The Weekly ShopKat

After a week of cold wet fog, the sun finally came out yesterday afternoon.

As you can see, the leaves are turning already. There’s no snow on the mountains yet, but it’s coming.

The Weekly ShopKat

 

For the ShopKat Fans (you know who you are):

Shot in Auto mode from 70ft with the 200mm lens, black cat in shade with a brilliantly lit background. Photo is edited only for size.

 

You’ve really got to love Nikon. Seriously.

The Weekly ShopKat

I happened to be holding the camera with the 55-200mm telephoto lens mounted when I noticed ShopKat sitting in her favorite spot on top of one of my stock piles.

I love the colors and the contrast in these pictures.  They’re unedited except for size.

 

(Image settings provided for the shutter geeks)

@190mm. Aperture priority mode F-stop 5.6 Exposure 1/320s. ISO 400. Light meter is set to pattern

 

@55mm. Aperture priority mode F-stop 5.6 Exposure 1/125s. ISO 200. Light meter is set to pattern.

 

ShopKat will now hear your petitions…

 

…and most likely ignore them, as is her wont.

Standing Watch

ShopKat keeping a keen eye out for vermin

 

I don’t know why, but she likes to sit on top of those burl blanks, on the bottom rack of the wood cart. She’ll sit there for hours, absolutely alert, watching for any vole stupid enough to cross the perimeter.

 

This, of course, is my way of saying I spent the evening in the shop working on the lathe instead of writing. 

So sorry.

A Conversation With My Cat

I’m in the shop, running a stack of wooden plant hanger bases through the shaper. Between units I pause to adjust my safety glasses and happen to look up. Out in the drive, I can see ShopKat hunched down, staring intently into the raspberry bushes. The tip of her little tail is twitching slowly, back and forth, back and forth.

Some small hapless creature is about to meet its fate.

I look back down at what I’m doing (seriously here, you really want to keep eyes on hands when running the shaper unless you enjoy riding in the ambulance helicopter). When I look up again, Shopkat is gone.

There is a small cat shaped cloud of cartoon dust where she was a moment ago, and a furious commotion in the raspberry bushes.

Go, ShopKat, go!

I kill power to the shaper table and I’m in the process of moving a stack of finished pieces to the project cart - when out of the corner of my eye I catch a black and white shadow slinking furtively through the far highbay and around behind me towards the carving table at the other end of the shop. The hunt has been successful then, obviously. ShopKat likes to display her prizes on the mat in front of my lathe, next to the carving station. I’ll go to use the lathe and find the headless carcasses of voles and chickadees lined up like corpses in the morgue of some budget horror flick. The fact that she’s sneaking into the shop, after stalking prey in the bushes, indicates that she’s made a kill.

I don’t mind the voles (voles are exactly like mice, little gray gnawing disease vectors with tails), in fact I’m all for it – this is ShopKat’s primary duty, vermin eradicator, it’s what I pay her for. But I wish she’d leave the birds alone. So I look to see what she’s got this time.

It’s a HUGE black vole.

It is so big I think for a moment that she’s finally taken down a moose. On second glance I realize it’s the Vole King, Granddaddy Patriarch of the entire Vole Nation, hanging limply in her jaws. This thing must be the source of all the voles in Alaska. He’s like the Godfather of Voles – try to visualize ShopKat dragging Marlon Brando across the floor and you’ll understand what I’m saying here. And when I say Marlon Brando I don’t mean handsome chiseled hardass Marlon Brando from A Streetcar Name Desire, I mean more like blobby gelatinous Island of Dr Moreau Marlon Brando. What I mean is it is one big damned rodent.

ShopKat drops her prize, plop! square in the middle of the mat and nudges it around until it’s perfectly lined up, perpendicular to the centerline and square to the lathe. Then she sits down in satisfaction of a job well done and commences to wash her face.

The Vole’s eyes pop open! Pop!

He jumps up! Boing!

He’s not dead at all! It’s a trick! He was only playing possum, the sneaky son of a bitch!

The giant Vole King spins around and zips off towards one of the work benches like Marlon Brando going for the all you can eat buffet table!

ShopKat is caught completely off guard. She goggles in yellow-eyed amazement. Her tail rigid, like a pipe cleaner, her ears straight up in points.

I yell and gesture, “There he is! Right there! Get him, ShopKat, get him!”

ShopKat continues to stare and the expression her face says clearly, “Well, that’s odd. I know I killed him. Zombie Marlon Brando Voles are not my responsibility.”

The Vole King alters course and dodges towards a pile of birch burl blanks that I have drying in the middle of the floor. The big bastard is fast, like a furry brown bean bag on wheels. For a moment I have a flashback to Saturday morning cartoons and Wylie Coyote giving a shot of super speed tonic to a mouse before trying it himself. The Vole King moves like that super charged mouse. Meep! Meep! Bwing!

ShopKat continues to stare, whiskers twitching, ears wiggling. But she doesn’t move. This is blatant dereliction of duty.

I yell. She looks at me. The Vole King disappears under the stack of birch burl.

ShopKat yawns.

