Category: Cats
Felines and framesets
With the holidays bearing down upon us like a doped-up masters racer, a cat’s life is simply overflowing with anticipation.
“When will Jesus bring the pork chops?” wonders Turkish, a.k.a. Turkenstein, The Turkinator, Mighty Whitey the Blue-Eyed Bully of Bibleburg, Big Pussy, et al. He suspects that something wondrous is taking place on the other side of that door and has asked Santa to bring him a pair of opposable thumbs so he can work the knob.
He’s actually pretty damn’ close to getting the door open without thumbs — he certainly doesn’t have any trouble grasping the knob, which sits 36 inches off the ground. Wrap it with something he could sink his claws into and he’d come and go as he pleased.
Miss Mia Sopaipilla, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to see an unwary Turk’ ambling past her grocery-sack spider hole en route to the feed zone so she can whip an ambush on his big white ass. A half hour ago she was merrily flogging him around the house — through the living room and into the bedroom, then through the kitchen and down to the basement. Repeat until naptime, which has just arrived.
Herself is making banking noises out there in the living room, moving money around from one account to another to balance my extravagance as I await delivery of my new Voodoo Nakisi frameset. I’ve found most of what I need to build it up gathering dust in the garage, so naturally the purchase is justified by the crisp sense of order its assembly will bring to a presently cluttered space.
It will use Salsa bars (either flared Bell Laps, Pro Road or Moto Ace); some unlabeled off-brand stem; nine-speed Shimano drivetrain (bar-end shifters, Ultegra derailleurs, XT triple crankset, 11-28 cassette); a pair of moderately scarred Shimano 600 aero brake levers, plus cantis and top-mounted brake levers from Cane Creek; a Thomson seatpost and maybe the old Avenir saddle that came stock on my Nineties road bike.
I don’t have an actual 29er wheelset, however, so I’m gonna make do by pulling a pair of wheels off one of the ’cross bikes and slapping some 700×45 Panaracer Fire Cross tires on ’em. That should be burly enough for my mild purposes until I can get Jerry down at Old Town to build me up a set of righteous hoops using a leftover pair of Hügi hubs and maybe some Alex Adventurer rims, which come recommended by tech editor Matt Wiebe of Bicycle Retailer & Industry News. Matt is the generous gent who is ferrying the frameset from BTI in Santa Fe to Your Humble Narrator in Bibleburg en route to Turkey Day festivities in Denver.
So, yeah. Christmas beats Thanksgiving to the DogHaus this year. But then we were never traditionalists. And if you’re hanging around here, you probably aren’t either. So I’ll leave you with the words of Robert Downey Jr., from “Home for the Holidays”: “That was absurd, let’s eat dead bird.”
If a tree falls …
We were here when it fell, and we heard it. The last tree standing in our back yard has been sawn down and hauled away in chunks.
Turkish loved that crabapple tree, and so did Miss Mia Sopaipilla. It was fine for climbing, and occasionally held a toothsome squirrel or two.
We two-legged sorts were less enamored of it — it shat bitter green apples all over the yard each fall when it was in sound health — but it was lovely to look at until fire blight carried it off, as it did the smaller ornamental apple next to the driveway.
Before that it was either aphids or a bacterial infection that did in the small stand of black walnuts by the fence. These were a favorite of the late Chairman Meow, who used them to access the pergola over the deck, so she could keep an eye on things. She always did like heights.
I miss the Chairman, and I miss the trees, too.
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful
Deadlines suck. Like The Turk, I’ve been indoors more than I care to be lately, in my case generating bicycle comedy for fun and profit (well, for profit, anyway, and only just barely). This is particularly irksome because we’ve been enjoying a stellar fall here in Bibleburg. It’s 76 right now — 76! — at 5:45 p.m. on Oct. 15. Imagine my amazement.
This will change, as it must. Tomorrow and Sunday look pretty damn’ nice, and wouldn’t y’know, I have to clock in for a couple of shifts in the old VeloBarrel. Come Monday, the weather should become a bit more seasonal, as in 50-something with a chance of showers. Ick.
After that, it’s the Colorado lottery, which means exactly what it sounds like — a total meteorological crapshoot, which I must say keeps life interesting, like the wining jug in John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row,” a punch blended by understudy barkeep Eddie using any booze left in glasses by the patrons of La Ida. A Palace Flophouse roommate, Jones, first pans, then praises the concoction:
“You take whiskey,” he said hurriedly. “You more or less know what you’ll do. A fightin’ guy fights and a cryin’ guy cries, but this —” he said magnanimously — “why, you don’t know whether it’ll run you up a pine tree or start you swimming to Santa Cruz.”
That’s the sad part. Pine trees we got. But Santa Cruz … not so much.
Why, dog my cats!
A cat’s brain is not particularly large, only about twice the size of the average Irishman’s. Nonetheless, the feline mind is fertile ground for evil schemes.
Turkish — a.k.a. Turkenstein, The Turkinator, Big Pussy, Mighty Whitey, et al. — likes to sit on me. Not curl up in my lap, although he will do that about once in a blue moon, but rather sit on me. If I stretch out on the floor for some situps or in the bed for some reading, he’ll stroll over and perch on my chest, facing me with slitted eyes.
This means he wants some attention, and attention means from both hands. Let one lie idle and he’ll dig his giant shovel-shaped head underneath it. Scratch the left side of the head, if you please, then the right, but for God’s sake not both sides at once. Are you mad, sir? The universe has rules, and cats made them. Now, once more, first the left, then the right. …
I hit the deck for him yesterday, practicing a little Buddhist charity, and after a few minutes of ministrations the giant furry swine repaid me with a chomp on the left wrist. Not quite biting the hand that feeds him, as I am right-handed, but pretty damn’ close.
Miss Mia Sopaipilla is not a biter, but she also provides periodic performance evaluations. If we neglect our primary chore, described in the Employee Manual as Paying Reverent Attention to Her Ultimate Cuteness At All Times, she’ll sneak into the upstairs bathroom, pull Herself’s towels off the rack and arrange them in a cozy Mia-sized pile on the floor.
Still and all, the occasional nip and/or towel pile is preferable to the stunts my first dog, Jojo the Terrible, would pull when he felt put upon. He would pee in some obscure location and watch with barely contained amusement as I tried to locate the source of the stink, or shred whichever book I was reading. And in one memorable instance, he tore a near-perfect circle out of the center of the fitted sheet on my bed.
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