sleeping cats are sacred

11-16-99

Even though I had today off, I got up before 8:30, when John left. I showered and was sitting, naked, on the couch when I heard a key in the door. I knew John wasn't supposed to come home until 4:30, so I sort of wigged out and hid behind the S'mores chair. My mind told me that it had to be the bug spray guy, who comes once a month. When the door opened, I peeped up and said, "Just a second!" It was John. His morning rehearsal had been moved to 10:30, so he'd come home to grab some music. Our bug spray guy comes tomorrow.

There was a live trap outside my apartment building all day. I don't know what they were trying to catch, but I suspect they're trying to purge the neighborhood of the stray cats that have plagued us lately. There was a woman who lived upstairs until last month who used to feed all the animals around here. Cats, squirrels, possums, skunks, raccoons, birds, even the little foxes that crawled over from the empty lot next door. When she moved, she dumped a 15-lb bag of cat chow under a bush for the strays. Four cats sat around it and guarded it for about a week, until it ran out. They began to turn on one another, and then some of them wandered off to different parts of the complex.

I knew the woman—her husband's in the band with John. They got a house on the base after waiting for seven years. Naturally, I didn't tell her how irresponsible it is to feed strays. She'd try to catch them and take them to the shelter, but she had to have known that eventually she'd leave and the cats would go hungry.

I don't know whether to be happy or upset about the cats being caught. Of course, none of them are stupid enough to walk into the cage and eat the can of wet food that was sitting in there. Julia spent an hour out there herself, reaching through the bars of the cage to dip her paw into the moist salmon pate, then licking it off her fingers. All the cats in the neighborhood had a go at it, and then left the trap empty, to be removed by maintenance in the afternoon. Curses! Foiled!

So what ethics are involved in taking stray cats to the shelter? Most of them will never be tame enough to be housepets, so they'll likely be euthanized within a month or two. I know our local shelter does euthanize; a client at the vet mentioned dropping off some barn cats and even learning the date that the cats would be put to sleep. As you can guess, I don't much approve of putting cats to sleep.

When John and I considered getting a cat from a shelter once, we discussed the euthanasia issue. Do we want a cat from a shelter that does euthanize, or one that doesn't? On the one hand, I'd rather support a shelter that doesn't. On the other hand, I could save the life of a cat who would otherwise die. I've always wanted to go into a shelter and say, "Give me the cat/dog who needs a home the most."

After Fleck, I don't believe I'll be getting another kitten for a good long time. I prefer older cats. I'd like to take in cats who aren't cute enough to be grabbed up by families with kids, the ones who are likely to live out their lives inside a 2x3 cage. The ones with missing eyes, missing tails, chewed-up ears. (The very tippy-tip of Julia's tail is crooked; it was probably broken at some point and healed by itself. Now, whenever I feel a cat's tail and it's straight, it feels funny to me.)

* sigh *.... Thomas O'Nalley....

Man, it's my day off and I'm still talking about pets.

I spent all afternoon online, catching up on some others' journals and checking out a few new ones. John came home and we drove out of town for dinner. I'm planning to get to bed early tonight, and from now on. John has no trouble going to bed at 1 and getting up at 7:30. Most people don't have too much trouble with that, I guess, especially in their mid-20's.

I do. I have an increasingly difficult time waking up in the morning. The less sleep I get, the more I hate my job. Any job. I loathe getting up in the morning. More than that, I loathe my alarm. I hate having to get up. Like this morning, I got up at 8:30 voluntarily. Tomorrow, getting up at 8 will be the worst thing that's ever happened to me. If I don't get 8+ hours of sleep, I will hate my job all day. I'm fairly sure that if I slept 9 hours a night, I would be more content with my place in this society of music-underappreciaters. I just need more sleep than the average person.

Used to be, I'd go to bed at 5 and get up for a 7:30 class. I told myself that I could sleep more than 5 hours, or less than 3 hours, but in between 3 and 5 and I'd never be able to get up. Good old REM denial. I also took a 2-3 hour nap in the afternoons.

Now, sleeping two hours is foreign to me. Sleeping 5 hours is painful; I only half-function after I've slept 5 or 6 hours at night. I have to budget, shut down certain areas of my brain so that other parts can run. Maybe it's those years of collegiate non-sleep that have caught up with me? I hate naps. They don't work in the real world. Every night I figure out when I have to be up in the morning and I plan to go to bed 8 hours before that. But it's not working. I need more. Gonna have to face it—I'm addicted to sleep.