I had a discussion one day, a while ago, with some fellow cat people, about what they feed their pets, how much it cost to feed their pets and how it relates to what the people feed themselves.

As you know, I’m fairly particular about what I eat. I like to buy organic. I don’t eat junk food (usually). I like my food to be as natural and as additive-free as possible. So, for me it seemed obvious that I would feed my pet the same way.

Bazel gets Wellness brand cat food (A different flavour each day of the week – he only likes the poultry or fish ones). He gets one 5.5 ounce can per day at $1.99 per can. Then, on the vet’s recommendation, Bazel also gets a scant ¼ cup of the Hill’s Prescription Diet dry – the one that keeps his teeth clean. One bag of that stuff is about $30ish, but it lasts for months and keeps his teeth tartar-free. Teeth cleaning for cats can cost thousands since they have to knock them out to do it, so I reckon I’m saving money in the long run.

 On Sundays, Bazel gets a special treat. I get him the small cans of Snappy Tom  tuna or tuna with salmon dinners. He gets one of those in the morning and one in the evening. Each can is $1.69. They’re yummy because they look like actual chunks of fish, not all pasty like the usual cat food. (Zoom’s cat, Duncan, gets his special treat on Tuesdays)

I also always try to have some cat grass in a pot growing somewhere he can gnaw on it.  Sometimes he eat a whole bunch of it and throws up. Apparently cats enjoy throwing up cat grass. They eat it specifically so they can barf it back out. Cats are mental.

A lot of people think I spend too much money on cat food. But that cheap stuff in the grocery store just doesn’t even look like, smell like or contain ingredients that resemble real food. And yet, I know plenty of pets live long and happy lives on it. I don’t know if Bazel is any better of with his all-natural food or not, but it doesn’t make me gag when I open it first thing in the morning and that’s the important thing.

I usually buy Bazel’s food at Global Pet Foods on Bank Street. What a great place. They don’t sell animals, of course, but they have pretty much everything else pet-related you could ever possibly want or need. Lots of natural pet foods and healthy pet treats; toys, crates, leashes and other gear.  It’s also a very social place. The owner’s and/or employees’ dogs are usually there. Customer’s dogs wander in gamboling with each other. Cat people are in the cat section exchanging tips and ideas on cat toys and cat entertainment and cat food. 

Occasionally a gerbil person can be found in the gerbil section. They’re usually alone looking at blocks of wood shavings or little gerbil mirrors.

So, anyway, I’m wondering what you feed your pets? Back when I was a kid our pets foraged for food on the farm. They’d get table scraps and when (and only when) foraging and scraps were scarce they’d be supplemented with store bought pet food.

Now vets are horrified by the idea of pets getting people food. They’re horrified by the idea of pets being outdoors and eating mice or birds or plants or random bones they’ve dug up.

Of course back in the day, pets didn’t live to be 36 years old either.

I once worked with a woman called Marissa (yes, that’s her real name) who was one of those certifiable vegans who give normal vegans a bad name. She only fed her cat potatoes and beans because cat food was made from “the putrid flesh of murdered animals“.

I once had a cat named Dwight who was obsessed with spaghetti. Whenever he smelled it cooking, he’d try to dive into the pot. I had to lock him out of the room if I wanted to eat my spaghetti without being killed for my meal.

Bazel is only obsessed with normal cat things like fish and cheese. He will also happily kill me for either.

Now that I think about it, I always seem to have very aggressive cats.

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Disclaimer:  I am earning no revenue nor am I receiving any gifts for mentioning any of these pet food brands or pet food shops….though I would happily accept gifts and/or revenue should they be offered.

Sharing a Great Pet Adoption Pet Story!!

Our friends, Al and Andrea, in Corpus Christi moved there with 3 cats.  Over the past five years, one… Maggie, has passed on and gone to kitty heaven.  But during that time, they have  rescued a black pug that had some health issues, a Black Ker (maybe) out of a litter of abandoned puppies and an orphaned Chihuahua.  This was quite a feat for my friend, Andrea, who was basically afraid ‘or at least leery’ of dogs  before they adopted their first one, Buddy, at Al’s urging. Then ‘she’ adopted the next two, Beau and Princess.

Then about 10-days ago they ran across, almost over, a kitten.  The Calico kitty who looks like one of their older cats, Peaches, was running across the highway when they found her.   They did more than their due diligence to find the kitten’s owners but she is now one of the family and has been named Kit Kat… along with Peaches and Bart makes three.

3 kitties and 3 doggies… a nice family now that the kids are grown!

If you are an animal lover 4 to 6 pets, throw in a bird, fish or pocket pet, perhaps making even 7 or 8 are a fun and manageable number for a couple or a responsible family teaching their kids the values and joy of taking care of another living creature and overall responsibility (under supervision). If you aren’t, it probably seems like a nightmare… but then you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog.

