Sasha in the sun.
You learn a lot cooped up with a cat. Even when you think there’s nothing to do, she’ll find something for both of you. Like enjoying a shaft of sunlight in the apartment house hall. Or — if you can’t easily get down on the floor — enjoying the sight of her.
[A LONG SHAGGY CAT STORY]
Ten thousand dollars is how much I spent on Sophie last spring. And she wasn’t my favorite cat. Laying out that much money – in four installments, to be fair – was a major financial event for me. It took almost all the discretionary cash remaining in the private little slush fund I’d set aside for travel when I retired fourteen years ago. Together with frequent flyer miles, ten thousand dollars could have paid for two more modest yearly trips abroad – after which I‘d have been too old to enjoy hobbling around the world anyway.
So how could I have? Put simply: I couldn’t not have.
Even though she’d been a disappointment from the get go. For starters, she came with sticker shock. Sasha, my other cat — from the same breeder three and half years before — had cost $1200. Sophie’s price was $1500. Sasha had been adorable as a kitten. (She’s still gorgeous.) When ten-week Sophie arrived, she looked like a little rat. She was also a highly neurotic kitten. She’d been the runt of the litter, smaller and weaker than her seven sibling kittens. Because they’d kept her from nursing, the breeder had to feed her by hand. Safe from the killer seven with me, she was still afraid to eat. At mealtimes, she would look at her bowl longingly, lick her mouth and run away, creeping back in stealth only when she was sure Sasha — who in any event had her own bowl and no interest in Sophie’s — wouldn’t attack her for eating.
Eventually her appearance improved. At six months, she did look like a cat. But a $1500 cat? Candidly, no. She had a pointy chin, not typical of the breed, from which water from the drinking bowl perpetually dripped. Her head was smaller than Sasha’s, and her fur less fluffy. She had baldish spots beneath her ears. Even more distressing cosmetically, her eyes bulged. The vet shrugged off the eyes. He didn’t quite say “Suck it up.” But that’s what he meant. Moreover, her pupils were closer to the top of the eyeball than to the center, giving her a perpetually mournful look.
She did wash herself nicely, and had no accidents outside the litter boxes. But she covered her productions therein with such furious digging that litter sprayed all over the bathroom floor. (God forbid an enemy in the apartment discover her whereabouts from a whiff of her poop or pee.) She also had the unpleasant habit of taking a mouthful of wet food (when she finally worked up courage to approach a bowl) and then depositing it on the floor or rug, eating it from there in tiny bits but not entirely.
She didn’t really play, except with one cheap wand and one tunnel – ignoring all the other cat toys and equipment decorating my living quarters. Unlike Sasha, who investigated everything, Sophie had no intellectual curiosity. She ran away when you tried to pet her. She never came for cuddles. The one thing she truly loved in all the world was Sasha, the dominant cat of the two, who almost always graciously licked Sophie’s head and ears if they met in the apartment but otherwise kept her distance. Whenever I came home from outside, Sasha would run to greet me at the door (if she wasn’t already waiting on the hall table). Sophie didn’t care about me. She came running because Sasha would be there.
In short, an unrewarding cat. And not the sharpest tool in the box either. Who did she think was the food source anyway?
Because she was so standoffish, it took a few days to realize her left eye was half shut and oozing. At first I thought the eye was partially gummed together from fluid, but whenever I tried to soften the gumming with a warm wet washcloth, she pulled away. A traveling vet came to the apartment. She said it was a corneal ulcer, “common in flat-faced breeds with pronounced eyes.” She also explained Sophie wasn’t opening her left eye because it hurt when she did. It would need to be treated with antibiotic eyedrops four times a day for ten days.
In the vet’s dreams! I was living alone now, with no one to help. Sophie was not only skittish but had prominent and needle-thin dew claws. I was taking heavily advertised Eliquis, apparently the blood thinner par excellence for clot prevention, the one cardiologists, including mine, fly to like iron filings to a magnet. I would be bleeding non-stop all over the apartment at each attempt to bring an eyedropper near Sophie’s eye. But untreated, the infection would spread. Long story short: I was to try hiding the antibiotic in Sophie’s food, a method the vet admitted was of dubious effectiveness. And if that seemed not to be working, either because it didn’t get eaten or the eye didn’t improve, Sophie would need further treatment that Ms. Traveling Vet couldn’t provide. She gave me the name of the nearest veterinary surgical hospital – “nearest” meaning forty minutes away – and the name of the surgeon she recommended.
Whatever minimal amount of antibiotic I managed to trick picky Sophie into swallowing had no effect on the eye. An acquaintance in my building who had constructed her retirement years around adopting elderly cats with medical problems knew the back-roads way of avoiding hated Route 1 to reach North Star Vets (“Veterinary Emergency Trauma & Specialty Center”). She offered to give up the better part of a day driving us there, waiting for the diagnosis, and then bringing me (or hopefully us, meaning me and Sophie) home again. When I protested gratefully, she explained it was actually for Sophie, not me. She really did love cats!