I get the broom and start moving burl around. ShopKat moseys over to watch.

Suddenly the Vole King appears, making a break for the router table!

ShopKat becomes fascinated with her tail. The Vole King passes her within inches, unnoticed.

“Out of the way, Peck!” I shout, and swing the broom with savage abandon.

Contact! There is a solid Thunk! The crowd goes wild! The Vole King is ejected from the shop at high velocity along a low flat trajectory. He lands stunned in the drive. Ha! Didn’t see that coming, did you, your highness. I pick up a hunk of scrap wood and go finish him off - and in this regard it is exactly like a Godfather movie. Meet your Maker, Brando. Thwack! Thwack!

The Vole King gets a royal funeral pyre in the burn barrel.

He was a canny foe, we shall miss him.

Yes, yes, I spent twenty years in the military, I have murderous skills. Back off, Ladies, I’m married. I am a mighty warrior, facing down the Vole King like Beowulf and the Grendel with nothing more than a bad attitude and a stick of hickory. But that’s not the point here. The point is I shouldn’t have had to do it.

Obviously it’s time for ShopKat’s employee review.

I find her sitting on the workbench next to the radial arm saw.

Me: OK, look, we need to discuss a few things regarding your recent performance.

ShopKat: Makes a rumbling noise, like a poorly tuned diesel engine [Translation: Pet Me!]

Me: Stop that. Look, I thought I was pretty clear when I hired you. You keep the shop vermin free, in return I feed you and give you a place to sleep. You get a basic health plan and the occasional tuna treat. There may, may, be some petting involved. Which part of that is unclear?

ShopKat: Sticks her nose in my face, sniffs [Translation: Your breath smells like a dead mouse]

Me: Perhaps you aren’t clear on the process. See, you prowl around the shop, all stealthy catlike and such, and kill the vermin that try to get inside. You don’t go out into the bushes and get them and escort them inside! Understand? Well?

ShopKat: Yawns, turns around, swishes tail [Translation: Blah blah, I don’t hear your monkey chatter. Talk to the paw.]

Me: Look, your actions are tantamount to aiding and abetting the enemy! You could be court martialed!

ShopKat: Mmph? [Translation: Is that a piece of fuzz! oooh! Me likey fuzz!]

Me: Hey, over here, Princess. Pay attention, I’m talking to you. Here’s the bottom line - you catch ‘em, you kill ‘em. Savvy?

ShopKat: Meow [Translation: Speaking of things, the cat box needs changing, Monkey Boy. See to that, would you?]

Me: Damnit! I’m the boss here!

ShopKat: Makes sort of a feline snicker [Translation: I’ve met your wife]

Me: I mean I’m the boss of the shop!

ShopKat: Wiggles her whiskers [Translation: I’m pointy on five ends. I win]

Me: Well, don’t let it happen again.

ShopKat: Jumps on to my carving stool. Curls up in a ball. Yawns hugely [Translation: Nap Time]

Me: You probably shouldn’t expect a raise this year. Just saying.

Why I’m Having Trouble Typing This Morning

There seems to be a large furry object in the way.

As I mentioned to Dr. Phil yesterday, you have to be careful writing science fiction when there are cats present – you’re very likely to fall under their psychic influence and end up channeling Andre Norton.

Have A Picture Of My Cat

 

It’s been a while since I posted a picture of ShopKat, so here you go:

She’s sitting on top of some rough cut burl pieces that will eventually become bowls.  I’m not quit sure why she’s sitting up there, but she spent most of the morning perched on that slab staring out the door into the drive. 

Rainy Caturday

This cat will kill you, but first he needs to take a nap.

Take the time to prepare yourself.

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I'm going to be away from the keyboard for a while today. Sorry about that kids.

There will be a post later about the recent Prop 8 ruling in California. I've got the snark, and I'm not afraid to use it.

In the meantime feel free to play with the cat. Bandaids and Betadine are in the medicine chest in the downstairs bathroom. Have fun. Oh, and keep your guard up, he likes to go for the eyes.

Rainy Caterday

Yesterday my son came up the driveway, pushing his bike and looking all dejected.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s too hot! It’s just too hot to do anything. I’m going inside.” He stomped off towards the house.

“Uh,” I replied. Rather cleverly too, I thought, given the circumstances. “It’s too hot” isn’t something you hear people in Alaska say all that often. Especially during break up. Most people are overjoyed at the warmth and the sunshine after seven months of darkness and snow and sleet and snow and ice and snow and wind and snow and minus 30 cold and snow. Did I mention snow?

I glanced at the outside shop thermometer, it was 62 – that’s like 17 degrees in Canada. It was also damp and rainy. My bones ached from it, despite the heavy sweatshirt and Carhartt work pants. I wasn’t cold, but I sure wasn’t hot. In fact I thought 62 degrees, or even 17 Canadian, was just about perfect.

In the last three or four days everything has started to turn green. The snow is gone from the valley floor, though the mountains are still covered in it, and the pass is still twenty feet deep in drifts. But down here in the MatSu it’s just plain gorgeous.

ShopKat agreed.