Adopt Just One More Pet and Save a Life!!

Posted:  Just One More Pet

Ouga Chaka chaka chaka ouga chaka chaka chaka!

I can’t stop this feeling
Deep inside of me.
…I’mmm, I’mmm Hooked on a feeling.

This was my morning shower song. I have learned to pay attention to these random songs that pour through my head as I am getting ready in the morning concluding that one of three things is happening:

(a) The voices in my head are bored and have commenced singing to keep themselves occupied
(b) There is something that my subconscious is trying to tell me about the topic at hand and I need to pay attention
(c) All attempts at medicating my psyche have completely failed and I need to try a new strategy

It is really quite entertaining, these morning songs that have arrived in my conscious awareness this last couple of years.

I often find myself wondering what incites the gerbils in my brain to begin moving at so early of an hour.

They definitely keep me entertained and are a great way to wake up the day. I think that the songs were always there, I just never paid attention before. The songs range from full-fledged orchestral pieces to just a single voice tinkling out a melody.

One thing is consistent though in that it is always parts of the songs, rather than the songs in full. This is probably as much of an indication of my lack of long-term memory recall rather than some deep philosophical meaning behind the fact that I am only repeating the same four lines thirty-seven times.

It gives me this picture of a bunch of gerbils running across a keyboard pounding out the same melody over and over (Think scene in the movie Big)

I often wonder what prompts my brain to produce such profoundly priceless moments such as these morning melodies…

And should I be worried? Or is this the norm for the human brain?

Perhaps the songs are trying to tell me something exceptionally extraordinary. Like this morning’s song for instance. It covered the topic of feelings. “I’m hooked on a feeling” says the song. The songster is so hooked on the feeling that they can’t stop it. This feeling is coming from a deep place within them, so incredibly deep that the first line demonstrates their lack of ability to name the words that describe it…

Ouga chaka ouga chaka…

Like, how often do we make huge decisions “based on a feeling”? I would love to think that I am entirely logical in my approach to problem solving, but unfortunately feelings sometimes have their way. Even when I am trying to think through a decision, well…

Ouga chaka ouga chaka chaka chaka…

So go the voices in my head…over… and over… singing gerbils…day after day. I wonder what tomorrow’s song will be?

I'm still a baby, really

Toby made us wince, cringe and laugh yesterday. 

Well, he made the Hub cringe; Spud and I thought it was hilarious, because we weren’t there.  Hub took him for his booster jab.  The wince part came in when they stuck a needle in him, poor little thing.  I always hated it when it was the boys.  The Hub could never take them for their vaccinations or to the dentist because his reflex is to thump anyone hurting his children.  He could have taken Spud to the dentist, at least, because he has never had any treatment on his teeth; they have always been lovely.

The vet lives in a huge pet shop and Toby loves walking around it, enjoying the smells and drooling over the degus.  Degus (pronounced: day-goos) are sort of larger, friendlier gerbils.  The Hub would like some once our last gerbil goes but I’ve put my foot down: I want a couple of years free of large tanks in the lounge, and its inevitable smells.  After his jab yesterday, the Hub took him for his usual store stroll and that’s when the cringe came in: Toby didn’t realise it was indoors and pooped in the middle of the shop.  Poor Hub.

Last night, exhausted from his evening walk – it took us ten minutes to walk thirty yards, Toby needing to smell every smell on the way until it was fully documented and recorded on his data base for future reference – he was fast asleep on his mat and snoring hard when he suddenly barked himself awake, startling us all.  That’s the laugh, daft dog.  He must have been dreaming.  The Hub does something similar: from time to time he has punched the wall behind our bed, dreaming he was in a fight.  Like pet, like owner, I guess.

Casal de gerbils (esquilos da mongólia)

que vivem em quase perfeita

harmonia em nossa casa.

A paz desse casal só tem fim

quando importunados pelo

Rafinha, o gato de casa.

We’ve all experienced the JOYS of certain little inconveniences meted out by those in the “public service sector”: the fat DMV worker wearing Wal*Mart stretch pants and day-glo shimmer pink nail polish, who bathes you in rancid coffee breath as  she informs you of all the additional “fees” you now owe the DMV in order to get your 1971 Ford Pinto registered; the pimply face McDonald employee who makes you late for work every morning by holding you up in line as he slooooowly counts his money drawer 5 times, yet still manages to get your order for coffee wrong; that one special teller at your bank who should be held up at gunpoint and pistol whipped in the face based soley on principal, and of course one or two of the lovely people who make up the employee population at the Post Office. 

After our experiences with OUR local post office spanning a period of almost a month, I now understand the term “going postal” , and why some of us may have no choice but to give in to its siren call. (Or maybe I’m just justifying Todd’s reactive behavior…you be the judge). 