This was a year ago last February. Until then I had no idea there were surgeons who performed only small-animal opthamological operations. Until then, I had no idea how much small animal surgery, and billed-by-the-day hospital recovery, would cost. Dr. V. – the recommended surgeon – was very kind. She regretted there were no miracle shots. The infected part of Sophie’s eye would need to be surgically cleared away. (I immediately felt guilty I hadn’t brought her in sooner.) Fortunately, the infection hadn’t yet reached her cornea.
There were two ways to deal with it. The first, a keratacomy, would address the present infection but not necessarily prevent such a thing from happening again. However, it would leave her vision and her appearance unimpaired. The more extensive procedure, called “conjunctival flap surgery,” did prevent recurrence 90% of the time. It would involve lifting a flap from behind the eyeball and bringing it forward to cover the cleaned part of the eye. It would save all her vision, but there would be a slight blue haze over her eyeball, “hardly noticeable except in certain lights.” I had to decide there, on the spot, what I wanted Dr. V. to do. I could tell she was leaning towards the more extensive procedure, despite the blue haze. But I was thinking “more extensive” meant more expensive. I was thinking we could always address future problems in the future. I was thinking why blue haze until absolutely necessary? I asked how much a keratacomy would cost.
A line-by-line estimate was prepared while my accommodating friend in the lobby waited. It was extensive, since it also included a three-to-four week recovery period, termed “medical boarding,” during which Sophie’s eye would receive, at North Star, all the post-surgical painkillers and medications her inept owner was unable to administer. North Star overlooked no detail. In addition to her medical care, every meal of Science Diet Sophie would be offered was listed. I would also pay $12 for the surgical collar that would keep her from pawing her eye. The “low” estimate was $5,187.14. The “high” estimate was about $1,000 more. I would need to pay half the “low” estimate before Sophie could check in.
Was there an alternative? Dr. V. looked sad. “We could remove the eye. That’s a simpler surgery, costs less, and heals faster. Cats can live long and happy lives with one eye.” We were all in the examination room together, Dr. V., Sophie curled up at one end of her carry case with the top open, and me. I looked into the carry case. Sophie hadn’t asked me to buy her and bring her home with me. She had never asked for anything, except to be licked by Sasha. Her idea of happiness might be different than mine. But she was a warm living breathing little creature entirely dependent on me for food, warmth, shelter and care. For everything really. Suddenly, despite her weeping half-shut eye, she looked beautiful. Much more beautiful than money, or another trip abroad.
I went with the keratacomy – the surgical alternative I thought might cost less and look better. As the cashier processed my credit card for half the low estimate, I did ask, “What about people without savings? Do their animals have to be put down?” (Shame on me for even having the thought.) The cashier looked shocked. “They charge it and pay over time,” she said firmly.
Sophie came home last March. When my cat-loving friend and I arrived at North Star to pay the balance due and collect her, the technician who brought her out exclaimed how “sweet” she was. One of the sweetest cats they’d ever had boarding with them, she declared. Everyone working there used to take her out of her “cat condo” – a two-story cage that invited climbing around — and pet and play with her whenever they had a little free time. One had declared she’d adopt her in a nanosecond if she ever became available.
My Sophie, sweet? Had she preferred medical boarding to me? Was she sweet only with others? Where there was no dominant Sasha to commandeer attention? I resolved to make future efforts to be more fair. To divide the cookie more scrupulously into two equal halves. (A metaphor originating in having once raised two small boys.)
A wise decision. In the next few months – strengthened in any resolve to assert herself by the unremitting favoritism she’d experienced at North Star medical boarding, and supported by increased cooing from me – Sophie became perceptibly less neurotic about hiding herself from person-produced pleasures. She stopped running away from the food she wanted to eat, and merely circled the area several times while scouting for invader cats before deigning to lower her head to the bowl. She left the expensive living-room chair where she’d formerly spent much of her life sleeping curled up on a protective towel and explored some of the nooks and crannies of the apartment. (Linen closet, open shower door, under the kitchen sink, all replete with interesting-to-the-feline-nose smells.)
She even began to spend some parts of some nights at the bottom left corner of my bed. (The right side of me was Sasha territory.) From there, she once or twice moved to my prone body and, if I were flat on my back with legs extended together, visit my mid-section to push down regularly with her two front paws – the pumping movement very new kittens use on their mama cat to bring on the milk. It wasn’t entirely comfortable, especially with a full bladder. I nevertheless glowed with pride in the dark. I was becoming Sophie’s mama!
Alas! I’d also made a less wise decision. Driven in February by trivial concerns like money and Sophie’s appearance, I’d chosen the keratacomy over the more comprehensive surgery Dr. V. implied was the better option. In May, Sophie’s left eye returned to half-mast and began to weep again. This time I skipped the traveling vet. My cat-loving acquaintance with back-road expertise was summoned. She was willing. (Although admittedly, when pressed, she was additionally willing to accept a bottle of expensive French sauterne by way of thanks.) Moreover, I’d been wrong that the keratacomy might save me money. The conjunctival flap surgery – although presumably a more difficult and delicate operation — turned out to cost only $200 more, even with the anesthetic and weeks of medical boarding and antibiotics and painkillers and Science Diet and new surgical collar added in. And candidly, the so-called “blue haze” was barely visible when she came home last June; after a month it disappeared, at least to the lay eye which was mine.
