kept her closed up in there for the first week, during the days. She was so happy to see me at the end of the day; and at bedtime I would let her out to walk around a bit.

She started sleeping with me every night, right on top of me, curled up on my chest under my chin. I named her Popeye, but that didn't take. She was too cute and huggy for that name. In the end, she just started answering to Honey.

She's much too big now to sleep on my chest, but she still sleeps with me every night, snuggled up at the head of the bed, right beside me, under my arm. I always wanted a nice kitty to snuggle with on a cold night. It's strange to think that the poor sick kitten that I wanted to put down would turn out to be my favorite cat ever.

-- Freder

Playing with Paper, and a Petrified Pussycat

More photo prints of the defunct house and a big ol' jar of India Ink arrived Wednesday night.

I dove right in, using the India Ink to blacken the pages of the ledger book I am turning into a photo scrapbook of the house. This is better quality ink than the last bottle I had (love the name: Black Cat), or else the stuff in my original bottle was just so old that it had congealed a bit and lost its potency. It covers  everything! By the time I had finished about eight pages in the front and back of the book, my fingers were black all the way down. With much scrubbing, it came off of my skin, but my fingernails made it look like I was headed to a goth club! All day at work I tried to keep them hidden. "It's not black nail polish, people! It's India Ink!"

I've probably typed it before, but working on the scrapbook is what Martha Stewart would call A Good Thing. It's a positive activity that allows me to look back without regret.

Along with the prints, I got five more 8 X 10 enlargements. These turned out wonderfully well. Much more so than the regular size snaps, they really convey the physicality of the house and its contents. I wish I could blow them up to room-size and paper the walls with them!

Actually, I could project them onto a wall and do a mural. That's not such a bad idea for the new house, whatever it turns out to be.

One of my student workers said that I could get one of those "I Spy" books out of these pictures, and the enlargements have convinced me it's a smashing idea. Too bad that higher quality pictures can't be taken. It's history, now.

Tiger Whitestockings is in the house. Unsupervised. I hope the place isn't getting torn apart while I'm at work. I didn't mean to keep her in for the whole day, but that's how it worked out.

It was raining cold and hard when I got home last night, and Tiger Whitestockings was soaked through, crying at me out of the dark. Still, she wouldn't come in when I held the door open for her. I finally said, "I really think you should come in," and grabbed her!

I showed her the food and the cat tray, and she promptly disappeared. She stayed hidden for a couple of hours. I was watching the final episode of Farscape (with John finally proposing to Aeryn just before they are blown to smithereens, yes, smithereens, by a UFO -- no wonder the fans were pissed when Sci-Fi canceled the  show!) when I suddenly noticed her at my feet. I pulled her up onto my lap and she settled right down and purred and purred.

But when I went in to work on the scrapbook, she disappeared again, and I haven't seen her since. There was no time to look for her this morning: I overslept and was running dramatically late. No time to clean the cat trays. The house will be a pit when I get home!

-- Freder.