The Diamond Island

Ten years ago, if you asked me if I liked cats, I’d have said, “all cats must be destroyed”. Now here I am, going to a cat expo with K to check out the scene and look for vendors with cool cat toys. Wow, talk about the times they have a-changed.

Communications officer Jessica picks up a transmission about a cat convergence in the area. I put it on the list of things to make a report to back at starbase with K, when we’re planning the weekend explorations and patrols. I know she’s been jonesin’ to get some fresh cat toy tech, and the cats have been a little in the dumps lately, so I know it’s a cat maintenance power-up coming down the pipe at some point.

I mention it, and all of a sudden a blah Saturday turns into a chance for something exciting. Its like I told K we have emeralds growing in the gas tanks of our cars. Whoo-eee! Water bottle, check. Ducats, check. Printed out copies of the coupons, check. Backpack for the mule (me), check. Ready the thrusters, here we go!

Docking achieved, payment administration taken care of, entry achieved. All I can say is, “Zoinks, Scoob!” The layout of the place is eight judging areas, with all manner of contestants in their orbit allocations more or less around the judging central locus. Around them, you have the vendors selling wares and taking up what are the edges of the warehouse structure. Then there are the expected support structures on the edges. Food court, lavatories, security, etc. You get the drift.

Each contestant has a “space” with a table and chair. They plop their cat carrier on the table, along with all their accouterments, and sit on the chair until its time for them to participate in a judging. The cats seemed to be grouped according to breed, so all the Siamese are in one area, for example. I’m not sure what the system used was, however, as it was a little hard to locate the breeds based on the signs. They didn’t seem to follow a logical order.

What blew me away were the cat carriers the owners brought with them. Each one was different, even though many of the base cages used were the same. You seemed to have plastic tents with air holes and metal bar cages. Inside, I saw probably every variation of litter box, cat bed, cat hammock, cat toy arrangement, and cat dishes known. Almost all the cats looked zoinked out, and I don’t blame them. The overload of smells and noises must have been really stressful for the poor critters. The ratio of women to men was about 3 to 1, believe it or not. There are more of us cat guys out there than you might want to admit! The crowd ranged from the typical “best of show” obsessive compulsives and crazy cat ladies you’d expect, to people who looked innocent enough and were there to share their passion for cats with other like-minded people.

I saw one carrier covered in pink satin and done with taffeta ruffles and pearls. Inside it was pink plush cushions and a pink little litter box, with a number of fine china dishes with various kinds of wet and dry cat food. The owner and their precious were out, so I got a chance to look at the setup. The owner had the equivalent of the Terminator’s arsenal of weapons for keeping the cat looking good, all in specially made carrying cases that holstered on the sides of the carrier for easy access. 45 comb-slide, with laser sighting! Spas-12-gauge clippers! Phased plasma pulse cleaner, in the 40-watt range! It was crazy to see how serious these people came ready to fight to the death!

The judging was kind of cool to watch. Owners put their cat in a numbered cage at the back of the judging center. The judge had a table with a number of toys and ribbons, and a raised stage to place the cat on. There were chairs for everyone to watch the judging take place. K and I watched a Siamese and a Persian judging take place. We missed the Maine Coon judging, which was disappointing, as I wanted to see the judge try and tackle those large twenty-pound cats. The judge took each cat out of the front of the cages, and did a series of tests on their tail, fur, face, playfulness, and so forth.

At the end, the cat goes back in the cage and some ribbons are placed on their cage according to how well they did. The playfulness test was the easiest for the audience to gauge, I think. The judge uses a short, sparkly toy to see if the cat will play with it. If the cat just sits there, it’s wah wah wahhh. One of the Persians was funny, because it was over enthusiastic, and the judge had to calm the cat down. It went nuts trying to get the toy. I’m not sure if that was a loss of points or not. The judge remained calm, and laughed with the audience. I had to give him kudos for keeping his cool.

But we were there for the vendors, and K managed to find some decent stuff for the kitties. She located a cat mat of soft material with pink and purple princess cats on it, with some matching mice toys filled with catnip. For Frankie, we bought a plastic rod with a series of strips of bunny fur on the end. K bought a white feng shui lucky cat for good health, and a lucky cat tea mug for herself. Not a mean haul, so we exited before the insanity took any more of a toll on us.

K loves the burgers from Checkers, and I have to say they are pretty darn good. But it’s not a luxury we get often because the nearest one is a ways away. But the cat expo is already halfway there, so we decide to go for it. The traffic proves minimal, and we make it there to fuel up on the Checkers burger and fries powerup. A bit of a drive home awaits us, but our happy tummies prove strong enough to get us through it, showing once again the power of the cheezburger.

We get home, and the cats each give the mat the seal of approval, and the mice toys soon disappear down the rabbit hole. Frankie goes wild for the new rod-flap toy we got, which is a good thing. Her previous one had been ripped and torn to pieces and was no fun anymore. The cats get their superzapper recharge; we get ours, it’s all good. Another successful mission in the day-to-day adventures of beat-down land.

There’s a white furred Norwegian Forest cat living with us named Michael.  K is his officially adopted human, as he came up to her as a kitten on her birthday and said, “I’m living with you now.  Feed me!”  Oh boy, Minnie the Moocher is an amateur compared to this walking food beggar.  Michael has perfected the Meow-Bomb technology to smart-bomb levels, and can pinpoint your location with the perfect frequency for getting on your nerves.  When he’s hungry, this little monticore snap-dragon powder puff won’t let you rest until his tummy has been filled!  In particular, he has a knack for meow-bombing you when you are right in the middle of things, such as an important phone call, or coming home from work and trying to decompress to a human level again.

