Portrait of a big faker

One morning we noticed that Oreo was hobbling.  Actually, it was hard to miss.  When he wasn’t hopping around like a three-legged rabbit, he would dip and list pitifully whenever his right front paw approached the ground.

Dr. Skippety, who ended up doing some surprise veterinary work in Alaska (no vets lived out where we were, so the ER patients  sometimes had tails), palpated the foot to Oreo’s agonized meowing.  He couldn’t find anything obvious, so it was off to the vet we went.

I love his vet.  She looks kind of like a female version of a garden gnome, and she is a cat lady and a medical person through and through, which is to say that 1) she loves her patients and  that 2) nothing they do makes the slightest dent in her pragmatic calm.

But Oreo does not love her.  Nor does he love his plastic cat carrier.  Nor does he love the big happy dogs that inevitably sniff around his cat carrier whenever we go to the Place of All Evil.

So Oreo hunched, glared, tucked all of his legs out of sight in bread loaf position, and wrapped his tail tightly around himself.

“Huh,” said the vet.  “Well, put him in the corner, go sit in that chair over there, and see if he walks across the room to you.  Unless he decides to freeze.”

So I did.  And he did freeze for a moment but then walked slowly toward me.

“I do not see a limp,” said the vet.

I said “But — but — but — he was hopping around like an amputee ten minutes ago!”

“I believe you,” said the vet instantly.  “But right now he is faking.  Put him up on the table for me.”

She palpated his feet and legs and gave him some range of motion tests and asked me how he held his paw when he was limping, and she said it was something with his foot, possibly a sprain, but no broken bones.

Oreo lay there as if he were in a coma.

“Hmph,” she said.  “If he had a cracked or broken bone when I pressed it, he would have bitten me.  Even the nicest cats will bite, because that’s really painful.  I have bad news for you.  He is going to be just fine.”

I said, “I don’t get it.  How could he be smart enough to fake not having a limp?”

She said, “He is a cat.  Cats know what happens at the vet’s office, so if they can possibly fake being well, they will.  But some dogs, some dogs are kind of dumb and they’re just really happy to be anywhere — ” she wiped every trace of intelligence from her face, grinned, stuck out her tongue and panted, then resumed her usual deadpan expression  — “and they can’t fake.”

She gave me some advice about pain management, should we need to resort to that, what to watch for if he needed to come back, and said, “And by the way, as soon as you get him home, he will start limping again.”

And sure enough, as soon as we opened the cat carrier in the kitchen, Gimpy hopped out with three legs and hobbled swiftly toward his favorite hiding place in the basement.

We did not see him for the rest of the day.

Our favorite son and his teammate had a lively discussion at the dinner table about the One Ring.

Namely:

“What if it didn’t fit?”

Say, for example, that the One Ring wouldn’t fit over your knuckles and you’re surrounded by Orcs, with no way out.

There you’d be, attempting to become invisible . . . and the thing just wouldn’t get over your knuckles.   Hobbits are short, but they have big feet, and appear to have big knuckles.   So it could happen.  You could be a Hobbit and have really big knuckles, and then the One Ring wouldn’t fit.

Oh, but it's a magic ring! Surely one size fits all.

So it jams, and there you are, perfectly visible, surrounded by the hot, stinking breath of Orcs.

Game over.

Or — what if it’s too big?  Sword fight, so you’re in a sword fight, right?  — and you have it on your finger, but then it falls off!  It rolls around . . .

. . . and here our speculators were too overcome with guffaws to complete the scenario.

*As opposed to Middle Earth, despite some Orc-like creatures roaming the locker rooms.

At dinner, our favorite son was telling us about his social studies class.  Today one kid asked a question about “Kacastan.”

The teacher admirably managed to keep his composure long enough to start saying that really, the country was called “Kazakhstan,” when another student’s voice burst out:  “Dude!  I told you Borat wasn’t true!”

Dr. Skippety, who used to be a journalist before he went to medical school, tells me that the classic boilermaker is one quick shot of whiskey, followed by a leisurely beer (he says he had a boss who liked Seagram’s Seven chased by a Bud.)

This evening, discussing various combinations of whiskey,  we came up with the Desperate Housewife Variant: a quick shot of whiskey*, followed by a leisurely (or perhaps not so leisurely, depending upon the number of young tugging at your apron) glass of white wine.

But back to journalism, New York City, and Dr. S’s former boss.

