Still More Crap

Well that's just crap. Blogger cropped the photo below and messed up the caption: "Nao I can haz tawks wif ceiling cat." It's crap not to be able to post crap.

It's been almost two weeks since the passing of our furry friend.


moar funny pictures

It's a SOL (Sad Out Loud)

Wearing a fur coat in a heat wave

It's been warm down in SoCal the past couple of days. It was in the upper 90's here in SD county. Now although the house is well insulated and has air-conditioning, we are adverse to turning the AC on for many reasons. So the temps climbed into the low 80's in the house.

In the afternoon, the poor Kitty crawled upstairs and plopped down at my feet and did his best fur rug imitation, and I was reminded of our family cat when I was growing up.

I grew up in San Francisco in the Eureka Valley district (now known as the Castro). (My elementary school was renamed from Douglas to Harvey Milk too, but I digress.)

Our house was built around 1900, and like most houses in the area it had no insulation and no AC. Also, since they were row houses, there was little air circulation around them, and for the most part, the windows had been painted shut for years.

Now it is a largely unknown fact that San Francisco has heat waves. Usually in Sept/Oct and is called 'Indian Summer' there. The temps can go into the low to mid 80's for a couple days to a week at a time. Now down here in SoCal, that is a picture perfect day, but in SF with no insulation and no AC and no air circulation, the houses became ovens. The papers would always maintain a body count on how many 'old ladies' succumbed to the heat. (Its always the 'old ladies'.)

Now the point here is that we had a family cat. This cat was well loved, and with 3 boys in the family, the term 'well loved' could be construed as continuously molested. Most of the time this was OK, the cat loved the attention and the only issues were the fights over whose turn it was to hold/molest the cat. Except during Indian Summer.

During those hot Indian Summers, the cat did not move much. When we boys got home from school and went to grab the cat, my Mom would intervene and forbid us from touching it. 'Just imagine having to wear a fur coat in this heat', she would say, and wouldn't let us near it.

So, anyway, when poor Kitty was doing his rug imitation this week, I flashed back to my Mom yelling at us to, 'Leave the poor cat Alone!'.

A picture is worth...

Cat Crap

Last Wednesday night or Thursday morning our cat Sybille died. She was 18. We had been expecting it for a few months now, even though she went to the vet in January with a fair bill of health. She was ailing, had lost weight, and had trouble walking. She had retired some years ago and had been living in an assisted-living facility; that is, we helped her up and down the stairs.

Still, her last day involved sitting out in our backyard with Linda, having some shrimp for dinner, and sitting with me watching TV. Coulda been worse.

Sybille Tashker was born in the spring of 1990 at Emandal in California. Her early kittenhood was spent charming campers there and later families. My kiddoes convinced me to take her home, thus becoming our first indoor furry pet. Her early adult years were spent dealing with teenagers. Her mature years after kiddoes went away to college involved looking deeply into our eyes and meditating.

Sybille leaves Michael, Linda, Jessica, and Sara. She will be missed.

crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap

(with thanks to karen for the original design)

you know when you say a word over and over again and it starts to lose meaning and sound like nonsense syllables? crap isn't like that. it's still crap.

First Post

Well, sports fans, this is the first post to 4families-crap, a place where members of the 4 families (more on that later, mebbe), can post their thoughts, woes, and, um, crap. Let's see where it leads us.