She was lounging in the sunlight in front of the shop.

She’d spent the morning stalking a squirrel. It was pretty funny to watch and the squirrel was in no danger. ShopKat would spot the wily rodent sitting on top of the squirrel feeder. She would hunch down and belly crawl across the driveway, inching closer and closer. The problem is that ShopKat is built sort of like a chunky bowling pin, and with her black and white coloring she looked for all the world like a penguin playing soldier, and just about as effective. She’d get within about twenty feet of the squirrel, who was watching intently with amused black eyes and malice in its heart – then, without warning, the tree rat would chatter loudly and zip! it would be thirty feet up the big birch tree above the feeder, laughing its mad rodent laugh and spitting sunflower seeds.

ShopKat would slink dejectedly back across the drive to the shop, and sit in the open door staring forlornly at the feeder until the squirrel returned. Then the whole thing would start over.

Eventually ShopKat moved her surveillance post to the wood pile and assumed a heroic pose.

Got West, Young Kitten!

The squirrel was not fooled – so eventually ShopKat lost interest and went off to pout on a log behind the shop.

I figured she would go play in the woods for a while, but it clouded up and started to rain. Rain does not please ShopKat, she returned to her previous perch in the doorway.

My son came back outside refreshed from the cool interior of the house (and a round of Motostorm on the PS3).

“Man, I’m glad it finally cooled off. I’m going to ride my bike!”

“In the rain?”

“Du-uh!” (how is it possible for a 12-year old to make a three letter sound of derision into two syllables? He gets that from his mother I suspect). “That’s what makes it cool enough to be outside, Dad.”

Indeed, the temperature had dropped to a much more tolerable 59F – that’s like negative five in Canada I think. My teeth wanted to chatter.

I glanced at ShopKat as my son rode out of sight, she ignored me. Her expression said very clearly “Don’t look at me, he’s the product of your genetic material.” She had me there.

She spent the rest of the day sitting in the door, watching it rain.

Me? I filled the squirrel feeder and put on a sweater.

This Week's Search Phrase

Why is the cat's mouth open after licking his ass?

Because his tongue tastes like shit.

Glad I could help.

From the WTF File

I buy good shoes, and especially good hiking boots.

One of the things you learn in the military pretty damned quick is that there is little as valuable or more important than quality footwear. Don’t skimp when it comes to boots. Seriously.

And that goes double for me. During an at sea boarding a couple of years ago, I managed to fracture four bones in my foot. Specifically my left instep. For various reasons that I’m not going to go into, it didn’t get casted up, I just kept the foot wrapped in a tightly laced boot and eventually it healed. Sort of. As you might imagine that type of stupidity has an associated cost. After I retired the VA X-rayed it, shrugged, and said, “Well, there’s not much we can do about it, now.”

So I get some percentage of disability for it, along with all the other damage the Navy did to my body over two decades, and I don’t think about it much.

But I buy damned good boots, especially hiking boots because otherwise I’d be crippled a lot of the time.

See this?

That’s the tongue of my expense leather Hi-TEC hiking boot. Notice the odd raggedy corners?

The tongue on the matching boot looks the same.

How did that happen?

What strange wear pattern do my boots experience that causes such odd damage?

Did you answer, this:

Somebody is going to get a beating.

Stupid cat.

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Crap, what were there? Ten, fifteen typos in this post? I'm suffering an allergy attack this morning and having a lot of trouble focusing my eyes, but damn, I didn't realize it was that bad. Urk. I think I fixed most of them.

Things That Chap My Ass About Cats

Wright’s Law of Cats: the perversity of cats tends towards the maximum – plus ten percent.

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Cats are irritating little bastards, aren’t they?

Take the chair routine.

Get up from your desk, go get a cup of coffee, and inevitably you come back to find Mr. Whiskers in your chair, curled up and pretending to be asleep. You dump him out, take the chair back - and the cat then climbs into your lap and parks on top of your bladder like a hairy codpiece. Try to move him, and he imitates a boneless chicken. It’s like trying to push a jellyfish with velcro on the bottom of it. Now after a while, you’ve got to get up (you’re drinking coffee remember, there’s a ten pound cat sitting on your bladder – try to keep up). So what do you do? You carefully pick the cat up, stand up, and place the cat on the chair. What’s the cat do? Yeah, gets down immediately and struts away. Fuck you, Pink Monkey, I’m not staying in the chair if you want me to stay in the chair, I only want to be in the chair if you don’t want me to be in the chair.

Perversity, see what I mean?

Then there’s the whole dive bombing your ankle.

You’d think that after the umpity dozenth (screw you, it’s a word, look it up) time of having a paw or tail stepped on, a cat would realize that walking under my feet is not a good idea. But no, at least once a day ShopKat decides the best place in the whole freakin’ woodshop to be is directly under my feet. Stomp. Squawk! And then I have to endure an hour of the “You HURT me, Pink Monkey, scowl.” Don’t think cats can glare? You don’t live with cats.

Then there’s the whole food thing.