THE SAGA OF TODD AND THE POST OFFICE – A PlAY IN THREE POSTS

Part One: For Whom the Bell Tolls..

It’ a beautiful day in the Gangsta Hood, and for once the bullets over Broadway can’t be heard so  Let’s Go Get Our Mailbox Key!  Since I’m out-of-town this day, Todd decides to take on this task even though it means taking a risk of getting run over by the NASCAR race of endless Black and Whites that speed down our street from 3 am to 5 pm, eradicating every living thing that gets in their way as they head to The Donut Ranch for that one last jelly crueller and cup of Joe before heading back to a bottle of whiskey and a bitchy spouse.  Thankful with their cut from a stash of really good street dope that helps blurr the red pill vision of their home lives.

Anyway, the destination is less than  2 blocks from our cinderblock drive- by  target, and since we’ve been expecting a check for the last 2 days, Todd and the Fluffster head out in the badass Mustang for a pleasant little visit to our friendly neighborhood post office – proof of residency documents in hand. 

Once there, Todd stumbles over a panhandler who’s set up a kind of  hopeful “toll booth” at the post office door, and takes his place at the end of  the line behind a mustachioed, portly gentleman in curlers and a Wal*Mart flowered moo moo who’s muttering to himself about Crisco. So far there’s only one postal clerk on duty (cutbacks? union breaks? who knows) but since there’s only 5 or 6 people in line before him, he figures it could be worse.

One by one the people are called up in traffic court-like fashion to be assisted in a painfully sloooow manner by the same one clerk.  The barely-moving dream state atmosphere is greatly enchanced by the autistic-like behavior of the one clerk – who takes ”time outs” in between helping each customers to adjust underwear that’s crawled into his butt crack and then  inspect what he’s found there,  check the ink on his time stamp and compare it’s quality with a sample stamped on a change of address card from a previous day, and of course, count his drawer money again and again in the true fast food OCD tradition that has  made so many pimply-faced grease flippers so annoyingly memorable.   

Finally a creaky voice calls out “neeeeext” and Todd comes face to face with  the clerk.  A circus-quality “smidge”  of a man (about 4 11′), who’s uptight and cranky - due to either his chaffed butt crack or because he’s still pissed off at being forced yearly into the role of  “lollipop kid” in the Post Office annual Summer Fest employee version of the Wizard of Oz.  “Can I help you?” asks the man, like his heart really isn’t into it. Todd explains we just moved here and need to pick up our mailbox  key, AND he’s brought the proper residency-establishing documents!

“OK, says the bored federal smurf, here’s a list of requirements you need to fill, then I need $30 in a check or money order and THEN it’ll take about 7 days”.   He hands Todd a pre-printed list but Todd ignores it – he’s still stuck on two things only- ”$30 dollars”  and “7 days”.  “For WHAT?”, my proper victorian gentleman asks, a bit loudly.  “For The…. Key… To..Be…Made..” the minute man explains in a Can-You-Believe-This-Moron tone of voice.

“No, that won’t do – we have to pay bills and we’ve already changed our address!” “I have the $30 for you, but there’s one problem – it’s in MY MAILBOX and won’t be available for SEVEN DAYS! Why 7 days? Did you misplace the key? Does the Union allow you 7 DAYS TO DIG THAT FAR UP IN YOUR ASS TO FIND IT?  Hint…It’s probably kitty corner to the gerbil you haven’t been able to find since last Christmas” 

“Try Crisco, yeah, Crisco”,  mutters Moo Moo man, who never left the post office after his turn in line.  He’s leaning up against a wall being a spectator, adjusting his Moo Moo hem and making himself at home.

“WTF?!! No one can help me out here?” At the last part of WTF (the F part) Todd literally hears bells go off. At the back of his mind he’s thinking ‘either it’s time for another bi-hourly Union mandated employee break or there’s a robbery in progress here and I’m gonna see some SHIT go down now!’

Then he notices Billy Barty has a frozen deadpan expression on his face and not only has his right hand disappeared behind the service counter, but the muscles in his forearm are bunched up and twitching like he’s by himself on a rainy Saturday, just he and a batch of clown porn. 

FOR WHOM DOES THE BELL TOLL? In a flash Todd realizes the bell is tolling for Todd.

Since Todd doesn’ t have the $30 in order to begin the postal’s anal cavity investigation for his mailbox key, he bravely decides to return to fight another day – and leaves while things are still friendly and he’s still cuffless.

Sneaking out the door Todd whispers “Try Karo syrup instead of Crisco”, to Wal*Mart Curler Man who’s STILL at the Post Office and standing back in line again.   “Crisco!” the man smiles exurberantly, like he can’t believe he didn’t think of that before!

