Spot's Curse

Okay, I'll be honest. I uploaded pictures over a week ago for a post I planned to entitle "The Least of These". The tone was, in retrospect, shamefully self-congratulatory--focusing on the effort I was putting into providing as much comfort as possible to this rat dude in his last days. This rat, who, let's be honest, never liked me. Or any human. He did quite like his brother, Stripe, who passed away over two months ago. 

Initially, these two boys had lived in my daughter's room, and I didn't really have much access to them in their formative months. Once we brought the cage down into the living room--my guess is that they were about a year old at the time--I made persistent efforts to present myself to them as friend rather than foe. Or at least as "mostly harmless". Food bringer. I made significantly more progress on that front with Stripe, but Spot never stopped flinching when he saw me approach. Mind you, as soon as he spotted a morsel in my hand, he would eagerly grab it and scarf it down.

Spot is the one on the left.

Over the course of the past month, Spot has still flinched at my approach, but was happily accepting my increasingly creative offers of sustenance. In addition to putting his food on the cage floor so he wouldn't have to reach into the food dish, I started offering grape halves, bits of canned peach, dabs of yogurt---basically anything that would help get some additional liquid into him.

He was pathetic to look at, an the human residents of this household looked at him as little as possible. But he did still seem to be enjoying life to some extent, thanks in part to my efforts. A week or so ago, I noted that fresh cooked broccoli was apparently the most awesome stuff on earth. Anyway, I took a certain amount of pleasure in these little daily acts of kindness (mitzvas?) I was performing for what was objectively the least lovable creature I had ever intentionally lived with.

The end is near for Spot. We've been saying/thinking that for weeks now, but yesterday he started refusing food and drink. I suspect he is unconscious most of the time. Anyway, we keep checking on him. Yep, still breathing. Later on...still breathing. Seriously, boy, do you have something to prove? 

Please indulge me as I turn to a bit of dark humor here. This is not fun, so sometimes you've just got to try to find a way to laugh at a predicament, you know?

A while ago, I jokingly speculated

Spot the rat genuinely seems to be slowing down now. He's over 2 1/2 years old, so he's definitely led a long life for his species. I was starting to wonder if he'd made the rookie mistake of asking the gods for eternal life without clarifying that he wanted that to come with a side order of eternal youth and heath.

I've revised my fanciful hypothesis since then. I now propose that Spot actually angered one of the Greek gods. My money is on Hera. Hear me out. You know how Zeus had a reputation for not being able to "keep it in his pants" (robe?) And also, when looking for some action among the mortals, I seem to recall that he didn't strictly just go for the females. 

So, here's how I think it went down. Spot (Spotocles?) was caught by Hera in flagrante delicto with Zeus. Spotocles' punishment was to be turned into a lowly rat, and, just for spite, Hera threw in the part about living (practically) forever, but without the eternal youth and health that would make such a fate more bearable.

Zeus' punishment, in my estimation, was remaining married to Hera. Forever.

Fred Rogers: Jedi

(Image via Huffington Post)

I get a lot of songs stuck in my head. This is one of the better ones...

Sometimes people are good 

And they do just what they should. 

But the very same people who are good sometimes

Are the very same people who are bad sometimes.

 It's funny, but it's true. It's the same, isn't it for me...  

Isn't it the same for you? 

 Wherever Fred Rogers is right now (hopefully someplace cool), I hope he doesn't take offense...but that man was a frickin' JEDI!

New shoes, yo!

I thought of adding "motherf**kers" or "b*tches" in the post title, but that might be just a bit TOO out of character for me. Still, I freaking HATE shopping for anything, so this is kind of out of character in the first place. 

Next outing, I need to find some clothes. Give me strength...

Fizzix not so hard?

The following is a Facebook comment that got to long to be just a Facebook comment (says me)...

I didn't actually take physics. I went to an all girls' Catholic high school, and went as far as chemistry. Physics had this intimidating "aura" about it--you had to go to the "brother school" next door, where you were taught by an actual Brother somebody-or-other, and he addressed all students as Mr. and Miss. Now, I don't want to make a big deal of being "intimidated" out of taking this class--I had a full enough schedule of honors and AP classes without it. The reason I bring it up is this--years later, I found myself scoring proficiency tests in a variety of subjects, including science. At some point I was a scoring team leader on a test that included physics items--this was for, I don't know, maybe 6th grade. But I'd never heard of "Newtons" before as a unit of measurement. (Just the commercials, telling me that Fig Newtons are not cookies, but fruit and cake. But I digress.)

Anyway, talking with co-workers, I learned that it is popular now to teach physics in elementary school, because it lends itself to so many great "hands-on" experiments. Isn't this kind of amazing--based on the educational philosophy of the decade or so you were going to school, a subject can have a completely different, um, mojo? Image?

And to really publicly confirm my status as a middle-aged person, I remember checking out high schools (going to a parochial school, there were three to choose from, as opposed to one option for public school--another thing that is very different today). My dad consistently asked of the people giving the tours, "Do you offer computer classes?" I recall one of the answers being something to the effect of, "Yes, but only for the really advanced students who have already taken all of the other math courses." One would assume that included the scary demon known as calculus. But really, doesn't that exchange, both the question and the answer, sound totally bizarre today, when children grow up with computers as part of the landscape?

Dogs in the yard

Now that Demetrius has raised the height of the fence all the way around the back yard, both dogs can be off leash in the yard again. I still feel like I need to supervise them, until I know for sure whether Perkins is a more ambitious jumper than we expected.

Maddie and Perkins

Maddie. Been trying it out for a couple days. Don't know if it's going to take. But Madonna seems unwieldy--it's the name she came with and I frankly didn't have any better ideas. Mostly we call her "the kitten", but now that her size is beginning to rival Stevie's, that is starting to seem less like a workable solution for the long term...

One point in favor of the name is that the girl does seem to have a touch of the madness. Case in point, now that Perkins has made it fairly clear that he has no plans to eat her, she's gotten downright bold. I'm still feeling tentative about the degree to which I can trust a dog with a strong prey drive to be gentle with a small animal. But Maddie has decided it's perfectly okay to bat at his tail as if it were a toy. She is, at least, smart enough to wait until I've clipped a leash to Perkins' collar before pulling this move. Still it gets me thinking "What exactly is the difference between doing something "bold" and doing something "stupid". I guess the answer to that question, at least in part, is, do you live to tell the tale?

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Really wish I could have caught a picture of these two that looked a little less like Perkins was tasting Madonna (okay, I will most likely go back and forth with the names). But the interactions tend to be brief, and the other two pics I got were much blurrier. So you'll have to take my word for it that there have been downright sweet moments in which Perkins licks the cat on the nose, or she affectionately rubs the top of her head against his face. I am still careful not to leave them unsupervised in a room together, but it does appear that these two are sorta kinda working out something like a friendship.

Perkins workin' the bling

You may recall that a few days ago, Perkins' collar broke loose, and Perkins took the opportunity to go on a merry romp through the neighborhood. The experience was NOT so merry for me, who still had geriatric Winnie in tow, and was dealing with a twisted ankle. But there was no way I could go back home for reinforcements, or I would have lost sight of where Perkins had gone off to.

Anyway, Demetrius has come up with a solution to the problem, which is to use a second chain (originally used as a choke chain) to attach Perkins' prong collar to his harness. This way, if the prong collar becomes unlatched again, at least SOMETHING is still attached to Perkins. Now my boy is sporting quite a bit of metal (the prong collar is somewhat hidden in his fur, so you can't see it all that well.

But it's making me think that I should go all out and get some big honkin' medallions to hang from his collar while we're at it.