There must have been even more petting, playing and favoritism during Sophie’s second stay at North Star. This time she came home a quite different cat. Almost at once she staked out her claim to being a full and equal participant in a two-cat family. The crap with the feeding bowl disappeared. Every morning she now waits at the kitchen doorstep to be served, and immediately lowers her head to what is offered. Whenever Sasha jumps up to the kitchen counter to be brushed, Sophie scrambles up to be brushed too, and often pushes Sasha out of the way. Whenever I sit in the center of the sofa, Sasha has always taken the left side. Sophie now takes the right. She initiates crazy running-up-and-down-the-apartment games. She accompanies Sasha along the hall with me to the Trash Room, where “we” dump garbage in the garbage chute and put recyclables in their barrels; it’s also an opportunity for her to do some delicious floor sniffing. At night, I now get time-shared. One comes to the bed, the other goes. And vice-versa. It makes for some broken nights, but also for feeling loved.
Some people look for lessons in their life experiences. Formerly, that might have included me. But I’m not sure what the lesson is here. Money isn’t everything? You never can tell? (Both clichés, but true. And applicable.) The love you take is equal to the love you make? (Thank you, John and Paul.) Four months shy of eighty-nine, I feel it’s time to stop thinking about what life teaches and live it now.
“Now” – as I write — is coronavirus lock-up time. Just me, Sasha, and Sophie alone together in a reasonably spacious one-bedroom apartment with den and a small outside balcony for fresh air. So nothing to complain about. No small children to be home schooled, no working at home in an overcrowded space, no squabbles with a formerly loved one. And in these parlous times, I also have the benefit of what Sophie’s infrequent bedtime milking routine has morphed into during the ten months since her second stay at North Star.
Now, at least three times a night, she comes regularly to me from her corner at the left bottom of the bed. If I’m not on my back, I obligingly roll into that position as soon as I sense her careful approach. She may do a few exploratory paw pushes into my clitoris when she arrives on top of me. Then she settles down – tail towards my feet, little head between her paws on my upper pelvis. (With arms extended, I can just reach to stroke her silky cheeks and below her chin.) The center of her weight, all twelve pounds and two ounces of her, is right on my crotch, heavy, breathing and warm. It’s been more than four years since there’s been anything heavy, warm and alive pressing down on that particular area of my anatomy. It feels wonderful. Sophie enjoys it, too. I hear a low rumbling purr.
Five or ten minutes, that’s all it lasts. Then she’s had enough and jumps off, too soon for me but I know she’ll be back.
How priceless is that?
Readers for whom new posts from this blog arrive via email may not have noticed. Between the last post and this one, “The Getting Old Blog” acquired a new name. It was time. How long can you go on “getting” old without eventually reaching your destination?
“The Getting Old Blog” began life nearly five years ago, in November 2013. (This was after three weeks or so of baby-step experimentation in “Learning to Blog” — still out there in the ethernet if you’re interested, although I don’t see why anyone would be). Despite the scary-sounding year of my birth (1931), I didn’t feel particularly old at 82, and thought a blog marking my passage into the “later years” might be a good place to park bits of memoir (old folks tend to look back), memoir disguised as fiction, and general reflections on what was happening to me as I reluctantly rolled towards becoming 83, and then 84, and so forth.
But as you’ve already read (two posts back in “So What Happened?”) last year was for a nanosecond the end of me. Having your heart stop beating, although they get it going again, really does change the rules of the game. Not to mention the months and months of medical and pharmaceutical tribulation that necessarily follow such a near-terminal event. Who was I kidding with this “getting old” stuff? I was old. I am old. In bed at night, with the lights out, I can still fantasize that a near-crazed-with-lust eighteen-year-old is pressing hard and stiff against my luscious seventeen-year-old body. It helps, of course, if I’m on my back and an eleven-pound cat is lying vertically on top of my mid-section or else pushing in rhythmically with its two front paws. You think that’s funny? With the lights on, I do too. I know what I look like undressed; I still have a full-length mirror. I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but no one ever called me stupid.
One of my grandsons, who at twelve of course knows nothing of his Nana’s occasional nighttime fantasies, tried to reassure me last week that “you’re only as old as you feel.” Like many pre-adolescents he’s a sponge for grown-up expressions — even though he still lacks the life experience to know when they’re cliches. To which I immediately replied, “That’s a lot of crap!” and everyone burst out laughing, partly because it’s true, but also because 87-year-old grandmas aren’t expected to say “crap” out loud– at least not in the suburbs of Brandon, Florida.