As Todd unlocks the Mustang he realizes that Fluffy’s earlier request for an open window had nothing to do with needing air, but played  the escape route in his planned disertion of his appointed post as faithful driving companion.  “Where the FUCK is my dog?” Todd yells at the panhandling toll-booth keeper, who’s swaying way too close to the car to be completely ignorant in his knowledge of the whereabouts of Fluff.  “You mean tha’ dog o’er there?” slur/burps the panhandler.  Todd looks around and there is the Fluffster, waiting patiently for Todd at the door of the  neighboring establishment “Sticky Pricky Love You Long Time Massage Parlor”.

“Fluff!” LOAD UP!”  Fluffy comes running over joyfully and leaps into the car for a ride his next adventure. Ignoring the angry cries of “Hey DOG!  You owe my girl $25!” from the Massage Parlor Madam who’s at the door shaking a fist, Todd shakes his head at Fluffy and drives off, thoughts on making alternative plans to free our hostage check.  He leaves a polite little note in the mail slot for the postman to find the next day.

At 11 am Friday morning, our street’s postman delivers our mail personally to our residence. He asks how our newborn is doing and recommends a couple of price-friendly, low-fatality,  grocery stores in the area.  Todd says “Fluffy is fine and thriving!” and thanks a confused-looking Mr. McFeely for his help.

And…our check is there in the mail. Todd discards the bills into the trash and kisses the check! We’re saved for a moment….BUT the saga continues in Chapter 2.  Stay tuned….

TODD’S HINT FOR THE UPROOTED CLUELESS:   “When you move and don’t want to deal with the bureaucratic red tape 2 to 3 “business days” to establish or transfer services – SMUD, PHONE, CABLE, PG&E (whatever.. except the Post Office apparently)  - tell the rep you speak with you had to move, you have a newborn, you NEED electricity AND CABLE as your job is done via the internet.  Also throw in you have no transportation and no food and don’t know what to do.  The service rep stops hearing anything after the word “newborn” and will go to great lengths to help your fictictious “little one” grow up to be a healthy pain in the asses of it’s parent’s as it strives to be ”all it can be” in it’s contribution to the drain on society…”

The last few days have been spent trying to learn all we can about snakes.  Not having a CLUE what to do with one, I turned to the internet as a source of education.  That’s when I found Southeastern Reptile Rescue located down in Oak Hill, Georgia.  I emailed the founder and president, Jason Clark, with some questions about our new little friend, along with a picture for a positive ID on this critter.

I got an email back almost immediately from Jason, who sounds like a super nice guy.  He confirmed that we did have, in fact, a rat snake, which would grow to be 7 – 8 feet long.  He gave us some general information about caring for these snakes and then he told me something I had never heard before.  It is apparently illegal to capture or keep in captivity any non-venomous snake that is native to Georgia without a permit.  These permits are only given to wildlife educators in the state of Georgia.  He didn’t think anyone would come knocking down our door over it, but felt like he should let us know what the law says.

Of course we had no idea about this, but I did find this page on the DNR website that lists all the MANY types of species that are illegal to keep in the state of Georgia.  Who’d have thunk such a thing…

Jason offered to give Robby another snake that he had if we decided to get rid of the rat snake.  He said the best all around snake for a beginner would be the Ball Python.  He said that they only grow to about 3 – 4 feet in length and are very docile.

Have you seen one of these things?  They have heads as big as mine.  Docile or not, they still freak me out.

Needless to say, Robby thought this to be a great idea.  Hence commenced the 24 hour snake drama as we tried to decide what to do.

When I talked to my sister this morning on the phone, she suggested maybe Robby could be talked into another kind of pet, something preferably small and furry like a gerbil.

Sooooo, let’s see.  We could either do option A:

Or option B:

So we decided to give Robby the choice.  Guess we’ll see what we end up with.

Dia com muitos presentes, e Malcon e Potito, meus esquilos da Mongolia (gerbils) ficaram largados.

“There’s no heavier burden than a great potential.”   Charlie Brown

I’m usually a cheerleader for stories involving animals but this one lacked something, I’m not exactly sure just what…   excitement, charm, humor, human relevance?   The Gerbil Farmer’s Daughter: A Memoir is the true tale of a woman whose father literally raised up to 9,000 gerbils at a time.   The publicity for the book made it seem as if the father did this to promote medical research for the condition (cystic fibrosis) that killed the author’s sister.   But sister Gail died well before the mega gerbil farm was established.