Dr. Skippety  is of Irish heritage and used to be a journalist in New York City, which tells you all you need to know about Dr. Skippety’s knowledge of booze combinations.  (This  explains why he is also ashamed to admit he had to call it quits after the fourth round of boilermakers with the aforementioned boss.)

Dr. S’s boss, who was also Irish-American, never wore a coat.  He wore a houndstooth sports jacket, brown, with khakis, and saddleback brogans (suede, brown and white) all year ’round, in New York.   That was one notable characteristic.  The other was what his boss had for breakfast.  His former boss had “worked the slot” (meaning he was a night copy editor) at a big San Francisco paper back in the golden days of journalism; that is, when millions of people actually read dead tree newspapers.

“Journalists didn’t have to freakin’ go to college, they just hung around police stations and courtrooms then,” says Dr. S.

When questioned further, Dr. S admits that technically speaking his former boss attended Harvard, but never mind.

“I don’t know if he got an actual bachelor’s degree or not, but he did go to Harvard.  So anyway after a night at the copy desk as he emerged from the newspaper office, bleary-eyed into the new morning sun, there was a convenient bar around the corner to which he repaired, and ordered breakfast, which would consist of a) a cigarette and b) a tall glass of vodka into which was cracked a raw egg.”

I am not sure that I am up for the breakfast of champions yet, but intend to try the Desperate Housewife’s boilermaker.

Salud.

*Tullamore Dew.

These boots are not petroleum-based.

Our favorite daughter’s choir director is a delicate looking young woman who adopts the sweet nature of a piranha and the voice of an air horn in the classroom* (as she must, to control a high school choir).  Recently she informed them that they would be performing a 30 minute song and dance concert for a country-western themed dedication ceremony, and that everyone must acquire cowboy boots and a cowboy hat.

And nobody argues with the choir director.  

Buying shoes for our favorite daughter is always difficult, as her feet are unusually small and she has had multiple foot surgeries, which make most shoes uncomfortable for her.    She pretty much sticks to flipflops and canvas sneakers.

Speaking as her mother, it was a happy day for me when we found a pair of children’s pink Hello Kitty rain boots which she actually wore to school because 1) they were flexible and comfortable,  and 2) because no one else in high school could fit into such small boots.  HK is still considered stylishly funky at high school; thus she was pleased for being able to make a unique fashion statement.

I was pleased about the Hello Kitty rainboots because now when it rained she was wearing something besides flipflops or canvas sneakers.  No functioning mother likes to have children sitting around with wet, cold feet all day.  We all hate that, and we all brood about it.  But pink Hello Kitty rain boots would not do for a country western themed concert.

At last in a Western shop we found boots that fit, and they looked beautiful on her, too.  Plus she swore they were comfortable, and did some dance steps from the routine to test them out.   And she swore that she really, really liked them.

Then I swore at the price.

Then she swore that she would wear them more than once.

We returned home in a glow of retail triumph, and I immediately called up my father, who had worn cowboy boots daily for thirty or forty years, to tell him that his granddaughter now had Western boots.

And then — disaster!  Our favorite daughter appeared at the doorway, tears streaming down her face.  I told my dad I had to go, and she sobbed that her boyfriend — like her, a staunch vegetarian — said he wasn’t sure he could date a girl whose commitment to animal rights wasn’t solid.  She had killed a cow.  It was a crisis.  They had to talk.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,”  I said.  “Didn’t you tell me your friend was working the concession stand at the football game yesterday and he was frying up hamburgers because he was too shy to talk to people at the front?”

“Yes,” she sniffed.

I said, “And we bought those boots because you have to perform in a concert which requires them, and your grade will go down if you boycott the concert, right?”

“Yes,” she said.  “Besides, I LOVE doing concerts!”   A fresh round of sobs.

” So if your friend feels uncomfortable talking to people, it’s okay for him to compromise his animal rights principles and cook cows, but if you need to wear a cow for class, it’s not okay for you to compromise yours?”

And I went off on a rant shared my maternal wisdom about not dating anybody who holds you to a higher moral standard than he holds himself.   Then I said he was a thoughtful young man and I was pretty sure, when they had time to think and talk, that they could come to some agreement.  I suggested that maybe they could find a project together to express their mutual commitment to animal rights.  Then I took her to the elementary school playground where she had agreed to meet her friend and gave her an hour to talk with him before I’d pick her up again.

