Monthly Archives: July 2010

A Door Opened

Emotions, , ,

Back when I still liked watching news programs like 60 Minutes or 20/20 I remember seeing a segment on one of those programs about a woman with autism who developed a better slaughterhouse. I may have been a vegetarian at the time, so the idea of slaughtering cattle was not as upsetting to me as it is now that I eat the end result.

Having worked with autistic children during my tenure as a teacher and having read a number of books about autistic individuals, I found this woman’s story fascinating and kept it tucked in the back of my mind ever since.

That’s why my visceral reaction to the preview of the HBO film, Temple Grandin, surprised me.  I adore Claire Danes and I find Temple Grandin’s story amazing but I was dead-set against seeing this film because… why? I’m not sure, but I think it was the whole cattle slaughtering thing and the fact that a gentle hug made the cattle less upset about their death. I didn’t want to think about the cattle’s last moments. I just wanted to buy meat at the grocery store and pretend it grew on trees. Or just materialized there in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. Hey, magic!

I recently commented on a post by Lali that, when I was a vegetarian, I vowed that if I ever ate meat again I’d first have to kill an animal — to prove I was not a hypocrite*. Since I’ve never killed an animal, I am a hypocrite and while, on a day-to-day basis, that doesn’t bother me, occasionally it does. Perhaps that’s why I refused to even consider watching the film. I didn’t want to confront my hypocrisy.

Last night I did watch the film. It was excellent. It changes nothing. I’m still a hypocrite but at least I admit it.

*when I was young and had not had that many life experiences, being a hypocrite was probably the worse thing I could imagine being — it ranked up there with murderer in my mind.

Our Three Cats

Pets

I’ve been meaning to write about the new [temporary] addition to our household, but I always seem to be scooping poop or filling water or food bowls or breaking up cat fights and don’t have time to blog about it.

Halloween — asleep — and Joe (caught him in action)

So, you may know that we have two “mature” cats (I hate to say elderly), Joe and Halloween. Joe and Halloween were littermates and we brought them home from Dean’s brother’s farm in  1996. I keep saying that these are the last cats we’ll have because even though cats are not hard to take care of — they do take some effort. Plus I can never have flowers in the house because the cats think flowers are a yummy treat.

Sometime, late last spring, Clare called Dean to ask if we could cat-sit her roommate’s cat, Annabelle. Dean referred her to me. I wanted to say yes, but Dean cautioned me to word it more like, “we’ll be the last resort”, which I did. Clare and her roommate interpreted it as “yes” and they went on with their last few weeks at college, confident that the problem of Annabelle’s summer residence was solved. (Clare’s roommate is spending the summer in New Orleans and her mother is renting her room to a woman who, apparently, is allergic to cats).

Secretly I was excited that we’d be cat-sitting. Annabell is a calico and I’m partial to calicoes. I was worried about how we’d deal with the food and litter box issues, but figured if they didn’t get along at all Annabelle would be the “attic cat”.

Annabelle
Annabelle — Just look at that face

Well, Joe, Halloween and Annabelle don’t love each other. Joe and Halloween are curious and might actually like Annabelle, but Annabelle doesn’t like Joe and Halloween at all. Annabelle can be in the same room as Joe and Halloween are without hissing, but if they come within 2 feet of her she hisses and swipes at them.  I think this has made them a little sad.

We’ve nicknamed her “the little bitch”. She’s very cute. And very cuddly if it is on her terms. And she’s very tidy. In fact, since she started using the communal litter boxes (we now have 3 in the basement and 1 in the attic) she covers up the other cats’ messes (they never did learn to cover their poop).

I’ve tried to not become attached to her because she’ll most likely be gone come September — but that is really hard to do. I think that our own cats are getting a good deal — we’re overcompensating on the cuddles they get because of the guilt we feel for giving Annabelle cuddles. (Ok, I’ll stop now — I’b beginning to scare myself)

I think I’d make a terrible foster mother. I’d want to keep all the kids.

Ghost Stories

Dreams, , ,

I don’t really know if I believe in ghosts or not. I suppose that sometimes I do — especially if I’ve seen a scary movie or read a scary book and am home alone. Also if someone I trust tells me about seeing a ghost herself or maybe her close relative saw one — then I get goosebumps and believe again. For a while.

I was a real skeptic until some friends of ours told us their story. They rented a home in the country and a number of strange things happened while they lived there with their children. Let’s call them Richard and Laura.

  • A large fan that was usually in one room was moved to the top of the stairs — no one in the family admitted to moving it. In fact the house was empty and Richard came home for lunch — that’s when he noticed the fan had been moved from where it was when he left in the morning.
  • They often heard footsteps on the stairs as if there were children playing on them. One day Laura’s sister, Rosie, was having coffee in the kitchen with Laura. She heard the footsteps and asked what it was — since she thought Richard and Laura’s were in school. Laura remarked that it was “just the ghosts”.
  • One night when Richard and Laura were asleep in bed they felt the bed move as if someone sat down on it.
  • Richard and Laura’s daughter also had stories of someone sitting on her bed.

Even my husband, who has never believed in ghosts, said that the story made him wonder. I was no longer skeptical and believed in ghosts after that, but didn’t really give it a lot of thought.

The other night my son and I checked in to a college-owned hotel in Ohio so we could be close to the campus where he had a 9:00 am interview with an admissions counselor. We got to the hotel late, but were able to get a quick dinner in their “pub” at around 9 pm. I had two glasses of red wine — taking the second glass to our room when we left the restaurant. Andrew spent the some of the evening researching the college to prepare for his interview, then he watched some television. I read email and logged onto Facebook. I decided to call it a night and fell asleep around 11. I don’t know when Andrew finally went to sleep.

I woke up somewhere around 3 in the morning — something I often do if I drink wine late in the evening. I got a drink of water and turned on the air conditioning, which I had turned off earlier because we were cold. Then I got back into bed and tried to sleep. I know I slept because I dreamed that I was at my mom’s house and it had snowed. I saw a cat outside and ran to help it, but it was somehow killed — maybe a dog was involved. Anyway in the dream I brought the cat back in the house and for some reason put it in bed with Clare who woke up and, understandably, freaked out.

Clare’s freaking out in my dream woke me up, I remembered where I was and could feel the foot of the bed on the bottom of my feet (I scrunch down in bed and usually hang my feet over the bottom). I heard the air conditioner fan and felt the cool air. I pulled the blanket up to my chin. I felt, what felt like a cat, jump up on the bed near my feet, pad around my feet and come up near my face. I thought it was Annabelle, but remembered that I was not at home. Then I felt the mattress push down behind my back (I was lying on my left side, facing towards the middle of the bed) as if someone were sitting behind me. I knew it wasn’t Andrew because I could hear him breathing in his bed. I turned my head and saw a large white mass over my hip — I thought it was the blanket bunched up. Finally I felt myself being pulled off the bed as if someone had hold of the waistband of my pajama bottoms and the collar of my t-shirt.

Then I woke up. It was 5:30 am. All that was a dream — but a very vivid one.

I’ve had dreams like that before — where I feel like I am awake and know where I am (they mostly happen when I am not at home). The other times I’ve had these kind of dreams I see someone standing at the foot of the bed. This time it tried to pull me off the bed.

This dream, has pushed me back into being skeptical about ghosts. While it doesn’t explain the footsteps on the stairs at Richard and Laura’s rental house, it might explain the nighttime occurrences.

Of course, when we checked out of the hotel I did notice that our door opened right next to the stairway to the attic…