We did our civic duty, after Max had attacked him, this poor little kitten, in our backyard. At first, we thought he was dead. But, Amanda, who was the brave one, stepping forward and retrieving him from Max’s jaws, saw that he was breathing…barely.

Me, Sugar, Max, and, a gin and tonic.

Breathing enough, however, that he was more than agile and able enought to bite Amanda solidly on her finger. Not long after, she found herself in the emergency room, receiving a Tetanus shot. 

You may recall that we were turned away from the Vet School at MSU, and abruptly sent to another Vet’s office, way down 82 – the older version of the highway used mainly by elderly men who are never in a hurry and golfers who are.  The kitten, that we’d named Rasputin for all the obvious evil reasons, was left under the care of a Dr. L; I can’t tell you his whole name because I can’t spell it. It’s a little bit exotic a la Bulgarian and a little bit Willy Wonka a la Willy Wonka.

A couple of days ago, though, after the kitten had been gone for over two weeks, Amanda received a phone call.

“Your kitten is ready.”

“Excuse me,” she replied.

“That stray kitty that you brought in, with the collapsed lung? He’s fine now, completely fixed and ready to come back home.” (I still get tickled when adult people use the word ”kitty”).

“Oh…well, you see, we, uh, we thought…I mean, we don’t want another kitten. We’ve got a dog and a cat already, you see, and so…you know. We just wanted him to be healed, and make sure he was all right.”

The response to that: “Well, he is…and he can’t stay here.”

It was a short drive that took forever, going down 82, right to the county line, where devil kitty was. We pulled into the driveway, in Amanda’s black Fit, and nearly had one ourselves. We were nervous, anxiously snacking on our fears.

Genuine fears, I should add.  Ever shrouded by her Ivy League wisdom, Amanda suggested we assess the situtation.

So, we did. Here are the things we knew about Rasputin: 1) he was half-wild, half-evil, and a quarter kitten – was that too much?; 2) he was a quarter kitten, half-wide, and half-evil – was that enough?; 3) we didn’t want a kitten; 4) it was impossible to be half/half/quarter, anything, ever. Math just didn’t work that way…

…and 5) what if he weren’t cute anymore?  Cuteness is pretty much the most important factor in kittendom.

Two weeks was a long time, especially in the feline world; a lot of things could have gone wrong and vastly so. Chances were he’d grown even more feral while at the Vet’s, and no doubt, that would show, wouldn’t it?  His hair would be bristled, his eyes shot and angry, his claws…oh god, like midget hypodermic needles, and of course, further chances are he would remember us. Bitterly.

We couldn’t sit in the car all day, one way or the other, staring out at the pasture, where we’d temporarily cast our fears for better visibility.  There was plenty of room to lay them out in that pasture; nothing out there but a horse, what might pass for a cow, and the remains of a ’57 Chevy, minus the backend of the truck.

So, out we dragged our feet and headed to the front door.

Customer Service, 24/7, except on Mondays-Thursdays.

Inside, the Vet’s office, though, let me tell you, was cleaner than most human doctors’ offices. I was pleased with that. It was the first time I’d actually seen the inside; I didn’t come with Amanda when she bravely brought the kitten here.  I was surprised that it was missing that animals-come-here-daily-with-vicious-sick smell. I approved of its absence, and yet, was somewhat suspicious of it, as well. Over in the corner stood what may very well be the smallest Yorkshire Terrier I’ve ever seen, of the four Yorkshire Terriers I’ve ever seen. He didn’t move, he didn’t growl, he didn’t bark.

He stared.

That made me very nervous. I don’t like it when dogs appear to be thinking. And he did appear to be thinking. All the while he was staring at me. I tried to stare back, but I was unable to. Instead, my neck became a bit like a bird’s, pivoting back and forth between the Vet Assistant at the sliding glass window/check-in desk and this minute Yorkie security guard.

Amanda had to pinch me to calm me down.

Enter the Vet, himself, the wizened old man from the Bulgarian Chocolate Factory. He was ridiculously interested in Amanda’s finger: did she get the shot, did she go immediately to the emergency room as encouraged, how was the finger now, could he see it, and so on.

