Ornoth

With a tall pile of empty cardboard boxes after a household shopping spree, I decided to manifest a little creativity.

Bigi's Castle

With box-cutter and duct tape in hand, I sliced up, arranged, and secured a half-dozen large boxes, eventually producing a kitty castle with two grand entrances, a lofty royal hall, two balconies, and a rooftop deck.

Teh fluffeh is still getting used to the idea, but treats keep mysteriously appearing in the upper levels, so I’m sure he’ll take up full residence shortly.

For a virtual tour, see below…

Over the solstice, I attended an 8-day silent meditation retreat with Bhante Gunaratana at his Bhavana Society retreat center in West Virginia.

Buddha in Bhavana's main hall

Bhavana Buddies

Is this a dhamma talk?

My Kuti

What Eighth Precept?

Bhante G. is a well-known Sri Lankan Buddhist monk, the author of the widely-read manual “Mindfulness in Plain English”. To be honest, I didn’t know he was located so close. When I learned that Bhavana is a three and a half hour drive from Pittsburgh, I was immediately motivated to go do a retreat, especially since I wouldn’t be inconveniencing Inna, who has been out of town for months on business. And at 90 years old, Bhante G.’s advancing age gave me an added sense of urgency.

Last spring, when I looked at the Bhavana Society’s schedule, one event immediately stood out: a jhana retreat planned for the end of June.

What’s “jhana”? Jhana is an intensive concentration meditation practice which predated the Buddha, which presumably leads to four increasingly subtle and esoteric mental states.

The jhanas comprise Right Concentration: the eighth component of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path leading toward the ultimate goal of practice: the cessation of suffering. Once you have developed a high degree of equanimity through the jhanic concentration practice, you can use it (and the impermanence of those states) as a tool in Vipassana practice: the development of insight/wisdom through the internalization of the Three Characteristics of Existence (impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and non-self).

That sequence—practice concentration, then use it to develop wisdom—is one of two ways that people approach Buddhist practice. The other approach, called “dry” or “pure” Vipassana practice, does it the other way around: meditators work directly to realize the Three Characteristics, and let their concentration skills develop as needed. Meditating on the Three Characteristics through Vipassana meditation comprises the seventh element of the Noble Eightfold Path: Right Mindfulness.

Virtually all modern western Insight Meditation centers go the latter route, teaching Vipassana meditation exclusively. They rarely talk about the jhanas, and often discourage jhana practice, believing that the preoccupation with mental attainments is an unnecessary diversion from the development of wisdom… if those presumed attainments even exist at all! Having “grown up” in that Insight tradition, I dismissed jhana practice for years as little more than legacy Asian mysticism.

But ten years ago I decided to read some of the original Buddhist suttas, specifically the Majjhima Nikaya: the Middle-Length Discourses (my 2007 blogpost). There I discovered that there’s a passage describing how a skilled meditator enters the jhanas as a preliminary part of practice. Moreover, that standardized passage is repeated in a lot of suttas: about 30 percent of them, IIRC. Appearing so frequently, it was clearly something the Buddha considered extremely important. From then on, I knew I couldn’t simply dismiss jhana practice; I needed to give it a fair and openminded trial.

I bought books and did online research, but couldn’t get past my confusion. On one hand, the “jhana factors” that arise are familiar to me: applied thought, sustained thought, single-pointedness, happiness, bliss, and equanimity. But on the other hand, the four jhanic states are subtle and difficult to judge, and I certainly hadn’t experienced any of the mental imagery (nimitta) or magical powers that supposedly precede them. Were they merely metaphorical? As an avowed empiricist, I had difficulty reconciling the presumed importance of these concentration practices with the mystical bullshit that accompanied them.

As a followup to his best seller, Bhante G. also wrote a book about the jhanas called “Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English: An Introductory Guide to Deeper States of Meditation”, which I also read. So when I learned his center was nearby and that he’d be leading a jhana retreat, I figured the time was right to go and try to resolve my longstanding confusion. That’s why—due to an unfortunate scheduling coincidence—I decided to stay home at our Tuscan villa on the day the Giro d’Italia bike race came by: so that I could guarantee my spot in Bhante G.’s jhana retreat as soon as they opened online registration.

To conserve Bhante G.’s strength, activities like dhamma talks, Q&A, and teacher interviews were shared, with three different monks taking responsibility for two days each. As a result, my understanding of the jhanas changed and evolved over the course of the week.

