Odd-eyed girl

Yes, I know, I know... I've been away from this Whirled for yet another month. I apologize. After this long-overdue eulogy for a departed loved one – a lengthy piece that is, I suppose, both a horror story and a love story – I will get back to snarking. I promise. And you probably know the drill by now: If you think you are in danger of getting screen fatigue, print this out and read it the old-fashioned way. On the other hand, if you really do not like cats, you might consider skipping this piece altogether.
~ CC

“Dogs have a depth of loyalty that often we seem unworthy of. But the love of a cat is a blessing, a privilege in this world.”
~ Kinky Friedman, from a 1993 eulogy for his cat Cuddles

I long ago learned a secret about cats, one which you may know as well, and I share it with all due respect to the Kinkster, who seemed, in the quotation above, to be implying that the love of a cat is a rarer and more difficult thing to earn than that of a dog. It's not that I would ever take a cat's love for granted, but the truth, and I suspect that Kinky knows this too, is that cats are at least as loving (or perhaps more accurately, as emotionally needy) as dogs. They are simply not as inclined as dogs to display it in obvious ways – unless, that is, they are compelled to live their entire lives within the walls of human homes. It is then that we get to see them up close and personal, and vice-versa, and they reveal their truly affectionate natures on a consistent basis.

Or maybe it is simply that the confinement makes them neurotically desperate for stimulation, and we're the best they can come up with. In any case, during my so-called adult life I have seen to it that all of the felines I've lived with have been indoor cats, and while some people may consider that a crime against nature, to me it is nothing more than an expression of concern for the cats' well-being (not to mention consideration for neighbors and wildlife).

Coca Bean Kaye, an odd-eyed, pure white domestic shorthair who died on November 12, 2010, at the age of 16, wasn't always strictly confined to the indoors. In her kittenhood, I hear tell, she occasionally got out and about in the Alaska wilds – dodging rapacious eagles and the occasional meandering moose, or so I like to imagine – but that phase of her life came to an end in the mid-1990s when she relocated with her original companion human to Houston, Texas. She then became an indoor cat for the most part, but her existence was hardly quiet and peaceful, as her human lived with an abusive partner who, fueled in part by a dangerous mix of recreational substances, became more violently abusive as time went by. Given the dynamics of that relationship, and the reluctance of either partner to simply go their separate ways, there was almost no chance of avoiding a tragic ending.

Indeed, it all came to an abrupt halt one terrible summer night in 1996 with the shooting death of the abusive partner by the abused person's sibling – an act of desperate self-defense that was, nevertheless, referred to a grand jury. The shooting happened after a long day of ugly violence, and Coca and the other feline resident, Gracie, a pure white longhair, were right there in the apartment through the entire ordeal.

When Ron and I paid a visit the next day the scene had not yet been cleaned up. I should have been prepared; the rookie news reporter I'd watched that morning on TV had haltingly described the scene as "graphic," and I knew, from the expression on his face and the slight quaver in his voice, that his description didn't begin to do it justice. Suffice it to say that on that day, I learned that it is not the sight of massive amounts of blood that gets to me; it is the smell. The carnage was in the hallway just outside of the apartment; inside, the human survivors of the incident were huddled together, dazed and numb. Coca and Gracie were nowhere to be seen.

In the turbulent months that followed, the survivors – both human and, presumably, feline – struggled to get their lives back in order. The grand jury that convened the following February declined to press charges, but the ordeal was far from over. The mother of the abusive partner, driven by grief, anger, and her own drug-induced mental problems, continued to do whatever she could to make life miserable and more than a little scary for the survivors and members of their immediate families who lived in the area.

Please do not think that any of us lacked compassion for her loss, or sorrow for the way the situation had turned out. It was a tragic state of affairs all around. But her threatening phone calls and letters, her vows to seek her brand of "justice" for the death of her last surviving child (we were told that another child, an infant, had been shot to death years earlier by her ex-husband's drug-dealer buddies), and even her morbid insistence on taking possession of the firearm that had killed her offspring (the weapon had originally belonged to him) were disturbing to say the least. And it was all instrumental in the decision by Coca's human to flee back up to Alaska, sans Coca this time.

We were told that arrangements had been made for a friend to take Coca, though there was no word on any arrangements for Gracie. Ron and I found out after the fact that the friend had backed out, and we felt we had no choice but to go to that sad abandoned apartment and gather two frightened and very hungry white cats to take home with us. It was only meant to be temporary, till we could find permanent homes for them. I was adamant about it being temporary. After all, in addition to five dogs we already had two cats, and I had all the litter box maintenance responsibilities I wanted.

Of course, you already know how this went: Coca and Gracie (whose name we shortened to Grace) stayed. They really had no place else to go, and there was no way we were going to take them to a shelter, which would have almost certainly doomed them. So it was that in that chaotic summer of 1997, Ron and I suddenly found ourselves not only with our two cats and Coca and Grace, but also, for a while, with a cat named Quinnie, who, along with the sibling of Coca's human, also moved in with us for a few months. Quinnie was a pretty but demonic tabby, vaguely reminiscent of a Kliban cat. She had a large body and a disproportionately tiny head (I'm talking about a ridiculously tiny head; we sometimes called her Pinhead). Small as it was, that cat-head was full of evil mischief. But that's probably worth a whole other blog post.

The point is that now there were five cats, and overnight we went from being a one-litter-box household to a three-litter-box household. There were also three more sets of fully functional cat claws to shred the furniture. It's not that we've ever had impeccable furniture – far from it, but the addition of more cats made a bad situation worse, aesthetically speaking. A crappy-looking old '70s-era couch that our then-friend Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale had given us rapidly became even more crappy-looking. It was apparently more attractive to the tiny tigers than the sisal-and-carpet scratching posts we provided. Joe had also given us an old recliner, the back of which was already well-clawed by his own cats, and ours gleefully added their own contributions.

The extra litter boxes and clawed-up furniture were the least of the problems, though. Our original cats, Sabrina and Bruce (the latter of whom you met briefly here; see link below) were not happy with the interlopers, and vice-versa. Troublesome cat politics erupted, and even after the initial hissing and threatening behavior died down – even after Quinnie the Pinhead and her human moved out, in fact – the politicking continued.

Since cats handle their everyday political issues mainly by peeing and spraying, whether or not they are spayed or neutered, it is hardly surprising that we quickly reached a point where even Febreze and Nature's Miracle couldn't solve the problem. The epicenter of cat politics in our household was an expensive and once-elegant rattan couch that had belonged to Ron's late mother. Bruce, who was unquestionably the head cat, loved to lounge on it – it was his spot – and prior to Coca's arrival, the worst offense he ever committed was the occasional ginormous hairball, easily cleaned away. But Coca had been the head cat in her former household, lording it over timid little Grace, and she had issues with Bruce being the leader in her new home. Bruce was relatively laid back about the whole thing, but he let it be known that he was the supreme feline. He and Coca had countless discussions about this during summits at Camp Rattan. Some of their exchanges were quite vocal (with Coca doing most of the talking), and most, unfortunately, involved bodily fluids.

Over the next year or so, despite frantic efforts to keep it reasonably clean, the rattan couch became so foully saturated that we had no choice but to remove it from our home. Since we lived at the time in an uber-gentrified section of Houston, we knew we would never be able to get away with setting the pee-soaked piece on our front lawn and waiting for someone to pick it up – as much as it would have amused us to see the expressions on the faces of our snootier fellow residents. So we cleaned the couch as well as we could, loaded it into the van, and took it to a spot in front of the Dumpster at the apartment complex where Coca's first human companion, who once again had moved back down to Houston, was now living. As we were leaving a little later that day, we discovered that the couch had already been removed, presumably by someone who thought it might be a lovely addition to their living room. What a find! we could imagine them thinking, and it made us snicker. On a subsequent visit a couple of days later, we noticed that the rattan wonder had been returned to its spot in front of the Dumpster. 

