I want to thank the great number of you for the outpouring of support and kind wishes over the loss two days ago of one of my best, my dearest and truest of friends, who just so happened to be an old, blind cat named Banjo. He was indeed better people than most people you …
I am among the lucky who deeply experience the annual joys of seasonal affective disorder, even here in the South. For me, it kicks in each year about early September, as daylight hours noticeably start slipping away earlier, and earlier, and goddamnit, where did my day go? It’s a lousy thing, SAD. Symptoms overtake me …
In the annals of furry FUs, this: Big Orange. Biggie. Bigs. Aka our beloved bastard Biggles, not allowed on our kitchen-island counter. Says me, anyway. Biggles himself refuses to acknowledge this, despite our long-standing ritual of him climbing up, sometimes in blatant view of disbelieving humans, to investigate whatever — untended wet cat food being …
So I’m a pretty angry guy, if you haven’t noticed. I got some issues. This country. This callousness. These cruel things. When I was younger, I had such a chip on my shoulder that I made at least one tall friend who shall Rayle-main nameless think I was gonna drag him into a brawl with …
Kittens. The plural of “kitten. To be more exact: kit·ten ˈkitn/ noun plural noun: kittens (see?) 1. a young cat (go with this definition; things go really wonky in No. 2). 2. stout furry gray and white moth, the caterpillar of which resembles that of the puss moth (again, No. 1; I know nothing of stout …
Some days, the world is just too much with us. Some of us, anyway. Me, to be specific. And today was so very much one of those days, one of my days. The news of our ongoing national trainwreck got to me more than usual, and if you know me at all, you know it …
These last two days: So first my iPhone, essentially free a couple of years ago (accumulated points), yesterday made its death knell clear, ignoring a new Sim card and all factory resets; it’s now a pre-corpse of stumbling WiFi, no calls, no text, no Internet, no Siri and her prudish answers to my naughty questions, …
I took my frail old-girl kitty to the vet’s this morning for scheduled dental x-rays I somehow knew in my gut would be ugly in their revelations. And they were, even more than I had bargained for, absolutely crushing: a mass growing fast up near one eye. I thought she would at least be going …
There is nothing, just nothing they can giveyou, not for this. You’ve set the timethey will arrive with needles, somethingliquid clear and final, andsome sorries, surelyso the suffering will go out But for now, you markthe labored rise of ribs, furfloated into every cornerof your life, there will beso much less to clean, feelyour own breaths, halting there is …
The roller-coaster ride of old pets, another dip, another rise. Took my dear old Bug boy in today to our outstanding vet office, East Carolina Veterinary Service, sure in that awful down-in-the-bones way it was over, or the start of over, and even the vet was bracing me for the worst of news. Old boy has …