He was pleased that she was somehow still alive and then said, “I didn’t want to scare you before, but one time, Charlie, who used to work here was bitten one time by a cat and I told him to rush to the hospital and get a shot, and he didn’t, for several days, and then when he did, they had to chop off the tip of his index so the bacteria wouldn’t get into his blood and kill him. Because that’s what the bacteria would do, from a cat’s mouth, anyway.”

A small pause.

“I’m so glad you listened.” He smiled and I’m sure he meant it, and Amanda was…well, quiet about the whole thing.

I was, naturally, riveted, at this point in the lecture. I knew rabies was bad, but my god, it could kill you? 

I worried extra-hard then about every stray animal I’ve ever touched, rescued, or looked at, despite the fact that I was apparently rabies-free. I also felt extra-sorry for that poor dog Atticus has to kill in To Kill A Mockingbird, but dear god, people back in his day had to have all their fingers…a lot more than people in my day seem to do…hell, all my students would need to hold onto would be their thumbs so they could text during class.  Or Twitter, I guess that’s the new “it” thing, right?

The lecture went on: Amanda was fortunate that she was bitten by a kitten and not the finger-destroyer that is the large, adult cat. The reason for this is that the kitten was too young to have eaten much. (What?) Adult feral cats would have collected unhealthy, bacteria-ridden tartar and plaque build-up on their teeth. That’s where the danger lies.

I didn’t even want to think about what all a feral cat would put in its mouth.

He continued: That’s what could have resulted had this kitten been older (he was barely 3-weeks old at the time), Amanda could have overlooked her festering wound (this is highly doubtful) and it could have gotten into her bloodstream and caused something that sounded like Acinetobacter or acetaminophen or some A-word…and probably died.

Well, thank god, the bite hurt. Otherwise, she may never have known. I mean anytime I get bitten, I just ignore it unless it hurts.

After class was over, Vet Assistant A brought out a carboard box that somehow was to be folded into a house, A-frame style. Emblazoned on the side of the box was CAUTION!  PRECIOUS CARGO HEADING HOME! I think this is when it hit me. There was no turning back, now. Ugly or cute, cuddly or wormy, lovable or satanic…we had a new kitten.

A kitten named Rasputin.

Then, Vet Assistant B rounded the corner and in her hands was a small pile of striped fur barely mewing above a whisper. She turned him around and I finally looked into his eyes, for the first real time and I fell. Head. Over. Heels. In. Love. with the blame thing.

Here he is. Nothing but a pound and a half of sass.

His ears were too big, his eyes green and creamy, pulling away from his lower lids, were two black as mascara stripes that made him seem distant and romantic like Errol Flynn or Casanova. And right above his brow, were these two vertical lines that veritably screamed, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Demille.” He was, I could tell, a lover of the arts.

I only had to hold him a second. Amanda…she needed a little more coaxing. She was, I’m sure, recalling the whole trauma of the event from a perspective I didn’t share. Rasputin, as if sensing this trepidation, crawled over onto her shoulder, found a perch, and snuggled up under her neck.

The end was near.

After gushing, Amanda made an astute observation:  How could we continue to call this sweet, innocent, doe-eyed kitten, Rasputin.  

This kitten who was mean as the devil, bit everything in sight, couldn’t be tamed, wouldn’t be loved, hadn’t he all but died from meanness?

“Yes,” she said, “But he came back. And so, we should call him Lazarus, instead.”

If he hadn’t purred, right then, from his shoulder perch on Amanda, I would have hesitated.

Next, of course, came the real challenge: re-introducing him to Max, the dog who had nearly severed the small bridge of tissue between Lazarus’ lungs and esophagus (they’d hardly be willing to hang out together); letting Sugar set the routine for the household (she was after all the Alpha Cat and I was sure they’d hardly be willing out together, either); and getting him to transfer his kitty-aggression to a banana. (Amanda had already bought a selection of toys, a catnip banana was among them). When he starts in at the ankles, or the hands, we encourage him to “transfer to the banana.”

We’ve started using that phrase now on our friends, if they “get out of line.” Only two have, as of the publishing of this blog. 