I’ve therefore been thinking for a while of what to rename the blog. Some ideas — “While There’s Still Time” or “Near Journey’s End” — were too funereal. “What It’s Like To Be 87” was appealing; I could change the number each time I acquired another birthday. But it would be inaccurate. Each of us ages somewhat differently, and what 87 is like for me will not reflect the experience of every 87-year-old woman. I seem to be an outlier. One example only: I know a number of near-87-year-old women who sleep with their cats but are glad — at least they say they’re glad — their sex lives are over. Hand-holding might be all right, but anything more than that: no-siree, an expression that dates them as much as anything. Bottom line: “On Being Old” seemed most descriptive without necessarily being depressing. It’s also an accommodating title. It can encompass scraps of memoir as well as details of my life in a so-called “over-55,” but really more like “over-70” or “over-75,” community. In fact, it will accommodate just about anything about being me at this stage of my life, whatever that stage is.
So welcome to “On Being Old.” Don’t get hung up on the new name and go away. It’s really just the same old same old… me.
Selfie taken in Florida last week. (Slightly retouched but only slightly.) The sunglasses do help.
These six notecards turned up in the gift shop of The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in the Berkshires. They’re all from The New Yorker, which means they have nothing to do with Wharton, or The Mount, or its gardens, or my trip to the Berkshires — except that I bought them in The Mount’s shop.
So why were they there? Because Wharton advocated finding happiness in small ways? (See previous post for details.) That would be a very good reason, although it probably isn’t the reason. I’m sure a baker’s dozen of these small pleasures were in the shop because they sell.
They sure got me. When I saw them, I couldn’t not smile. (Of course I also thought, almost at once, “Blog!” Which opened the purse strings even if I’d had more self control.) My apologies to dog people. What can I say? I have cats? But you know that already.
Lucky cats, to get such good seats.
At ground level, they couldn’t see a thing.
I was all set to do a companion piece to my last post. I was going to call it, “Medicare Part D: Between a Rock and a Hard Place.” It was going to weigh the annual cost of the “optional” Medicare Part D insurance premiums deducted every month from Social Security benefits paid to eligible seniors in the United States against the very real risk of finding oneself in need of having to pay out of pocket at some time in one’s future for prescription pharmaceuticals that could bankrupt you in order to keep you alive.
(Like, just by way of example, $84,000 for the latest, and most effective, treatment for Hepatitis C. What’s Hep C to you? Well, I don’t know. But it’s estimated that four million Americans are walking around with those little Hep C suckers swimming in their blood streams and slowly destroying their livers. Many of the four million don’t even know they’re infected, because it happened before the virus became identifiable and could be screened out of blood banks.)
Then I discovered I had already written this companion piece — two years ago! (It was minus the reference to Hep C medication, which came along later. But still….) The post was called Why Am I Paying $101 a Month for Medicare Part D? You may even remember it if you’ve been hanging around “The Getting Old Blog” that long. And if you don’t, because you haven’t, you can certainly click the link to read it now. The piece hasn’t aged a bit, except for the stated price of the Part D premium, which (of course) was somewhat lower two years ago. So rather than repeat myself, as old folks are wont to do, I had better change the subject.
The first thing that comes to mind as a quicky replacement post is a cartoon recently placed on our refrigerator door by Bill, who has taken to musing aloud that our life together would be even more perfect if we had a third cat. Not so coincidentally, the cartoon is another example of someone beginning to repeat himself (like me). But it’s somewhat more amusing than anything I wrote, or could write again, about Medicare Part D. So here it is, even though it may very well fall flat with dog lovers. I’ll try harder next time.
Living with two house cats is instructive. Our condo is their universe. They know in intimate detail the three upstairs rooms and two bathrooms, the laundry room, closets and linen closets. Downstairs is a long open space, from kitchen and family room through dining room to living room and front door. They’ve commandeered all of it – counters, tables, chairs, sofas, cat tree – plus the utility room and guest bathroom.
They also enjoy the open porch off the kitchen, one flight up from the ground, with birds at the feeders, and bugs, and the occasional squirrel. They can explore the garage, the furnished basement and, more rarely, the unfinished storage section next to the finished part of the basement.
But that’s it. That’s all Sophie, the younger, knows of the world. When the weather and my schedule permit, Sasha, the older, has sometimes been outside on a leash. So she knows there’s also a heaven beyond the front door, carpeted with grass, orchestrated with birdsong, and decorated with fragrant bushes and trees. We’ve never crossed the street though, and she regards the occasional quiet car moving slowly through our residential neighborhood with grave suspicion. Moreover, getting to heaven always requires me.
Jokes about cats letting us live in their houses are ubiquitous among cat owners, and I’m no exception. But joking aside, our cats live at our pleasure. They’re here because we want them here; we could wipe out their known universe by giving them away. That will also occur to a lesser degree when Bill and I move elsewhere as we grow still older. And given our respective ages, one or both of our relatively young cats may well outlive us. Then life as they know it would end when we die.
