HOOVER'S HEGIRA

This is Hoover.  He does not look like he has any special talents, but looks can be deceptive.

Hoover adopted us some time ago and Girl10 and I, along with a lot of effort from Auntie Mary, have been trying to socialize him.  He now enjoys our caresses and ear scratches, and responds to our lilting voices by rolling back and forth on the ground.  I prefer to think of it as not writhing in anguish, but happily wriggling.  These bouts of affection are always accompanied by some sort of food.

When he eats, Hoover dives into the dish and food flies out at all angles.  It is like watching a tornado devour whatever is in its path.  Although he makes a mess, he eventually vacuums it all up.  That is how he earned his name.

Hoover spends the majority of his day in the shade of a large bush in the back yard.  He is near enough to the house that he can smell the daily offering as it passes through the door, yet far enough away from garden traffic and hoses.  If One did not know of Hoover's hiding spot, One would not suspect a large, undomesticated feline to be sleeping there.

The summer is winding down and there are many tasks on the To Do list, preferably before school starts, such as but not limited to, cleaning the chimney, pest-proofing the yard, cutting and stacking wood, weed eating jungly corners of the yard, and making crab apple jelly.  A new addition to our list is Take Hoover to the Vet.  If he is going to be a permanent member of our family, Hoover needs a major overhaul, from Top to Bottom.  Emphasis on the Bottom.

The day came that Hoover was to meet Auntie Veterinarian.  I had been coordinating his capture carefully. (In fact, I had made an appointment for him earlier in the year, but he failed to show up at the agreed upon time.)  That morning, I got up and was greeted by Hoovs patiently waiting outside the door for his daybreak vittles.  I retrieved the carrier in which to transport him, and opened its doors.

I reached out to pick up the rangy tom and fully expected him to be as light as a feather.  I admit that I grunted at my miscalculation as I hoisted him.  He was solid and dense, with no fat at all.  As he descended into the carrier, his legs instinctively splayed out and found the edges of the opening.  He was squirming, and not with joy.  His claws, sharpened daily for not only his procuring of a hot meal, but also climbing trees and fighting savage beasts, dug into my arms.  Plan A was hastily aborted.  I deposited him back on to the deck and we stared into each other's eyes.  His were yellow and unblinking.  Mine watered as I felt the burn of the scratches on my arms.  He meowed.  Still hungry, he was not offended enough to part company.  I initiated Plan B.

I put some Seafood Sensations, a staple offered at our house under the brand name of Friskies, inside the carrier and flicked my fingers temptingly.  "Hoover",  I whispered in a soft, most friendly voice, "here, kitty kitty kitty."  Suspicious, he sniffed the air inside the conveyance.  His better judgment was outweighed by his appetite.  He ventured inside for a nibble.  I slowly closed the top hatch and then, with one swift movement, shoved the rest of his body through the end opening and latched the door.

He filled nearly the entirety of the pet carrier.  I realized how much of a wild animal Hoover really was as I watched him scrabbling to get out.  He was running around and around in circles, like the tigers in the tale of Little Black Sambo, who eventually turned into butter.  I took one more look at the rocking crate and then rushed to prepare for liftoff.

Not even five minutes later, I could here the pounding of Girl10's feet down the hallway.  She burst into the bathroom shouting, "Mama!  Hoover got out!"  I found myself hoping that this was her version of April Fools' Day in August.  There was doubt in my voice.  "Are you sure?"  She squealed in indignation, "I saw him on the couch!"  I instructed her to close all of the bedroom doors while I quickly got dressed.

Sure enough, Hoover was lurking around any furniture he could fit behind.  I opened the sliding door and stationed Girl10 between the den and the kitchen, where she assumed a defensive stance.  "Go on, Hoover," we encouraged in soothing voices.  It became painfully apparent that he was much less tame than we had let ourselves believe, and getting him back into his natural habitat became more urgent.   Hoover took a look at me, faked a dodge in Girl10's direction, and then leaped four feet straight up in the air to get through the open doorway to freedom.  Had he been a few inches to the right, he would have smacked into the glass window.  I looked at the transport box on the floor, which had not been touched or moved in the excitement.  It was flipped on its side.  Both doors were latched shut.

Hoover probably ran to the county border that day.  We did not see him again until the late afternoon when he showed up, suspicious and hungry.  It took a few days to gain back the trust we had so carefully built all summer.  We are now back to friendly words and pats, and many conversations utilizing MEOW - just as it was before Hoover's Hegira.