It may also be that the author’s father – the prime character here, more than the author -  is simply not someone the average reader will identify with.   A retired navy commander, he comes off as gruff and argumentative; someone who uses and abuses his wife and children.   (At one point he fires his wife from the family business replacing her with his mother.)Then there’s author Holly Robinson, who displays some odd contradictions.   For example, at one point (pages 140-142), she asks her high school classmates, “Why do you hate me so much?   I haven’t done anything.”   She asks this as the victim of mean behavior and bad language.   But then just one  page later (143) she uses very negative language to make fun of some neighbors:   “…the Albino children wore plastic bread bags wrapped around their feet instead of boots.”   The Albinos, a derogatory term adopted by Holly’s mother, are poor – “The one thing they all had in common besides missing teeth was their white-blond hair and pink-rimmed eyes…”

As far as the reader can tell, the neighbors never did anything to the author and her family…   So why did they hate their neighbors so much?   Simply because they were poor?

Once we realize that there’s no nexus (connection) between the gerbil farm and life saving research, a lot of the assumed charm and relevance (if not romance) of the story melts away.   Robinson might have been better off writing a straight biography of her life – with her family members as secondary figures – or a cute modern guidebook to raising gerbils (an updating of the books her father used to write).   As it is, there was just something missing in this book’s 289 pages.

Poor Bella the sweet-natured gerbil died today of her tumour. That leaves us with fat Callie. If we didn’t have the evidence to the contrary, I’d suspect her of eating the other two.

I was at a funeral yesterday. Public transport: two and a half hours there and two and a half hours back. It was only in Liverpool, which is thirty minutes away. I had the good sense to leave an hour before my train was due and to choose comfort over presentation, and when the bus to the station failed to arrive I was able to walk it: thirty minutes goes by so quickly when you’re cursing under your breath. Two trains and a ten-minute walk later, and my feet were showing no signs of blisters. I love the train; it is my favourite way to travel, but you’d think in the 21st Century there’d be a direct route to somewhere so close. This government is so in love with taxation – it was June this year before tax payers could count their annual salary as their own, and that doesn’t include the myriad stealth taxes that parts them with the rest of their wages – that it occurred to me they should put the tax rate up to 100% and pay for all services, food, dentists, etc.; everything could be free to the populace. Socialism in action! That way they could control what we eat, do, desire and think (I think I despise this government and I think they know it) like they have tried to do for the past twelve years.

The service was brief and sad, like funerals are, though it was enlivened by 93 year old Aunty Betty who couldn’t hear the priest and said so, in what she thought was a whisper but to which the priest replied, ‘Well I can hear you!’ This was after a furious argument, sotto voce, between AB and her son, because she was asking him to repeat everything and he was growling, ‘It’s the prayer; I can’t repeat the prayer.’ Finally, he took control and wheeled AB to the front of the chapel, and everyone was happy.

We took the dog to the park this afternoon. Not an unusual occurrence. Nor was his eagerness to chase the ducks and geese. What was unusual was that he forgot to stop at the water’s edge and slid straight off the edge, plop! into the water. At least we know he can swim.

There’s my news, but not much of it, I’m afraid. I’m nursing what feels like another migraine about to explode in my head, so I’m off to bed.

Thank you for reading, ladies and gentlemen, and goodnight .

I went grocery shopping yesterday and rather enjoyed it. I don’t normally like shopping; I never have, even when we had plenty of money. I am intimidated by bored and rude sales assistants – but at least they are better than hairdressers. Hairdressers are scarier than dentists; scarier than walking Stockport streets at night; scarier even than a doctor’s cold hands at a five-yearly check-up. They hold the key to my appearance in their hands, and I am powerless to stop them having their wicked way with me. I once had a hair cut. I asked the hairdresser to bob my hair to the top of my shoulders, and cut in a fringe. As she was combing it, she remarked on my natural kink, saying that she had one and it was useless trying to fight it. She decided to give me some layers to make it manageable, and then she began cutting, and cutting, and cutting; tiny snips at a time. I was in the chair for at least an hour, but by the time I realised how short my hair was going to be, it was too late to protest. I wasn’t wearing my glasses and her friendly chat lulled me into a state of torpor, and it was only as much time passed that the horror of what was happening gradually dawned on me. She bobbed me to the top of my neck, not my shoulders, so I had what’s technically known in the hairdressing trade as ’short hair’. Giving in to the kink meant flicking it out at the back, but the sides and front curled under. I have to say that I was really pleased with the whole look for as long as it took me to walk out into the damp British air and the frizz to kick in. The hairdresser later confessed to my mum, who she knew and was therefore another reason not to complain about my shearing while it was happening, that she just couldn’t stop cutting and I was sitting so quietly and acceptingly that she kept talking and cutting and talking and cutting in panic.