I’ve set aside money in my will for their care, and stated the hope they can stay together. But such concerns are mine, not theirs. They lack knowledge of a greater universe, a different tomorrow. They have no fears, except of loud noises. They simply enjoy what’s now: treats, smells, washing themselves, petting.
Even though we’re more aware of what’s across the street, foresee some of what’s coming, we might learn from our cats. It’s a wise human who, like a cat, can simply enjoy what’s now.
Our bed in its prime.
Our bed is leaving us. The cats have torn several holes in its underside in which to hide. The whole thing squeaks whenever we sit or turn, and not just when something interesting is happening on it. It’s time.
I bought the box spring and mattress from Mattress King in February 1988, under the guidance of the man who’d been my first serious boyfriend when we were young and was then being recycled, as my older son put it, after my second husband and I had separated. That makes the sleeping part of the bed twenty-seven years old.
The headboard and footboard came later, purchased with a year-end bonus after the boyfriend’s second departure from my life. I had always favored Victorian brass beds; I thought they were romantic (and still do). Second husband and I had one, but I left it with him when I departed. This set was as close to the first as I was able to find. I could still hang on to its posts (if hanging was needed) and when made up it looked as good, or better, than the first.
Like the marital original, it was a standard double bed. No Queen- or King-size degrees of separation for me. If I’m alone, I’m alone; so be it. But if I’m not, I need spooning — and always did. Second husband and recycled first serious boyfriend slept straight up and down. Alas, Bill espouses the diagonal “Z.” I can accommodate that under protest, even in a standard double, by making myself into a complementary “Z.” But then came the cats, who both favor my side of the bed. When the three of them are in place by the time I get there, I can hardly insert myself under the top sheet.
So this time we’re going for a Queen. (No room in the bedroom for a King.) Bill, who takes aesthetic pleasure in how things look, was prepared; he’d picked out the new bed well in advance of my capitulation to the need for it. He favors minimalist, expensive Italian design. I’m not arguing. Hanging from the bedposts at our age? Really? All the same, it’s hard to part. (Sob.)
Goodbye, dear bed. Goodbye.
SOPHIE, ON EXPENSIVE KNOLL CHAIR SHE SHOULDN’T BE ON
[From “Stand Up for Your Cats,” by Julia Baird, New York Times, March 29, 2015]
Cat men and women, we have the numbers. There are now roughly 95.6 million cats in America [compared to 83.3 million dogs].
****
Part of the appeal of cats is that they are independent and discerning. They have few needs. They come to you when they want; you can’t force them, or cajole them. They can be fiercely affectionate. They are gloriously indifferent. Cats don’t pretend to like you, and don’t care if you like them.
****
[From Honorable Cat, by Paul Gallico (Crown Publishers), pages 8-9]
Everything a cat is and does physically is … beautiful, lovely, stimulating, soothing, attractive and an enchantment.
It begins … with the compactness of construction, composition, size, proportion and general overall form. The domesticated cat is the tidiest of all animals. There is an almost divine neatness and economy about the animal. Completely packaged in fur with not a bald spot showing, rarely two specimens wholly alike, it often comes decorated with designs that Picasso might envy and always functionally streamlined for every activity; just another case of the practical made glamorous.
SASHA, AT HER MORNING POST IN THE KITCHEN
Early in my girlhood, I became aware my mother and father called each other a name I visualized as “Mi” although they both pronounced it “Me.” I had no idea what it meant or where it came from but knew it was not a name I was supposed to use. It had something to do with whatever went on between them that didn’t concern me (lower case), their daughter.
“Mi” was used more affectionately than another mysterious word they sometimes called each other — the one I visualized as “Bubi” but sounded like “Booby.” “Bubi” was matter-of-fact; “Mi” meant something a trifle more intimate. I eventually figured out “Mi.” It was the first syllable of both their names in Russian — his, “Mikhail,” or “Mischa,” hers, Mira (pronounced “Meera”). Since they were using it while speaking English, it was a trace of their early days together in Baku before they emigrated — the memory of which was exclusively theirs. The provenance of “Bubi” remains unknown to me to this day.
My father sometimes had another word for my mother: “Youshka.” It showed up in the context of satisfaction with or approval of something she had produced around the house — a good dinner, nicely ironed handkerchiefs, the fragrance of lemon-scented Old English furniture polish. When reminiscing about his boyhood to me many years later, he once mentioned his family had had a servant called “Youshka” whom he had liked very much; she had brought back candy for him from her day off. I don’t know if my mother ever heard this anecdote. She can’t have been very fond of being called “Youshka” though; she never called him “Youshka” back.
Bill recalls his parents called each other “M.” “M” was the initial letter of each of their first names: Morris and Mary. (Bill’s grandmother, who was Mary’s mother, called her daughter Miriam. But that began with “M” too.) No one else called either of them “M.” It was just for, and between, them.
My first husband, when pleased with me, called me “cute sweet.” It’s scribbled all over dozens of household notes and post-its which I stuffed into a large manila envelope after reading them with increasing irritation. Whatever affection all those “cute sweets” may have contained, they sounded patronizing to me, as if I were some small something that he had acquired and was fond of but wasn’t in any way central to his existence. He was nine years older than I and over six feet tall, so I couldn’t really have called him “cute sweet” back even if I’d felt like it. It may be I never threw the “cute sweets” away because as long as I felt I had to stay in the marriage, that might have been bad luck. Then I forgot about the envelope after things went from not-so-good to worse and he stopped calling me that or using it in little household notes. An upside to keeping them: although the last “cute sweet” was probably written in 1959, because I run across the envelope from time to time while looking for something else in the basement, I still remember all those “cute sweets” well enough to tell you about them.
My second husband didn’t go in for pet names, So any pet names arising in my marriage to him were the ones I used with my small children when tucking them into bed at night, Since they would now be extremely embarrassed were I even to hint at what they were (if indeed they remember them), I won’t. When they reached adolescence, the pet names fell into disuse. But they developed special names for me and their father when speaking about us to each other, which I got to hear but he didn’t. I was “the Ya!” and he was “the Uh!” I have my own views on what ” the Ya!” and “the Uh!” meant, but if I go there, we will need to commence an analysis of that marriage and our somewhat different approaches to parenting that would be unwise. Besides, “the Ya!” and “the Uh!” are not pet names within the meaning of this post. I believe they too were abandoned by the time their users reached college.
Bill and I also began our life together with pet names for each other, reserved for that private place between the sheets where they will stay. All I will say about them is that (1) these names are not based on either the initials or sound of any syllable of our respective first names, which isn’t what you wanted to know, anyway; and (2) a pet name as I conceive it must be accepted by both parties, the one who speaks and the one to whom it refers.
As witness the day when I suddenly burst out not with my usual pet name for Bill, but with “Baba!”
“Baba?” he not unreasonably inquired.
But when I explained I had no idea where it came from but it meant him and it was good, he soon began calling me Baba too. Not always, you understand. Just, impulsively, now and then. I even made up the first two lines of a little song about it. (You will have to create the extremely short tune for yourself.) “I’m a Baba; You’re a Baba; We are Babas two.”
When I connect with my brain, I suspect that “Baba” is a corruption of “Baby.” But believe me when I say that at such times as “Baba” falls from my lips, my brain is usually in sleep mode.
Then came the cats, Sasha and Sophie. Sometimes, when one of them was being particularly adorable, I began calling that cat Baba, too. What do you know? Before you could blink an eye a couple of times, we were a family of Big Babas and Little Babas!
Is “Baba” sufficiently acknowledged by the cats to qualify as a name accepted by both parties and therefore a bona fide pet name of the sort I’ve been discussing? (As distinct from a “pet” name given to dogs, cats, or parakeets.) I believe I can assure you that it is, at least as far as the cats “accept” that their individual names are Sasha and Sophie. They do know the difference between those two “S” names and sometimes come, correctly, when individually called. And when they feel like it. By now they will also come to the sound of “Baba” — when they feel like it. Of course, they may simply be coming to the sound of my voice, the voice of the treat-and-food provider. But these are mysteries beyond the purview of this post.
Lately, when Sophie — the dumber of the two — is particularly slow to grasp something, such as that it’s okay to eat from her dish while Sasha is eating from her own dish — I have begun to call her “Poo-poo,” or “Poozie.” Bill is still trying to wrap his mind around that one — “Why? Why?” he asks — so it may not become shared family vocabulary. If it doesn’t, it will simply be my way of venting annoyance that both our Little Babas are not equally brilliant (for cats).
How did I fall into this seemingly nonsensical post, anyway? Because if I can’t think of something to write next, I look at the title of the blog. This time, it occurred to me that when one of us survives the other (as will certainly happen when two people are getting old together), the pet names for each other will go too. But not the pet names we gave together to our relatively young cats. And that will be a comfort.
When my father died, my mother had no one to call “Mi” and “Bubi” anymore, except perhaps in her heart. She didn’t even have cats. But in her last years she did start feeding a non-feral stray cat, lost or left behind, who came to her door every morning and evening for the cream and tuna she put out. “Why does she keep coming?” she asked me ingenuously. She looked forward to it though. So I do hope she gave the cat a pet name she didn’t share with me. A name that was private — just between her and the cat.
A pet name means more and more as you get older. It means you’re still not alone.
There is no deep hidden meaning in this post, or even a shallow surface meaning. Think of it as penance, or atonement, for past failures to provide photos with my posts, which — I realize — a good blogger should always do.
Thing is, I’m no good at hunting up Creative Commons pictures that might be relevant, or even attractively irrelevant, to what I usually write about. And I don’t generally run around taking pictures of this and that anymore. (Our breakfasts? The cleaning ladies? My hairdresser?)
However, I do feel I can always fall back on the four-pawed members of the household when the need arises. Since I’m pretty sure I haven’t done any such falling back since the end of 2014, perhaps you’ll cut me some slack here and let me show you the five relatively okay shots I got last night of S & S. That should be sufficient penance for at least four entirely verbal posts already run. Then, starting tomorrow or the next day, I can babble on shamelessly photo-less for a while. Thank you.