His fur is soft and double layered goodness, so there is the pet factor to consider.  But his guard hairs fall out easily, and a lot of time is spent keeping the hair infestation to a somewhat acceptable level.  Michael is especially good at covering dark clothes in his protective layer of shed fur.  Give him a kitty pie to lie in, or a blanket in a corner, and it’ll acquire a soft layer of Michael-fur.  Most disturbing are the egg-cases.  These are white masses of matted fur that become tangled and are pulled off when he rolls around on a surface.  I swear, they look just like moth cocoons.  Did I mention that this cat’s other other other nickname is pig-pen cat?

Michael’s stomach, for such a greedy eater, is remarkably sensitive so he throws up a great deal.  Hairball remedies don’t seem to work, though Gerber’s Baby Food Squash seems the most effective in settling his stomach.  Though, if it fails to do the job, get ready to bring out the ammonia on that carpet stain!  The countless times I’ve had to clean up Michael’s barf, it really doesn’t bear thinking about, really.  When the little monster gets into a puking spell, it’s Charles Dickens misery all around.

But the worst part is, this darn cat is expensive to own.  K got him for free, but we’re still paying for him!  The cat has a million things wrong with him, yet he refuses to give up the ghost.  He has urinary tract issues, so he has to have his food specially bought from the vet, for thirty dollars every month or so.  He eats and drinks often, so he has to go to the bathroom a lot, which means we have to buy a lot of kitty litter.  He has cardio-myopathy, an irreversible swelling heart condition, so he has to have a beta-blocker pill every day.  Man, kitty drugs are expensive!  He has to get yearly sonic scans of his heart to see how he’s doing.  And after all that, we get the welcome worry that one day he’ll keel over and bite the big one anyway!  I stopped counting after a thousand bucks, but Michael’s price tag is easily over three times that by now.

Last April, as we were moving, Michael decides to go on a rampage and puke all the time while having problems going to the bathroom.  Turns out, he has three bladder stones that need to be removed or he dies!  Fourteen hundred dollars, says the vet, and thanks for sending me to the golf course this afternoon.  Despite the chances of croaking under the anesthesia because of his heart, the tough little cat makes it through without a single complication and is more meow-bombingly active than ever!  Aieeee!

When Michael is not demanding food, he is sleeping.  If one of us is not on the couch or other suitable sitting unit, he will chirp and scratch at you until you move to the designated seating position.  He will then begin purring, dig at you with his claws until your limbs are in the right arrangement, and then he will plop his heavy boned frame down on you and purr himself to sleep.  Chances are good that within 5-10 minutes another cat will be attracted to your properly pacified form and add their mass to your immobilization factor.  You’d better hope you put a good DVD in the player, because you aren’t moving.

I keep thinking, what unholy universe spawned this feline?  What brutal, unimaginable world did this viking cat from hell come from?  The creature is an investment now, and he’d better live for a long time.  But how much longer can one’s sanity take such responsibility?  I hear some cats live as much as thirty years, and if Michael is one of those Methuselah cats he’s got many years left on the life clock.  Then I get to thinking about the secret lives of cats.  Is Michael a spoiled brat living on his fortunate choice of human servants?  Could he be a hard rockin’ biker viking cat living la vida loca in a parallel universe?  What monsters is he keeping at bay with a fully charged meow-bomb, bathing us in a fur shield and keeping the peace with nap power?  It might not be as one-sided an arrangement as it appears.

Random encounter time! K and I drive into the shuttlecraft parking module and grab our civilization training gear, when lo and behold, we have a critter call! Slightly bony, gray haired kitty announces his/her low fuel gage and projects that psionic command line letting you know if its not happening now, you’re dead meat! Such encounters get added to your lifetime RSS feed when you come under the province of a cat’s karmic lessons. Yup, there’s our very own cat responsibility in the window silently meowing. Yeah, thanks for letting the rogue traders know where the soft touches are.

At first, I think its smokey, our nickname for the local cat constable for the neighborhood up the hill. Might well be, in which case, way to hook up with the protection racket, purr puff! Kitty is friendly, vocal, and affectionate. Yup, pulling out all the bonuses for the Beg Roll on us. Ha! The first meow knocked out the shields and put me on auxiliary power. No worries there, nagging hungry stomach that is the cat uber-psychic “now” of feline study on earth. I pass the retina scan and open the supply lines for a hit of the expensive vet stuff. K distracts the pit stop kitty with pets and praise (humans have a few desperate measures that can sometimes be relied upon to work, or at least reassure us that something is happening).

This paw-puff knows what time it is. The meow-bombing ceases, food is calmly assimilated into main reactor, and mandatory licking of mouth commences. Without any further ado, kitty powers up disruptors and goes back to whatever appointed quest or neighborhood duties may be pressing. See ya next time! Hey, this racket has been getting these creatures by for thousands of years. I don’t see natural selection weeding this behavior out with a ten-foot pole any time soon. Next, feed the cats that, you know, actually live with us. Just another night in the maintenance of inter-species alliances, I suppose.

Next morning, as I’m setting up the recycle pod for the local truck feeding, I see a white and gray cat in our neighbor’s yard, munching contentedly on catnip I swear wasn’t growing there before, but of course its reality change 22-732 and its been there all along. Whether it’s a change in the Matrix or the local cloaking device is down for repairs today, how would I know? I don’t make monkeys; I just play one on earth. The cat looks at me and chooses at that moment to munch dramatically to emphasize how lucky I am that there’s more than one fueling station. Hrm. I guess this is what in cat free trade practices is known as “opening new markets for exploitation”.