Melon

I realized that I have been errant in keeping up with blogs about our cats, so here is another in a continuing series that I will try to update more frequently.

In 2004 Sarah and I started doing cat rescue. We had a feral mom and her kittens in the downstairs bathroom (which we weren't really using at the time), and four cats in the spare bedroom upstairs. These cats were on their way to the SPCA to be put down by their annoyed owner until Sarah stepped in and brought them home. More on them later.

In the midst of this, we thought it would be a GREAT idea to have another cat of our own, as we only had two at the time (those were the days). We were taking our rescue cats to the Delaware Humane Association because they had a very inexpensive spay/neuter program, compared to the local vets. We were looking through their website one day, and they had a photo gallery of all of the available animals for adoption, and we saw this photo of Melon:

Sarah and I both fell in love with Melon from this picture. The caption said he was a sweet boy and that he had FIV. Both of our cats also had FIV, so we figured what's one more cat? Sure.

I took a trip up to DHA to meet Melon. The first thing I found out was that he was a she, they assumed that Melon was a boy because she was an orange tabby, which is apparently rare in females (score!). They kept the sick cats out behind the main building, I don't remember if it was another building or just a shelter, but whomever was sick and contagious were kept out there. One of the staff took me out there and went inside and brought Melon out, into what I guess was the foyer part. There were other cats there walking around, seemingly starved for attention, and it did make me kind of sad and I wanted to take all of them home. The woman gave Melon to me and she was very small and very sweet, and let me put my face up to hers, which hardly any of the cats at home let me do. I decided that I wanted to take her home, and I thought Sarah would agree.

The director of DHA had gotten wind that I was there and was looking to adopt an FIV positive cat. He came out and asked me a lot of questions, I guess he wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to perform experiments on Melon or something like that. I assured him that we had FIV cats at home and just wanted to add to the party. He seemed assuaged by that and I made an appointment for Sarah and I to come back and pick her up.

Our other two cats at the time were male (incidentally, they both still are male), and Melon did not get along with them at all. She was always growling at them when they walked by her, and they seemed to give her a wide berth (the year before, we had acted as a sort of hospice for a terminally ill female cat who acted pretty much the same as Melon, more on her later). She also was very standoffish to us. It took her about 3 years before she would sit with us on the couch or tolerate petting from us. Our poor dog Niffler really got the short end of the deal, as he was never hostile to any of the cats, but they always were to him (not for long, more on that later, probably much later).

Melon eventually ingratiated herself to us and the rest of the cats, and will play with some of them, but not all of them. She really enjoys ripping up carpet, especially when she has a freakout and rips up the carpeting on the stairs. She's really done a number on those stairs.

A few years ago she got sick and she needed exploratory surgery. When she came home she had to wear a collar (which she was VERY happy about, as you can see) and stay in our room by herself for close to a month. She made a divot in the carpet by the door, always trying to get out. Later on, after she was better, she made another divot on the opposite side of the door trying to get back in. Cats.

Luckily the vet couldn't find anything, but after the surgery she... changed, a little bit. She gained a lot of weight, which is weird because she chases the other cats around quite a bit (we call her Melon Ball). When she lays on the floor on her side her legs almost stick up in the air. She also meows differently. I don't know how to describe it, maybe it sounds scratchier than her meow used to, but it's definitely different. She also has this weird tic with her tongue now, like she's trying to clean herself but failing. She's still a sweetheart though, maybe even moreso than before the surgery. She's a very good sleeping companion, she's not one who is trying to get you to pet her when you're trying to go to sleep. She stays near the foot of the bed and observes personal space rules. She will come to you if you call her to get some pets, but then she will go back to the foot of the bed when she gets tired of it. She also likes sitting on our lap or by our feet when we're on the couch watching tv. She makes the recliner go back down when she jumps on it though. She is a very sweet girl and even though we had too many cats at the time we got her, I'm glad we did.

Book #1

As I mentioned in my last post, I will be writing about all of the books I read this year, and perhaps every year. I don't know how good it will come out because I'm not that good at reviewing any kind of media, other than "I liked it" or "I didn't like it." Perhaps I will get better as the year progresses. That would be nice.

Enemies and Allies, by Kevin J. Anderson

This book was given to me by my friend Adam for my birthday last month. I love Batman and have for a long time, but my exposure to Superman has only been through TV and movies, and of course general pop culture. I was looking forward to reading this book because I have a few Batman short story books that I read and enjoyed very much. It's kind of nice to read a story about Batman and not have to look at a lot of pictures. I know this is practically blasphemy to comics fans, but I have always been more of a story person. I catch myself quite a bit reading the story in a comic and barely glancing at the art.