The Comedian Leo Gallagher (The Sledge-O-Matic guy from the 80’s) used do this riff about cats: They can’t read but they can compare. They can look in the pantry and see what kind of cat food you got too many cans of – then they don’t want that kind any more.

Seriously, what kind of picky eater licks his ass? They ought to make ass-flavored cat food.

Cats will sit beneath your chair and mew piteously. Pet me! Pet me! I’m so lonely! My head is so itchy! How come you ignore me, Pink Monkey? So you reach for them – and they run away! Five minutes later, they’re back. Pet me!

A cat plays with its toys all at once. Bring home a new catnip ball, the cat will play with that bastard furiously for 30 minutes. Then the cat will leave it laying in the middle of the floor and never touch it again. There, got that done. Unless you pick it up and put it near the cat bed. The cat comes along and does a double take. What the fuck? How’d this damned ball get over here? Thirty minutes of furious batting later, and the ball is back in the middle of the floor – right in front of the last stair step. Just out of sight if you’re coming down the stairs with your hands full… Move my shit around, will you, Pink Monkey? I’ll kill you.

How about cat butt? In the face? Hey, Pink Monkey, check out my butt! In your face! Dig it, I just finished up in the litterbox. Check it out, my man! Then they do the cat butt dance and give you a little tail swish as a flourish.

If you don’t hack off their balls or their toes, how do they show their gratitude? Yeah, by either spraying your couch, or shredding it. What the hell is it with cats and couches anyway? It there some genetic feline memory, some ancient racial trauma of Paleolithic cats being hunted on the plains of Africa by giant prehistoric sofas? For God’s sake, Run, Fluffy! It’s a marauding naugahyde Barcolounger! Oh no! It got Snowbell!

Hairballs? No seriously, hairballs? Dude, you’d think that after swallowing gobs of hair, then choking a big nasty wad of it back up – you’d get a clue. Hair, bad, don’t swallow it. I mean, it can’t taste good (of course, there’s that whole ass licking thing again), ever come across your cat sitting by the window, trying to be cool and shit – with its mouth hanging open? The White One does this, and it freaks me out. The Grey One sometimes will sit with his tongue hanging out like he just completely forgot he was licking his balls in mid-stroke. I don’t know about you, but that’s something I’m not likely to forget.

How come a cat can remember to use the litterbox ten times in a row? Then one day hide a load behind the couch? Or leave a puddle in the clean laundry basket? Little surprise for you there, Pink Monkey. Have fun with that. If you need me I’ll be over here wiping my ass on your couch.

Don’t worry I’ll be by later so you can check out my fuzzy ass.

Cats. Yeah.

Arrgh!

OK, obviously I’ve pissed off the universe today.

I had a post finished, and my Internet connection dropped out.

I went back to writing while I waited for the connection to come back up.

Some friends called, they were cleaning a Ruger Mk III 22cal pistol. They’d taken it apart and couldn’t get it back together properly. The slide kept jamming. This is a common problem with this particular weapon, like most weapons there’s a trick to reassembling it correctly – and the Ruger is a bigger pain in the ass than most, it's like German engineering, or rather over-engineering. (Update, Note: just to be clear, Ruger is an American weapon). I hate Rugers, they're fine weapons, don’t get me wrong, but it’s like working on a BMW – you’ve got to be a humpbacked four-armed, left-handed, googly-eyed midget to work on the damned thing. Also it helps if you know how to swear in German. You have to point the barrel down while inserting the main spring, then flip the weapon over so the barrel points up and the hammer lever drops into the pivot slot on mainspring lever. Only then can you tension the spring and close the housing. If you don’t do this correctly, the hammer is forced up into the firing position and doesn’t retract, which means the slide jams against it. This process sounds easy, and it is, but it’s not something you can talk somebody through on the phone. So I had them come over and showed them how to properly disassemble and reassemble the weapon. If it seems odd that they didn’t know how to take apart their own weapon, well, it’s a 22cal Ruger. A weapon like that gets cleaned about once a decade, usually (unless you’re anal retentive about it like I am and clean them after every firing. A clean weapon is a happy weapon. Just sayin’).

OK great, got that done. Just as I was heading inside to check the Internet connection, the power went out.

It came back on after five minutes.

I wasn’t worried, both my word processor and blog editor are set to back up every couple of minutes.

Except, of course, they didn’t.

I lost the entire blog post and 2000 words of the novel. Goddamn it all to hell.

Also did I mention that this week is spring break? No? Well it is. So the 12-year old is under foot all day, which is why you’re not getting anything deep, blogging wise.

And now the Internet is back up and I’ve got nothing for you, deep or otherwise.

So, here have some ShopKat:

[Note the visual pun: Copy Cat, hardee har har]

Apparently the paper towels gave her some attitude, ShopKat doesn’t take that kind of shit lying down. Certainly the paper towels will think twice about offending her again. Oh, yes, they will.

Before you ask, yes that’s her box. It’s full of old towels and it sits on the work bench next to my carving station. Because otherwise we have issues over who owns that chair. Once I put the box on the workbench, she stopped trying to kick me out of my chair, and if you don’t think a two pound cat can kick a 180 pound combat veteran out of his own chair, you’d be wrong, wrong, wrong, I direct your attention to the aforementioned paper towels.