And, so far, so good, sort of. He certainly has some anger-management issues to work on.  My ankles bear the initial verdict. But a re-trial was called, at the last minute, a governor’s reprieve, if you will, and…well…

…that jury is still out.

But the kitten…or I should say, Lazarus (Rasputin), he is still firmly, entirely, and safely in…the bathroom, for now.

Related Posts:

• Rasputin and the Fateful Finger Day
• I buried probably, like, a million birds as a child.
• I couldn’t see the title of the book so it must have been about Scientology.
• I know how to get a blame Diet Coke, thank you.
• Because hands can do everything but lie.

Again, this is far from an exclusive list.

The original Michelangelo.

Of the things listed above, several have affected me in the last 24 hours.

Last night I dreamed I couldn’t quite get up this rather large hill. It was exhausting, and I couldn’t catch my breath to get further than halfway up it. I was very disappointed in myself, in my dream, as I consider myself to be in rather pristine health. I woke up this morning, and there laying acoss my chest was Max, all 100+ pounds of him.

As a dog, I love him, as someone to sleep with – he may kill me.

I pushed him off my chest so as to ward off the complete suffocation, and he jumped off onto the floor, and vomited.  There are few more unpleasant sounds in this good, green world than that of vomiting. It seems even more tragic when it’s an animal. Even one who has tried to kill you as you slept.  And let’s not overlook what we’re all thinking: had I not woken up in time…(gross, right?)

Of course, the truly awful part is that you know it isn’t going to clean itself. I was less compassionate when I saw it consisted mainly of leaves from the backyard. Why he insists on eating them is beyond me. Ya Ya used to tell me that animals knew when they were sick and they’d traipse off to the woods to find certain leaves to expunge their stomachs.

None of that vital knowledge, though, made the clean-up any faster or easier. In fact, it just aggravated me.  (But god bless, Amanda. But hey, before you say another word - remember – it is her dog, after all).

Then, came the grocery store incident. Which I will recall for you, here, in some detail:

When I’m at the grocery store, which is one of my absolute favorite activities, as you may as well know right out – it’s one of the few pure joys I have in my life. I love to take my time and touch all the products. I’m very haptic, as I’ve pointed out, I’m sure. I like to touch the loaves of bread and the fruit glaze packages (though I’d never, ever allow that to come within 100 feet of my mouth). There’s just something so delicious about the weight of objects.

And, without a doubt, I’m a full-fledged member of the Reads the Complete Ingredients List. I like to know what’s going in my body. I wasted a lot of years on junk food. It’s going to take a long time to clean all of that out.  (Maybe I should go in to the backyard with Max, one afternoon and learn a few things).

But, the real aggravation comes when I’m putting my groceries on the counter/conveyor belt, and I only do this when I’ve got more groceries than I can carry in my arms, and the clerk is with another customer, but she insists on using the belt, you know, that moves your groceries down to her so she can run them across that red sensor light that never ceases to make me think of the End Times and Armageddon, and “check” their bar codes, are you still with me?

And you? What are you doing? Just trying to keep all your groceries together, that’s all.  At least that’s what I do because I’m extremely OCD about holding all of my groceries together. I like to make a little family unit out of them: the mayonnaise is always the Daddy, but I can’t very well do that because she won’t turn the blame thing off…and so before I can help it, my Daddy Mayonnaise is rolling down the other side to the bags (they sit at the end of the conveyor belt), and my onions will not sit still – I should have never expected them to - I can’t even think about what I’m gonna do with the 2-liter Fresca, bubbling up in retaliation right in front of my very face.  

Trust me. She's in no hurry.

It’s a madhouse, and she, this cashier, is completely unconcerned about it…the woman in front of me is just getting Cool Whip and cat litter but now she’s got two of my tomatoes and a loose jar of peanut butter hurtling themselves toward her 10-lb. bag of Purse like they’re old lovers reunited after a lengthy hospital stay due to a specific type of surgery like a bladder retacking that went a little awry (but would fix itself in a matter of 5-6 weeks, tops), and I’m trying to be cool about it, like It’s ok, I’ll get the tomatoes, I’ll fix this in just a few minutes, but you don’t say anything because that would make the entire situation too awkward, but she’s more than ready to announce to the cashier, that, No, these aren’t my items. I’m not paying for these rogue tomatoes. And you’re forced to make a little smile about it, and apologize.

