Ornoth

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.

Haven’t been inspired to write much lately, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle. So I guess it’s time for another potpourri posting. I’ll try to be brief, although there are a lot of little things to go over, and a few lengthy ones.

Everyone always asks me about employment first, so… I haven’t found anything yet. I haven’t been too worried about that, since you learn as a consultant to save during good times to get through the bad, and there’s nothing like taking a year or two of your retirement when you’re young enough to get out and enjoy it. At the same time, it’s really time to make this a top priority, now that summer’s over.

However, it amused me to no end to find a TED talk by a designer who totally espoused my beliefs about taking time off during one’s working years, and demonstrated some fabulous design work that came as a result. Check out the nice, eloquent, short talk here.

Ironically, my net worth right now—nearly a year after being laid off—is the highest it’s been in seven years. More surprising still is that if I go back to the last time my net worth was this high, it was December 2002, about a year after I was laid off from Sapient. What is it about being laid off that causes me to get richer, when one would normally expect one’s savings to be depleted in no time?

Well, actually it makes sense. Tech and consulting layoffs correllate pretty closely with stock market bottoms, and the market usually recovers nicely in the following twelve months. So although my savings has eroded somewhat, my mutual funds have appreciated much more. So remember: buy stocks whenever I lose my job!

The next most common inquiry concerns biking, and I have such a tale of woe about the incompetence of my bike shop. Sparing you the details, my bike has been in and out of the shop since the Fourth of July, and has been completely out of commission since early August, while two major components were shipped back their manufacturers (one of them twice).

Meanwhile, I’d been putting a lot of miles on my Bike Friday folding bike, including my first century ride on it. The folder isn’t bad, although I will complain that it’s heavy, which means I can’t climb hills as well on it.

Thankfully, I just got the reassembled bike back from the shop, and after all that travail, it’s running fine. Just in time for cold weather, of course. There’s a lengthy writeup about the whole long ordeal here.

Since I measure my cycling year from mid-October to mid-October, I just concluded my 2008-2009 season. I wound up with 4,000 miles on the road and about 500 more on the indoor trainer. With five centuries under my belt, it was a really good year.

In other news, Boston’s bike coordinator has targeted my street, Commonwealth Ave, for some very non-standard bike lanes. I’ll be curious to see how they pan out.

The deadline for PMC fundraising has passed, and this year I raised a total of $8,266, which is pretty good for a recession year. My lifetime total is now $52,657. The check presentation isn’t until December 5th this year.

This also seems to be the year I started sea kayaking. After expeditions with my brother and my CIMC friends, I also spent three hours recently on a very choppy Charles River basin, having rented from Charles River Canoe & Kayak’s new Kendall Square location. My obliques got a real heavy workout. Once I’ve got an income, I really do have to start thinking about picking up a boat. Meanwhile, I’m looking into my storage options, which are limited in my condo.

Indoors, I recently re-read Alan Watts’ "Wisdom of Insecurity", an awesome little tome that was my first serious exposure to Buddhist philosophy, back in January 2003 (original review). I’ve also just re-read Robert Anton Wilson’s 1975 "Illuminatus!" trilogy, which was interesting, especially when some of the details of his dystopian future turn out to be accurate predictions of policies enacted by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11. Here’s an excerpt:

"Their grip on Washington is still pretty precarious. […] If they showed their hand now and went totalitarian all the way, there would be a revolution. Middle-roaders would rise up with right-wingers, and left-libertarians, and [they] aren’t powerful enough to withstand that kind of massive revolution. But they can rule by fraud, and by fraud eventually acquire access to the tools they need to finish the job of killing off the Constitution."

"What sort of tools?"

"More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subversives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public mind. […] The people reason—or are manipulated into reasoning—that the entire populace must have its freedom restricted in order to protect the leaders. The people agree that they themselves can’t be trusted."

Online, I’ve put some time into finally revamping OrnothLand. The new version can be seen at http://www.ornoth.com/. I was pleased to be able to easily include my most recent Twitter tweet, Livejournal blog and cycling blog posts, and Flickr photograph by parsing their RSS feeds. And I’ve implemented (although not perfected) long-desired features like the ability to search through past entries as well as see only what’s new since your last visit.