BREAKING THE ICE

Girl9.67 and I were recently invited to our friends' house for a party.  We had not been to this house before, and the hostess was eager to make a good impression (please note that this was certainly not necessary, we were not there in Inspection Mode).

As we drove up the driveway, we remarked to one another about the beautiful paint job (they finished it last fall), the well tended yard, and the overall beauty of the house itself.  The inside did not disappoint.  The spacious rooms were painted artfully, and hard wood floors lead into a cozy, tile-floored kitchen.

Girl9.67 immediately melded with the girls, and I drifted into the kitchen, where I accepted the invitation to a glass of wine.  The hostess took a beautiful, tall wine glass from the cupboard and looked at it thoughtfully. She had a twinkle in her eye, and when the host encouraged her with a "Do it, Babe!", she dropped the glass to the floor.

Shards flew around the kitchen as the air was filled with the sound of breaking glass.  I thought I felt a piece zip past my ear.  My mouth may or may not have been hanging open in shock.  The look on the face of the hostess, however, was priceless.  She was frozen in the middle of the tile-floored kitchen, her eyes wide with pure surprise, and her hand suspended in mid-air.  She stammered for a few moments while the rest of the guests chortled.  "This is supposed to be shatter resistant!", she exclaimed with dismay.  The tweens all rushed in to see what the commotion was, while the adults waved their arms and shouted, "No! No!  Stay out of the kitchen with your stocking-feet!"  The host brought in the vacuum while the hostess swept.  Other guests kindly picked up nearby shards or pointed out sparkling bits for the clean up crew.

Once the mess was cleared up, the host took another wine glass from the cabinet.  I was thinking how nice a sip of wine would be at that moment, when I heard him say, "Babe, you must have had the wrong kind!" as he flung the glass to the tile floor.  Again, the air exploded with a crack and the fragments flew.  Still standing in the same spot from which I had witnessed the first mishap, I speechlessly looked at our host.  He had the same stunned look that his wife had had a few minutes before.  There was a moment of silence and then time started up again.  The girls stampeded toward the kitchen and the other guests and I motioned them back.  The hostess reappeared with the vacuum.  I was thinking what a good commercial this would be for their Dyson.  Again, the guests laughingly pitched in by gathering particles and spotting others to be removed.

I did wonder if I was ever going to get that glass of wine, but I need not have worried.  Another glass, from the same set, was procured and poured without incident.  The discussion continued to revolve around the difference between shatter proof and shatter resistant, if the floor material mattered, whether or not the glasses had been washed in the dishwasher, and the ease of returning the remaining five glasses from the set to the store from which they were purchased.

It all came back to the demonstration that the host and hostess had witnessed at the store, she explained to us as she uncorked a new bottle of wine.  She retrieved a glass for herself from the box and washed it. Before she poured her wine (her first drink of the evening, if you were wondering), she tapped it against the counter.  "I can't figure it out", she shook her head. "He was banging it really hard on the counter in the store, like this!"  She continued to knock the glass against the counter, striking harder with each blow.  I cannot speak for the other guests, but I was flinching at every swing she took.  When the glass broke I was only surprised that it had not fractured sooner.  The girls did not even dash in to the kitchen this time.  Only the hosts' own daughter sauntered in, glumly surveyed the scene, and wandered out again. I heard her report, "It was my mom this time!"  I suspected that this was not what she considered acceptable parent behavior at her birthday party.

The purposeful destruction of three wine glasses certainly did not ruin the party.  One might even say that it was a good ice breaker, and that the party was a smashing success.  I am convinced that there is a moral in this story somewhere, something about people who live in glass houses - no, that is not quite it.

People Who Live in Houses Should Not Throw Glass.