The first two days we were in the care of Bhante Jayasara, a young American novice. He addressed the groundwork for jhana practice: specifically, suppressing the negative mental states called the Five Hindrances: a straightforward and familiar practice.

During his Q&A, he shared his personal experience of a nimitta: a sign of deep concentration that’s often perceived as a bright light. I found his sharing informative and inspiring, especially his confirmation that the nimitta is not a visual perception, but a purely mental one.

Interestingly, he could only share this with us because he’s not yet a fully-ordained monk, since the Vinaya—the Buddhist monastic rules—forbids monks from contradicting the canon or discussing their own personal experiences and attainments. So if you’re looking for practical advice based on personal experience, don’t bother asking a monastic!

During his Q&A, I asked which of the Five Hindrances compulsive planning fell under and how to practice with it. Of course, the answer was somewhat nuanced. Planning is often useful, but could also be an expression of anxiety and discomfort with uncertainty. In the moment when the compulsion comes up, one should consider three things: what is the appeal of planning, how it might be problematic, and how to reframe one’s habits of mind to avoid following that pattern out of compulsion. As Bhante Jay summarized: “The gratification, the danger, and the escape.”

After that, the middle two days were handled by Bhante Seelananda, a middle-aged monk who was born in Sri Lanka and became a monk at age eleven. As a lifelong academic scholar, he has exceptional knowledge of the Pali canon (the Buddhist scriptures).

His talks covered Buddhist academic theory relating to the jhanas in unrestrained detail, reciting a litany of passages in Pali and lists of theoretical esoteric mental states. Less of a dhamma talk and more of a collegiate lecture, it was the first dhamma talk I’ve ever attended that included a slide deck presented with an overhead projector and laser pointer!

With a straight face, he reported the magical powers the canon associates with the jhanas: the abilities to fly, read minds, recall past lives, and clairaudience.

At no time did he share any personal reflections or practical advice, limiting himself to reporting the content of the Pali canon as if it were literal truth. I’m not sure whether that was because the monastic rules prohibited him from contradicting the Buddhist writings, or whether his childhood upbringing within the monastic community rendered him an indoctrinated faith believer incapable of critical thought.

In either case, he had zero practical advice to share that would have benefited his audience of lay practitioners. As you might imagine, his circular reasoning and arguments from false authority didn’t sit well with an objective materialist like me.

After coming into the retreat with an open mind and specifically looking for practical help, I was getting discouraged and felt that I was wasting my time. I was ready to conclude that the jhanas are simply not a useful concept. Sure, concentration practice is important in habituating oneself to meta-thinking; the Five Hindrances are things we can all relate to; even the “jhana factors” I listed earlier make sense in the context of quiescing the discursive mind. But the four jhana states themselves sound like abstract, magical mumbo-jumbo.

And even if they are real, someone has got to find a better way to teach them. One doesn’t learn how to whistle by being told “Just blow long enough, and it’ll happen”; and one doesn’t learn how to swim by being told “Keep splashing around on your own and one day you’ll magically become a master swimmer”. You need someone to directly show you the techniques of how to whistle, how to swim… and how to meditate, achieve, and recognize these abstract, theoretical mental states.

For me, no matter how much of the official doctrine Bhante Seela cited, the jhanas simply don’t pass the Kalama test. In the Pali canon’s Kalama Sutta, the Buddha tells the Kalama tribe to accept as true only those teachings that one has personally verified are skillful, blameless, praiseworthy, and conducive to happiness; and to expressly reject teachings that derive from blind faith, dogmatism, and belief spawned from specious reasoning. And the jhanas demand a whole lot of the latter.

After Bhante Seela’s academic theorizing, the final two days’ talks were given by Bhante G., and I was eager to hear how he would follow up. Thankfully, as a non-academic, Bhante G. is more personable and more encouraging than Bhante Seela, which was reassuring in itself.

In the meditations he led, he ended each sitting by reciting verse 372 of the Dhammapada, one of the earliest Buddhist texts:

There is no concentration without wisdom,
Nor wisdom without concentration.
One who has both wisdom and concentration
Is close to peace and emancipation.

This is the central theme of his teaching. Here “concentration” is a reference to jhana practice, and “wisdom” is shorthand for Insight or Vipassana practice. While the two are often considered completely separate practices, Bhante G. says they are parallel roads, different but complementary ways of reaching the same destination. After all, Vipassana constitutes Right Mindfulness, the seventh element of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path, while Right Concentration (the jhanas) comprises the eighth. That helped me put concentration practice into a better perspective.

