The Martinet, The Hooker, and The Vamp

I was looking through some old photographs recently and came across a shot of my female cat.    She looks regal, sitting upright, her head turned to gaze at something in the distance.   I think of it as the “Mona Lisa” shot, though da Vinci’s inscrutable lady looks at the artist and thus at us.

long-haired calico cat.

I love this picture of her, her long white whiskers sharply defined, the temple hairs perfectly coiffed to cover her ears, and the small gray spot on her lower jaw.  She was a fine companion, quite affectionate, and even tolerant of the various birds that lived in her home—the Cockatoo that tried to shoo her from the lap she was curled upon, as well as the orphaned magpie that sneaked up and pulled her tail while she slept.  

She was not always so tolerant.   

Kitter, off duty.

Much is made of the felines’ independence and aloofness, their disinclination to submit to discipline.   This cat, who responded to the highly original name of Kitter, took discipline in another direction.  She became a martinet. 

  

The subjects of her strictly-enforced discipline were two part wolf huskies, whelped during the early winter months in the late 1970s.  Two of these pups were exceptional, a male and a female, both blue-eyed, and I decided to keep them.   When prospective buyers were scheduled to arrive, those two pups went into the house, hidden from view so the buyers couldn’t see what they were missing.

To keep them in one place until they learned their house manners, I put the youngsters down on the couch or in an easy chair and wasted my breath by telling them “Stay”, not something a playful seven week old puppy is inclined to obey.  When I returned to the house after the visitors left, I always found the two pups exactly where I’d left them.

Mugsy and Bashful would mature into excellent lead dogs and loving companions.

And then I began to notice something.   Their nervous demeanor and panting was not the result of a warm house or being a couple feet off the ground.   No, that demeanor was caused by none other than a Calico Martinet crouched on the floor in front of them, casually switching the tip of her tail back and forth and back and forth.  One false move and Kitter’s front claws met the offender’s nose, thus gaining her the nickname “The Hooker.”

Incredibly, this lasted for months, far past the time the two pups should have been allowed on furniture, but when we tried to have them lie on the floor, Kitter wouldn’t allow it.  I will confess this all became a game with my husband and I, who should have been the adults in the room.   We would depart to the den and call the dogs and then watch as they did everything possible to obey without setting foot on the carpeted floor.

This involved leaping from the couch or chair to the entrance of the room where we waited, always followed by The Martinet with claws.   My retired fifteen-year-old lead dog was exempt from her discipline;   Kitter seemed to understand that.

Kitter snuggling up to my retired sled dog, Kolega.   The love-sick look on her face says it all.

Then came a fateful day when the pups were a few months old.   The Martinet was betrayed by her own body and she transformed into The Vamp, all because she came into estrus.   No longer The Hooker, she terrified the dogs by rubbing against their legs, cuddling up to them as they lay on the floor.  They would look at her out of the corners of their eyes.

Then my husband made the torture worse by telling the male, Mugsy, to give Kitter a kiss.   Mugsy would try to lick the cat’s face without pointing his muzzle in her direction, still afraid of those sharp claws.

The estrus passed and she became The Martinet again, but it was all for naught.   The dogs were no longer afraid of the cat.   Instead, what had once been flight for life became a game.  Kitter chased the dogs into the den; they chased her back into the living room.

And they lived happily every after.   Well, not quite.   They are all gone now and I miss them terribly.

Kitter

Mugsy

Mugsy and Bashful leading the team at the Kennicott Copper Mine.   This photo was taken by Nancy Simmerman.

Mugsy and Bashful in lead, my husband Ken on the sled, and his Super Cub in the very deep snow behind.  Photo by Nancy Simmerman.  Wolf, the sire of Mugsy and Bashful, is the lighter colored dog immediately in front of the sled.

Things That Matter

Imagine sitting in a quiet place, a place where there are no distractions and no interruptions.  There is only one person in that room with you, sitting beside you, telling you of things that matter the most to him, and you are spellbound.

He is a great intellect with a gift for speaking, a wit that you admire and wish you could emulate.  You might not agree with him all the time, but you listen carefully and absorb what he has to say.  He speaks of his brother, baseball, politics, foreign relations, and the foibles of mankind.   He talks of dogs and cats and their eternal comparison.   He tells stories about life and death, war and medicine.