Left to right: Sophie, who cannot jump high and therefore needs orange stool to mount her scratching post; orange stool for Sophie’s use; humidifier on top of air purifier (both for us, not the cats, although I suppose they benefit, too); electric heater (only used for daytime naps) on top of second orange stool (which is there for symmetry and because Bill likes lots of orange, not because Sasha needs it); Sasha, trustingly offering us her rear; she can jump, which explains why heater is on “her” stool. Blocking the view: footboard of fake Victorian bed I thought romantic when I bought it twenty years ago in my sixties. What was I thinking of? Hanging on to the headboard bedposts?
Another view. Despite the bright light, this is really midnight, chez nous.
SASHA’S CLOSEUP. She’s the acknowledged family beauty, but she just wasn’t cooperating last night. “Let’s sleep already,” she was saying, in body language.
SOPHIE’S CLOSEUP. Sometimes she looks good, sometimes not so good. This is sort of in the middle, but what can you do at midnight?
ONE LAST SHOT, because I hated to turn out the light. You don’t think they get up on their matching posts every night to pose for pictures so nicely?
Then Bill called out from the part of the bed I haven’t shown you, “Let’s sleep already.” (We’ve learned so much from these cats.) So that was that.
Lights out, nighty-night. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. (As they said in the seventeenth century when mattresses — you should have been so lucky as to have one then — were stuffed with straw.)
Now one or both cats will jump from their expensive perches — we’ll hear them — and run downstairs to frolic freely in the dark, disarranging the upstairs hall rug as they go. What they do down there I cannot tell. I don’t go snooping. Cats deserve some me-time, too.
(With many thanks to M., whose emails containing something to post arrive just when I ‘m getting desperate!)
I was at the upscale pet food store at the mall earlier today to nail down a bag of the fancy frozen raw venison chunks with which we spoil our cats at dinnertime. (The store only stocks one or two of these a week. Not many cat owners as nutsy as me out there.)
No one else was in the store yet. I had two young male clerks entirely at my disposal. “Happy Holidays,” they chorused as I paid.
“Thanks, but I take the ‘bah, humbug’ approach,” I said, putting on my agent provocateur hat. “Now that my kids are grown with kids of their own, and all of them are somewhere else, I’d just as soon pass on the holidays. I’ve mailed out the presents. I’m ready for January 2.”
One of the clerks — the taller, cuter one — laughed. “I don’t care about Christmas either, ” he said. “But I can’t wait till New Year’s Eve.”
Cuteness shouldn’t count but it does, so I was conciliatory. “Well, you’re a guy. But I always dreaded New Year’s Eve because it meant going to parties where you had to be kissed at midnight by men you’d rather not be kissed by.”
They both were kind enough to laugh again. (Clearly they had nothing better to do until another customer showed up.) Encouraged, I went on: “So all those New Year’s Eves have run together in my mind and I can specifically remember only two. One was in 1949, before you were born, when my boyfriend took me to a party at friends of his parents to admire a small black-and-white television set, the first any of us had seen. We all sat around on bridge chairs in front of it, with the lights out, as if it were a shrine. Holding hands in the dark was nice, though.”
My mentioning 1949 must have silenced them, allowing me to continue. “And the second was in 1959 when we were all toasting Fidel Castro for having come down from the Sierra Maestra to bring democracy to Cuba. A lot we knew. The midnight kissing at that party wasn’t so great either. But all the thousands and thousands of other New Year’s Eves in my life? Nada! Gone with the wind!”
Tall and cute tried to top me. “I went to one a couple of years ago where I drank so much I got sick right at the party and vomited all over myself, the couch, somebody’s shoes, the rug…..” He chuckled in happy reminiscence. (And this is the guy who can’t wait to ring in 2015.)
“Well, there you go,” I said, feeling we’d now run the subject into the ground and it was time to leave. “When you’re in your eighties, you’ll have at least one good New Year’s Eve story to tell!”
The idea of being in their eighties was even funnier than the vomit. Merry peals of laughter followed me out the door.
But you all have yourself a real good holiday. And never mind grumpy old us. We’ll be having one, too. Only our way.
Mark Coakley, a funny blogger I follow, recently posted his thoughts on naps. By way of comment, I remarked, “Since you’ve just had the last word on naps, what more is there to say?” I was too quick on the draw. Having given the matter at least two further minutes of thought since then, I realize there’s quite a bit more to say about the little-discussed and usually private practice of napping. Mark is a youngish father, so he understandably focussed most of his post on the napping, or failure to nap, of small offspring and the impact thereof on family life. As I have already advanced well into the empty-nest stage of experience, you will therefore learn nothing from me here of the adorable circa-1970 napping habits of my own children. I now tend to think of naps as interesting only when they are out of the ordinary, or else very cute.
