For The Love Of Cats

My family has always had animals. Growing up, there were mostly dogs. It was my father that brought the first cat to our house. (My parents had a few cats before I was born, but I never had a kitty)

Like potato chips, you simply can't have just one cat. Soon our house was over run by little felines. Some people have children, I have cats.

I love their unique personalities.

Yes, dog's have them too, but cats are different. Dogs are easy to love and be loved in return. Cats are different. You can own a cat, but your cat can be totally indifferent to you, that's just how cat's are, but for some reason, this dog girl became a cat person.

In the course of the last 20 years, I've had over 20 cats. The hardest part is watching them when they pass. It is the circle of life, and doggies and kitties are only with us a short time. It is so unfair how short that time is.

I write about this because this past week, I lost one of my little furbabies, Blinky Mucker. He was only a year old.

I've only once had a kitten pass at such an early age, and it is heartbreaking. Blinky was from a litter of 5 and two of his siblings stayed with us. He was a beautiful ginger tabby. So friendly, talkative and full of love.

He seemed under the weather for a day or two, but nothing that made you think it was life threatened until Sunday, when he went downhill so fast it was unbelievable, and then he was gone.

Some people say they can't handle losing and animal. Once one goes they never want another. I'm not like that.  I think my heart has a greater capacity to love animals then it does humans.

When I knew Blinky was going to pass, I kept telling him to look for kitties of mine that have gone to the Heavyside Layer. I told him to look for Mutchka, Buddah, Misty, Coco and most importantly, Itchy who looks so much like his mom. I told him, they'd help him get to where he needed to be, and that it was all right for him to go.

I'm the type of person that must always have an animal. I'm a self professed Crazy Cat Lady, but believe me, I have the capacity to love guinea pigs, hamsters, and the Critter Country's 2 toed sloth named Moe.

I love animals for many reasons:

~ The won't betray you.

~ Their love is unconditional.

~ You don't have to send them to college

~ They make great alarm clocks and foot warmers.

~ They are eternally innocent.

There are so many reasons. That's why I'm a sucker for these little cuties and why I've always taken care of strays in the neighborhood, so much so that most of them moved in with me. (Including one I'm quasi fostering for my sister until she gets one of her boy cats neutered)

I believe every animal deserves to know love in their lifetime and I'm just the girl to do it.

Blinky, you are a little furangel now and you are playing with some wonderful little furry friends that have gone before you. Tell my Mutchy I miss him terribly and that it isn't the same without Misty sitting on my monitor, or Itchy doing the pick me up dance...or Buddah begging for table scraps...and Coco being well Coo Coo.

I know you are in a happy place and I know you really weren't ready to go. You fought so hard little man and you didn't want us to see you when you left, but know this little Blinky Mucker, you were well loved by all of us, including your feline family.

Your human mama will never forget you.....

The Best Cat Song Ever

I was a huge fan of the Mean Kitty Song. That one still gets stuck in my head at regular intervals..Little Kit kitty! Little Kit kitty!

ARGH!

But today I found a new kitty song and it may have just taken The Mean Little Kitty Song out of the top spot!

Go ahead and watch..and laugh..and laugh..

MUST LOVE BABBIES (aka, are children automatically a feminist issue?)

So I should have realized by now that I need to stop reading certain feminist blogs because the comments sections devolve into extremist two-sides mud slinging and negativity no matter what the post. There's certain blogs that make me feel worse for reading them, and even some that I feel don't offer a whole lot of safe space for me for various reasons.

Therefore, I guess I had it coming when I read the comments section of a recent Feministe article called "On Hating Children." Because it turned into the Old West of ableism (disabled adults are the same as screaming children), subtle racism (inner city people like to beat their kids), and privilege (calling the kid that threw a Tonka truck at me in the mall a "brat" is bigoted), I'm going to mainly focus on bits and pieces of the article. From what I gathered, the main focus of the article was debating whether or not it was okay to say certain restaurants weren't for kids, tentatively leaning toward the side of it being okay. But one of the throwaway comments that the author didn't elaborate on too much was that saying you "hate kids" is a sexist statement.

Here's the part where the parents in the audience automatically discount everything I say: I don't have kids, and I certainly don't want to. But I don't hate kids. In fact, in their own space where they feel comfortable, kids are pretty cool. I regard kids the same way I do cats, train whistles, and my downstairs's neighbor's love of booty bass. (A) I like interacting with them in someone else's home because I can leave before my eyes start welling shut (B) outdoors, in neutral spaces, and in spaces dedicated solely to them, they're cool and I encourage them to go full steam. Even if they annoy me, that's my bad, and I'll either suck it up or leave. But (C) when they interrupt my nice dinner, my movie, my personal space, my bodily peace, places reserves specifically for adults/dog lovers and allergy clinics/ quiet meditation/ sleeping at 2 AM, that shit has to cease.