That is what it’s like to read Charles Krauthammer’s new book Things That Matter, Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics.   Had I written that title, I would have inserted a comma after Pastimes.  Dr. Krauthammer did not, and he did not because thinks commas are a pestilence and they “must be stopped.”   He wages war on commas.  I, however, write with a congestion of commas, a little collective noun I made up to describe my writing style, and I use the series comma, sir, to avoid things like Eats, Shoots and Leaves, the guide to punctuation by Lynne Truss with pandas on the cover that signify the title should have been Eats Shoots and Leaves.

I have heard Dr. Krauthammer speak so often that I am familiar with the cadence of his speech and the slight change in his voice and his droll delivery when he is making devastating fun of something or pointing out those dreaded foibles.   As I read his book (I’m less than half way through), I hear his voice in the printed words.   He is an engaging, welcome, and appreciated guest in my home. 

One of his most recent pronouncements was in regard to President Obama.  He said the President was the first president to commit “death by punctuation” when he said, “If you like your health care insurance, you can keep your health care insurance.  Period.”

I heartily commend this book to you.

(Financial News has called Dr. Krauthammer the most influential commentator of our times.)

Soupçon and Olios

I stayed in Anchorage overnight Nov. 21, after my first cataract surgery because the surgeon wanted to check my eye the next day.

The temperatures had been cold--around zero, but a storm was moving in from the west and the temperatures were rising quickly, much faster than objects--such as my truck--could keep up with the warming.  I was oblivious to what was going on outside the condo where I stayed, so when the rain started falling and hit those still-very-cold objects, ice formed on them.

The doctor's office was only a 15 minute drive from the condo, and I decided to leave at the appropriate time, after a restless night's sleep, or lack thereof.

My truck looked like a burgundy ice sculpture.  I had to pry open the door.  I hadn't gotten around to putting an ice scraper in the truck because I house it in a nice warm garage,  so I had to scrape the windshield ice with a credit card.   When the heater finally began putting out some heat and assisting ice removal, I rolled the driver's side window down halfway.

The glass had warmed enough to separate from the ice, but the ice remained.   I rolled down the window a bit farther.

Finally, I broke out the ice and went on my careful way, in four wheel drive with studded tires.

A couple days later, caught up on sleep, one thing was on my mind:   soup.    And so it began...

Now, the title of this post,Soupçon, is meant to be a clever play on words, but because it means a "smidgeon" or "hint of" certainly doesn't describe what happened in Gullible's kitchen over the next few days.

Lentil and Corned Beef soup

Chicken Noodle

 

Lima Bean and Ham

Split Pea with Ham

Not shown is the Chicken Veggie soup because either I didn't take pictures or I can't find them, take your pick.

Also not shown are Minestrone and  Chicken Tortilla soup, because I still have plenty in my freezer.  I should be set for the winter, regardless of the weather.

 Why?   Because this is the size of the pot I used to make these soups!    Have I mentioned I used to own a restaurant?

 

Snow, cold, ice, and soup.   A perfect olio.   Anybody want some Lentil Soup?

Madiba

Resentment is like swallowing poison and hoping it will kill your enemies.--Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

The Morning After Pill

There's an old come-back that goes something like this:

"Wow!   What happened to you?" says one person to another who looks like he's been in a prize fight.

"Hey, this is nothing.   You should see the other guy," says the batteree.

Guess what?

I AM the other guy!

Now, isn't that pretty?   This is the morning after I had cataract removal surgery on my left eye.   The right eye is swollen in empathy or something, because I had the same surgery on it ten days prior.   The right eyelid didn't swell anything close to this.

That morning after pill would have been an Aleve or Advil or Tylenol, but I didn't need it, appearances to the contrary.   There was no pain or discomfort, though I might still have been under the lovely effects of a sedative they gave me prior to surgery.

A couple hours after surgery.

That's what they do, hook you up to an IV, then slip you a mickey, and while you're totally out of it, they give you a shot to numb everything.   I think it's through the eyelid, which is why there's so much edema.  The eye itself looks fine; it's the wrapper that's swollen.

And, boy, can I see!   My trifocals are now obsolete.   Whoopee!

I was allowed to take off that blue shield the morning after and see what I could see.   Not much, actually, not until I put a cold wet wash cloth on it for a half hour and could see through a slit.

For those of you considered cataract surgery, this is the absolute truth:

The very worst part of the whole deal (after overcoming my initial panic about the whole idea of someone messing with my eyes) was the tape they use to tape the eye shut and hold that blue thing in place.   It itches.  The eyelid itches.   It's just paper tape, but the eyelid itches.  Get through that for a night and the whole thing is a piece of cake.

And I even got a free pair of designer sunglasses to wear for the drive home: