I don't know that I've ever taken a regular vacation. I've traveled some, taken time off here and there to visit relatives, I've backpacked and canoed and hiked and biked for most of my life. But I can't remember the last time I went somewhere and just rested. I always say I'm gonna take a vacation and just sit around the house, but even that wouldn't work, since I would invariably start working on some house-related project. So when Jeannie told me her family was getting together in the Virgin Islands, at first I didn't think much of it. But then it started to sink in: I could tag along, ostensibly to meet and hang out with her family, while getting a chance to sit in an exotic location and, in the immortal words of Peter Gibbons, "sit on my ass and do ... nothing."

Tickets were cheap because it was off-season. My dad gravely informed me that mid-September is the height of hurricane activity. But they hadn't had one in over 10 years, and anyway, according to all the insurance companies, New York is where all the cool hurricanes wanna go these days. We had a direct flight there, which was great. 3.5 hours and we're there. Downside was the flight was at 7:30 in the morning. Consequently we slept through a good deal of the flight.

Jeannie's sister and her husband run a construction company on St. Thomas. This means they were able to build their house themselves, which resulted in one of the most awesome houses of all time. Y0u can see in the photos, it's deceptively large, has pretty much every amenity you can think of (plus something like 5 bathrooms), and is smack dab in the middle of a rain forest. The plot of land that house sits on contains a huge boulder that would have been very, very expensive to disintegrate. Normally, home builders would just have to bite the bullet and pay for the rock's removal, but they had a better idea: just build the house around it! So in several rooms of the house you see this big rock protruding from the wall. the best example is in the master bathroom, which gives the room a grotto-like atmosphere. The other big protrusion is being turned into the centerpiece of an indoor koi pond (!) That is what we call "pragmatism."

The house has a hot tub and an in-ground pool, plus satellite TV that receives just about every channel every invented (though "Top Chef" and "Judge Judy" seemed to be on a lot). the forest surrounding the house was full of plants that I normally only see as indoor houseplants, and there were lizards all over the place. Between the lizards and the tiny (but really loud) tree frogs, the bugs were kept mostly in check (I didn't really get any mosquito bites until I got back). The days were warm, but comfortable. It only rained once I think, and even that was fairly picturesque. Everything about the house said 'relax, have a drink or three ...' Just what the doctored ordered. Frankly, I would have been happy to lie around for a week, catching up on Good Eats (ah, cable!)

But of course, there was a whole exotic world out there to see. St. Thomas has those beaches you see in the movies, with the white powdery sand and the weird, turquoise-colored ocean. There were palm trees and iguanas (!) all over the place, some of which we fed lettuce and bell peppers (iguanas are vegetarians more or less). The water is very calm, warm, and the salt content makes you float like a bar of Ivory. We hit three main beaches, two on St. Thomas and one on St. Johns, where we went for a day trip. At the latter we snorkeled around a coral reef, which was pretty sweet. I gotta look up all the weird fish we saw. I know I saw a sting ray, some parrot fish, Blue Tang, and something called a "Sergeant Major" which looked like Charlie Brown in his yellow and black jersey.

Despite my best efforts, I got sunburned pretty much by the second outing. I don't understand how sunblock is supposed to work, I got SPF 50 and the first day I was fine. But after snorkeling (picture my hairy back directly skyward for a couple of hours) I looked like a lobster and felt like a stupid tourist. My only solace came from the fact that everybody else got burned as well. Misery loves company!

Somehow I ended up doing a lot of driving. Jeannie's sister lent me her car (some kind of 4x4) to tool around the island. Let me say this about the roads of the Virgin Islands: they will scare the hell out of you. Even the well-maintained roads are incredibly twisty, turning back and forth at a moment's notice, going up and downhill and severe inclines, with hidden drives around every corner. I don't think one intersection on that entire island describes a 90-degree angle; every street crossing was at odd angles, making it hard to tell which way was 'straight.' And god forbid they should put street names at the intersections! Is this 33? 301? 35? 42? Augh!

That said, I did all right. No accidents, just a lot of sharp inhales from the back seat, and a fair amount of turning around to find a turn I had missed. Of course, the real upside is the autonomy having a car provides. We were able to go wherever we wanted (though with the threat of getting lost), we could happily turn down the near-constant barrage of taxi come-ons when we were down in the shopping district in Charlotte Amalie. When we took the ferry to St. Johns we rented a big car to comfortable seat all 5 of us, which again added to my whole "relax in comfort" thing.

Speaking of shopping, because the Virgin Islands are not states, they skirt many of the regulations that burden us landlubbers, including sales tax. Consequently, anything that's pricey due to tariffs was generally pretty cheap there. I bought a liter of Bombay Sapphire for $13 (I paid nearly $50 for one bought at the liquor store down the street). Cigarettes ranged $11-23 per carton, compared to around $70 here. I guess perfume was also cheaper, but I don't really have a frame of reference. For some reason, gas was really expensive, as was a lot of fresh produce. There was a gourmet grocery there, so we had all our usual lazy vegetarian stuff, plus supplies to make guacamole, hummus and mango salsas. I would also like to point out that while my local grocery store does not carry tahini, this store carried 5 varieties (two of which are manufactured in New York. Go figure.)

At some point, the cat chased an iguana into the house. This was awesome, a huge-ass lizard scurrying around the house like a trapped pigeon. Eventually he was shooed out the door, no harm done. I wish we had big lizards roaming around. I was happy to see there was a stray cat being fed, who strongly resembled one of our strays, Flossie. They also had a hamster, who didn't really do much except sit around and stuff peanuts into his mouth pouch. At night, the tiny tree frogs came out and made an enormous racket. It sounded like something off a sound effects record. I wish I had brought my dB meter, they may have been louder than the J train when it passes by my house.

We hit a few bars, the best one, Sibs, was the quintessential locals bar. Damn those drinks were cheap. And with all the money we saved, it was time for some video gambling! These multi-game machines are all over the place on the Islands (St. Croix is the only one with a real casino). Jeannie and I lost modest amounts on blots and blackjack, while our host won $200 playing Keno. I have no idea what Keno is or how it is played. But apparently it pays to learn.

Anyway, we went on like this all week, at times it was a little more exhausting than I would have liked. But no matter how tiring a given activity was, everything was mitigated by the fact that I had no hard decisions to make. I was up for anything, but was happy doing absolutely nothing as well. It was nice to have the physical separation from home so it was easy to forget about an unstable job situation, a messy house, stray cats, gunplay on my street, irritating commutes. I think I understand why people get hooked on heroin now!

The journey back was hard. I felt ill most of the morning, which was either due to nerves or the gallon of whiskey I drank the night before. We may never know. We had to make a connection in Miami so our trip was nearly twice as long. We were seated next to a baby who, while very cute, also made a lot of noise, not to mention the fact that it basically meant there were 4 humans in our row (Why do they let people 'carry on' a baby without buying it a seat? they spend all that time telling you to strap yourself in, but a tender-headed infant? Just plop it on your lap!) After an interminable wait at baggage claim and a traffic-ridden ride home, I was relived to be back. Even if our house isn't as fancy or full of cool stuff, it's still our house, full of our cats. Plus we feel inspired by example to do stuff to our house. Now we just need our own construction company.

One of Jeannie's other sisters lives in Hawaii. I'm feeling uncharacteristically familial all of a sudden.

Labels: Photos, Vacation

Here's the pictures of our trip. I'll write something more about it in a bit, still got a lotta work to deal with and everybody at the office has been taking Stupid Pills since the merger announcement. For the time being, I think the above photo captures the essence of the entire week.

Labels: Photos, Vacation

We are back from the Virgin Islands and dealing with all the shit that has been hitting the fan since we left. As they have been warning us for the past year, the parent company who owns my division has sold us out to some other company. This happened in the middle of my vacation and since nobody can be trusted to handle anything while I'm gone, I found myself at an internet cafe inside a tourist spot in Charlotte Amalie, posting boilerplate statements from the CEO and whatnot while people played pool and drank all around me (okay, I was drinking too).

Ultimately, this 'transition' as they constantly refer to it, probably won't be that big a deal, it sounds like everybody will get to keep their jobs, though they might just be telling us that so nobody freaks out prematurely. Other than this ground-shaking stuff, we have all the usual post-vacation blues of having to catch up on work and dealing with having to get up every morning in a sub-resort quality home full of cats who are not as accommodating as the ones we spent the week with.

Actually, the cats are fine. They all weathered the week well, it seems, even the outdoor ones. One of the kittens has already been by and there's even a new kid in town: a big orange tiger cat. We'd seen him around but in the past week he seems to have befriended the locals. He's fixed, so I think it's just the neighbor's cat (he was previously spotted darting into a window down the street). Jefe has a lovely new habit, however: he grabs the roll of toilet paper and just starts biting it, ripping out huge wads of paper which are all over the bathroom now. Jeannie noted that it resembled the act of rending meat from the bone, maybe he misses the chicken wings upon which he used to subsist on the streets.