The book is set in the 1950s and revolves around how Batman and Superman met and had to unite against their common foe, Lex Luthor. The basic tropes of each character are added along the way, and some of the aforementioned pop culture tidbits relevant to each character are mentioned. I did like that, and I didn't think it was overused to the point of corniness.

This being a superhero book set in the 50s, you can guess the outcome. It was an easy read and I enjoyed it very much. I usually only read books during my lunch break at work; what I read at home is usually just Entertainment Weekly or other magazines. But I did manage to get a few chapters of Enemies and Allies in at home as well, so that's usually a sign of a good book for me. My only complaint is that there seemed to be more chapters based around Superman than Batman (each chapter was headed by the Bat symbol or the Superman symbol, so you knew who the main focus of the chapter would be). Anderson really plays up the differences in the two superheroes; the almost goody-two-shoes alien Boy Scout Superman, and the dark, law-breaking Batman. That's probably why I prefer Batman, because he could actually exist, but in this day and age someone would be able to find his secret identity very quickly.

I would not hesitate to recommend this book to a comics fan or a Batman/Superman movie or TV fan. You don't really need to know the backstory of each character to enjoy the book, as Anderson basically gives all of that to you during the book. But if you're not a superhero fan, you should probably read something else.

Wow, this was a lot harder than I thought. I'm definitely not a book reviewer, so I'll have to come up with a different method of writing about the books I read. The next book is about the baseball player Ted Williams, so that will be interesting. I don't know much about him aside from the fact that he is one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball. And he's angry.

Recycled Blog Idea/Adulthood Dream Come True

Happy New Year!

I was looking at a friend of a friend's blog, just out of curiosity, and she had posts relating to books she had read during the year. For example, the first book she completed was posted as Book 1, etc. I thought this was a cool idea and that I would try to copy it this year. I'm not a book reviewer by any means, but I will share my thoughts on said book and give it a thumbs up or down. I just started a new book yesterday about Batman and Superman, that I got for my birthday from my friend Adam. It's pretty good so far. Before that I read Blockade Billy by Stephen King, which I had not heard about until I saw it on the shelf at my library. It's more like a short story, it only took me a few lunch breaks to read it. Stephen King loves baseball, and it comes through in this story. It was kind of weird too, because King wrote it as if the character telling the story was telling it to him. I have a lot to catch up on with Stephen King, so you'll probably see me write about some of his books this year.

A few years ago, we went to a local restaurant for the first time, and they had on the menu something called pineapple bread pudding. I had never had it, and it sounded good, so I ordered it. It turns out that I had had it, and quite often when I was a kid. My paternal grandmother always made it, and I had totally forgotten about it. It was exactly like the scene in Ratatouille where the critic is instantly transported back to his childhood (this happened before I saw the movie) after taking a bite of the ratatouille. I thought I was going to start crying right there in the restaurant, but I managed to hold it together.

After I had this experience, and I saw the movie, I started to hope that one day I could do the same thing for someone else. As I have mentioned, my dad was a baker when I grew up, so we had a lot of bakery stuff around the house. Christmas was my favorite time because there was a lot of different stuff that you didn't get the rest of the year, stollen being my favorite. When I got to my current job I started to experiment with it at Christmas time. I started it maybe 5 or 6 years ago (my manager looked at me funny when I asked for a bottle of rum), and I could barely give it away. This year, I had an order for 2 before I even started making them, and people came in and asked for stollen specifically. I'm not making hundreds of stollen every year, but it's a far cry from that first year.

The day before Christmas Eve was a pretty emotional day for me. I was tired as my schedule ramps up around the holidays, and the store ran out of propane, so all of our ovens were down, ruining some of the stuff I had made. I actually threw a bucket in the back room and put a hole in the wall that day, which I feel bad about now. After we opened and had put the stollen out, one of the managers was walking out to the store when a customer stopped him and asked him about the stollen. He referred her to me (I'm the only one who makes it, my co-workers are afraid of it). She told me that it was delicious, and that it made her husband cry because it reminded him of the stollen his mother used to make. I don't remember what I said to her because I was concentrating hard on not losing it right there in front of everyone (I managed to bottle it up until I got home). But whoever you are, that was best compliment I ever could have gotten and probably ever will get. Thank you for making the holiday better for me.