But where I most benefited from Bhante G.’s wisdom was in the group interview I attended, where I was able to ask “How can you tell you’ve reached a jhana state if you don’t experience something as unmistakable as those bright-light nimittas?” His answer was packed with insightful nuggets.

First, one should look at those factors that co-arise with jhana: applied thought, sustained thought, single-pointedness, happiness, bliss, and equanimity. Those are a lot more concrete than the four abstract jhana levels. He said that entering the first jhana isn’t that hard to do for an experienced practitioner, but it’s a subtle and difficult thing to see. He said I might have achieved it many times, but who can say? You just have to judge for yourself. The important thing is to just practice. Concern yourself with your own mind, not the esoteric theories about signs and levels.

His advice was personal, immediate, practical, and encouraging… way more useful than any of the infographics Bhante Seela had presented. I’m so glad that I got into this retreat and had the opportunity to have an exchange with him, while he is still well enough to teach. It was touching when, on the last day of the retreat, I ran into him on his daily walk and we exchanged smiles.

So where did I wind up as far as jhana practice? While I didn’t get confirmation that jhanas exist or not, I did get a degree of practical clarity. Taking Bhante G.’s words to heart, I’m not going to pay a lot of attention to the jhanas. I’ll continue to practice meditation of various flavors (Vipassana/Insight, concentration, and samatha/calmness), with the main focus on evolving my relationship to desire, aversion, impermanence, ethics, and renunciation.

With that, let’s dump all this philosophy. “How was it?” I hear you asking. Well, lemme tellya…

Long retreats hurt. Despite their obvious benefit, I dread them. Even though I use a meditation bench, long periods of sitting hurt both my knees and back, and my knee pain turned severe this time. On top of that, my yogi job was washing dishes, and their sinks are definitely not at a height for normal-sized humans.

There’s also an odd kind of discomfort associated with heightened mindfulness. I would spend all day building up my mindfulness, only to find it difficult to relax and fall asleep at night, because I was so busy noticing and observing everything. Once you’re in that mental state, you can’t simply shut it off, which in my experience leads to a particular kind of retreat fatigue. I find that far more uncomfortable than the more-frequently reported discomfort returning to mainstream society following a long retreat.

Rather than being put up in a dormatory, for the first time ever I got my very own kuti, a tiny one-person cabin off on its own, used as a living space by monastics. It was little more than an uninsulated wooden shed, with a twin mattress and just enough space to squeeze around it on three sides. No electricity, but two windows. I guess it fit the modern idea of a “tiny house”. Thankfully, there weren’t too many insects inside, though I was still glad to have brought bug repellent. I was assigned the cabin named “Panna”, which is Pali for “wisdom”.

The weather. The first three days were hot and sunny, which I enjoyed, despite the lack of aircon. Although the heat was supposed to hold all week, the weather turned very rainy and cold from Wednesday through Sunday. Several times so much rain fell that the short, grassy downhill path to my kuti spontaneously turned into a rushing brook!

Flora and fauna everywhere. Poison ivy. Fireflies. A deer outside my kuti one morning. Termites or something loudly trying to bore into the kuti all day and night long until the rains came and drove them off. Ridiculously loud and annoying tree frogs that trilled back and forth to one another from 8pm to 11pm, sounding for all the world like dueling car alarms. Great for practicing equanimity, but not so great for actually sleeping.

And Buddy. We were told that we’d see Buddy, their tabby cat, who might come and sit in your lap. Monday evening, during a ten-minute break between sittings, I ran into him outside the main building, introduced myself, and made friends. I sat cross-legged in the driveway, and he climbed into my lap and promptly fell asleep. I saw him a couple more times, but he too disappeared once the rain started. I mused that although I hadn’t experienced the Buddhist concept of “no-self”, I did understand “no-Buddy” (nobody).

Other oddities, for your amusement…

Bhavana’s retreat FAQ suggests bringing earplugs, and those were key! I’ve already mentioned the nightly amphibian car alarm chorus and the termites or whatever was chewing its way into my shack. On top of that, the kuti came with a battery-powered clock whose second hand ticked louder than its built-in alarm; I yanked its batteries on the second day. Then the pounding rain on the kuti’s roof topped it all off. Without my earplugs I wouldn’t have gotten any sleep at all.

There’s always one… Normally people claim a spot in the meditation hall and have one zabuton (mat) and one zafu (a tall cushion) or meditation bench. One guy sitting a couple rows in front of me built and sat atop a ziggurat composed of no less than three zabutons, a square cushion, two zafus, and another square cushion, with a bench nearby, just in case. He was perched more than two feet off the floor! Which I think is a violation of the vow we took on the first day to uphold the Eight Precepts, specifically the vow to refrain from using high or luxurious beds and seats. Ridiculous!