Hence the box. Now everybody is happy.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out why the backup didn’t work and recreate ten pages of novel.

Faceplant!

Clonk!

Which is the sound a cat's head makes when it slams full tilt into a glass door like a coconut dropped from a height on to concrete.

Bonk! is the sound the second cat's head makes when it slams into the same exact glass door two seconds after the first one.

Stupid: [Clonk!] Ow! Ow! Ow! Shit, that's going to leave a lump! Damn my uncontrollable feline pounce reflex and lack of close range visual acuity!
Tubby: That's odd, why did he stop! Outta the way, Retar... [Bonk!] Ow! Ow! WTF? Why didn't you warn me!

Nyah! Nyah! is the sound a squirrel makes when it's sitting on the porch outside the glass door taunting the cats like the Frenchmen in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

What amazes me about this entire incident, aside from the fact that both cat skulls and the glass security door managed to survive multiple high speed collisions (and not for the first time either), is that the squirrel didn't even blink. She just pretended to ignore the cats from a foot away, washing her face nonchalantly, peering through the glass with an amused expression on her little rodent face and wiggling her whiskers.

Both cats staggered drunkenly around for a minute after primary impact and then pressed up against the door like urchins at a candy counter. The squirrel froze - and then after a minute twitched her tail, once, twice, three times, for all the world like a kid taunting a cat with a piece of string. The cats damn near went insane. The squirrel just grinned - and it was obviously that she was just being an asshole.

Hmmm, I wonder what that squirrel could do with a laser pointer?

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Update:

I'm not sure why, but this post has been linked to a number of cat blogs and forums.
For those of you surfing in from various cat related places, hello and thanks for coming by. You can find a number cat stories here on Stonekettle Station. Stupid, Tubby, and ShopKat provide endless fodder for blog posts. Start here.

/Jim

The Stupid Cat

For the curious, Stupid is doing better.

He's still taking antibiotics and he still has a shitty attitude, but at least he's stopped shredding my wallet for the moment.

There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Cat

You remember Tubby and Stupid, right?

The long haired Idiot Brothers were ‘free’ kittens. A neighbor gave them to us when we lived in California.

Free cats. One gray, one white. Cute little kittens.

Free.

Evil little bastards.

Of course, there’s nothing free about pets, especially cats. Right from the first moment they start costing you money. They need shots, and deworming, and ‘fixing.’ Cats need litter boxes. Yep you get to spend money on dirt for the cat to crap in so you can throw it out and go buy more – I tell you, it would be a whole lot more efficient if the cat just learned to wipe its ass on my wallet. Cats need special scratchin’ posts where they sharpen their claws so that they may more easily shred your furniture. Cats need special cat food, specially formulated to permanently stain your carpet when they yak all over the floor for no apparent reason.

In our case those free cats cost us money for full physicals and special certification because we were driving through Canada with them on the way to Alaska. That trip was a little over 10,000 miles (We drove to Alaska from Southern California via Arizona, Florida, and Michigan – What? How would you do it?) which meant we needed cat carriers and methods to feed, water, and do waste removal on the road. And it is in travelling that dogs clearly have the advantage as pets. Dogs understand travelling. A dogs will sleep in the back of the truck for hours without complaint. Need to entertain a dog on the road, open the window. Dogs understand priorities. Stop, open the door, dogs get right out and immediately take care of business; a dog understand the concept of a piss break. Stop, fill a disposable tinfoil pan with litter, put it in the back of the truck, put the cats in the pan – and watch them do everything but pee. You can sit there for an hour, and the cat will play with a little piece of fuzz and sniff the air and not use the litter pan. Put the cat back in the carrier and get back on the road, and the cat will start hollering - “Hey, I gotta go here!”

We did pretty well on that trip, but there were times I seriously considered snapping both their necks and tossing their fuzzy butts out the window. In the middle of the Yukon, for example, when despite offering them frequent opportunities for a potty break, both refused to go – seriously, after nearly a month on the road and 8,000 miles you’d think they would grasp the basic concept. Suddenly the cab was filled with the most foul stench imaginable, obviously at least one of them had let go in their travel container (both were smaller then, and they liked to be in the same travel kennel). We cranked down the windows and I found a spot to pull over. Now if you’ve never driven the Alcan (the Alaska Canadian ‘highway’), especially into the far Yukon, you probably aren’t understanding the situation. It’s not like I can pull into a gas station, dunk them in a tub of windshield washer fluid next to the pumps and rinse them off with the hose. We were at least a hundred and fifty miles from the nearest human habitation of any kind. We hadn’t even seen another vehicle in an hour, if not longer. We had just spent an hour negotiating our way through a herd of bison blocking the road. We were in the middle of a valley, surrounded by a weird dark forest – the kind inhabited by Sasquatch or the Blair Witch. We found a spot to pull over and I parked the truck. I took the cat carrier around back while my wife fished out a big container of wetnaps (best travel item ever invented, especially in the jumbo container) and a roll of paper towels. My son took the dog for a walk (I want to point out that the dog immediately found a spot and did her business, just saying). Now, you need to visualize this, I am standing in the middle of the Yukon, about to open a box with two shit covered, highly irate cats who are now making deep growling noises like demented Tasmanian Devils and clawing with very sharp claws at my hand on top of the carrier. I’m serious when I say that I would have rather have walked into a wolverine den wearing nothing but a raw hamburger jockstrap than reach into that cat carrier at that very moment.