Tory Boy decided to grow his hair long when he was fifteen. I had to accept his decision but it drove me nuts, particularly as he is the only person I know who can wash his hair without cleaning it and dry his hair so that it remains wet. Then there was the unexpected side-effect of his unplugging the hairdryer without switching it off. Every time I came to use it, it would explode into action as soon as I plugged it in, leaving me several heart attacks closer to a hospital. I tried telling him politely, and followed it up with a threatening email when that didn’t work; eventually I was forced to hide in the kitchen, jumping out on him whilst simultaneously turning on the hairdryer as he walked in, so he could have the hospital bed next to mine. But it didn’t work; he looked at me as if I was stupid and, when using the dryer, began exaggeratedly showing me he had switched it off, and then secretly switching it back on again to catch me out. My only choice was to ban him from hairdryer contact altogether and wake him an hour early so that his hair had time to dry naturally before school. Lack of sleep on my part meant that strategy lasted one day.

My Blonde Friend once gave me a load of luxury bubble bath as she had developed an allergy, nudge nudge wink wink, know what I mean John? Remember that annoying advert from the Seventies? Eric Idle and Breakaways, if I recall. Aren’t adverts strange? As a child I thought only brunettes got dandruff because there were no blondes in the Head and Shoulders ad. I was astonished when Tory Boy got dandruff: my then scruffy blonde baby never rinsed his hair properly, of course. Anyway, Blonde Friend gave the bubble bath to me instead of her mum because she didn’t want her poor frail mother to slip in the bath. I treated myself to a luxury bubble bath one Sunday night while the menfolk were watching Top Gear (this was in the days before I discovered the strangely attractive midget that is Richard Hammond). Despite three metre-high bubbles, I didn’t really enjoy my bath: as I was getting in I slipped and banged my knee and was in agony for an hour; the menfolk couldn’t hear my howls of pain because they were laughing so hard at TG downstairs.

Hair plays a big part in my life. I wear a full body apron, no sleeves, and a tubee over my head when I cook, a la Yentl, because the favourite saying in our house during a meal isn’t, ‘That was delicious, Mum,’ or even, ‘Well, at least you tried,’ but, ‘I got the hair.’ My hair finds its way everywhere: the usual places like plug holes and bed, but also in all food (even when it’s stored in the fridge) and behind the toilet. I don’t know how it gets there; it’s not like I ever go behind the toilet to clean. The Hub is also affected by hair. He likes to give our pets the best life he can, and if that involves buying brushes to groom gerbils, then so be it…he will ignore my mocking laughter while they sit nestling in his hand for a brush, then take their turn to groom the hair on his arms, and his moustache.

Even Christmas Dinner can be hair-perturbed: one year, things went better than usual in spite of my mild hysteria, first over cooking, then on putting my chair and all my weight on TB’s foot (screaming adolescents are not good for my nerves, no matter how much pain they claim to be in). However, my hat would not fit on my head over my tied-back hair, and I pulled out my clip in a hissy fit, threw it on the floor and tried again to adjust my hat, which snapped back over my right ear, leaving my ear ringing, me sulking, and my family laughing at me. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been to Mum’s hairdresser on Christmas Eve. That was the year the boys gave me thoughtful gifts: TB bought me a month’s supply of Maltesers and Spud bought me a Christmas pinny, a collapsible washing bag, and a pair of nose hair clippers.

I truly believe that the hardest part of being a parent is letting my children go, which is rather ridiculous, given that I spend all my time preparing them for independence, for a time when they won’t need me. Having said that, there are mornings when I am more than happy to let some of my children go…like the morning when TB berated me for being cruel, wicked and unfair, for not only did I make him polish his shoes and apply his acne cream, I didn’t pass him the lemonade bottle last night when it was me who wanted him to tighten the top after pouring him a drink while he was drying his hair, thus making him late for school fourteen hours later and forcing him to rush. I admit it: I am a dreadful mother; I thought so as I watched him through the window, strolling to the bus stop while fiddling with his mp3 player, hair doing a passable imitation of Jimi Hendrix in a wind tunnel, clearly determined not to miss that bus he was so late for. It was not the first time my teenage son had stressed me out: he once managed to turn a civil invitation to the cinema into an argument that left me rescinding the invitation and stabbing an innocent chicken sandwich. This is the child that I took shopping with me yesterday. Nineteen and determined to one day rule the world (watch out teachers, you’re heading for a colony in Antarctica), he spent the time choosing alochol supplies, riding the trolley, and out-Barry Scotting Barry Scott with his Cillit Bang advert impression.

I enjoyed my shopping because I saved £20-odd. Stuff was marked down by £1-2 – only 19pence for cooked chicken slices! I thought I’d died and gone to pound shop heaven. I loaded my trolly and later my freezer, and we may be eating ham sandwiches for the next three weeks but, hey, it only cost me £1.37 so stop moaning and enjoy the added hair flavouring.