The food. Normal people always crow about how great retreat food is; I’m too finicky for that, but I found everything surprisingly palatable. Plus there were a couple treats, such as Nutella, Gatorade, and one day we got orange juice. They also provided Sriracha sauce, which I found helped many dishes, except loading up on it wasn’t always the best idea, since I usually didn’t fetch anything to drink with my meal! Still, when the retreat ended, I made a quick stop at Dairy Queen for a Dilly Bar, then grabbed a cola and potato chips to enjoy on the drive home.

My yogi job washing dishes provided some entertainment. I’m used to turning dishwashing gloves inside-out to dry, which is difficult to do unless you know this secret: blow into them like a balloon to reverse the fingers. But somehow I managed to explode two gloves by blowing too hard into them! They blew up with impressively loud bangs during an otherwise silent retreat!

At one point (for some unknown reason) the cook pulled me aside to tell me he thought I looked like Frank Zappa. “Maybe it’s the ponytail?” That’s a new one on me. In the past I’ve drawn comparisons to David Beckham, Steven Seagal, Fabio Lanzoni, and (in a swipe from the ex-wife) Star Trek’s emotionless Mr. Spock.

Even with all this zaniness, it was a good and productive retreat, although three weeks later my knees are still recovering. I was able to meet and practice with Bhante Gunaratana, a cherished teacher whose career is nearing its conclusion; and I gained some clarity about how to practice with and relate to the jhanas (or not). It gave me what my practice needed, and was quite a memorable experience.

Upon coming home, I felt a huge sense of relief. Not because of the retreat, but because I had concluded four months of frequent travel: two weeks gallivanting around Asia in March, a week in Italy in May, and another week on retreat in West Virginia in June. It’s nice to visit new places, but home will always be home, and I was eager to hole up for a while in a familiar place. I wouldn’t mind if there were a few less-eventful weeks in store for me now!

It having been over a year since my initial Begemot photo post , I suppose it’s time for a few more images of our special guest star.

He still exhibits completely catatonic midafternoon shutdowns, as described last time, which Inna & I take as ideal times for molestation.

But he has developed one really cute/strange behavior. One of his first toys was a squeaky weasel stuffed animal. Every evening, about two minutes after we turn out the light, he trots off to find it. Once he’s got it, the little guy—who virtually never meows at all—starts howling and crying like it’s a bloody emergency. That lasts maybe 30 seconds until he trots into the bedroom, carrying the weasel in his mouth, and offers it to us. Then he quiets down and settles into bed for the night. And in the morning, he’ll usually get up and bring it with him into the living area (usually without the verbal announcements). It’s pretty hilarious, but equally adorable.

His other favorite toys include shoelaces, the brown construction paper sometimes used as packing material (see below), and he’ll come like a flash if he hears anyone crumpling up a credit card receipt. Between all that and his diverse collection of boxes, the floor’s always a bit of a mess.

It doesn’t take a lot to keep the boy happy, and he definitely has reciprocated by keeping Inna & I happy.

Click for teh bignesses.

On April 8th, Inna and I adopted our first joint-custody cat, an 18 month old longhair tuxedo whom the shelter had christened “Trent”.

The biggest problem we’ve had with him has been choosing a suitable new moniker, since “Trent” did nothing for any of us.

I brainstormed a list of 55 names I’ve suggested, and I’m sure Inna’s list was equally long; the problem being that we each hated the other’s.

The ones we came closest to agreeing on included:

• Sammich
• Fennel
• Serif
• Talisker
• SID
• Baxter
• Todeson (that’s “nose-dot” backwards)
• Trivet

And then there were some awesome ones that I offered which were summarily rejected, like:

• Cat5
• Poori
• Kapusta (the Russian word for cabbage)
• Mallard
• Balrog
• Acidophelous
• Tuft or Tufte

Ultimately Inna came up with something that we could both appreciate, being unique, humorous, and utterly surreal. The little guy will forevermore be known as:

Yes, that’s Cyrillic, because it’s a Russian name (in case you don’t know, Inna’s a first-generation transplant from Ukraine). For those readers who don’t read/speak Russian, you can approximate the pronunciation via the English mnemonic: “Big-Emote” (which apparently horrifies my live-in native speaker). Or, if you have the technology, you can play Google Translate’s pronunciation here.

