Kitten High

Phil has been home for two weeks and things are going fairly well! He is a goofy confident fluff. Once he consistently came out and played with us in the safe room, we took him on excursions in a carrier to the living room so he could meet the two old ladies.  Or the Golden Girls as we like to call them.  Surprisingly, Shauna was the more aggressive of the two! She growled, hissed, and batted the carrier. Stella only growled and hissed. Phil was not scared at all. He was straining to look everywhere. He stayed out for almost an hour and then we’d whisk him back to his safe room. A couple more nights of that resulted in me letting him out in my bedroom. He was so tentative and yet excited. When he was pooped, he crawled back in the carrier.

 

The next night, we left the safe room door wide open. Phil emerged eventually and made his way to the living room. The two girls did the growl and hiss thing but nothing physical – just posturing. Shauna would slink into the safe room, nibble on Phil’s kitten food, and curl up on his blanket bed while he was out exploring. When it was bed time for the humans, Phil went back to his room. We had a couple more rounds of this kind of night and now Phil is out 24/7. We’ll slowly transition his safe room feeding and litter areas to the other cats but now the areas are still separate.

Phil enjoys the scratching post in the living room and crawling under our coffee table to A) stalk Shauna or Stella or B) curl up and snooze. He is absolutely not afraid of the old ladies at all. He keeps on trying to engage them in play but they are having none of it. He’s especially persistent with Stella.


I’m going to try Jackson Galaxy’s bully formula with Stella to hopefully mellow her out. Phil does climb in bed with me which is fucking amazing and fills my heart with joy. And YET Stella is lying against me and starts growling once she sees him. Guys, there’s enough love for both of you – I promise!

Seeing Phil in the hallway with his head cocked to the side with a “Whatcha doin?” look or hearing his squeaky mews makes me so happy.  When he lets me pick him up, I love that he lets me pretend lick him while he purrs like an engine.  He’s healing my heart in ways I can’t describe.

Introducing Phil the Maine Coon

This past Saturday, we picked up my 3 month old Maine coon kitten. He was a trooper as we drove home then we whisked him into his prepared safe room. I opened his carrier and he mostly stayed put looking around a bit. I hung out in the room and picked him up to calm him. 

He started to act more confident and inspected the room sitting next to the door.

 That’s when I heard Stella hissing on the other side. I shooed Phil away and spent some quality time with Stella outside of the room.  By the time I came back, he found a corner between the wall and a bookcase to wedge himself into. He just looked me and inched away every time I approached.  I tried to show him all the stuff he has in the room.  Finally, I gave him some space and time while I did stuff outside of the room.

My roommate checked on him in the evening and couldn’t find him. He had climbed under a printer stand in another corner which will be his main hidey hole for the next several days.  

Every time we’d come in to visit, he’d stay under the printer.  Overnight he mewed piteously.  The first couple of nights I got no sleep because I checked on him with each round of cries.  The third night I decided to be hardcore Ferber. I made my roommate agree to that. The next day, both her and I separately googled methods of settling kittens. He was definitely eating, peeing, and pooping which was a good sign. There was evidence that he did stuff in the room but he’d disappear when he heard us approach.  The fourth night, roomie and I ended our night playing a quiet, calm game of war in Phil’s safe room and we left a radio on low overnight. Only one big mew at 2:00AM! The next morning Phil did not disappear when I came in. In fact, he let me hold him! Today, this is him.

Lazarus

The past several weeks have been difficult. I’m a news junkie and it’s my nightly ritual to chuckle over comedian’s current event commentary on Twitter. The child concentration camps were not an easy laugh. The racist and nativist bullshit being spewed by the president and his cult members is not new but it’s new to hear the Leader of the Free World utter that dreck.  

I’m a daughter of a refugee.  My father and his family had to flee Hungary in WWII.  In Hungary they had land, family, and excellent jobs. But the Russians were fast approaching from the east so they had to get out.  They had forged papers and wound up in Austria by V-E Day. My great grandmother was raped by Russian soldiers and killed herself.  An American minister sponsored my family's emigration.  In 2018 there are only 12 people in the world with my last name. Our family survived and thrived thanks to America. I grew up hearing the stories of the bombings, starving, and fear my 11 year old father, 5 year old uncle, 3 year old uncle, and newborn uncle lived through. My grandmother made sure we never forgot where we came from. I cannot fathom the country that helped my family can inflict such irreparable trauma on children. It’s state sanctioned child abuse.  I found the following poem online and I wish every person who uses the words “vermin” or “illegals” can read this:

Home

by Warsan Shire

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark

you only run for the border

when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you

breath bloody in their throats

the boy you went to school with

who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory

is holding a gun bigger than his body

you only leave home

when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you

fire under feet

hot blood in your belly

it’s not something you ever thought of doing

until the blade burnt threats into

your neck

and even then you carried the anthem under

your breath

only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets

sobbing as each mouthful of paper

made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,

that no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land

no one burns their palms

under trains

beneath carriages

no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck

feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled

means something more than journey.

no one crawls under fences

no one wants to be beaten

pitied

no one chooses refugee camps

or strip searches where your

body is left aching

or prison,

because prison is safer

than a city of fire

and one prison guard

in the night

is better than a truckload

of men who look like your father

no one could take it

no one could stomach it

no one skin would be tough enough

the

go home blacks

refugees

dirty immigrants

asylum seekers

sucking our country dry

niggers with their hands out

they smell strange

savage

messed up their country and now they want

to mess ours up

how do the words

the dirty looks

roll off your backs

maybe because the blow is softer

than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender

than fourteen men between

your legs

or the insults are easier

to swallow

than rubble

than bone

than your child body

in pieces.

i want to go home,

but home is the mouth of a shark

home is the barrel of the gun

and no one would leave home

unless home chased you to the shore

unless home told you

to quicken your legs

leave your clothes behind

crawl through the desert

wade through the oceans

drown

save

be hunger

beg

forget pride

your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear

saying-

leave,

run away from me now

i dont know what i’ve become

but i know that anywhere

is safer than here

-----

I hope and pray I will not hear that sweaty voice in my ear about the U.S. Weeks of crying over the concentration camps preceded the announcement of Justice Kennedy’s retirement.  That filled me with such despair, my boss had to tell me “You need to stop watching the news. You’re going to kill yourself.”  So, I took a couple days off following the news then my heart didn’t hurt and I actually got full nights of sleep!  One of my friends posted this article and I cannot recommend it enough! Firstly, I’m not the only crazy empathetic Liberal who feels like living in this world is a burden that I cannot lift. Secondly, there are steps that make sense and help.  So, comrades keep fighting the fight but also take care of yourself – we need you.