Anyway, we took nearly 400 photos, which I am going through now (so far 50% seem to be of the little lizards which run all over the place there). So I'll soon have a whole album/write-up of the experience, but in short: the folks who put us up are now our favoriteist relatives ever and we intend to spend much more time with them in the foreseeable future. And I'm not just saying that since they let us stay in the super fancy deceptively large house in the middle of a subtropic island which contains those white beaches you see in postcards and the cheapest liquor I have ever seen (where else can you buy a liter of Bombay Sapphire for $13?) It was a great time all-around, in every way pretty much the polar opposite of New York City (in a good way on both sides).

Except for the stray cats! There were only a few, but each one corresponded to stray cats we have here, which was pretty strange (there was a calico whose markings matched Flossie's unusual patterns, AND is currently nursing a littler, just like she is). So we felt at home. Anyway, I gotta do all this stupid work now, I'll talk more about the trip shortly. Work sucks.

Labels: Cats, Good Stuff, Job, Vacation

Tomorrow I'm going to the Virgin Islands. I'm not really clear on where that is exactly, but I was looking at a map and it seems to be among a tangle of little islands in the Caribbean. I also learned that there is no real difference between the terms "Caribbean" and "West Indies." I used to think these were discrete regions but apparently not. I'm not sure I should be allowed to go to a place I know so little about, but hey ... God Bless America.

My girlfriend's sister lives there, otherwise I'm not sure we could justify such a trip. I'll be spending the week surrounded by her relatives, which I am hoping will be very enlightening. She has a lot of siblings, some of whom she hasn't seen in many years, so neither of us really knows what to expect. We're both optimistic yet slightly fearful that somebody will want to do stuff while we're there.

My parents have a problem in that they can't sit still for five minutes, they're constantly running around futzing with stuff. It's like living with enormous hummingbirds in the kitchen. I am striving to deny this genetic predisposition and actually relax instead of feeling the need to jump from one project or another. So I'm looking forward to this trip for its possibility of doing nothing.

We're both hoping to lie around on a beach or something while we're there, unconsciously re-enacting a Corona commercial while slowly acquiring sunstroke. Our fear is that somebody in the family will utter the phrase "parasailing" or "walking tour" or "mini golf." Maybe later in the week I'll feel like, I dunno, snorkeling or something. But for now I just want to do nothing for a little while. When I get home then, theoretically, I'll be raring to go on the many projects I have been putting off, not to mention finishing the new web site at my job with the exceptional flourishes that have come to be my professional signature.

Labels: Vacation

After the debacle of trying to capture kittens the other night, I have been afraid we spooked them so much that they wouldn't come back. Well, we still might have over-spooked those two kittens, but the original kitten returned last night, along with a totally new kitten (pictured above).

I haven't seen this little orange guy at all among Gladys' kittens, but unless he's a tag-along, he's just lat to the party. He ate some, then lurked in the shadows for the rest of the night.

His brother (I think) turned up and basically ate an entire can of cat food himself. Jeannie was able to even touch him briefly; he's not easily scared and usually comes right back if something makes him run off.

We gave him a catnip mouse and he grabbed it and ran outside with it. I saw it out on the areaway later in the night but this morning it was nowhere to be found.

Before I went to bed I shined a flashlight into the storage space under the stoop. I could see that Gladys had climbed back there (she's still small enough to squeeze through the gate door), I assume the kittens were with her. When we left this morning we checked and saw only the orange kitten sleeping there. This works out pretty well as we can leave food there and the bigger cats won't be able to get at it.

We're going out of town next week, which means Matt and Sylvia get to feed all these cats. It's one thing to do it yourself but you really do see how ridiculous it is when you have to train others to keep up your insane antics. But still, we gotta feed these kittens! I hate to lose a week of possible socialization time with them, but there should still be time when we get back to give 'em the My Fair Lady treatment and dole 'em out on an unsuspecting public.

Labels: Bushwick, Cats, Feral, kittens, Strays

If you read The New Yorker, you may have seen this full-page ad with a cute kitten, drawing your attention to the hypocrisy of The Humane Society of the United States. It discusses how HSUS puts none of its money into animal shelters, nor does it run any kind of spay/neuter program or pet adoption programs. At first, I admit I was all like, "Son of a bitch, those thievin' bastards! " Then it occurred to me, the Humane Society has NEVER been an animal-shelter level organization. They focus mostly on industrial animal welfare, like cows going to slaughter or chinchillas being raised for fur. They work for broad, sweeping changes to animal cruelty laws in general; other groups handle things like shelters and adoptions. So why would the posters of this no-doubt expensive ad be trying to rile us up over a non-existent issue?