A couple notes on Facebook, while I’m here. A while ago I stopped getting notifications when a friend added another friend to their list. I miss that feature, which was sacrificed to one of Facebook’s rewrites; however, now it seems to be about to come back. On the other hand, I also recently stopped getting notifications every time a friend took a quiz or took an action in one of their applications, and I have to say that’s been a godsend, and saved several inane people from being un-friended. I’d already manually ignored 787 applications, but I haven’t added to that list in several weeks.

I’ve also spent some of my free time expanding my cooking repertoire, which has paid nice dividends. I started with basic stuff that I’ve cooked before but hadn’t in years, like roasted beets, roasted potatoes, sour cream cookies, tollhouse cookies, brownies, and my family’s traditional spaghetti sauce, which I modified to include a bit more heat. I added steamed broccoli to the list of things I’d make, and I continue to experiment to figure out how to make stir-fry that doesn’t produce allergic headaches. Sadly, I think garlic and onions are the culprits. I also just made Hi-Rise Bakery’s vanilla loaf, which came out nicely, but boy is that one expensive piece of bread!

People often ask about Grady… He’s doing okay. Nothing really to mention there. He’s mellowed out a bit, even to the point of tolerating being held, but he’s still quite the little athletic hunter, especially when it comes to wadded up balls of paper. I should probably take and post some more pictures of him.

Speaking of photos, this photo of mine will be displayed in two five foot long resin displays at the Red Rock Canyon Visitor’s Center outside Las Vegas. Very cool thing to add to the resume/portfolio, and it’s another paying client. And made another photo expedition to the top of Boston’s Custom House tower; results (here).

On a side note, my friend Inna is DJing a show on Duquesne student radio. Visit wdsr.org Fridays from 5-7pm.

Closer to home, this is a big year for Boston politics. There’s a big mayoral vote this year, plus the election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.

The autumnal equinox has passed, which means the end of summer, which I hate to see go. The fourth quarter is always the worst time of year for me, starting with my birthday, which as usual I’ll thank you not to observe. I’ve been kicking around ideas of what to do, but I suspect it’ll look a lot like last year’s observance… hopefully with the same result!

October and November look to be very busy at the sangha, as there are two big events coming up. In October I’m participating in a metta (lovingkindness) practice group. I’ve sometimes scoffed at metta practice for being simplistic and pointless, but at the same time, all the challenges I encounter in my practice are pointing me in that direction. So this’ll be an interesting experiment. And there’s also the annual Sandwich Retreat in early November, which is always revelatory. You can of course expect writeups. And there are several interesting topics and speakers at CIMC’s Wednesday evening dharma talks. So it’s going to be an intense couple months of sitting motionlessly with one’s eyes closed.

That’ll be quite a change, tho. The center was closed for their usual summer hiatus, and until recently I’d seen very few of the people in my dharma circle since July. I miss that. Unfortunately, the previously copacetic dynamic has deteriorated after some of the usual adolescent antics. It saddens me, even though I know that change is, of course, inevitable.

I should take a second to record a couple interesting tidbits from the most recent talk, given by John Peacock. There were three key points he made that resonated with me, each from a context outside Buddhism, in addition to coming from completely separate contexts from each other.

One of his main points was to approach life with a sense of wonder, to see things deeply and anew as they are encountered. By looking at a tree and seeing "a tree", our minds see little more than our pre-existing conceptual model of "a tree", rather than the specific instance before us, which might differ radically from that mental construct, and is certainly much more vibrant and alive. This obscures reality and inhibits one’s ability to see special and meaningful details that make this tree unique. It’s these kinds of penetrative insights that also give a fiction writer the experience and the vocabulary to build a compelling mental image of a scene, which is a belief I’ve held strongly since writing an article about Tolkien’s use of vocabulary for a fanzine thirty-five years ago. You can see one incarnation of that particular rant on the DargonZine site, at http://www.dargonzine.org/dpww/docs/wonder.txt. So you can imagine how John’s words about wonder and careful observation resonated with me.