Out of the ordinary, for instance, were the naps of Winston Churchill’s wife, Clementine. According to one of her biographers, she had them every day, after luncheon. What makes this habit of hers interesting to plebeian me is that the sheets she napped on needed to be impeccably fresh and ironed at all times she might conceivably want to stretch out on them, or between them. Thus, not only were they changed daily in the morning. They were also changed every afternoon following each nap, so that they would again be fresh (and ironed) for her nightly slumbers. I think they may also have been made of silk, but I’m not absolutely sure of that, so don’t quote me.
Now I love fresh, smooth sheets as much as anyone. But I don’t love making up the double bed from scratch even once a week, and couldn’t possibly conceive of making it twice a day for my own delight — especially now we have two cats who insist on helping unless I close the door on them before they can get into the bedroom, in which case they miaow piteously from behind the door, tugging at my heartstrings (even if not at the sheets themselves) and distracting me from my hospital corners. As for ironing, you already know how I feel about that! (See here, if you don’t.) Since Clemmie couldn’t possibly have done her own laundry and ironing, or even known how, the Churchills must have had at least one “downstairs” person whose job, among others, was sheet duty. Although before you begin with the envy, think of all the stresses and strains — “We shall fight on the beaches! We shall never surrender!” — that drove Clemmie to seek comfort from her sheets, and give thanks for your own slightly wrinkled and perhaps not entirely “fresh” ones.
Speaking of historical figures, I understand that Napoleon, although not given to actual “naps” per se, had very short nights. Three or four hours at most. The length of a good-sized afternoon nap, if you want to think of it that way. So there you go. Plus of course several teensy bits of shut-eye during the day, cat-naps as it were, which apparently sufficed for refreshment of his mental resources.
As for those still living — or at least living when I knew them — my first husband comes to mind. He took to lying around our grubby West Side apartment in his BVDs for several hours every afternoon during the last years of our marriage — an unhappy period of life, probably for both of us but certainly for me — when I was supporting us and he was allegedly churning out yet another rough chunk of whatever he was supposed to be writing every morning. This left his afternoons free for relaxation and torpor, with eyes closed shut. He claimed he wasn’t really napping, just “thinking.” You could have fooled me.
Moving right along, after the second husband there was a briefly recycled boyfriend — in retirement by the time of the recycling. He had been practicing law, but suffered from sleep apnea, which required whoever was sharing his bed at the time to wake him regularly whenever he stopped breathing at night, lest he stop breathing forever. (A heavy burden for the bed-sharer.) As a result, he was always exhausted from all those sleep interruptions and frequently dozed off in court, snoring heavily, when he wasn’t up at bat with a witness. Understandably, his inopportune and unprofessional naps eventually led to suggestions from the bench that he close down his practice, such as it was by then, and call it a day. All this occurred before we met again and for a short while took up with each other to see what was what, if anything.
By that time he could have resumed practice, as he had acquired something called a C-Pap machine — a heavy metal box with an extrusion that looked like a gas mask and needed to be attached to his face at night. It did his breathing for him while he slept, somewhat noisily but he got used to it, since it kept him alive. In the morning he now awoke refreshed and ready for action — of which there was very little, post-retirement, other than eating and drinking. He did not nap during the year we saw each other, but had taken rather too enthusiastically to the food and drink component of his retirement. So “what was what” became that was that. Napping I can deal with. Alcoholism I can’t.
Bill — who unlike the others is still alive, thank God — also naps. His are real naps, taken with intent. They are compensation for the night life he leads with our cats while I am sleeping. Somewhere around three or three-thirty every night, he arises and tiptoes downstairs to feast on crackers and the expensive cheese I try to hide from him behind the celery and cucumbers in the refrigerator. The cats get Halo dried chicken treats for keeping him company. I know because there are crumbs of dried chicken, expensive cheese and brown rice crackers on the counter in the morning. Then he drinks half a glass of grapefruit juice or Califia vanilla almond milk, leaving the other half to turn bad in the glass near the sink. He must think we have Churchillian-size staff, instead of just Polish Eliza and Anna once every other week for two hours. But these are minor peccadilloes really, especially as he gets back into bed very quietly, so as not to wake me up. Much preferable to writing unsaleable novels in your underwear, or drinking up a storm.
Moreover, the need for the compensatory nap usually doesn’t come upon him until around five in the afternoon — which is actually fine with me because then I can pull together a relatively healthy supper and deflect later complaint by pointing out he could have had some menu input had he managed to stay awake but he didn’t, and so there. Eat your spinach, Popeye! I have many photographs of Bill napping here and there — on a Greek island, on a Portuguese island, in a pretty auberge near the Riviera. But he’d get really — not just pretend — mad if I shared them with the world. So I won’t.
However, I do live with some nappers who can’t get mad. Not with me, anyway. (I’m the food provider.) They’re the very cute ones I sort of implied earlier I would get to. You’ve seen them before, but I’m told a blogger can’t do too much of this stuff. So here they are again, S & S, getting their zzzzzs.
Ooops! I just woke one of them up! Sorry, Sophie. Go back to your cat nap…..
ON BEING OLD 