ACCOUNTING 101

You may know, Alert Reader, that I spent some time in the hospital a while back.  Leading up to my admittance, I suffered from nerve pain that was unrelenting, unpredictable, and unbearable.  I had sought help from a new medical provider, and thankfully, she listened.  She knew better than I when she prescribed the Vicodin.  I very nearly turned it down, not wanting to become someone who goes to the doctor just to load up on pain pills.  (For the record, it had been so long since I had been to the doctor, that my previous provider sold the business, started a new clinic, moved to Arizona, and then retired.)  As I awaited my insurance company's approval for an upcoming MRI, the pain got worse.  I was tempted to try one of my ten Vicodin.  I learned that one Vicodin by itself was of no use to me.  I discovered that two Vicodin barely took the "edge" off of the pain.  I would not try for three.  After receiving the MRI results and realizing that I would have to wait for a couple of weeks before meeting the neurosurgeon, I asked for more Vicodin.  During those weeks, I counted the days and the pills over and over, saving and scrimping to ensure that I made the pills last until my appointment.  It was becoming harder and harder to sit in a chair, and riding in the car for any amount of time was torture.  In my standard driving position, my right hand was between my shoulder blades and my elbow pointed at the sky.  The neurosurgeon understood my plight, and after reviewing my MRI and planning my surgery, I was given a prescription for Oxycodone.  Every day I counted the pills and my remaining days.  When I realized that I was going to come up short, I limited my pills sometimes to just one or two a day.  Dear Reader, I am telling you all of this so that you know how I nursed and preserved those pills so carefully.  It never crossed my mind to ask for more, I knew I had to grit my teeth and bear it until the surgery date.

Fast forward to my arrival in Pre-Op.  I sat quietly, in my curtained space, dressed in nothing but my gown and slippers.  The poor man next to me whispered about the coil in his brain popping.  An older woman across from me hunkered under her covers and tried to sleep.  We all were hungry, thirsty, in pain and eager to get on with our procedures.  A new patient arrived and things picked up.  Her daughter was a Loud Talker.  Her voice cut through from behind the privacy of the curtain and extolled the virtues of her kid's school's online grade book.  It was so wonderful that she could check on her son's attendance and grades with the click of a button.  Her conversation was not limited to such mundane topics.  I learned that her mother, the patient, was hard of hearing and had lost her hearing aids.  We all heard that the daughter was leaving her mother with an iPad so that she would be able to watch Netflix in her hospital room, and that the mother was hoping to watch romance movies, much to the daughter's vocal disgust.  What caught my attention was when the nurse, who must have drawn the short straw, was bound by her duty to review the list of medications that the woman was taking.  Although I could not see through the curtain, I was sure that there were at least three pages when the nurse said, "OK, I will go through this list one at a time."  She then proceeded to ask the patient when the last time each medication was taken and how big the dose was.  As the patient was hard of hearing, we all heard the laundry list.  I so wanted to write it all down, because it was as if she had watched every TV commercial for medication and then gone to her doctor for it.  It was when the nurse said, "Oxycodone?" that my ears perked up.  Apparently everyone's ears perked up, because I heard the Brain Coil's wife hiss behind the curtain, "Oxycodone!!!"  The patient replied "three".  The nurse asked when were these taken.  The patient responded, "oh... 9:30".  Based on my last month's experience, I expected that she would add to this by saying, "and 1:30 and 4:30".  When I realized that she would not be adding to her times, it hit me.  She obviously had not been scrimping and saving, if she had taken three pills at a time.  In my discomfort (I had not been allowed any pain pill that morning), I felt more than a little annoyed at the woman, who seemed to have had a full dispensary at her disposal.

My next stop was a second Pre-Op room.  In this space, my IV was started, I was covered with a heated air mattress called a Bair Hug, and I was flat on my back.  As my surgery had been postponed for two hours, I was hungrier, thirstier and in more pain than ever.  I could hear the woman across from me, chatting to the doctor about how he looked just like her Norwegian nephew.  I could hear the woman to my left, talking about her unfortunate experiences after surgery a month ago.  She was quite graphic about how she had been throwing up ever since.  A nurse came along to inquire about my medications.  Had I taken my 1/2 tablet of beta blocker that morning?  Yes, I had.  Had I taken anything else?  No.  With nothing else to say to me, the nurse moved on to the perpetual vomiter.  She, too, must have had a huge list of medications, for the nurse spent a long while with her.  It was when she asked about oxycodone that I became interested.  My neighbor stated that she had taken twelve.  Did you read that?  TWELVE!  The nurse asked when this was, and the woman could not even remember.  There I lay, flat as a board under that hot air mattress, aching with pain and in a fury.  How was it that I was the only one who had been parsimonious with my painkillers and managed my meds?  I knew exactly how many I took, when I took them, and how many were left at any given time.

I thank you for your indignation on my behalf, Dear Reader.  Please dial it down with the knowledge that after my 4 p.m. surgery and spending the night in the ICU, things began to look up.  I was discharged before 11 a.m. without ever graduating to a real room.  Within two days I was walking laps and within the week I was back to 2+ miles per day.  Without painkillers.  I wonder if my Pre-Op roommates can say that?