You should never have to apologize at a grocery store, for anything.

You really shouldn’t even have to explain one single, solitary thing, at a grocery store. All you’re wanting is for the clerk to turn the damn belt off so that, unlike everyone else in the world, I, at least, could keep my groceries with me!  Am I on the belt?  Yes.  But, it’s because I can’t hold all my groceries with me. Do I want the belt to move? No, I do not. Not for Cool Whip and cat litter. I can’t help that I’m on the belt, ok.  I have some items that are too fragile for the journey, namely my eggs. Maybe she could switch it to a lower speed? More than anything it’s just embarrassing.

But, she doesn’t care, the clerk.  Nope.  She just flips that little switch and conveys everything to kingdom come.

And that…that is something that irritates me. That aggravates me.

That, and, cheap toilet paper.

Which I purchased day before yesterday at Walgreen’s. The store that you go to when you’re less than perfect. (I still don’t really agree with the concept of that commercial).

A lot of things happened to me as a small child, and they were upsetting and scarring and are now par for the course in my blogging life. Case in point: I was nine years old, and Aunt Ruth had come to stay for a interminably lengthy period at U.L.’s. Several people did that after Tigi died; she was U.L.’s mother and Aunt Ruth’s sister. I suppose it was her turn. I can’t remember that part.

She was a darner, though, that I remember and well. She darned from morning until night. When she finally went back home, the house was littered with plastic five-sided tissue boxes that she’d darned together with bright red yarns and pink shimmer yarns. Tissue boxes for every size of container. They are still at U.L.’s house because to move them would have been to insult her, and now that she, too, has passed on, it would be adding insult to injury (even though, I consider these “darn” tissue boxes to be a great injury), to touch them and move them.

Instead, they sit on the backs of toilets and on bedside tables collecting dust, which yarn does very well. Maybe that was the real gift Aunt Ruth was giving us.

Good at collecting dust.

I can still see this day-in-question as clear as a bell (whatever that actually means); the day I became afraid of bathrooms.

I’d thought Aunt Ruth was asleep, taking a nap the way well-behaved old people should, and I had gone to use the bathroom because my stomach was full. I was a nervous, private child at U.L.’s. It was mostly like living in a museum with Jesus’s kid brother. That kind of intense, reverent ambience. You did things quietly at U.L.’s.

Except Aunt Ruth, on this particular occasion.

Out of a dead sleep, I guess, she rose, and quickly. I was just about to wipe. I had torn several 2-ply pieces of toilet paper to assist me in this process when the bathroom door swung up to reveal my small frame on the procelain toilet to Aunt Ruth and the rest of the house – which was empty, yes, but that’s beside the point.

“I hope you’re not wadding,” she said.

“Ma’am?”

“Never wad. It’s wasteful. Fold, Kris. Tear off a few pieces, at a time, and fold. Like this.”

The demonstration was embarrassing enough. Having to show her that I understood what she meant has so seared itself into my conscience that unless I die in the bathroom, and can somehow alert you to that fact on my “way down”…I always go alone to the bathroom, whether it’s a stomach problem, a shower, or I’m brushing my teeth; I cannot share a bathroom. I am simply too scarred to correct that behavior.

I have no doubt that she did what she did with the best of intentions.

But, it has left me with a complex that I’m not entirely sure the DSM IV has been made aware of; if and when they do become aware of it, I’d be flattered if they named it after her. I’d be the first to sign the petition. I still get anxious in my own bathroom. My hygienic sanity is worn and frail, and barely hangs on by a thin string when I’m at my own house, let alone in public.

God, I can’t even think about public restrooms.

Oh, you know, wait, to be fair, I shouldn’t say it hangs on by a thin string. It’s much more like a piece of yarn.

Yeah, that’s better. Don’t you think?

A nice, red, shimmering piece of yarn.

That’s what I meant.