I was frequently frustrated because the task of cleaning up pet messes in our house generally fell to me. (Then again, the task of lawn mowing and fixing things that broke around the house always fell to Ron, so it all worked out.) The dogs weren't really a problem, because even though they stayed indoors with us most of the time, they were house-trained and went outside to do their business. But the cats... well, even absent politically motivated spraying and such, and even when there are no litter box glitches, cats are – I might as well be blunt – filthy little creatures, despite their reputation for being immaculate. Sure, unless they're physically ill or emotionally disturbed, they're constantly cleaning themselves, but where do you think all of that kitty body dirt goes? That's right: on your stuff. 

At the risk of sounding hopelessly petty and self-involved, I will confess that despite my compassion for the plight of the rescued cats, and my continued love and concern for their former owner, I sometimes felt resentful. There were times I looked on the white cats as a symbol of what I viewed as their first human's irresponsibility and my own lack of choice in the matter. I think, though, that at my core I was also feeling residual guilt over the fact that I too had abandoned a couple of cats when I was much younger. I was a teenager at the time, still living at my parents' home, and the cats in question had "difficult" personalities.

At some point I decided I simply didn't want to take care of them any longer, but I couldn't find a home for them, so I had them taken to the local SPCA, where, despite my attempts to convince myself that I had done what was best for them, they almost certainly met their end. I still feel guilty about my choice to this day. Taking in Coca and Grace so many years later could, I suppose, be looked upon as either payback or a way of making amends. Either way, from my perspective and those of the others involved in the situation, it was indisputably the right thing to do.

In any case I never took my occasional resentment out on the rescued cats or anyone else, but one day, in a fit of frustration after cleaning up more cat spray from odd corners of the house, I did declare to Ron, "Either the white cats go, or I go!" And he calmly said, "Okay. 'Bye." Of course he didn't mean that, and of course he knew that I didn't mean what I'd said either. Issuing fake ultimatums isn't my style, and he had simply called me on it. What is important is that for the most part we all learned to live in peace together. Eventually the kitty politics dissipated, the spraying all but stopped, and I found that I had fallen hopelessly in love with both Coca and Grace.

* * * *

It occurs to me, this far into my essay, that I've really said precious little so far about Coca as an individual, a being who had a life apart from the chronicle I've shared of violent death, unsettled human lives, and ruined furniture. If you've read any of my previous writings you probably weren't expecting a sweetly sentimental Rainbow-Bridge sort of tribute, but maybe you're thinking I should focus on Coca herself for a bit. All right, then.

Coca was an individual and she did have a life, of course, but she was also very much a part of our lives for more than thirteen years. She had an unusually strong personality and after recovering from the initial shock of coming into a new household, she was not at all shy. She was in fact quite forward and had no problems whatsoever with clambering all over anyone, even casual visitors, who came to our house and sat down for a moment. Even so, for a long time she wasn't what I would have called inordinately affectionate, and certainly she wasn't as cuddly and flirtatious as Grace.

Coca also had no problem with making her likes and dislikes abundantly clear. As is the case with many cats, she did not suffer extensive petting mildly. She would put up with it for a certain amount of time and then suddenly and quite without warning turn on the offending hand with a hiss and a quick slap, if the person was lucky. I learned early on when to back off. Later on, however, she became more tolerant of being touched for extensive periods of time, and even got to the point where she was as affectionate and hungry for touch as Grace. And although in the early years with us, Coca didn't like to be picked up at all and always protested loudly at the indignity of actually being carried anywhere, in later years she came to tolerate and then actually enjoy being in human arms. Especially mine. She even got to the point where she would let me pick her up and hold her upside down – one of the ultimate signs of trust from a cat. (Crazy Bruce, whom I probably continue to unfairly employ as the gold standard of felinity, used to love being held upside down and even swung gently about at times. But he was not at all a normal cat.)

Nearly everyone who met Coca commented on her odd-colored eyes: one green orb and one blue one. Having two different-colored eyes is actually fairly common among domestic cats and, for that matter, some breeds of dogs such as Siberian huskies and Malamutes. Coca was perhaps one blue eye away from being stone deaf; pure white cats with two blue eyes very often are. But there was nothing at all wrong with Coca's hearing, either on her "green side" or her "blue side."

There was nothing wrong with her voice, either, and she liked to use it; judging from its tone and timbre, there was a fair amount of Siamese blood coursing through her veins. Though not as generally conversational as Bruce, and not possessing his range, she was considerably louder than he. If Bruce was the head cat, she was definitely second in command.

She grew particularly attached to me, and would come to me when I called her name. She got to the point where she would respond to hand signals as well. Anyone who ever doubted that a cat can be as responsive as a dog in every way never knew a cat like Coca.

* * * *

Life became easier for all of the cats as time went by, but it was not always so easy for the troubled humans in their midst. There was still fallout from that awful night in 1996; the bereaved mother continued her campaign of harassment for a few years. When the two people whom she felt to be responsible for her son's death weren't available for harassing (they moved back and forth between Alaska and Houston several times), she aimed her harassment at Ron and me. We would find trash on our lawn – boxes of cards, letters, and other mementos of the doomed relationship between her dead son and Coca's original parent.

One evening, as we were leaving the house to go out for dinner at a local restaurant, Ron and I found a very large, very dead, and very smelly snake on our porch; obviously it had been tossed there by someone, and we were pretty sure we knew the source. And somehow PsychoMom ended up in Las Vegas one Mother's Day weekend during the same time Coca's former companion and new partner were there. PsychoMom happened to spot them in a crowd at a popular Las Vegas hotel (really, what are the odds?), and began shouting and screaming, then pushed her way through the throng and proceeded to beat up on the target of her wrath before security personnel were able to separate them. Scary as that was, it could have been much worse.

Even that blew over, though, and life went on. Ron and I moved from the snooty neighborhood to a more comfy suburban area, leaving Joe Vitale's ruined couch behind in the old house, which was soon demolished and duly replaced by the requisite McMansion. But we did take Joe's old recliner, which the cats continued to slowly and methodically shred, although the really awful-looking part was hidden from our view because we tucked the chair into a corner of our living room. The four cats settled into our new digs with a minimum of fuss, and over the next few years they all became much closer, even to the point of growing quite fond of each other. Harmony prevailed.

But time just never stops, and cats, even well-tended indoor types, are on a shorter cycle than the large lumbering bipeds who tend them: a cruel trick of nature to be sure. In early 2005, ten days before my birthday, Bruce left us at the age of almost seventeen-and-a-half years. I still haven't really recovered. His nearly-lifelong pal Sabrina, sixteen, followed a little over a month later, two days after Valentine's Day. I was heartbroken, and more grateful than ever for the two white cats who had insinuated themselves into our household eight years previously. I became even closer to Coca and Grace.

Over the following months I toyed several times with the notion of getting a kitten – maybe a little boy, preferably from a shelter. But I was in no big hurry and did nothing about it, and one bright Sunday morning in October of that year a tiny dilute-orange and white tabby showed up in the bushes under our bedroom window, crying like a lost bird. I scooped the kitten up and brought it into the house, and then proceeded to ask around the neighborhood, but there were no takers. It appeared to be a girl, and though I'd wanted a boy, Ron and I welcomed it into the fold and I named it Kyra. A couple of weeks later I was holding Kyra and noticed "she" had manifested some parts that hadn't been apparent in the beginning. Well, then, I had my boy after all. We scrambled for a new name, and Ron came up with "Sabu."