Another interesting bit was John’s response to a question I asked that went something like this:

Having a background in Tibetan Buddhism as well as Theravada and IMS, you seem singularly qualified to speak on the topic of viewing Buddhism along a continuum from extremely rational and scientific to extremely superstitious and ritualized. I don’t know how it is at IMS or Oxford, where you teach, but here at CIMC we hear almost nothing about jhana (concentration) practice, despite the fact that it is very heavily emphasized in the Pali canon. Where on that spectrum do you see jhana practice falling?

The response was that jhana practice is useful in developing concentration, but he seemed skeptical about the existence of the specific sublime mind states described in the suttas. He also said that the suttas actually equivocate, pointing specifically to Majjhima Nikaya Sutta 26, the Ariyapariyesana Sutta (The Noble Search). That sutta includes the Buddha’s unsatisfying search for enlightenment by studying under other Indian teachers, many of whom taught concentration practice. So the canon seems to imply that concentration practice is helpful, but not sufficient.

Finally, John was presented with the standard Buddhist question that sets Buddhist virtues of patience and acceptance of life as it is against the human desire to correct injustice and make progress (positive change) in the world. The answer is, of course, that wise action is virtous, but the important factors are that one perform such actions with a wholesome intent rather than coming from a place of aversion, and that one must perform all actions without becoming so attached to a specific result that it causes suffering if it does not come about. This relates very closely to managing one’s expectations. I first learned the importance of expectation management in my professional consulting career at Sapient, where common knowledge held that one should always under-promise and over-deliver, so as to always exceed clients’ expectations. A yogi should bring that same attitude to the actions they take in the world, letting go of the attachment to a particular outcome, and being delighted if things transpire in a positive way.

Finally, I’ve taken a bit of time to do some formal goal-setting for 2010. Here’s what I’ve got:

• Get a new job
• Travel to the Bay Area and:
  • Participate in the annual Buddhist Bicycle Pilgrimage
  • Meet and thank Gil Fronsdal
  • Hang out with some of my friends in the area
• Complete my 10th Pan-Mass Challenge
  • Possibly crossing the entire state by starting in New York State
  • Exceed $60,000 lifetime fundraising
  • 5th consecutive heavy hitter
• Participate in at least one week-long residential meditation retreat

So those are some of the things that have transpired over the past couple months. Although my cycling blog will be a bit less active in coming months, hopefully this one will get a little more attention, even if it may not be the most exciting reading in the world.

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 it’s been three days, and things are starting to settle down a bit chez Grady. Here’s a few notes.

The first thing to note is the name discrepancy. The card on his cage at the kennel said “Grady”, but the info sheet the owner filled out said “Gray”. So he might not be used to Grady, but it’s an infinitely better name than “Gray”, so it’s gonna stick. it’s close enough that even if he’s used to “Gray”, it won’t matter.

The kennel card also said he was around three years old, but the owner’s sheet says he’s one. He looks and acts one, too. He’s smallish, still a bit unsteady on his feet, and has some pretty kitteny behaviors. So I think I’m gonna have a more energetic, untrained cat than I expected.

I’ve had a couple occasions to observe the owner-mentioned “hand clapping” behavior. It’s more like he sits up, puts his paws together, and raises them up and down together. Online references can be found for cats clapping or praying, including specific references to Chartreux, a grey breed. He seems to do it mostly when he wants something. I’ll be sure to try to get pix and/or video for your amusement.

His resppiratory infection is still quite there, although perhaps it’s getting better slowly. I was given a liquid antibiotic to give him for ten days, and fortunately he seems to tolerate my administering it to him, which is a procedure not unlike pilling. So far so good there.

The furniture scratching… is something we’ll work on over time. The good news is that his favorite place so far seems to be the entryway to the living room, which is solid brick. He can scratch that all he wants, but I hope to wean him over to cardboard boxes and a scratching post.

His favorite toy so far? Livestrong-style rubber bracelets. He loves batting them around, flipping them, rolling them, and of course biting them. Fortunately, they’re cheap and I already have a good supply of them.

I’d say the only real difficulty right now is that when he gets excited he nips, but again that’s something we’ll train out of him. So far I’m making plaintive kitty-in-pain noises and leaving him alone when he does that, but if that doesn’t get through, we’ll move to clapping and the squirt bottle, although I’d prefer not to use negative reinforcement with him unless absolutely necessary.