I really hate to go into libertarian territory, but I feel that the above mentioned situations go along with the old slogan "your rights end at the tip of my nose." I fully expect to hear train whistles at a train museum or when I lived next to the depot (yeah, that wasn't a great choice on my end); I'm going to get pissed when some jackass stands outside my bedroom window and blows a train whistle for 30 consecutive minutes. Therefore, it's fair game if your kid wants to act up at Bob Evan's, but not at Bloody Slasher's Revenge 2: Blood, Guts, and Boobies. And unlike the train whistle jackass, I can't tell your kid to shut up. That's stranger danger, or disciplining your kid for you, or a myriad of other things that get you screamed at by someone other than a four-year-old.

So that rant took a different turn, and I still haven't addressed the original sticky statement: that "hating" kids is sexist. That's something I can't get behind. I do agree that sexist actions can discriminate against children, such as workplaces passing up mothers for jobs or promotions, the brunt of domestic violence going to women and children, and "all inclusive" activist activities/conferences giving the cold shoulder/ not accommodating moms. But simply not enjoying children isn't a sexist act. In fact, I think that the implied other end of that statement - all feminists (ie women) should love being around children - is a lot more sexist of a statement.

Now caveat, Wench-readers: this is not aimed at all kids and all parents (yes, parents, because for all the "mombie" bullshit that gets thrown around - and yes, that is sexist that it's always moms - it's usually uptight dads that 9/10 of the time get on my nerves). This is a subsect of parents, maybe 15% at best, that are chock full of entitlement, classism, and white privilege that make the rest of you guys look bad. If you still think you're in that 15%, and that adult-only rules are the same as Jim Crow (honest to blog, I read that comment once), then let's make a deal. The first month that a family member, coworker, or complete fucking stranger doesn't walks up to me and ask WHEN (not if) I'm having a baby and looking in revolt or disbelief when I say I'm not, you're gold. I'll accept all your strawman arguments, ALL of them, and let your kid scream directly into my eardrum cart blanche for five hours on end. Deal?

One from the Vaults: Whiskers

There's a delightful feature with my cable called On-Demand. Most people use it to catch up on TV shows they've missed, not realizing that a delightful treasure trove of crap lies just within their reach. The free movies section is a grandiose collection of 80s horror, 70s exploitation, and simply uncategorizable head scratchers.

Whiskers falls into the last category. It's a Canadian made for TV kids movie about a boy whose cat best friend turns into a creepy man in a hoodie through the power of love and pagan idol worship. On the surface, it's your average talking animal movie, complete with clueless parents and musical numbers. You'll need to dig deeper for its true horrors.

Whiskers tells the tale of an emotionally stunted little boy named Jeb, who is on the fast track to Norman Batesville because he can't connect to people his age and can only talk to his cat Whiskers. In fact, he's pretty darn obsessed with cats in general. His parents, who have already voiced their opinion that their kid is a nutjob, try to tell him - SPOILER ALERT - that he's going to have a little sister. Somehow the kid processes this as "We're going to get rid of Whiskers, chump," and freaks out.

While at a cat museum with his dad, the kid makes a wish on a statue of the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet to turn Whiskers into a Real Boy so he could still be with his BFF. Bastet makes some 90s CGI happen, and the next day, Whiskers is human! Only problem is Whiskers has aged in cat years, so while Jeb was expecting a boy his age, Whiskers has become a 30 year old man in a brown hoodie.

So Whiskers teaches Jeb all the typical kids movie crap - how to have fun, make friends, and confront bullies - and even has a musical interlude with the world's 2nd catchiest white boy jazz song about cats as Whiskers introduces Jeb to his cat homies. Jeb, meanwhile, has to help Whiskers find his mother in a B plot that suddenly appears when the movie should be over.

Brent Carver, the actor playing People Whiskers, won a Tony for Kiss of the Spider Woman, so either he really believes in this project or has some gambling debt to pay. I hope it's the latter, because the former raises some serious eyebrows. Sure, any kids' movie with a person playing an animal is going to be awkward, but unlike Quigley, which had Gary Busey pretending to be a dog by acting like Gary Busey, this awkwardness gets into creepy territory. Whiskers ends up next to Jeb in bed too many times for me to be entirely comfortable with this movie. And unlike the parents in Goobie, who just seemed negligent with their psychotic son's maladies, these parents seem to take some kind of unnatural glee in fucking with their kid's head.

I can't recall as much batshit crazy stuff from this movie as I'd like, and I'm afraid I can't reference you to a place where you can see it. The internet only has faint traces of it - I couldn't even find a poster for it -and Amazon simply knows it exists. I just assumed it was a fever dream until I found screen caps.

This is the epitomy of the crappy sort of programming from On Demand, which is why you need to scope it out. In the words of Cinderella (the metal band, not the kids' movie), you don't know whatcha got til it's go-o-one. I doubt they were talking about Whiskers, but it applies well enough here.