Turns out the people behind the ad, ActivistCash.com, is the "Center for Consumer Freedom," itself a front of the restaurant, tobacco and alcohol industries. Their web site is full of lurid allegations about other "anti-consumer" groups (like the fairly unimpeachable Center for Science in the Public Interest), very little of which is actually damning. ActivistCash divides its time making pointless accusations, such as those against the Humane Society's lack of animal shelters (which is sort of like attacking the American Lung Association for not combating skin cancer). The rest of the time they try to draw connections between these groups and their supposedly 'radical' ties, such as people who at one time were members of PETA who now work at HSUS. Oh, the conspiracy!

But they probably know that very few people will bother reading the fine print on their site. The majority of people will see the ad in a magazine, note it briefly and move on. The only message they will walk away with is "The Humane Society is bad." Maybe the HSUS isn't a perfect organization, but they're decidedly not the evil, two-faced liars they're made out to be by this site. This kind of thing really pisses me off, probably because I'm ready to believe anything that has a fuzzy kitten attached to it.

To be sure, I have nothing against, restaurants, tobacco or alcohol itself. But these lobbyists whose paycheck depends on the profits of these industries are pretty scummy for trying to build up their clients through specious attacks. Whatever the failings of the Humane Society, at least they're doing something to make the world a better place. The Center for Consumer Freedom (what a shitty name) is just hoping to continue this country's long tradition of political obfuscation, since people are too stupid to make up their own minds about pretty much anything. Don't believe the kitten, folks.

Labels: Advertising, Animals, Bad Stuff, Politics

The kitten-snaring is proving to be more difficult than I originally thought. The kittens keep coming back every night but they won't stay inside. Yesterday I came closer but even this instance was anticlimactic.

First of all, my girlfriend was set to return in the early evening, so I had been cleaning up the bachelor-pad aesthetic around the house, going to the store, etc. She came home just as Gladys was wandering around in the are way. Our reunion was punctured by the sounds of a cat howling like a stuck pig. Gladys was antsy but not the source of the noise. Then Jeannie noticed tiny cat feet poking out under the door inside the stoop stairs.

Most townhouses that have a stoop have a small storage space under the stairs. I had been noticing that a lot of moisture had been collecting inside it, so the day before I had opened the door to facilitate evaporation. Well, it seems Gladys moved at least one of her kittens inside! The problem here was that earlier in the day I had closed the door again, unknowingly trapping the kitten. It turns out that Gladys is small enough to fit through the holes in our gate door, so I never even realized what she had done.

The trapped kitten was the female, white with orange spots. She scrambled out from under the stoop and joined her mother. Gladys convinced her to hop onto the windowsill where some food was waiting. The kitten went in, and I came from outside and shut the screen behind her. The kitten did not like this one bit.

She jumped into the other window and repeatedly tried to push through the screen. When she realized she was stuck, she whined and hissed a lot. We brought her food, which she ate voraciously, in between hissing and spitting at us. Oddly, she did not once try to scratch or bite.

So, we had one kitten on the premises. As though she understood the drill, Gladys went out and lured another kitten over (I think the other two kittens were back at their original site from down the street). The kitten approached the open window and I again tried to shut the screen behind him. However, this kitten was ready to throw down. He dashed through window and I just caught him as he ran past. I picked him up, whereupon I received two really deep scratches to my hands. I opened the back door and threw the kitten in (where he was met by Lucy and Jefe). I thought we had him, but instead of immediately closing the screen I stupidly went inside. The kitten saw his chance and zipped out the open window.

So now we had one kitten in hand, who although eating well, was shooting us daggers from her windowsill. The second kitten was gone and probably super freaked by the experience. Gladys was outside again, freaking the female kitten out because she was looking at her from the other side of the screen. Eventually she came in and comforted the kitten, before heading back out again. We waited in vain for her to return with more kittens. she came back several times to eat and check on the other kitten. But they were either too scared or too smart to attempt another breach.

The captured kitten slept a little bit but was otherwise a real chore to have around, as she wouldn't stop whining in a particularly grating, frog-like tone. At one point we thought she was calming down as she seemed to be purring. But then it was determined she was actually trembling. At some point Gladys came back and when she left we opened the window and the kitten went out with her. The kitten actually went back under the stoop, so we're hoping that space has not been tainted in her mind by us well-meaning humans. I later put a towel and some food in there. Nobody was there this morning but the food had been largely consumed (though there are any number of cats that could have eaten it).