As Sabu grew to tomcat-hood lust took over, and, since he had no access to outdoor girlfriends, Coca was his target. Grace, usually so sweet and calm, had despised him from the beginning, even when he was a wee lad, and hissed whenever he came near her, so he knew to stay well away from her. Sometimes Grace would pick fights with him, just for the hell of it. But Coca was much more tolerant of his attentions, and in fact she rather liked him. Both Coca and Grace were spayed so there was no danger of kittens, although Coca did occasionally lose patience with Sabu's repeated efforts to grab her by the scruff of the neck with his teeth and climb aboard. "We need to get Sabu neutered," Ron and I kept saying, and kept putting it off. 

In early 2008 we slipped the surly bonds of crowded suburbia and finally moved out to the country, to The Ranch at the Edge of Nowhere. I'm almost embarrassed to say that we still had the clawed-up chair Joe Vitale had given us many years ago; because the damage had been hidden, we hadn't really paid attention to how truly awful its back side had become over the past decade or so. In the large and many-windowed living room of the ranch house, there was no corner for the chair to hide in anymore, no wall to back it up against, and its ugliness stood out in a particularly embarrassing way. (Oh, God, had the movers really seen that?!?) Although one of Joe's fans had previously and in all apparent seriousness offered me $100 for the chair, it was too much of a hassle to work out the logistics. We exiled it to the garage, and paid $20.00 to have Stacy, our trash lady, haul it off. I did feel morally obligated to inform her that the chair had once belonged to the world-famous Joe Vitale, and she looked at me, puzzled, and said, "Who's that?" before she and her partner heaved it into the back of their truck with the other country folks' trash. Another fab money op lost, no doubt.

We all settled happily into life in the sticks, our joy marred only by losing our big dog Rex a couple of months after we moved. The cats were particularly pleased with our new home because not only did they have a much larger area to live in, but they had many more windows to look out of. Grace still had serious issues with Sabu, though, even after we finally got him neutered and he became more sweet and mellow. But Coca and Sabu remained close, and became even closer as the residual hormones faded and Sabu grew larger and lazier.

In the last year or so, however, Coca gradually started keeping to herself more, and Grace began warming up to Sabu. Over the last few months of Coca's life, Sabu and Grace actually became quite close. Perhaps they sensed that before long, they would only have each other. It was in those last few months that Coca began losing weight, fading away, and becoming, as people used to say, a mere slip of a thing. It was a combination of conditions, common among older cats – kidney failure, mainly, and we simply didn't have thousands of dollars to pay a vet to temporarily slow it down. But she didn't seem to be in pain, and she was still sweet and affectionate, still eager to climb all over me whenever I was in the living room. She would stretch herself across my newspaper in the morning, and relentlessly use me as furniture when I was on the couch watching TV at night. 

In late October of this year, she seemed to fade even more, though she rallied briefly, but then in November she developed a respiratory ailment. At first we thought it was a mere case of the sniffles; all of our cats had had this at one time or another and it was never anything serious. But Coca was not getting better and we decided to make a vet appointment to take care of the respiratory issue and perhaps give her a little more time with us. On the morning of the day the appointment was scheduled, Ron called the vet and canceled. There were unmistakable signs, he explained to the woman answering the phone. Cheyne-Stokes respiration. The telltale gurgling. The death rattle.

We sat with her all that morning. At some point it was apparent she couldn't see us any more; her eyes were glazed over, the green and the blue barely discernible any more, but she could still hear us, and we talked to her. And intermittently, she would talk back. Some cats go into that good night quietly. Bruce had. Sabrina had. Coca did not. She still had things to say. But by mid-morning, she was finally silent, and we buried her in silence too. We've talked of maybe planting a tree on her spot in the spring. It's too soon to think of doing much else right now.

* * * *

And the world moves on. Some time ago, Coca's first human found happiness at last with someone truly wonderful, and they were married a few months ago in Alaska. The sibling who shot the abusive partner is also up there, reportedly happy, though we rarely hear from him. I hope he finds his way back to us someday, and even if he doesn't I hope he really has found happiness. The last we heard, the bereaved mom was living somewhere up in the Texas Panhandle; we haven't heard from her in years (knock on wood).

And here at the Edge of Nowhere, Texas, we are once again a two-cat household, if you don't count the eternally wary self-owned gray tabby who lives outside, mostly under our house, keeping skunks, snakes, and other vermin away. Inside the house, Grace and Sabu are now as thick as thieves, eating out of the same bowl without trying to kill each other, and cuddling close together on the couch, or on me, when I'm lying on the couch. Cat politics are a thing of the past. Peace prevails. Christmas is creeping up on the ranch now, approaching on little cat feet (as the late poet Carl Sandburg might have said), and look, there's Coca at the top of this page, with Christmas-colored eyes, an artifact of flash photography. All is calm, too calm really, with no raucous Siamese-inflected songs streaming out from the cats' part of the house. Though our girl has been in the ground for more than a month, on occasion I still find myself searching, briefly, for an odd-eyed face when I'm doing a head count as we all settle into the living room at night to watch TV. Head counts have become easier over the past few years as our family has grown smaller.

"Grief is the price we pay for love," we're told. Among the countless others who've said that in one form or another, England's Queen Elizabeth II reportedly did while addressing a church congregation after the 9/11 attacks. Given the context, she no doubt had in mind the love and grief we feel for the humans in our lives. Almost certainly she was not talking about cats; the queen does not strike me as being much of a cat person. But she does love her Corgis, and I'd be willing to bet that she has experienced the grief, more than once, of losing a beloved animal.

Some people, once they've lost a pet, say they will never get another because they know they would just be setting themselves up for more heartbreak. To me a much worse heartbreak would be to have to make our way through this life without any four-legged companions. And many people who say they can't bear the pain of loving and then losing an animal overlook the fact that we endure much the same cycles of love and loss in our human relationships; the difference is that the latter are generally longer and infinitely more complicated than those we share with our animals. What the bonds with our animals lack in longevity, they more than make up for in their utter purity. I wouldn't miss that experience of pure love for any amount of money, and Ron wouldn't either, though our hearts have been broken repeatedly and will almost certainly break again.

And, given the opportunity, if we had to do it over again, I think we would both gladly welcome Coca Bean Kaye into our home – grief, aggravation, and ruined couches and chairs be damned. I've always thought that furniture was over-rated, anyway.

Related:

• Good cartoon tribute to a cat (thanks to my friend Jonathan Cohen for pointing it out to me): http://www.salon.com/comics/lay/1998/09/08lay.html
• More about Bruce (and other cat-related matters): http://cosmicconnie.blogspot.com/2007/02/feline-feng-shui.html
• Cats and Christmas: http://cosmicconnie.blogspot.com/2006/12/signs-of-season.html
• A book I've ordered recently, because I enjoy the author's work and am intrigued by the topic: The Divine Life of Animals: One Man's Quest to Discover Whether the Souls of Animals Live On by Ptolemy Tompkins

Other resources that might be helpful:

• Pet loss and grief support: http://www.pet-loss.net/
• Tips on dealing with cat pee and spray: http://www.getridofthings.com/get-rid-of-cat-urine.htm
  (My current personal favorite, which is also recommended on the link above, is Simple Solution http://tinyurl.com/2fdy9s3 )
  
• Give indoor cats safe access to the outdoors with a Catarium: I know I pick on Joe Vitale a lot, but something like this is a genius idea if it is feasible on your property: http://www.catarium.com/index.html (Note: I am not an affiliate)

And finally...