My wife held up an old towel to prevent the cats from getting away, and I opened the cage and carefully reached in. They both lunged straight at me, and I deftly grabbed the clumsy Tubby by his neck, but Stupid managed to evade both my wife and myself and dashed across the road into the woods. I stood there unable to pursue because I was holding a shit covered cat by the scruff of its neck, a cat that was doing everything in its power to get away from me, biting and scratching and making hissing noises like the granddaddy of all pythons. I believe my swearing violated at least seven different Canadian laws, and at least two international sanctions. Good thing the Mounties weren’t around. I carefully handed Tubby to my wife, who wrapped him in the towel, and started across the road.

Picture it, me looking for a shit covered white cat deep in the dark dank spruce forest of the the Yukon. This is what my life had come down to. If a pack of wolves or a grizzly bear had shown up then, I probably would have lain down and let them kill me. Eventually I found the filthy stinking cat under a log a hundred yard back into the woods and managed though stealth and guile to snare the damned thing. He fought me every inch of the way back to the truck, and he was none to pleased with his subsequent wetnap bath. We locked both cats in the back of the truck while I cleaned the carrier with wetnaps and paper towels and bottled water. Both, working together obviously, had deposited enough crap in the carrier to equal their combined body weight. Christ, what a mess, from the looks of it they’d been saving it up since Edmonton. Then I had to bag up the paper towels and such in two layers of garbage bags and strap that stinking bundle under the cargo rack on the roof – I’m an American true, but I wasn’t going to leave a pile of used wetnaps for the Canadians to clean up.

A week later outside of Tok, Alaska, it happened again – only this time it was in the middle of a forest fire. Yay. Cats.

Life since then has been one feline adventure after another.

And you know what happened later, Stupid cost us a serious amount of money. We’d hoped, after the eagle incident, that we would still have enough money to send our son to at least a second rate college.

But alas, it is not to be.

Two days ago Stupid started barfing up his dinner. I figured it was hairballs and wasn’t particularly concerned, it’s not like the carpet isn’t already ruined anyway. But he was still barfing the next day, and making an unearthly moaning noise. He was in obvious pain even though we couldn’t tell what was wrong with him.

Becky took him to the Vet yesterday morning. He’s still there.

He’s got a bladder infection, which blocked his urinary track. He hadn’t peed in a couple of days, apparently. He needed to be catheterized and given intravenous antibiotics. Cat intensive care, want to take a guess at what that costs? Looks like community college and living at home until he’s twenty-five for my son – unless he manages to knock up the Governor’s other daughter, mmm, there’s an idea.

So far, this ‘free’ cat has cost me thousands and the counter is still ticking. I just got off the phone with the vet, they’ve got him drugged, he appears to be responding to the antibiotics, but he’s still peeing through a straw and there’s still some blood in his urine. The Vet indicated that this might happen again, so I should probably look around for a second job.

Free cats.

I suggested they use a couple of wetnaps – perhaps hold a wad of them over his nose and smother him in his sleep.

My cats, they're trying to kill me

Manly Bloggin' Thursday

In the comments below the previous post, Random Michelle asked me to post "more kitty pictures." Then she tried to guilt me into it by claiming to feel "sick."

Gah.

Sorry, no. This is a manly blog where we talk about manly, manly things. Kitties are fluffy and cute and girly and definitely not at all manly.

No kitten pictures.

(Note: Rescuing a freezing kitten from the ferocious wilderness of my back porch is manly, which is why I posted about it. And I posted one kitten picture purely as a manly public service in order to return the kitten in question to it's child, again a manly superhero sort of thing to do. I was not, in fact, posting gratuitous pictures of kittens in order to increase my chick appeal. I'm quite manly, thank you, without resorting to such girly-boy tactics).

In order to prove this blog's manliness, today I will take you on a manly tour of my manly wood shop. Put on your man pants, and prepare to get dusty, sweaty, and gassy in a manly pull my finger way.

First a picture of one of my manly 4x4 ATV's, which I use in a manly fashion to harvest big burly logs from the deep and dangerous Alaskan wilderness. A powerful manly machine that could outrun a Formula 1 race car and pull a fully loaded 747 up a cliff without shifting out of 4th gear or spilling the drink cart. Note the manly gun rack on the front.