Okay, I get it: Big-Emote. What’s it mean?

Here’s where things get interesting, because Begemot has *lots* of meanings.

Let’s start with the most basic. Begemot. The Russian word comes from a Hebrew word “behemah”, from which also derives the English word “behemoth”. Hence “behemoth”: a huge or monstrous creature. Good name for a cat, even if our little guy isn’t even ten pounds yet. Although given the size of his ridiculous outrigger paw-pontoons, he might just grow into the name…

As a proper noun, Behemoth is also a specific Biblical monster, the land-borne equivalent of the ocean-borne Leviathan. The Book of Job identifies him as “the first of the works of God”, a grass-eater who shelters in the reeds and marsh. Interpreters seeking a real-world manifestation of the passage have most often associated Behemoth with the hippopotamus, and sometimes as an elephant, rhinoceros, or buffalo. So Begemot is an official Old Testament Hebrew name, too!

Which brings us back to Russian, because in the mid-1700s, Russian language speakers dropped the word “gippopotam” in favor of “begemot” for the hippo. Hence a second interpretation that points toward the hippopotamus! Maybe not the best name for a cat, but certainly unique!

And finally we come around to the literary referent. Begemot is the name of a character in a very prominent and well-known Russian novel: “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov. While I haven’t read it, it sounds like something of a dreamlike surrealist description of Christianity and atheism in pre-WW2 Soviet USSR.

In the novel, Begemot isn’t just your average character. His Wikipedia entry describes him thus:

He is an enormous (said to be as large as a hog) demonic black cat who speaks, walks on two legs, and can even transform to human shape for brief periods. He has a penchant for chess, vodka, pistols, and obnoxious sarcasm. He is evidently the least-respected member of Woland’s [Satan’s] entourage; Margarita [the heroine] boldly takes to slapping Behemoth on the head after one of his many ill-timed jokes, without the fear of retribution. His Russian name Begemot means hippopotamus, but also refers to the legendary Biblical monster. He is known for his jokes which he never stops telling.

So there we have it. Begemot: a huge creature, an Old Testament monstrosity, who is twice-over associated with hippopotamuses, and simultaneously an enormous anthropomorphic talking black cat who is Satan’s pageboy.

With all that going for it, it was hard to resist adopting that name. So now we have our own little Begemot running around the house. Let’s hope he doesn’t start showing any of his namesake’s attributes!

“Kinda bored on a Wednesday morning, I guess I’ll go see what’s shown up in the ol’ RSS reader. Ah, the Humor folder. Really nothing in there but LOLcats from the I Can Has Cheezburger site, but I like cats, and the captions are often worth a smile… Delete… Delete… WAIT A FREAKIN’ MINUTE THAT’S GRADY!”

So that was my morning surprise. Yup, someone took one of my photos of my cat, posted it on ICHC, and over a dozen people have added LOLesque captions. And for whatever reason, one of them was posted to ICHC’s RSS feed and thus straight to my mailbox.

Although unintentional, that caption was particularly apt, too: Praying? No… Imagining this around your throat… Yes!

You can see them below and click for bigness, or just go to the photo’s index page on ICHC.

How do I know that’s Grady? Well, aside from knowing my own cat, I’m also a photographer and know my own pictures. The original was posted to Flickr here back in 2008. For more words and pictures about Grady, read my post after he died last year.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time a photo of mine showed up on ICHC. Back in 2009, a coworker uploaded an embarrassing photo of an eagle that I’d taken on my trip to Scotland in 2002. You can see the resulting LOLpix and read my reaction in this blogpost. It provided a very handy template for this posting!

What I said then about the eagle pictures applies equally well to the LOLcats people have made of Grady: it’s a little slice of notoriety that I find amusing, and it’s interesting to see what captions other people have added to it.

I kinda wish he was here to see them…

When we love someone, we hold their story within our hearts. When they pass, it’s incumbent upon us to bring that story forth and hold it shining like a gemstone for all to see.

Thus, I have to tell Grady’s story.

Two years after my first cat passed away, I was ready to add a new member to my household. In September of 2007 I went to the MSPCA’s Angell Memorial shelter and met a little gray cat. When I petted him, he had a very loud, easy purr, and I decided that he was the one.

The tag on his cage said his name was “Grady”, which is strange, because the previous owner had written “Grey” on the info sheet when she surrendered him. Of course, the tag also said he was “about 3 years old”, when the owner had said “one year”.