Related Posts:

• That’s how we bring up all children in our family: by ear.
• Phenergan’s Wake
• How on earth do you wash a Fedora? [and other random thoughts]…
• I’ve never had a mullet, and other Things I Can Brag About [...]*
• You can’t kill a Honda, unless you’re an 18-Wheeler.

Erin said what I really am (she’s an authentic, bona fide vegetarian) was a pescatarian. Which sounds similar to a Christian denomination. But, mainly, it means I am 90% real vegetarian, and 10% fake-out: I allow myself fish, eggs, dairy, etc.  I have a great need for smoked salmon, on occasion.

I’m not trying to drag anyone along with me on this dietary sojourn (although twelve days is a little less than temporary), but as I cook all the meals in the house, Amanda might not have much of a choice. Well, except where the dairy part is concerned; she’s lactose-intolerant. Something that, with my cheese addiction, would just absolutely kill me dead.

Here fishy, fishy, fishy.

At first, I was trying to be macrobiotic, which lasted about a week, and it didn’t stop because of any particular reason other than halfway through it I forgot I was doing it.  Also, it was confusing: what food is a yin, and why, and if I yang’ed it too much could I counter it with a good long yin of apples and peanut butter. I just couldn’t get all of the material read in time to pursue it successfully. I did learn, however, that it’s a good idea to chew your food.

A lot. I think somewhere along adolescence I’d forgotten to chew food at all.  I was shocked, making myself chew carefully in the macrobiotic way, at just how little I actually tasted food anymore. I just shoveled it down my throat, for no apparent reason, who was I racing against? Where was I going in such a hurry that I couldn’t even eat properly. What was I, an animal? 

Besides, chewing food slowly was hardly a macrobiotic invention; that was plain, old-fashioned  U.L., right down to the core, telling me at the dinner table from age 3 and up to treat the table as a “table, not a trough.”

U.L. I could understand; macrobiotics not so much. Not yet. So, somewhere on the other half that week, I became a pescatarian. (Years ago, I was a vegetarian, during college, until my diet slowly came to consist only of cheese. After awhile, I got fat. And constipated). This time, though, this time, I was going to make it stick, make it work for me.

I can honestly say that after that first week went by, I felt better. I really did. I was eating smarter. Paying attention to ingredients. I’m also trying to curb my appeal to processed foods, high fructose corn syrup (regardless of their rather subtle mea culpa commercials), and go back to the earth, so to speak. Which is hardly a new idea in my family, as we grow almost all of the vegetables we eat, ourselves; we have a cattle farm, and catfish, we used to have chickens and fresh eggs…I mean, what I’m basically doing is returning to my own childhood, one squash at a time.

Then Amanda had to send me that awful article about the nature of cage-free eggs. I’m so tired of corporate farming; although, they’re great for my diet. Reading about their treatment of animals does nothing but solidify my desire to stay pescatarian…although, no doubt, I’m going to have a panic attack at some point in the near future, like, maybe, Wednesday, about fish, too, until I no longer eat fish…or eggs.

Ya Ya was instrumental in instilling in me this idea of an animal’s morality. If you want to eat fish, she’d say, you go down to the lake, the creek, the pond, etc. and you catch it yourself. That fish had a good life free of you until you needed to eat. We’re the dominant food taker, the Hunter, but we can still have grace about it. That’s so Acadian of her. I mean, one way or the other, something was going to eat that fish: between me and the cottonmouth or the Crane, more likely, I’d rather it be me.

Maybe this story will help: one time, Ya Ya was letting me drive down some old country roads around Fish Camp, I was 14, but nobody cares if you break the law on a dirt road, and I was having the time of my life, kicking up all that dry dirt, creating dust clouds the size of a silo, when she touched me on my arm and told me to Stop.

I did.

This is a problem.

There, some yards in front of the car, was a terrapin. He was, in the turtle-way, taking his precious turtle-time crossing the road. Ya Ya would have none of that. She said, “Get out, let’s help him.” And that’s just what we did. He shied into his shell, and I asked if I could pick him up. She let me, and I took him across the dirt road, a dirt road that perhaps only six or seven people drove down a week, but that wasn’t the point. This is what grace means to the dominant Hunter. This was giving back to those who sacrifice for us to live.