A final word on hair things: the Hub once made pom-poms with our niece, helped her with her cross stitching, made bracelets, and beaded her hair, much to Spud’s disgust at such girlie activities in the man who claims to be his father. It didn’t surprise me. When we were courting in our teens, I sat with my cropped head and watched his mother plait his pony tail, muttering all the while, ‘I expected to do this for me daughters but not for me son!’ No wonder gerbils like his moustache. And don’t start feeling sorry for him because I’m mean: he likes to be kept on his toes by my teasing, believing variety is the spice of wife.

Okay, I wrote a few days ago about the death of Lisa.  This morning, Annie passed.  She has been struggling with an ovarian cyst for while.  Her sister, Mira, had one back in April, and it ruptured on its own, and she was quite fine afterwards, so I was hoping the same thing would happen with Annie.  However, over the last several days, Annie was obviously more distraught and in more pain than I remembered Mira being.  I struggled with the idea of taking her to a vet, who would probably just  want to put her down, as surgery on such a little creature is often very difficult, though some will do it.  Plus, she did look like she was passing some of the fluid, so it looked like it was resolving itself.  I didn’t want to take the risks involved with anesthesia if she was going to be able to handle it herself.  Well, this morning, she was okay when I left to run errands but had passed before I got home.

Gerbils have an average lifetime of 2.5-3 years.  Females are fertile until they are about 18 months old, though occasionally, one will still have small litters sporatically up through about 2 years old.  I had never bred Annie or Mira.  They were from Vincent and Lauren, but as golden agoutis, they would most likely give me golden agouti pups, and that is the “regular” wild color.  Most people who are adopting gerbils want something “exotic” or “special” looking.    Annie had another problem besides just being the standard color.  She also had seizures as a pup.  That is another reason that she was never adopted – I never showed her to any possible adoptive parents.  I didn’t want someone who wouldn’t know what to do to have her.  I wanted her to stay with me.  I have a firm stance that I will not breed any pups that I am not willing to keep and love for their entire lives, so they had a forever home with me.  I did enter Mira in a few Virtual Shows, and she even won some points, though I had not taken her to an in-person gerbil show, but  I had never entered Annie.

Anyway, I am rambling, the point of this post is not really to talk about Annie, or Lisa, or any other particular gerbil, but to talk about life and its shortness.  The average gerbil lifetime is 2.5-3 years, but some last so much longer, and some have so much less.  And the same is true with people.  Several weeks ago, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer.  It wasn’t completely unexpected, in that every female on my husband’s side of the family other than his mother, sister and our 9 year old had already been diagnosed with breast cancer.  Some had died from it, some lived through it, but they all had it.  So when she was diagnosed, it was more more acceptance of something that we always knew would happen.  I know that someday my sister-in-law will call with the news that she has been diagnosed, and we will cry, and then we will make a plan.  And I hope that before I get that call from my daughter, breast cancer will have been cured.

The same day that we got the call from my mother-in-law (who will be 70 this fall), we got word from one of our friends down the street that her 13-year old daughter had been diagnosed with bone cancer that day.  It did not run in the family.  There had been no reason to suspect cancer.  She just had pain in her shoulder, and when they did the exam and the testing, it came back as cancer.  She started chemo two weeks ago.  She will have 3 months of chemo, then will have the bone replaced with an artificial bone, three weeks to recover, then 3 more months of chemo.  My husband has shaved his head in an act of solidarity with her.  My mother-in-law is old enough to hold her own if she ends up losing her hair, but a 13-year old…to lose her hair will be the end of life as she knows it. 

Perspective is so different between a 70-year old and a 13-year old.  She will have to give up dance and pom-poms this year.  I doubt my mother-in-law will give up anything.  She had given up most of everything years ago as other things stole her health.  The 13-year old will end up having a home-bound teacher sent from the school, so that she can keep up with her school work, and maybe not be held back.  My mother-in-law will just watch her “shows” and fold laundry a little slower.

We expect the old and the sick to get older and sicker and to eventually die.  My grandmother died this year.  She was 100.  When people ask me, “What did she die of?”  I say, “She was 100″.  She didn’t die of anything other than being ready to move on.  Her body was used up and she was tired of its limitations.  She didn’t hasten its demise; there was no suicide involved or anything.  But, she had sort of gotten tired of living.  It was a peaceful transition for her, and it was not frightening at all to me, or my 9 year old. 

But, we don’t expect the young or the healthy to die.  Somehow, we have in our minds that they are somehow…exempt.  There is nothing farther from the truth.  I remember when I was pregnant with my now 9 year old.  I was sent to the “high risk” doctor, and I asked him flat out, “What are my chances of dying in this pregnancy?”  And his response was that even as a high risk, I was still more likely to be killed in my car on the way to the corner grocery store by a lunatic driver than I was to anything pregnancy related.  That is a scary thought.  I am no longer pregnant (obviously, if she is 9), but I still shop at that corner grocery store, and those lunatics are still on the road.