I’d thought I was getting an adult cat, but he really wasn’t much more than a kitten, and he had the energy and temperament to match. In the early years, he would often full-on attack me, drawing blood mostly with his teeth. When I got an animal behaviorist in, she tried to play with him until he was exhausted, but after 90 minutes of that without pause, she declared him “99th percentile”.

It got to the point where I was almost convinced that I would have to get rid of him, but we persevered, and I found that putting him in isolation when he misbehaved finally got the message through. He even figured out that if he really needed to play, he could come up to me, sit up on his haunches, and beg with his hands together. And if I wasn’t paying attention, he could tap my elbow with his paw first.

Play for him meant jumping for bouncing ping pong balls or leaping for potholders tossed like frisbees. He even played with little toy cars, rolling them around on the hardwood floor! But his favorite toys were the rubber wristbands that used to be popular; he’d run and chase them, then chew them up until they were destroyed. If you threw his stuffed toy pheasant, he’d run after it at full tilt, grab it with his forepaws, and do a complete somersault before administering a killing bite and bunny-hop kicks.

As he matured, he mellowed and came to trust me completely. Of course, whenever I came home, I could expect him to trot up and meet me at the door. He’d come snuggle any time I was on the couch, or nestle in the crook of my arm as I sat up in bed reading. If I was working at my desk, he’d come drape himself over my shoulder. We even got to the point where I could reliably hold him in my arms and rub his belly.

He was a good leaper, jumping across the kitchen from the island counter to the top of the fridge. He’d also jump several feet up and grab onto “his” particular part of the brick wall separating the kitchen and living room, or atop his scratching post. Every time I was on the toilet, we’d have to play grab-tag in the gap beneath the bathroom door. With people and loud noises, he was absolutely fearless… He had only one mortal fear: tinfoil!

Another daily ritual was feeding time. He was fed twice a day by an automatic feeder, and really knew how to tell time! Two hours before dinner, he’d start nosing around. With an hour to go, he would constantly prowl around. With 20 minutes left, he was downright agitated. And as feeding time neared, he’d pace around the feeder in high excitement, often biting it. I told him, “Don’t bite the device that feeds you!”, but that particular lesson didn’t seem to sink in very well. I think he knew exactly what it meant when I sang the “It’s almost time!” dinner song for him.

Speaking of music, Grady had both his own song, poem, and a special rhyming haiku. The song goes like this:

Grady, Grady, Grady cat:
Him not no average little ’fraidy-cat,
But him meows like a little lady cat…

His poem is:

My cat is full of grayness,
From his whiskers to his anus;
It seems to be quite painless.

And that rhyming haiku? Voilà:

My cat’s named Gradle;
He ate a raisin bagel:
It wasn’t fatal.

Perhaps his most unique trick was this: when he was watching you, if you held your hand out and rubbed your fingers together, his eyes would slowly close, as if from happiness. Very strange, but cute!

I’ve included a few good photos in this post, but I really suggest checking out all of Grady’s photos on Flickr. There are some real special pictures in that collection that capture his personality.

None of that, of course, says much about what he meant to me. Let’s just say he was a dear, dear friend, who made every day much better than it would have been without his warm presence.

So, what happened, and why is he gone?

On September 4th, we celebrated the seventh anniversary of his adoption with the traditional wet food treat. He was due for inoculations, so six days later I took him to the vet for his annual checkup. At that point, everything seemed fine, and continued that way for the following week.

The eighth day after his vaccination was Thursday the 18th, and he was his usual active self. The next day, he was lethargic and (for the only time in his life) ambivalent about food. I decided that I’d bring him to the vet if he didn’t improve overnight.

Since he didn’t improve, I brought him in to the vet first thing Saturday morning. He had quite a fever, so they kept him until 4pm, giving him IV fluid and antibiotics.

At the end of the day, he hadn’t improved, and since the vet was closing and wouldn’t be open on Sunday, they advised me to bring him to the animal hospital at Angell Memorial: the same shelter I’d adopted him from.

After an anxious cab ride, I brought him into Angell Saturday night. The doctor planned to run a bunch of tests and give him more fluid and antibiotics, which meant Grady would probably be in the hospital for a couple days.

Sunday his temperature had come down a little, but he wasn’t eating. All the tests they ran came back with only minor variations from normal. More tests needed to be done.

On Monday morning his temperature was back within the normal range. Monday afternoon I got a call from the doctor saying that he seemed normal and stable, but he still wouldn’t eat for them. Given that, she suggested I bring him home, in hopes that he’d be more comfortable and more liable to eat in a familiar environment. I just needed to wait a couple hours for them to get him ready to go, until 8:30pm.