I just hope the terrapin actually wanted to cross the road. If nothing else, perhaps the tall grasses hid him from his predator, at least a little bit longer. God knows, I don’t eat terrapin, I don’t care how much Cajun/Creole blood I get from Ya Ya’s people.  So I don’t know how valid his sacrifice would have been, but she believed in that Great Oval of Life – there are so few perfect circles, these days.

Tigi, on the other hand, was a Delta woman. Grown hard due to poor times, but having come from good stock enough to remember the better ones. She had a calm sensibility, even after she came back into money. She insisted on keeping chickens around the house for the eggs. She made U.L. keep the back row behind the house and around the old water well uncut so the wild strawberries would grow. That’s what we fed the chickens, mixed in with their feed. It made the eggs tastier, I like to say.

I remember, being six, standing with her out behind the house where the coops were, collecting eggs, how she balanced herself against the roost, cane hooked over her right arm, and how she reached in, blindly, to the back of the coops to retrieve the eggs.

She would wear the nicest house dresses, but with a constant apron covering them, with a waist-arc of pockets on the front of it. And in these pockets she carried the following items: a small pen knife, a pen, an insignificantly sized writing pad, a cameo brooch as big as your hand, and a wad of tissue.

I knew this because I explored the depths of this apron in the evenings, each night, when she dressed for bed. There was never anything added to the pockets, but I had to make sure, just in case. But, never, had I seen her use anything but the writing pad where she wrote recipes down as she thought of them, perhaps as a reminder of what to cook for supper, and grocery lists, and words. Words that she found beautiful, I guess…I never found out why.  She died when I was eight, two years later.

That afternoon, though, I discovered why she kept the pen knife. As she pulled out egg after egg and deposited them in her Tupperware bowl, I stood watching and enjoying the moment. I loved my Tigi, who once, when I was crying having not received anything for my birthday from either parent, made me cry my tears in her hands and then showed me how clear the tears were, saying, there wasn’t a thing dirty in my soul, I was clean, clean, clean.

Good in the kitchen and with chicken snakes.

So, you can imagine how shocking it was for me to witness this: she pulled back her hand and instead of an egg, she had wrapped her fingers around the head of a chicken snake, six feet long or so. Why it didn’t bite her, I don’t know, couldn’t tell you.

It didn’t get a chance to either. Without a blink or a moment of trepidation, she wrung its neck, threw it to the ground, held its head in place with her cane, and sliced it off with her pen knife. I was rooted, not unlike how the gnarled aggravating magnolia roots can become. She pushed the helpless corpse of the chicken snake aside with her cane, took out the tissue to wipe it clean, and continued collecting eggs.

I don’t believe I ever went back to the coops with her again, not sure I understood the delicate balance the dominant Hunter sometimes had to achieve with the unsuspecting predatory competitor. They were our eggs, our chickens, after all. He was uninvited, and yet, so scorched is my upbringing, that I couldn’t decide if I was quite ok with it or not; it was all too “serpent in the garden.” I think I ran inside and took a bath.

You know, some people eat snakes. I read that once in a book; the book was The Family Nobody Wanted by Helen Doss. It was an early favorite autobiography that I read, at least four times before I turned thirteen, about a Methodist minister and his wife and their impressive need to adopt children; I think it was fifteen kids overall they adopted. That part was easy to relate to, I wanted a family so badly back then, a normal family. Plus, they adopted children of need from all walks of life; they were the original Benetton ad, I’m sure. Life magazine put them on their cover once; someone gave them a new kitchen, for free.

They had all these wonderful things and experiences, but that only came later. They’d had to eat a can of snake, early on in their marriage. Just to survive.

I just hope it wasn’t a chicken snake, though.

They look too ugly to taste good.  And for the record, I’m never going to find out.

Related Posts:

• Gary makes me hungry.
• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• Five foods that made me who I am.
• Suffice it to say, I was spanked, a second time, OR The 100th Blog.
• I brought my own microwave, thank you very much.