• A violent relationship will almost invariably have a tragic ending unless you get out of it. The National Domestic Violence Hotline (US, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands): http://www.thehotline.org/

* * * * *

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Horse farts and related matters

"The people who are skeptical are the people who are the most unhappy, the most broke, the most struggling...the people you don't want to be with, let alone BE, because they're not radiating a passionate vibe of ecstatic life. You want to be around the happy, buoyant, vibrant people, the people who are doing things, the people like you and me."
~ Joe Vitale to Kevin Trudeau, in an interview on the Kevin Trudeau Radio Network, 15 July 2009

First of all, Dear Ones, I apologize for my extended absence from this Whirled. I was preoccupied with being sort of...er...um...skeptical, though far from unhappy, because I am nothing if not easily amused. I can always find something that makes me smile – horses, for example, and there are plenty of 'em around here. The daughter of the ranch owner rescues and boards horses in the stables and pastures that surround our house, and she was grateful when Ron helped save a colicky bay gelding a few weeks ago.

The triple-digit heat and drought around here have really contributed to equine stress. Ron saw that the horse was down and that his sides seemed to be a bit swollen, so he went into the pasture to try to get him to stand up. The bay tried several times and finally got to his feet, farting loudly in the process, but he was obviously in distress, and his sides were still a bit swollen, though observably not quite as swollen as they had been before the gas-passing. Almost immediately he lay back down, and nothing Ron could do would get him back up. After a series of phone calls we were able to get help for the horse, and now he's doing fine.

Following that, the ranch owner's daughter asked if we'd mind checking up on all of the horses every day just to make sure none of them are in distress. Certainly we don't mind! We love walking around this place and we love horses. There are ranch hands around here to see to the horses' needs, but there's a lot of work to do on this place, and the hands can't always be everywhere. So Ron and I have taken to visiting all of the horses at the end of the day, every day, and have gained some new equine buddies. Several of the sweet things whinny greetings to us as we approach their stalls, as if they're happy to see us or something. Of course, they don't get out much so maybe they're kind of like me – easily amused.

The good news is that I have apparently become a horse whisperer. To tell the truth, I don't even have to whisper. I merely have to think certain thoughts, and the horses pick up on it, judging by an experience I had the other day with a dark brown and white pinto gelding whose real name I don't know yet, but whom Ron and I now call Thundercloud, for reasons that will soon become obvious. After talking with the pinto a few minutes on a recent evening, we walked on to look at some pigs that are in a pen adjacent to the horse's enclosure. There are two young feral hogs and what looks like a potbelly pig, and though they're all just cute as can be, I fear they are destined for what one of our local goat farmers refers to as "freezer camp." I am kind of afraid to ask.

Anyway, as we made our way towards the porcine ghetto, the pinto followed us for the length of his fence, and I found myself stopping several times to gaze at him, thinking about what a handsome fellow he is. I imagined seeing him a couple of hundred years ago, being ridden by some native across the plains, and then I saw myself riding him bareback (although the truth is that I kind of suck at riding, even with a saddle), and I thought how marvelous it would be to see him galloping across an open field. I'd sure love to see him run, I thought to myself, and at the same moment the old Christopher Cross song, "Ride Like The Wind," popped into my head.

No sooner had these thoughts formed themselves than the object of my admiration snorted and broke into a run, tearing around his enclosure a couple of times. He ended with a flourish, kicking up his heels, raising a cloud of dust and letting loose with a truly thunderous fart that put the above-mentioned colicky horse's efforts to shame, loudness-wise.

"Geez, you really know how to impress a gal," I muttered. But I was indeed impressed by his obvious ability to pick up on my thoughts, as well as by his performance, notwithstanding the flatulence. (I know, I know... I shouldn't have thought about "wind.")

Anyhow, it's good to be back in the saddle, so to speak, and I appreciate your comments and support during my hiatus. Now that I am feeling a little more buoyant and vibrant, I am ready to get this blog rolling again.

Equine flatulence has nothing on this Poking around cyberspace, I see that nothing much changed while I was gone. The hustlers are still hustling, the scammers are still scamming, and the oceans of my Whirled are swirling with snark chum.

So let's get down to business, beginning with that quotation at the beginning of the post. The first thing you should know is that a "skeptic," in the context of the discussion from which the quotation was extracted, is anyone who pooh-poohs the validity (scientific and otherwise) of the Law Of Attraction. LOA was the topic of the recent conversation between the infamous serial conner Kevin Trudeau and his new b.f.f., Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale.

 Back in January, I wrote at length about the first meeting between True-dough and Mr. Fire. The relationship has apparently only grown stronger; as noted, Joe was featured on a recent Trudeau radio show, and if you go to the show's web site you'll see that his name appears on Kevin's short blogroll as well. They recently had dinner together in Chicago, and Joe's wife, Nerissa, got a chance to meet Kevin. She apparently has some food sensitivities and other health issues, and was delighted to have an opportunity to discuss them with him. As we all know, health issues are right down Kevin's alley. (Apropos of that, on another radio show segment Kevin supposedly gives the real story of what happened between him and that pesky FTC.) 

When introducing Joe, after the obligatory mention of Joe's Secret stardom, numerous bestselling books, etc., Kevin adds that Joe has "something very, very, very unique...a website that actually creates a group of people to send out vibrations for you to make the things that you want to happen, happen faster." This would be Joe's Attract Miracles online community, which, of course, was discussed at length a few months ago on this very blog.

Kevin talks about it as if he's a true believer. My guess is that he really doesn't buy into all of the woo stuff, and may even secretly hold much of it in contempt, but he recognizes a good cash cow when he sees it. As I've previously speculated, perhaps he sees his alliance with Mr. Fire as a good solid foot in the door of the lucrative New-Wage/selfish-help market.

Throughout the interview Joe and Kevin use their very best radio voices, both of them enunciating very, very, very cleaaaaarly, extending their words and emphasizing every other word so their listeners can reaaaallly understand what they say. I know this will probably come as a huge surprise to you, but they begin the interview with a lengthy discussion of...hold on to your hats.... JOE'S CARS. And that's pretty much how the interview ends as well. Once again, Joe uses his immense car collection as proof that his stuff not only works for him but can work for anyone, and that his own life and thinking are in order.

At one point fairly early on, Kevin asks if Joe's $5,000.00-a-head Rolls-Royce MasterMind sessions are really effective. "Do they really make a difference in the lives of the people who go on these rides?" Kevin asks (I'm paraphrasing here but that's the gist of the question). Joe says it seems so, because people are RAVING about their experiences. He claims that in the nearly one year he has been having the RR MasterMinds, "Everybody has had a breakthrough!" He explains that these aren't billionaires; they're just ord'nary folk who are ready to take their dreams and visions to the next level. 

Ord'nary folk who just happen to have five grand to throw around.

One such dreamer and visionary is Don Wilde, whose web site you absolutely owe it to yourself to read. (But remember, the address he gives on the site is not a retail location, so please do not visit without calling him first.) Don wants to change the world and make it a better place. He says he went on the Phantom ride at the urging of his "coach," a guy in New Mexico named Darshan Shanti (you have to wonder if that is his given name). Darshan describes himself as, among other things, a "professional ontologist." That's not oncologist, as in cancer doc, but ontologist. I am not sure exactly what it means to be a professional ontologist, but I suppose it's not relevant at the moment because this is about Don Wilde, not Coach Darshan. Anyhoo, Darshan apparently turned Don on to the idea of going on the Phantom Ride. (I can't help wondering why he would do this. Finder's fee? Or just because he truly had Don's best interests at heart? Heck if I know.)