At home, I cleaned out his food, water, and litter containers, in hopeful anticipation of his return. At 8pm, just as I was getting ready to leave, I received a telephone call from the woman who was getting him ready. “He’s in respiratory arrest. Do you want us to resuscitate him? We need an answer right now.”

What? But his fever had broken! The vet had pronounced him stable! Four days previously, he had been a lively and happy cat! And he was only eight years old! This wasn’t supposed to happen!

I was utterly staggered. Grady had spent three days in the hospital, but they had absolutely no idea what was wrong with him. The woman on the phone tried to be tactful while reminding me that even if they resuscitated him, it was likely to be only a temporary, short-term thing. Could I ask Grady to go through more trauma than he’d already endured? Was this his way of telling me that he’d had enough?

In the end, I took it as a sign that it was time for me to let him go. I told them not to resuscitate. They called back five minutes later to tell me that he was gone.

Grady—my lovely baby!—was gone!

I spent most of that night howling the horrible animal pain I felt. The comments I got from friends on Facebook were helpful, albeit to a limited extent. The next day, when I talked to the doctor, I agreed to spend the money to perform a necroscopy seeking answers about why he died.

Ultimately, the necroscopy was of no more use than any of the veterinarians who had treated him. Grady had a few minor health issues, but they found nothing life-threatening. Was his death due to a reaction to his vaccines? Was there anything the vets didn’t do (or anything they did) which contributed to his demise? There was simply no evidence to base an opinion on.

So now he’s gone, and we will never know why. It sucks mightily that we had such a short time together. I was so happy, and I really expected to have a lot more than just seven short years with him.

One of the most difficult emotions is my sense of responsibility for his unexpected and premature death. I mean, I used to look him in the eyes and tell him, “I *own* you…” And he trusted me so meekly when I brought him to the vet for his checkup. And yet, twelve days later he was dead, despite my feebly ineffective good intentions. And his well-being was 100 percent my responsibility. That guilt tears me up from the inside.

The condo, without him and all the cardboard boxes, the toys strewn all over, the food, water, and litterbox: it feels as if I’ve had a roommate move out. The place is silent and empty and lifeless. It might seem odd that living alone feels so radically different than living alone *with a cat*, but so it is. While my friends’ sympathy certainly helps, life just isn’t the same without my lovable little guy.

Seven weeks before Grady’s illness, I rode in my last Pan-Mass Challenge, and spent Sunday night after the ride at my hotel in Sandwich, on Cape Cod. Monday morning, my support person and I went and explored the Sandwich boardwalk, a quarter-mile foot bridge crossing a tidal marsh, connecting a parking lot to the town beach. After storm damage, it had been rebuilt in 1992 and again in 2013 with money raised by allowing people to purchase inscriptions in each wooden plank of the deck.

As we walked along, we read a sampling of planks. As I neared the beach end of the boardwalk, my eyes landed on one which simply read: ♥ U GRADY. Whatever the original intention had been, the plank reminded me of my little roommate, whom I hadn’t seen for four days. For all the feelings that reminder of him evoked, I stopped to snap a picture of it.

I didn’t know then that Grady had only a few weeks left to live.

That photo I impulsively took is now a very poignant memory and perhaps a fitting memorial in honor of my trusting and faithful little roommate, for whom I held so much affection, and who had brought so much warmth and joy into my life. Blessed be, my little one! I’m so, so sorry.

Well, on one hand, I have referred to both Grady and the Puggle as my “roommate”…

But on the other hand, I also have also taken great relish in staring them down and repeatedly saying to them, “I *own* you!”.

And when you think about it, doesn’t being called a “pet” imply just as much imbalance as having an “owner”?

I just don’t understand why people put so much effort into arguing about semantics when that energy could be applied to something that might produce real meaningful change.

Since I seem to have a large contingent of yinzers in my flist, I’ll post this brief writeup of last week’s PIT trip.

Since food seems to be the majority of what PIT is good for, here’s the run-down.

• India Garden on Atwood: been there three times now, and still feel they’re passable, but nothing special.
• Mad Mex on Atwood: very tasty enchiladas, but they fought with my internals. Went at 3pm and so avoided the raucus college crowd.
• Pamela’s on Forbes: as always, very good but insanely greasy and too much food.
• Green Mango on Braddock: not bad. New Thai place. Grabbed a fistful of Thailand tourism pamphlets for future reference.
• Klavon’s Ice Cream on Penn: odd retro place with eerily friendly staff, but an awesome Pecan Ball with caramel. I’d do that again!
• Oh Yeah on Highland: okay ice cream place. Somehow both reminiscent of JP Licks and yet nothing special.
• Mario’s South Side Saloon on E Carson: very good burger, for a second choice after the Fat Head had a 45-minute wait at 3pm.

