Coyote Crossing

I should have known, based on my personal feline history and today’s crappy mood, that I shouldn’t read a piece named ‘Jasper’ tonight.  I should have known that a piece named ‘Jasper’ was going to be about a cat, and was going to make me cry.

(o)

As I neared the ending, I couldn’t imagine what the connection between the music and the cat could possibly be.

Then I sobbed.

Like Zoom, my Bella slowly went from being a sooky evening lap-lover to being all laps all the time, getting more and more gaunt: she died over a year ago. I found many Bella hairs on winter-clothes this year, and I’m sure I haven’t nearly got them all.

My neighbour Vera has an orange cat who, while not quite as big as Jasper, has the hiss-purr dichotomy down to a fine art. Apart from Vera I am the only one from who he suffers stroking. He takes some getting used to, but he ain’t no ordinary cat.

My Poco is 15 years old. I will miss her when she goes.

I had feral cats in Boulder, Co, when I was in college. They adopted me. Their mother was as wild a cat as I’ve seen, bordering on seriously deranged. Could not be petted or in any way touched. I called her two offspring AllGray and GrayChin, and learned to pet them only two strokes and then pull my hand away before they would hiss and scratch me. It is interesting to let something wild into your heart. They ask for very little, and yet it takes so much to really get a hold of them.

It is a shame that you didn’t get custody of Jasper. The little inroads you made into his heart were probably the only roads into that territory.

Yeah, I still have the scar on my chin from when I tried to “rescue” Jasper after he escaped from the house.  When Elissa got home I was a blubbering idiot.  Heh.  She went and got him, and took him into the house, no problem.  Figures.

Figaro, Sam, Snowball and Minky are still in my heart.  How I miss them.

I know enough about your writing style, Chris, to know there WOULD be a connection between the music and the cat — but it still got me. Great piece.

jjesus…... I’m sorry about you’re cat but come on….. there are a lot of things wrong with the world and youre complaining about a cat….. I dont see any posts here about Cindie Sheehan for instants….. some “progressive” you are….. you complain abot Kos but he never asked for money for posts about dead cats….

Chris, have you ever had a troll before? Except for the Morin thread, I mean. Looks like you’ve got one now.

You have a troll!  And, it seems that he has a unique theme.  None of this “Left bad, right good, ad hom, namecalling, can’t you be civil, why do you hate freedom?” crap.  I’m not even sure what the theme is supposed to be, and I’m finding it refreshing.  Of course, I expect no less from this blog; that even your trolls have something of a mystique.

Jinx, Erin, I owe you a coke!

Stephanie, we have in fact had troll outbreaks before, during and in the aftermath of this Ward Churchill piece.

Erin, I think Sethster’s theme is ellipsis abuse. Ellipses flanked with extra periods, that is. And out-lefting the leftist.

Nah, the troll’s problem is that he can’t conceive of people who can care about more than one thing.  It’s like the brains of this kind of troll are too small to hold more than one idea at a time, so they assume that this is true of everyone else too.

Add in a dollop of Likes To Tell Other People How To Blog, and there you go.

Thank you for sharing Jasper, in all his irascible glory, with us.

Another wonderful and surprising post, Chris.

Where….does the current….love…of….the ellipsis…come from?  Is it meant to mimic the author’s speech pattern?  It one of the most bizarre punctuation forms to have emerged since the birth of internet speak.

And is there any coincidence between people who use the ellipsis in this way and, say people who “highlight” words using quotation marks (a problem discussed earlier on this blog).

Ah, before my time then, Chris. And I would have stayed out of that one anyway, given the subject matter.

and i thought our cat was aloof. he just makes a funny sound and walks away when he’s annoyed.

Hee. “For instants”

I think that’s supposed to be slang for insufficient sex, SK.

As in: “Sethster asked her back to his place ‘for a quickie,’ but it turns out he ought to have said ‘for instants.’”

His place? You mean his room? Or the couch in Mom’s basement?

There’s something about orange male cats that epitomizes cathood. 

My wife and I have a big orange male cat too, but he’s a real sweetie.  His original name is Kashmir, but that evolved over time into Kashmeow, then Mr. Meow, and finally Misto — a name that catches him perfectly.

We’re pretty close, but he’s predominately my wife’s cat;  she had him before we met, and I suspect she still loves him more than me!

I’m intensely dreading the day he dies, in large part because I know how utterly devasted my wife will be.  She has a way of making special connections with animals, like they’re literally her children (perhaps because we have none).  Misto’s her favorite creature of all.

Chris, I recently arrived back in the Bay Area after a year away.  We’d love to take you out for lunch or dinner sometime for all the fine writing you’ve done here.  In any case, you sound like a pretty interesting guy, and our kind of people.  We’d love to meet you. Drop me a line.

I’ve wondered about the rise of ellipses too.  Maybe they come from television and film habits of mind?  They’re pauses for the the quick tearaway shots in between bits of dialogue?

*hangs head*

I will admit to the occasional misuse of ellipses.  My paltry defense is that when I’m writing in comments threads I tend to type my words as I would say them, and, well, sometimes the rhythms of my speech demand some sort of symbol to indicate that I just trailed off at the end of a sentence because I was rapidly realizing that I didn’t really have something useful to say.

Kind of like now…

But that’s what they’re for. They’re not supposed to be used in place of periods by people who are afraid of making simple declarative statements.

Last I checked, Rana my dear, you had no such fear.

Nope! That is true. I do not.

*wink grin*

ellipses used to be used by the late herb caen.  they were to suggest that the blurb was just part of the larger, ongoing, funny and sad, on-the-street and high-society story of SF and surrounding areas. 

maybe his blurbs tended toward the high end, but he once posted about the time my sister’s little house in berkeley was burgled — the idiot bandits tried to steal a 5 gallon water jug 2/3 full of pennies, breaking it and cutting themselves in the process.  [this was 1981-2, so fear of aids wasn’t even in the picture, but — ya know, it was a really, really stupid crime…]

my daughter and i are trying to catch up with the local cat rescue person.  we fostered some feral kittens for a few weeks recently, and my daughter NEEDS to have some baby cats to care for right now.  high school sucks.  but kittens don’t, even quirky ones.  even if the bite hard and hide.  they’ll come around….

we got a little dose of superb cat love today, just visiting the rescue place [which is, in its money-making persona, also a posh cat resort].  both of us emerged covered in long white fur, with that great purrrrrrr resonating.

There’s a great troll on the Massachusetts political blogs who calls himself “The troll.”

ellipses…go read Celine…Louis Ferdinand that is…not Dionne…

hi Chris,

I’ve been lurking here for a few weeks, so hi.  Last night I learned from my neighbor that a beloved neighborhood cat who used to come in through my window and nap in my armchair was hit by a car and has died.  I’m terribly upset, and while reading your story got me crying some more, it was also very satisfying and strangely consoling to read right now.  Thank you.

Have you read Breakfast At Tiffany’s?  As I read about you talking to Jasper through the window I couldn’t help but think of the very end of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, when the narrator sees Holly’s cat in a window in Spanish Harlem.