So Don went on the ride, and was thrilled not only by the experience but by the fact that, incredibly, Joe invited him to a seminar to be held the following weekend by one of Joe's buddies, Pat O'Bryan. How lucky can one man get?!? Don went to that too, and apparently was on fire with excitement when it was over, but then he crashed and burned when he got home. All of his old "stuff" came right back to haunt him, gosh darn it.

Now, I think most of us could have told him that the high always wears off, for some sooner than others, but he didn't ask most of us. Fortunately he didn't need to, because Joe had given Don the obligatory bag o'books and other goodies at the end of the Rolls Royce session, so Don dragged them out and somehow got his inspiration renewed. Now he's psyched and ready to expand his vision, thanks to Joe.
Here's a bit from the products page of his web site:

Do you want to be wealthy? Of course you do. We want everybody in the world to become wealthy, and we're going to make that happen with our new product!

Here's why: "Make Everybody Rich", by Frederick Turner
I have been dealing with money issues since shifting out of 'job mode'* in March, and Darshan, who I've known as a friend and coach since 2002, suggested that I do his money workshop. He gave me the gift of it, that he normally charges $1,500.00 for! I had just read the Turner paper the other day after it was pointed to by Michael Strong, Chief Vision Officer of Freedom Lights Our World, and as I came through the transformation caused by Darshan's questions I put the two together and came up with a product plan which I am now executing with Darshan's blessing.

We're going to give away the most important piece of it as a free paper and we will create a Gratitude Fund to translate it into every language on Earth. As hundreds of thousands of people start to transform their lives with it, people will start to lift themselves out of poverty and despair and the chains of abusive power.

For those who have computers and the Internet, we're creating a software desktop application containing the whole workshop -- and again, we're making the key piece work for free! Think of it as an Interactive Mindset Trainer^TM , it's really powerful!
That's right. We believe you will get so much wealth and value in your life from the transformation caused by our free gift that not only will you gladly buy the rest, you'll bring so much wealth into your life that you'll gratefully shower our Gratitude Fund with money so that the rest of the world can benefit from this amazing system.

And so on. Be sure to follow that "Make Everybody Rich" link as well. Talk about brilliant satire; my hat is off to Frederick Turner.

You can see numerous other testimonials on the site promoting the Phantom rides, and some of the enthusiastic riders also list their web sites. I urge you to visit those too. My point is that there's no doubt that most of the folks who have been on the Rolls rides "rave" about the experience, and are glad to write their testimonials for Joe's site. But does all that raving translate into their actually making buckets of money, particularly over the long term, as Joe implies they will? Time will tell, but the evidence so far, judging from those web sites and blogs and such, is just not all that impressive.**

But then, what do I know? I'm the skeptical gal who attracts horse farts.

Those darned skeptics again
Kevin Trudeau has never been one to shy away from controversy, and in his interview with Joe he eventually gets down to the nitty-gritty, acknowledging that there's a bit of criticism regarding the Law Of Attraction. He asks Joe to 'splain the main criticisms of LOA. 

Joe is on that one like a fly on...um...a horse's eye. "Ah, the skeptics have several objections," he says, and you can almost see him rolling his eyes at the word "skeptics." Their chief objections, he says, are that LOA, as taught in The Secret, etc., doesn't work, that it's just magical thinking, and that it offers false hope. Well, Joe is here to tell the listeners that it does work, and that other people, not just Joe, are proving every day that it does, not only by attracting cars and other material goodies, but by attracting good relationships, healing themselves of awful diseases, and the like.

From there Joe and Kevin get into a brief but spirited scientifical discussion about brain vibes; Kevin points out the recent advances in brainwave-activated devices that help paralyzed people manipulate objects in their world. This is "proof" that thoughts have vibrations, and from there it's only logical to conclude that if you control those vibes you can lasso the LOA and make it do your will. Science has PROVEN this, Kevin asserts numerous times, and at one point Joe talks about how "the whole field of positive psychology has proven absolutely definitively that you get what you focus on."

(Regarding Kevin's example of the brain device for quadriplegics, it should be noted that it is a physical device, and only works when it is physically attached to the person's head (or, in some experiments, when chips are physically implanted into the brain). It's not a case of someone influencing remote physical reality with mere brain waves. But Kevin doesn't mention this little detail.)

Later in the interview, Kevin and Joe both spend a bit of time lamenting the plight of those poor pitiful schmucks whom Kevin refers to as "professional seminar attendees." These are the folks who go to all the motivational gurus' workshops and buy all the products, but are still flat broke. Joe says they're either not taking the right action (and he hastens to add that he was the one person in The Secret who said you have to take action), or they're being held back by subconscious beliefs.

Naturally, Joe has products and services to remedy these problems, such as his famous Miracles Coaching program that helps you clear out all that unconscious gunk. The truth, though – and I think Joe and Kevin are all too aware of it – is that those poor schmucks are a New-Wage guru's bread and butter, and if half of the stuff really did work half as well as promised, they'd probably stop buying so many products and workshops from Joe and Kevin and every other deity in the New-Wage pantheon.

So it would seem that even though one message Joe and Kevin are trying to convey is that critics and skeptics are losers, they also secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) believe that many of their very own most faithful customers are losers as well. In fact, they're banking on it.

Towards the end of the interview, in the customary nod to conspicuous altruism, Joe assures Kevin that his success is about much more than just buying expensive toys for himself; it has allowed him to help others. "I started a movement to end homelessness in this country," Joe explains, referring to his Operation Y.E.S., which, though first introduced to the world in March of 2008, still apparently consists of a single-page web site that allows one to sign up to receive information about Operation Y.E.S. when it is "launched."

Well, okay, Joe has mentioned that some of the proceeds from various products and workshops and web sites will go to Operation Y.E.S., but so far there's scant information about this "movement." One can be forgiven for speculating that the main "movement" is the steady flowing of funds into Joe's coffers.

The gist of the interview is that LOA and the stuff Joe teaches are for real and really do work, but you have to change your thinking. And when you do, your life will be transformed and miracles can occur. Kevin mentions that Joe has seen people who were transformed instantly when they finally "get it." Some have been transformed just from one conversation or session.

Joe agrees, adding that he wouldn't be surprised if some of Kevin's multitudes of listeners experienced an epiphany just from listening to this radio interview, either in real time or on their computers later. They may be leaning forward towards the radio to listen, and suddenly they'll just GET IT, he says (and again, I'm paraphrasing). I kept expecting him to say, "Put your hands on the radio, brothers and sisters, and you will be HEALED!" a la those old-timey radio preachers. Matter of fact, I can't help thinking that he had that in mind, especially given his fascination with the master motivators/manipulators from times past.

In due course, the two get back to ragging on "the skeptics." Kevin asks, "Isn't it true that the broke people are the skeptics?"

Joe praises Kevin for his "brilliant insight," asserting that basically skeptics are broke because they're unhappy, and they're unhappy because typically they are "closed down, reserved, second-guessing everything." He wraps it up by declaring vehemently, "Well, to hell with them. I want to move on!"