Other activities included: a very profitable trip to Papermart on Baum, where everything (including red mini-Sharpies and big glass markers) was seventy percent off due to the store closing; a damned cold walking photography expedition from Heinz Field, around the Point, up to the Seventh Street Bridge and back down past PNC Park (full photoset here); sharing my Scotland photos and travel info with Inna’s mean friend Monika; meeting Inna’s new cats Pumpkin and Prawn; and just generally driving around and getting a better idea of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods and what they’re like.

Took JetLoo for the first time; seemed no different from any other airline, except the ground crew were a lot more potty-mouthed (pun intended) than on Merkun, Untied Airlines, or USHair.

Wasn’t a bad trip. It was nice to have a reason to break the camera out, even if it was really too cold to do a lot of work with it.

Monday marks Grady the Cat’s first adoptaversary. I really haven’t written about him or posted any pictures since his first couple weeks at home. That’s partly due to my five-month travel assignment.

I have taken pictures of him, but he’s not as photogenic as I once hoped, mostly because he’s not a very patient subject, so few of them have made it to Flickr or my LJ. You can see the ones I have taken here.

How can I describe life with Grady? In many ways, it’s great. He’s not a fussy eater. He doesn’t scratch furniture. He’s usually not noisy or destructive. He doesn’t have litterbox issues. He doesn’t spray or mark. He’s a pretty good cat, in all respects but one.

He’s one aggressive muthafuxx0r.

You’d think a cat would enjoy spending time sunbathing in a south-facing bay window in a fancy Back Bay apartment, watching all the pedestrian activity on shi-shi Newbury Street. He’s even got sparrows, pigeons, and seagulls to stare and chatter at when he gets bored.

But no. My cat’s got ennui. No, not just ennui; my cat’s got ANGST. Angst like Arlo Guthrie on the Group W bench: he wants ta kill. I mean, he wants ta kill. He wants ta see blood and gore and guts and veins in his teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. He wants ta kill, Kill, KILL, KILL!

Unfortunately, the only other living thing in my apartment happens to be *me*, and I’m not about to become “prey” to any twelve-pound ball of teh fluffeh, even if he does have nasty big pointy teeth. It’s kind of a pity, because he’d be an ideal farm cat, where he could go out and run and hunt and kill all day and all night long.

So after a year, during which time I’ve utterly failed to train this behavior out of him, I finally called for an exorcist. Today a Senior Applied Animal Behaviorist came by—along with two veterinary student observers—and we talked about Grady’s “case”.

Basically, the diagnosis is boredom combined with an inhuman—or infeline—amount of energy. They played with him for ten minutes, the point at which point most cats will get tired and go for a lay-down. After 80 more minutes of vigorous, non-stop play the Senior Applied Animal Behaviorist got tired and declared that Grady is “ninety-ninth percentile”, and that he’ll remain this hyperactive for a minimum five more years.

Meanwhile, I got all kinds of advice. A lot of it is geared toward finding ways to entertain and exercise him, so that he has an outlet for all this satanic energy other than mad killing sprees. We also discussed deterrence, drugs, and acquiring other living creatures for him to disembowel, ranging in sizes from crickets up to fostered shelter cats. The idea is to redirect his persistent demands for human sacrifices.

In the end, only time is going to tell whether I can live with this killing machine or not. But at least now I’ve some well-educated support and some ideas to try. Wish me luck…

So here's a quick example of Grady doing the advertised begging/praying/clapping thing.

In this clip he kinda gets carried away, batting at some imaginary object, but usually he just does the simple begging move.

Interestingly, a search on begging cats brings up the description of the all-grey Chartreux breed, which includes the following passage:

It's not unusual to find "praying" Chartreux. Some kittens start this spontaneously when very young; if you see this, you can encourage the little one by dangling a toy in front of the kitten. In any case, it seems to be a quite natural behavior for some Chartreux and they retain this characteristic behavior all their lives, frequently "begging" for food or affection by this praying attitude.

I'd actually looked at the Chartreux while researching grey cats, but decided I didn't need the headaches of a purebred. But it looks like Grady's got enough Chartreux to exhibit classic breed behavior. And rather odd behavior it is! See for yourself...