So goes the life of the amateur cat rescuer. Talk about armchair quarterbacking, the cats are literally coming to us here! It's pretty cute that Gladys has been bringing us the kittens, but it's harder to convince the kittens it's a good idea. They still appear fairly young so there is hope they can be unferalized and turned into pet cats, but we'd have to get them socialized fairly soon. Otherwise, they'll be the next generation of garbage-eatin', baby-makin', dogfight-batin' alley cats.

Labels: Cats, Feral, kittens, Strays

These are some pennies I had in my pocket. Fascinating! The one on the left is a wheat penny, which if this site is to be believed, is worth about 3 cents currently. Apparently 1909 was the year to save them, not 1957 as in this case.

More than the wheat penny issue, notice how Honest Abe changed over years. Is it just me or does the modern incarnation of The Great Empancipator look like he's sourly smirking?

As you know, there are several mother cats who come to us for food on a daily basis. They don't live in the house (although sometimes they do overstay their welcome) but know this is the food spot. We had been hoping that when their kittens are old enough, they would bring them over as well. But these cats live on the street side of the house, and their nests are across the street. So we didn't know if we'd ever see their offspring. Well last night they made the trek.

Gladys came over as usual and was eating when I noticed a little face in the window. There was a 10/11 week old kitten there, checking out the food bowl. Slowly, the kitten stuck its head in and started going to town on the cat food. I got the above photos at this point from across the room. The kitten eventually got spooked because I moved in too close. But it came back, and brought with it another kitten. Both were gray tabbies with white undercarriage, and both have the googly eyes like their mother.

They kept eating while Gladys stood around looking nervous. They hopped down to the floor briefly but when I looked over the couch to see them, they bolted out to the stoop. They came back and ate some more but eventually left. I thought that would be it for the evening, but then Gladys came back with yet another kitten!

This one was all white with orange spots and was the shyest of the 3. It would run if I just looked straight at it. Meanwhile, the first kitten was getting braver and actually came into the living room. It roamed around until it found a catnip mouse, which it started playing with. At this inopportune time, Jefe decided to notice the kittens and started going after it. As usual, I think he just wanted to play, but kittens rarely have the necessary insight to understand this. So I locked him in the bedroom for a while.

The kittens had their fill, but hung around the stoop. By the time I went to bed they were huddled in the steps leading down to the ground floor door, which kept them out of sight pretty well. Tonight I'm gonna make a more concerted effort to get them all inside. They're skittish but they're still so young I don't think they're all that afraid of me. My goal this time around will be to adopt them out, as well as their mother. Gladys is pretty darn cute in her own right:

Labels: Cats, kittens, Pets

Lucy started going into heat again this weekend. It was quite a sight. She rolled like a dog all the way across the kitchen floor, and she's suddenly very friendly to Jefe, has unlimited energy and has started singing around the house. It would be amusing if it wasn't so shockingly out of character. This is why she's at the regular vet and not at one of the cheaper alternatives; I just couldn't take it anymore!

So Lucy's there right now, she was spayed earlier today, I'm just waiting to hear if they'll let me take her home tonight. This is what I hate about vets. They say they have to keep her overnight to make sure her surgery holds together, that she remains healthy, etc. Of course I don't want to jeopardize her health but what this is really about is charging an enormous "hoteling" fee for keeping her in a cage all night.

Meanwhile, if I had been able to take her to the Mobile Spay Unit, or to Animal Care & Control (where 25 bucks gets you one fixed pet), I would have no choice but to take her home afterwards. They're using my assumed love of my pet as a means to soak me for more money. Of course, if I insist on taking her home and something bad happens, I'll feel incredibly guilty, but chances are I'd find SOMETHING to feel guilty about anyway ...

Lucy is being wooed by a stray Siamese cat who I would love to tame because I think he'd get adopted in a second. But he's very wary and I have not been within ten feet of him, even though I've been feeding him for a while. He might actually be a real feral cat, all the more impressive that he's such a fine specimen otherwise (the other truly feral cats around here are pretty scroungy). Maybe I'll build a nonlethal tiger pit out of a kiddie pool.

UPDATE: Lucy's home, safe and shaved and sound. I've got her sequestered in the bedroom fro the night. But Jefe keeps sticking his paws under the door, but at least he won't be able to pounce on her as has been his fashion of late. They really seem to have bonded over the past week, probably due to her being in heat. Let's hope they are able to be "just friends" now that her hormones will be in check from now on.

Labels: Cats, Pets