Making a list, and checking it twice...
And move on he has. He's still doing his lucrative Rolls-Royce Masterminds, is also still busy on the lecture and interview circuit, and of course, he continues to churn out books and other products, either solo or as a joint venture with one or another of his pals. One solo book currently in the works is called Attract Money Now, and in a recent blog post publicizing the book, Joe offers a cheat sheet/teaser in the form of a list, "29 ways to attract money NOW." He explains that his book will go into much more detail about the items on the list, and will also include – and here is something devastatingly original – a seven-step formula for attracting money. Will the surprises just never stop coming?

Here are a few highlights from Joe's list (and hold on, because these tips will absolutely blow you away):

1. If you’re in the US, and in an emergency, call 211.
2. Call the Silent Unity prayer line in the US: 1-740-362-4214.
3. Give money to wherever you received inspiration or encouragement.
4. Buy something you want and can afford.

Shopaholics, are you paying attention? Break out that plastic that you promised the folks in your church's Dave Ramsey study group that you'd destroy, but that you really hid in your underwear drawer. It's time to dig the Visa, Mastercard and Discover cards out of that pile of stained tidy-whities or faded Victoria's Secret thongs, and buy your way out of moneylessness! But only if you can afford it, of course.

There's much more. F'rinstance, who knew that watching movies could attract scads of cash to your doorstep?

7. Watch the movie The Secret.
8. Watch the movie The Compass.
9. Watch the movie Try It On Everything.

He saves the best for almost last, though:

26. Imagine what you would do if you won the lotto for $37,000,000. Do it.
28. Get a job. While you pursue your dream, feed yourself with work.

Oh. My. God. Who would have dreamed that getting a job could help you attract money? That whole problem of massive unemployment that the talking heads are always yawping about is unfortunate and in some cases even tragic but, as it turns out, soooo unnecessary. Those unemployed people should just get jobs. Have the news media picked up on this one yet? Oh. Wait. I guess it wouldn't matter much if they did, because number 11 on Joe's list is, "Turn off the mainstream news."

I have to admit that my first thought upon reading this list, which seemed a tad simplistic even by New-Wagey standards, was, "He has GOT to be on glue." But I am pretty sure that Joe is not into inhalants or any other illegal intoxicants, so my next thought was, "He's beating me at my own game. This is brilliant parody. Or self-parody." Upon further consideration, however, I came to the conclusion that this list is intended to be serious, or at least to seem serious enough to get people interested in his book. Then the more I looked at it, the more I became convinced that not only is the list serious, but it is profound in the way that only Joe can be profound. So I have completely changed my thinking, and now I believe that this country owes a big round of thanks to Mr. Fire. "Oprah" has already thanked him***, as have numerous other respondents. 

And the world's most successful huckster, Kevin Trudeau, just can't seem to get enough of him. I think we can expect great things from the happy, buoyant, vibrant True-dough/Mr. Fire team in the future. It's enough to make you want to joyfully run and kick up your heels and...well, you know.
PS ~ The radio show interview described above is not the only scintillating conversation between Mr. Fire and True-dough. If you order Joe's amazing "Hypnotic Marketing Library" you will get a free copy of Joe's interview with Kevin from Joe's "Hypnotic Gold" series.

In this interview, Kevin reveals, among other things, how he made his first million by the age of thirteen; how to maintain a high level of confidence even in a prison cell...um... I mean, even in turbulent times; and "the shocking answer" to how the Law of Attraction relates to all of the "controversy" Kevin attracts. And the whole shebang is only $197.00. Oh, and Joe says that if you buy the program you will also learn how to virtually enslave all of your prospects, compelling them to "whip out the plastic" every time. Sounds pretty kinky to me. (Actually, it sounds pretty icky.)

* "Shifting out of job mode" in this context sounds suspiciously like the result of an involuntary separation from one's job – a scenario that's all too common these days. Can you blame a New-Wage entrepreneur for glomming onto a money op with desperate, vulnerable, recently unemployed folks who just happen to have a bit of cash saved up? Of course, I'm reading between the lines here, as I sometimes do, and I could very well be wrong. If I am, I trust that someone will let me know so I can retract or revise my comments.

** Okay, I know my own business web site is less than impressive and is long overdue for an update/redesign (I'm working on it!), but at least Ron and I create tangible products (books), and we offer services that, I am reasonably certain, do not make you scratch your head and say, 'WTF?'

*** Another respondent actually asked if that was really Oprah. Yup, this is the market any New-Wage guru should aim for: the easily fooled.

* * * * *

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Feline Feng Shui?

If you have cats, and you keep them indoors, you probably know something about Feline Rearrangement Compulsion Syndrome, or FRCS, which is a chronic condition I just made up. Or rather, I just made up the name. I certainly had nothing to do with the syndrome, which has been around at least as long as cats have been cohabiting with people. Cats, it seems, are never quite satisfied with their environments and are continually in the process of changing and rearranging, destroying and recreating. The time not spent dozing, playing, scarfing down food, licking themselves, or coughing up hairballs is devoted to moving your stuff around to suit their fancy.

I know, because I’ve been living with indoor cats for many years, and Ron and I currently share our home with three of the little stinkers. When we go to bed at night, the living room, which is the cats’ part of the house, is in perfect order. Or at least it’s as close to perfect as it’s going to get in the care of negligent housekeepers. More often than not, however, when we wake up the next day we find knick-knacks and DVDs pulled off of shelves, pictures askew, lampshades all cockeyed, newspapers scattered and shredded, Ron's bicycle moved halfway across the room and tipped over on its side, even the occasional chair or sofa moved. Sometimes the place looks like the disheveled love nest after Rene Russo and Pierce Brosnan had their inaugural boink in The Thomas Crown Affair remake. During Christmas, I have a devil of a time keeping the living room decorations in place, thanks to my feline decorating committee. And throughout the year, anything small and lightweight that isn’t nailed down is likely to be cat-batted across the room, behind or underneath furniture, or even, quite possibly, into another dimension.

Ron has a simple explanation for all of this: "The world is a cat toy." (And whenever we have this conversation, he invariably starts humming the old War song, The World is a Ghetto, which, I am sorry to say, will now probably be going through your head for the rest of the day.) Animal behaviorists, of course, explain that cats are hunters by nature, and in lieu of prey, they’ll slap or bat around toys, food particles, household items, other pets, dangling human naughty bits or anything else that’s even marginally slappable. And then, of course, there are situations in which the wacky reshuffling or outright destruction of household items can be classified merely as collateral damage resulting from frenzied feline romping.

I’d always more or less believed the hunter/prey and collateral damage explanations, but I also believed that sometimes cats mess with our stuff out of spite. They crap in our shoes when they’re p.o.’d at us, or they find some other way to let their ire be known. For nearly eighteen years I shared my life with Bruce, a human in a cat body whom I still miss more than any animal I’ve lost in the past few years. Bruce was a large and beautiful tuxedo longhair who was not only one of the most talkative and profoundly affectionate cats I've ever known, but also, alas, one of the most destructive. Once I accidentally locked Bruce in the bedroom while I was gone from the house for a few hours. When I returned, it was to his loud and persistent complaint about having been imprisoned for so long.

Knowing my little guy’s destructive tendencies, I looked around the bedroom with apprehension. And at first glance, all seemed to be in order, but then I looked over at one of my bookcases and saw that someone had removed an expensive and somewhat rare illustrated children’s book, one of my favorites, and had flung it to the floor. It was only one book out of a couple hundred in the room. Moreover, it was packed tightly in between other books and had to have taken some effort to extract; I’d have thought opposable thumbs, or at least fingers, would have been a minimum requirement. But Bruce, or perhaps some impish creature from another world, had somehow managed to remove the prized book from the shelf (leaving the surrounding volumes neatly in place), toss it to the floor, take off the dust jacket without tearing it, and then crap on the lovely illustrated jacket. The book itself was unharmed, but what’s a book worth to a collector without its jacket?