Dr. S grumbled about allowing them to meet at the playground without parents hovering about, but I said, “It is full of little kids — they all go there to play on the weekends — and her friend has allergies to almost everything in nature, so no one will be sneaking off into the woods.”

In fifteen minutes I got a call from her.  Her friend had brought her a flower.  He was crying (or perhaps his eyes were watering because he was allergic to the flower).  She was crying.

“I forgot I had cooked burgers yesterday,” he said.   So all is apparently well again with our vegetarians.

Let us admit that retail is fraught with ethical dilemmas here — vegan cowboy boots  do exist (let us also bypass my daughter’s unusual sizing/fitting problems and the glaring fashion issues), but they are made of plastic, which is bad for the environment.  Which leaves cowboy boot wearers with the choice of wearing an animal or wearing the substance which wrecks animals’ habitats.   Anybody out there make cowboy boots out of hemp?

*The pianist/accompanist does a running soundtrack during choir rehearsals — if the choir teacher is about to let someone have it, he plays the theme music from “Jaws.”  One day the choir teacher appeared three inches from our favorite daughter’s face with a terrifying expression on her own, and then she bellowed, “SMIIIIIIIIIIIILE!”  Because show choir had better look really, really happy at all times.

Free range, nonrefrigerated hamster

All two of you who followed my old blog (hi, Mom!  hi, Dad!) may remember the Flying Squirrel Incident, in which I opened the refrigerator crisper drawer to discover the body of a baby flying squirrel neatly tucked in a ziplock bag, on top of the lettuce.

Dr. Skippety had found the deceased rodent on the lawn and had ziplocked and refrigerated it in order to show the children when they got home from school, as he said it would be educational* for them to see a flying squirrel up close.

However, I was not feeling at all educated when I opened the crisper drawer confronted by a little glazed eye rather than a romaine leaf.

Indeed, after my lightning speed deduction that THAT’S NOT LETTUCE, BECAUSE LETTUCE CANNOT LOOK AT ME BECAUSE LETTUCE DOES NOT HAVE ANY EYES,  my vocabulary descended into certain monosyllabic Anglo-Saxonisms which signal a temporarily ineducable state.

Recently it was I who found a surprising decedent on the lawn, which kicked off the following exchange of texts:

Me: We have a dead hamster in our back yard

Dr. S: Put him in a ziploc bag in fridge and will autopsy tonight.

Me: seriously?  you know how i feel about rodents in appliances, but will do 4 sake of science

Dr. S: just kidding

*Not all of Dr. Skippety’s conversations regarding refrigeration with the children are, strictly speaking, educational.  For years he told the children that they were born with monkey tails, which he amputated at birth and which we kept in the back of the freezer for sentimental reasons.

So your department’s been asked to produce an informational video about what you do?

This is what happened when our company asked for a video from each department. We take our employer’s requests very seriously.

Give it up for Los Bank Auditors!

In it for the ride

1) He is 77.  She is 73.  This is his first motorcycle.  He loves, loves, loves this motorcycle.   He has always wanted one.  He rides it everywhere.

2) This is her first sidecar.  She loves, loves, loves her sidecar.  She can read in it and she can stretch her legs.

3) The flaming “Born to Ride” emblem on the back of his leather jacket does not feature a skull.

4) And when she puts her book down, she says what she especially loves about the sidecar is that she is not spending the ride holding onto his back looking at his helmet; she too has her very own view of their road.

5) They moved to Florida so they could ride year-round, though when we met on a Burger King lot on this sparkling early September day, they were on their way to visit friends in Pennsylvania.

6) “Everywhere we go, people take photos,” she said.  “I even saw someone with a cellphone camera taking a picture of us at a stoplight!”

7) She had a coronary bypass operation and now she is fine.

8 ) When I told them my mother and father had talked about having a motorcycle with a sidecar when they first got married, this couple grinned and they both said, “Tell them to DO IT,” and then they said, “The only time it’s not fun is when it’s raining, but even that is okay.”

9) She also installed spinner wheels on her hub caps.  “I tell everyone I’m a drug dealer!”*

10) The “Born to Ride” emblem flaming on the back of his leather jacket features wings, not a skull.

*We have a friend who volunteers to drive prescription drugs to the homes of hospice patients.  The prescriptions include pain-killing narcotics.  He says he is a drug runner.