Annie, my beautiful golden agouti, is gone.  But, I have three breeder couples who will be giving me new pups in the next month or so.  Some of those pups will be adopted by bright eyed children whose parents will end up doing most of the care of those gerbils.  A few of those pups will stay here as possible future breeding stock, and some will just stay here as their forever homes.  Eventually, I won’t think about Annie every day.  Maybe, someday, I will have to look up in the database to see what day she actually died on, and I will be shocked that I didn’t remember that it was the anniversary of 9-11, when so many who were not old, who were not sick, lost their lives, for no good reason.

Brad Pitt spent $82,000 on his kids’ gerbil home yesterday.  I can’t confirm the number of Gerbils who will live in the home but I have determined Brad’s number on the douchebag scale – 10.  I thought he was Earth conscious and stuff.  Couldn’t he have spent it on something else a little less ridiculous.  I mean, if he had to spend money on a gerbil home, he could have just given it to Richard Gere’s ass…. I’m here all week.

Once, when I was a freshman in college, I boiled my hairbrush in bleach in a microwave oven.

In 1997 we didn’t have a swine flu pandemic.  We had lice.  The urban legend around patient zero had something to do with good deeds like volunteering at an elementary school, where the crawling dandruff latched on, laid eggs, and proceeded to mate and reproduce at rates never before seen outside of the incestuous family of gerbils that I had in the fourth grade.  The gerbils had babies while we were on vacation, and then the babies had babies, and then one of the adults died and the others decided he was food, and then we came home from vacation. Yes, it’s disgusting, but my dad had a solution. He drove me and the 10 gallon fish tank teeming with rodents to a small pond right next to a Denny’s and made me dump them out on the shore.  He justified this by saying that the owls would be happy and make more owl pellets, a unit of fourth grade I had completed only weeks before.  The flesh-eating cycle of life made sense at that moment, and I thought I might get a ‘Moons Over My Hammy’ out of the trip so I dumped the fuzzy nuggets and vowed to never let the cycle of life get the best of me again.

When the lice epidemic hit, I was ready.  At first word I washed anything that had fabric on it with double the amount of Tide, a product that is so intertwined with my memories of childhood that I will never even admire the packaging of another brand, and ceased to let friends enter my aseptic chamber.  I began dipping things that would make too much noise in the washing machine into a bowl of bleach so they could disintegrate instead, but my hairbrush received the royal boil treatment.

Did I mention that I never had lice?  This was simply my preventative treatment.

The stuffed version of H1N1 - boil before cuddling.

So, you can imagine my concern when I learned that the swine flu is causing college campuses, many of them that open today, to quarantine students.  My tiny Michigan town is home to a college, Hope College.  I walked downtown after work today and these Hope students are simply milling about, talking, touching…is that coughing I hear?  I squirm internally at the thought of the body-hopping H1N1s (“H1 to N1.” “You have sunk my battleship.”) feasting on freshman.

I don’t think enough is being done to design for germs.  Jeff Young has made some great face masks, and a few companies have created stuffed versions of the germs.  But will passing out fuzzy pink owl pellets to my local freshman help prevent disease?

These kids don’t need Hope, they need hot bleach water.

Yesterday, my Lisa passed away.  She wasn’t a breeder, but she was one of my oldest gerbies.  Her death has me worried about her sisters, Coco and Java.  Coco was never a breeder for me either, but Java was.  A beautiful siamese, she never gave me siamese.  I had her paired with Gandalf, whom I thought was a dove (and therefore should have given me siamese), but I never got any, so I think he was a lilac who just looked light because of the spotting gene. 

I have one of his sons with Honeysuckle, and they had one litter, of which I kept one pup (Annabelle).  I put another son with Peanut, but only got blacks (and black with whites).  Again, not colors that are genetically what I need in order to get closer to more rare colors.  But, I don’t really have a plan, so without a plan, how do I know if I am getting any closer?

What I need to do is decide what I want to eventually put out, then I have to get gerbils with the genetics to get me there.  My hubby wants to blend the Lauren/Vincent line with the Java/Gandalf line, but that doesn’t necessarily give me anything genetically useable. 

Most of the gerbils that came from the Lauren/Vincent line are really too old to breed.  All the females are.  That leaves only males, and even those are really too old, except maybe Bambi or Flower, who are grandchildren.  There are no females young enough on the Java/Gandalf line except whatever comes from Honeysuckle or Peanut (which means Annabelle).

If I put Annabelle and Bambi together, I would get Light Dark Eyed Honey, A*C(cb\ch)D*e(e\ef)G*P*; (BEW) Light CP Dark Eyed Honey, A*cbchD*e(e\ef)G*P*; Himalayan, DTW, A*chch******P*; Himalayan, Very DTW, aachch******P*.  From those, I could get siamese and burmese if I matched with a burmese or siamese. 

I just don’t which way to go right now.