After that, I was hard-pressed to believe any animal "expert" who claims that our companion animals are incapable of acting out of spite.

But it turns out that maybe Ron, the animal behaviorists and I have never had the whole story about why cats mess with our stuff. It’s not necessarily a manifestation of the hunter-prey dynamic, it’s not invariably a side effect of roughhousing, and it doesn’t always have to do with spitefulness.

It’s very possible that a cat who constantly rearranges household objects may have Feng Shui issues.

Feng Shui, as you no doubt know, is the ancient Chinese art of arranging one’s environment in ways that are harmonious with nature. It’s been around for thousands of years, but in the past decade or so it has really taken hold in the West, and now there’s a Feng Shui "expert" on every New-Wage corner. There’s even a gal in Connecticut who can Feng Shui your food; I blogged about her last September. In cities with a relatively large and influential Asian population, such as my own beloved Bayou City, the Feng Shui influence can even be seen increasingly in architectural design. And that’s fine with me. I’ve always been fascinated with octagons and would someday love to live in an octagonal-shaped house – not for any Feng Shui reasons but just because I think it’s a really cool shape.

Feng Shui is all about placing everything in one’s surroundings in such a way that there’s an optimal flow of a life force known as qi, or chi, as some spell it. I don’t know much about qi, apart from the fact that it seems to have caused quite a furor on this blog and a couple of others in the past week or so. At any rate, the result of this optimal flow of qi is, supposedly, a balanced and harmonious environment.

Apparently humans aren’t the only species for whom balance and harmony are essential. Feng Shui can benefit our animals as well, and I have that on good authority, the authority being Sharon Callahan (pictured above), a Mt. Shasta, California animal communication specialist and creator of her own brand of flower essences for animals. She's got a halo and everything, so I assume she's pretty evolved. I found an article by Sharon in the January 2007 issue of Natural Awakenings magazine, one of those New-Age/New-Wage freebie rags that’s available in a growing number of markets in the US. According to Sharon, "Cats, in particular, are extremely sensitive to the energies given off by different objects and the energies generated by different configurations of objects."

Sharon writes that when she communicates with small animals, which, naturally, she does telepathically, they often convey to her "a sense of discomfort with their indoor environment." She says the cats and other small animals transmit a mental picture to her of the undersides of beds, couches or other pieces of furniture. While these areas may be NBD to us, she explains, they comprise a great deal of our animals’ world.

Many of Sharon’s clients complain to her that their cats frequently explore the tops of their dressing tables, dining tables, kitchen counters, and other places where there are delicate objects or food is being prepared.

"Well, duh, that’s what cats do," I said to myself. They do it partly to see what’s going on in the upper regions of their world, but they also do it for the sheer bloody fun of it – and I just know they score extra points in their demonic little games for knocking valuable items to the floor, or getting their litter-encrusted paws into our food. Which is why Ron and I keep our cats shut away from the food-prep and computer areas of the house.

But Sharon has a different take on kitty’s compulsion to jump up on the table, dingle-berries and all, and get her butt as close as possible to your plate while you’re trying to eat dinner. "When questioned about this type of behavior during telepathic communication sessions," Sharon writes, "cats will often communicate that they like the energy in these places; they experience a sense of order, cleanliness and beauty that they do not experience when on the floor."

Hmmm….food for thought, though the implication that cats are obsessed with cleanliness is a little suspect. So, does this mean that we should just stop using tables and other furniture, and live our lives totally at cat-level in order to make kitty feel included and completely loved? For that matter, should we abandon that imperious upright-walking affectation and just crawl about on all fours in the presence of our beloved felines? Or, alternatively, should we give up and just let the pointy-ears join us on the upper levels? Well, those are certainly possibilities worth considering. (For other ways to make your cat feel utterly adored, click here.)

But Sharon has another idea. Instead of giving up our own high-level living, or resigning ourselves to litter tracks on the stove and cat hair in the soup, we should beautify and harmonize things at cat level. "Small container plants close to the floor, along with mirrors and sacred objects, make them very happy," writes Sharon. "They respond immediately to this arranging on their behalf and consequently, they spend far less time on furniture."

To illustrate her point, Sharon tells the story of how she once created an altar of remembrance for her cat Shoji on the floor in a corner of her bedroom. "I decorated it with fresh flowers, shells, rocks and a small statue of St. Francis, the patron saint of animals. Shoji loved his altar and would spend happy times in front of it, lying on his back in a kitty yoga posture." How Shoji learned yoga, Sharon does not say. She does explain that Shoji knew this was his special place.

That got me to thinking about why Bruce was often so destructive, and why my current crop of cats are all so intent on displacing everything in their part of the house. Perhaps it's because I've never created a "special place" for them. And no doubt the Feng Shui was all wrong in that bedroom I locked Bruce in. He wasn't p.o.'d about being locked in; he was just upset because the place was unbalanced. Who knows, maybe that organic sculpture he deposited on my book cover was just what he felt was needed to restore balance.

I know that by now you’re saying, "Well gee, Cosmic Connie, this all sounds pretty plausible, but how do we know that Sharon is really communicating with animals? And just how does she do it?"

Let me let her tell you. This is from one of the bio pages on her web site:

Although I have worked and communicated with animals all of my life, after a near death experience many years ago, I was given the ability to commune with animals in a very unique way. When I attune to an animal, I experience an actual merging of myself and the animal. In this merged state, I am able to feel what the animal feels and experience what it experiences. So the animal is not actually "telling" me something in the way that we usually perceive of "telling," but it is more that the animal allows my soul to merge with its soul.

I hope that clears it up for you.

Communicating psychically with animals has become quite a thriving industry in recent years, and I’d say it has to be a pretty easy gig. All you have to do is like animals, have a reasonably active imagination, and be willing to take people's money. Piece o'cake. I might try it myself.

Journalist Emily Yoffe wrote a piece in Slate a couple of years ago about her experiences at a workshop with an animal communicator she calls Delphine. Wrapping up the first day of the workshop, Delphine reminded everyone who was going to the next day’s advanced workshop to bring photographs of their animals. The idea was that by looking at the photo of their beloved, they could communicate long distance with him or her. Apparently they would find it easier to receive an accurate message because they wouldn’t be limited by reading the pet’s body language. One woman asked if they could bring pictures of animals that had died, and Delphine said, "Absolutely."

"It didn't matter if the animal was asleep, in the room, or even alive," writes Yoffe. "Delphine implied the deader the animal, the better and more pure the communication."

Sharon Callahan certainly doesn’t seem to limit her readings to the live animals her clients bring to her. When describing the "merging" process by which she communicates with an animal, she says:

This merging gives me access not only to the animals current state of health and well being, but often allows me to view the entire "life stream" consciousness of that particular species. Life stream in the broadest sense is a morphic field or soul group energy associated with a particular life form such as Dog, Cat, Horse, Elephant. or Human. A life stream can extend throughout time and across many incarnations of a particular being or whole species of beings. Tapping into the animal's life stream consciousness allows access to information about karmic learning's being played out in the individual animal and its overall species.