Next we'll look at the manly planer, a horrifyingly powerful machine, designed gnaw through literally yards of rough cut lumber. It could kill a lesser man in seconds and turn him into a pile of quivering pate. Seriously, this tool is only for the use of manly man, there is nothing fluffy or cute about it, as you can clearly see:

After processing in the planer, I move the lumber (lumber is more manly sounding than 'board') in a sweaty and gruntingly manly fashion to the tablesaw. Many men have lost their lives to this ravening beast which can slice through yard thick chrome steel in seconds. Note that this machine is equipped with the deadly stacked Dado blade, a truly manly device designed to remove human limbs. Never, ever, allow children or pets near this machine. Ever. Just sayin'

After cutting lumber to rough size on the manly tablesaw, I often stop and scratch, maybe even burp out loud in a manly fashion. Then I cut the lumber into more manageable sizes (not that I can't manage whole trees mind you, but some of the machines simply aren't up to the task despite their fearsome power and brutal capacity). I do that on the manly Dewalt chopsaw, a guillotine like device with huge spinning blades and no safety guards of any kind. A true test of manly strength and dexterity. Note the HUGE plastic jar of manly dog treats on the left hand side of the picture.

Next, depending on the manliness of the job, I might cut pieces on the manly industrial Powermatic 77 scroll saw. This huge cast iron behemoth can lop off a fist full of fingers in seconds, girls get sterile just looking at it:

I might have to bore manly holes into a piece and for that I use the manly Jet Drill Press, a powerful boring machine capable of drilling clean through the earth and killing everybody in China should it ever come unleashed from its stand. Note the giant manly quill handles and powerful manly red switch on the front:

Sometimes I have to stop and swear in a manly fashion, before cutting mortises in the Delta mortising machine, a cunningly cruel tool used to cut manly square holes in wooden stiles. Note the large red manly pipe wrenches hanging on the manly tool board above the manly work bench, I've used these to kill Kodiak Brown Bears in a single swipe to the head, that's why they're red, to hide the blood:

Of course, the real manly work is done on the lathe, a powerful and temperamental machine capable of turning an entire Honduran mahogany tree trunk:

In true manly man fashion, I built a mobile manly lathe chisel stand from the salvaged hull of an old Soviet nuclear submarine, it's only slightly radioactive and real manly men don't worry about a little fallout anyway. Radiation is good for manly men, puts manly hair on your manly chest.

Once I've finished with the lathe, I might do some manly power carving on the downdraft table. Note the large assortment of manly razor sharp carving bits, these are placed in the manly Foredom carving tool, which is powered by an monster 8-cylinder Buick motor:

Vacuum is supplied to the various machines by a huge manly cyclonic dust collection system that I built myself, or rather by forced orphan labor working diligently under my manly lash:

And finally, a sample of my manly efforts, drying in the manly finishing cabinet. These bowls were coated in the tears of bitter and sorrowful women applied with brushes made from the hair of my vanquished enemies:

And there you have it, a manly tour of the manly Stonekettle Station Woodshop.

We do many manly things here at Stonekettle Station, but what we don't do is cater to the pitiful cries of sickly women.

And no kitty pictures.

Ever.

_______________________________________

Hope you're feeling better, Michelle.

_______________________________________

Some sissy readers might have noted a rather large number of typos in the initial post. This was done on purpose, as manly men are not girly English professors and they construct sentences however they please. In other words, they command language, it doesn't command them. Yes. However, the shrill girly whine of some unmanly people was getting on my manly nerves. So I fixed it. You're welcome.

Now, pull my finger...

Catbloggin' Thursday

A couple days ago a package arrived in the mail.

I regularly order products and tools for the shop and both Beastly and I are expecting a couple of items from various woodworking supply houses in the lower 48. So, naturally I figured the package was one of the ones we were waiting on.

Not so.

The package was a standard large soft postal envelope, covered in paw prints, with globs of cat hair stuck in the packing tape. Strangely the package extruded a spicy, herbal odor. It was addressed to my cats, Sitka and Kenai (AKA Stupid and The Fat One, in that order).

I was, of course, immediately suspicious as I am of any item connected to anything even vaguely feline.

Hmmm. I poked the package dubiously. Nothing, no response. It was inert.

As I examined this unexpected arrival, listening intently for ticking noises or fuse ignition, biohazards, or gas emission, I had the sudden intense feeling that I was being watched. Glancing around, I realized that both cats were observing my every move with keen interest and eyeing the package with fierce feline curiosity.

Odd, neither cat had ever expressed such interest in the mail before.

"Well?" said I, sternly. "What have I told you two regarding use of the postal system?"

Both eyed me intently and remained silent.

"I better not find out that you guys have been ordering stuff off of the Internet again," I admonished them.

Stupid blinked mockingly. The Fat One wiggled his whiskers in an amused sort of way.

"Think I'm kidding, you little fuzzballs?"

The cats feigned studied indifference.

"Seriously, if there's another unauthorized charge on my credit card for tuna or frozen mouse pops you two are in deep dog shit."

The Fat One yawned. Stupid eyed a piece of fuzz on the carpet intently. Neither appeared the least bit intimidated.

"It's like this, you eunuchs, I've already had your balls cut off. I'll have no problem whatsoever cutting off other bits should I find it necessary. Do we have an understanding here?"

Ah, I could see that last comment had struck home. The Fat One's tail was twitching, and a large clump of Stupid's hair suddenly fell off and was floating freely in the air currents. They remembered, oh yes they did.