Given all that, I’m sure that Sharon knows what she’s talking about when she writes about the importance of creating a balanced and harmonious home environment for our pets. But don’t just take her word for it. No less an authority than Andrew Harvey, author and "sacred activism" expert, said in a recent interview: "If your animal is happy, the house will smile. And if your house smiles, all your hopes will flourish."

Well, hey, I’m convinced. No longer will I get all worked up about my pointy-eared angels’ penchant for altering my carefully arranged clutter. I’m going to go out to the 99 cent Only Store, where I spend most of my discretionary income anyway, and I’ll pick up some plastic flowers, candles, mirrors and other stuff to decorate the cat-level area of the house, all in keeping with Feng Shui principles, of course. And just for good measure, I'll go ahead and Feng Shui the entire room. That should put an end to the Feline Rearrangement Compulsion Syndrome once and for all. I’ll make the table tigers so friggin' happy that the house will be grinning like, well, a Cheshire cat.

But I’ll still miss Bruce.

Signs of the season

Despite my apparent crankiness in recent blog posts, and notwithstanding a bunch of other stuff that’s going on in my world but is beyond the scope of this blog, I really, really am trying to be holly-jolly this season. But if I hear one more ludicrously over-rendered version of Silent Night, heaved up by some blinged-out, excessively self-important young "diva" who isn't qualified to even whisper Aretha Franklin's name, I am going to commit an act of violence.Silent Night is a simple, lovely tune. It’s okay to occasionally perk up the beat a bit (a la Angie Aparo) so it won’t sound so much like a boring hymn droned out by a bunch of tight-ass church folks, but it does not need to be over-sung. I am not only deeply unimpressed but profoundly annoyed by all of those twittery, quivery, utterly unnecessary notes that the "divas" seem compelled to produce for the same reason a dog licks his naughty bits – simply because they can.


And while you’re at it, divas, stop over-singing The Star-Spangled Banner and Amazing Grace.

Okay, now I shall try to be a little more positive. It is, after all, a holy season. And in spite of my on-again off-again cynicism about the season, I do have my sentimental moments. For instance, I always feel a little tug at my fourth chakra when I visit a friend’s home and behold the Christmas tree, all decked out with bright shiny objects and surrounded by a huge stack of presents that will be torn open on Christmas morning and forgotten before the New Year. It’s not the presents I envy. I only wish, for a moment, that The Rev and I could have a Christmas tree too.

But we can’t. This is not due to cynicism or any sort of religious conflicts. Cynics we may be, but we enjoy fine Pagan traditions, of which the Christmas tree is one, just as much as any agnostic-animist-Jewish-wannabe* / Buddhist** couple.

We cannot have a Christmas tree because of the cats.

Our cats – three of ’em, at last count – are strictly-indoor table tigers, as I strongly believe all suburban and urban felines should be. They do not, however, have free run of the house. We keep them out of the kitchen and dining areas, the bedrooms, and the offices where the computers are. They are allowed to accompany us into the bathroom, but due to their search-and-destroy lifestyle, they generally aren’t allowed to stay in there by themselves. (We even have a sign on the inside of our bathroom door for the benefit of guests who don’t know the house rules.)
The living room and the adjoining hallway are cat territory. This means that anyone who happens to be lounging around in the living room watching TV is fair game to be cat furniture. So it’s a good thing that all of our friends like cats. Unfortunately, the living room is also the only feasible place for a Christmas tree. Equally unfortunately, cats have hands, and they know how to use them.

Nevertheless I have tried to make the space somewhat festive. Though there’s no tree, I hung a large fake wreath on the wall above the entertainment center, mostly but not completely out of cat reach.

Occasionally a furry little hand will reach up and swipe at a fake flower, or grab a fake holly leaf that I will later find regurgitated on The Rev’s armchair, but so far the wreath itself has remained in place. The real problem, if you could call it a problem, has been with the fake garland I placed above the living room window. This is the only window in the room, and it’s one of those high-up windows. The Rev built a "kitty shelf" for the dear little demons so they can spend their days reclining on the shelf, gazing out at the wide world. (Wicked Rev also recently placed some bird and squirrel feeders in and around the trees just outside the window, but so far it hasn’t caused a frenzy. At least it generally hasn’t come to the teeth-chattering point.)

Not surprisingly, the cats have decided that the Christmas garland, by virtue of being above their window, belongs to them. Every morning I come out to find the garland has been torn down, with some of its leaves and flowers scattered carelessly around the room. I sort of like that look, but I realize that if the garland is on the floor, the dogs (four, at last count) can and will eat it when we all gather in the living room at night to watch one of our sentimental holiday movies such as Die Hard, Bad(der) Santa or The Long Kiss Goodnight. So I dutifully replace the garland, only to find my work undone the next morning. This morning I came out not only to find that the garland had been torn down and fragments of it scattered asunder, but that los tigres had also strewn yesterday’s newspaper all over the living room, turned on the Rev’s reading light,***, pulled some DVDs off the shelf, and knocked over a chair or two.

Hmmm. Maybe I’d better reconsider this "indoor cat" arrangement.
In spite of their destructive tendencies, I probably wouldn’t trade the little dears for the most glorious Christmas tree in the world, or, for that matter, for decent furniture, which we will never have. Life is a trade-off, and our pointy-eared angels bring The Rev and me far more joy than material things ever could. Most of the time, anyway.

And speaking of angels…well, it is the season and all that, and I found a little piece in First, The Magazine For Women on The Go, a mostly brainless guilty-pleasure supermarket women’s rag that I buy for bathroom reading, as the magazine’s tag line suggests. (It’s not all intellectual literary stuff with me. For someone who can be such an ineffable snob at times, I actually have some pretty lowbrow tastes.)

Anyway, First, like many other magazines – particularly at this miracle-ridden time of year – has gotten on kind of an angel kick. The piece that caught my eye in the latest issue is titled, "3 signs angels are watching over you." According to Trish Chastain-Sage (what a name, huh?), a "specialist in spiritual healing through angels," any of the following three signs "could be an indication of divine protection and oversight":

1. FEATHERS: "Finding a feather in an unexpected place is a clear signal that an angel is nearby," maintains Chastain-Sage. Angels want to subtly alert us to their presence, she says, and these feather "hints" are one way they go about it.
2. SUDDEN POSITIVE FEELINGS: Experiencing a bright burst of optimism that seems to come out of nowhere, ad if your cares are being lifted away, means that in all likelihood you’ve just been embraced by a spiritual helper, Chastain-Sage asserts.
3. RUSH OF WARMTH: "A sudden warm sensation is an indication that a heavenly guide is helping to heal something inside you, be it an emotional or a physical wound," explains Chastain-Sage. These types of feelings are typically experienced during the night or early morning, when we are most open to spiritual intervention.

I couldn’t help noticing how Chastain-Sage likes to maintain, assert, and explain. It sounds to me as if some junior staff member was hitting the online thesaurus pretty hard. Apart from that, I also couldn’t help thinking of a few alternative explanations for these magical signs. I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s angel parade, but I think it is important to explore all possibilities.

Take that "rush of warmth." It could be angels, yes, but it could also be a sign from Goddess that the Estroven is no longer working, and it’s time to look into some bioidentical HRT. And those "sudden positive feelings?" Maybe that Vicodin-Soma cocktail you forgot you gulped a half hour ago to help you cope with the holidays has just kicked in. And as for those feathers in unexpected places, I'd say it is entirely possible that your own pointy-eared angel has just successfully hunted your favorite down pillow.

If I were you, I’d check the bird feeders too.
* Me
** The Rev
*** Since it was mainly ads that were scattered, I suspect they were hunting for last-minute Christmas bargains in the paper.