I flipped open my pocket knife, carefully making sure they could both see the sharp edge, and slit the envelope open.

Both cats moved closer.

The hair began to rise along the nape of my neck. The day took on an ominous darkness. From the TV, tuned to Animal Planet in the other room, came the unmistakable opening bars of When Animals Attack.

Well, hell, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.

I carefully emptied the contents of the package onto the counter, reasoning that if it was indeed an explosive, Anthrax, or Dick Cheney the little bastards would have safely distanced themselves. Anything dangerous enough to take me out would kill them too, and that was acceptable. I would die a martyr to evolved monkeys everywhere. I would have both of their furry souls as servants in simian paradise for all eternity. Bawahahahahaha!

A fuzzy blue bundle, a small pouch of what appeared to be dried plant leaves and a note tumbled onto the kitchen island.

Nothing exploded.

My curiosity piqued, I reached for the note.

And the cats sprang into motion. Stupid bit me on the ankle and as I turned, knife in hand, to deal with his sudden, but expected - always expected - treachery, The Fat One leaped onto the counter and snatched the contents of the package.

I had only a momentary glance at the paper as they both beat a hasty retreat, a cryptic message signed with the ominous feline monikers, Skulker and Orphelia. I have no idea what it said, but it can't be good.

Later in the day a new blanket appeared on top of the cat house in my den. It's a soothing blue decorated by a small square pocket in the middle, covered in smiling cat pictures. To my eye, the little cat smiles are full of mischief and evil malignancy.

See for yourself:

Shear unadulterated evil.

They're organized, the cats, to a higher degree than I would have thought possible considering their lack of opposable thumbs and tiny, pea-sized brains. They've taken over the postal system and they're up to no good.

I distracted both cats with a couple of catnip mice and retreated from the room.

If you need me, I'll be clutching my water pistol and hiding in the kennel with my dog. The cats, they're not taking us alive.

Death from the Sky, Part II

As usual, Beastly and I were turning yesterday.

I had finished a large piece the day before, and Beastly was just finishing up a bowl he has been working on for several days:

That's a copper inlay around the rim. Pretty dammed cool, especially for only his second time turning Alaskan green birch heartwood (Beastly is an experienced wood turner, but green birch turns far differently from the exotic hardwoods he's used to). It's available if anybody is interested.

We had the front of the shop open and I stepped outside with the chainsaw to cut some more blanks from the log stock. I made a couple of cuts, then turned the saw off in order to adjust the log on the cutting stand - and I kept hearing something behind me. Beastly was inside the shop, so it wasn't him.

Moose? No, the dog was laying in the sun, most unconcerned.

Everything was suddenly very quiet. The spruce grouse who usually trill and chirp all day from the tree branches were silent. Predators? Wolves or bears? No, the dog wasn't even sniffing the air, and she'd sure as hell know if something dangerous was about.

I looked around. Nothing. Maybe it was my imagination.

I picked up the saw - and the strange noise came again. Hmmm.

I looked around, again. Still nothing.

Then I looked up.

That's a young Bald Eagle, probably no more than a year or so old. He's still got the speckled plumage of a youngster, obviously. Young or not, he was big. His wingspan was easily six feet. He was perched about thirty feet up, in the birch tree between the shop and the house, eyeballing all of us potential food items below. He must have decided that Beastly, the Dog, and I were too big to cart away, but one of the idiot cats was in the sunroom window and Baldy was giving him the long hard stare. You remember what happened the last time cats and eagles mixed it up around my house, right? Fortunately for my wallet the cats remained safely behind glass this time.

However, I do have new neighbors. They have a little dog. A little yappy ball of fluff that resembles nothing so much as a tribble with a bad attitude. I think it's a Pekinese, but I'm not sure. It mostly looks like an animated mop head with a pair of beady eyes glued on. The whole damned dog, hair and all, can't weigh more than a pound or so - perfect snack size so to speak. Needless to say, the little puffball has no sense whatsoever and was roaming unconcernedly about about the yard, yapping spastically and sniffing the flowers.

Beastly and I began to speculate just how long fluffy had to live.

Beastly got out his Nikon and snapped a few shots, including the one above (He took that shot from about 60 feet away, against a glaring overcast sky. You've just got to love Nikon cameras).

Baldy kept turning his head back and forth, and it was obvious that he was triangulating the position of that irritating yapping noise. Suddenly, he spread his enormous wings and dropped like a stone from his perch.

Belatedly, we wondered if maybe we should do something.

Too late.

Fluffy made a frightened Cheap! and scampered backward like a supercharged hamster ... and escaped to safety under the neighbor's porch. Goddamnit! So much for a National Geographic moment.

Baldy glided away, disappointed, hungry, and in search of other unattended pets.

Life in Alaska can be hard for little fluffballs. He's out there again this morning, growling at the flowers like a demented ewok and snapping happily at the mosquitos. Not once has he looked up.

And he really, really should. Because, overhead, the eagles are circling and the grouse have grown silent again.

It would appear that Baldy went for help.

Really, it's only a matter of time.