Why Do I Love This Cat?

Someone on the Etsy forums posed a simple question: "Who loves cats, and why?"

Good question.

I love cats, especially my cat, naturally. She's the sixth cat I've ever owned, although it's more like she owns me. I am her bitch.

This is the culprit: Raven. You may say, "The word culprit implies guilt. What is sweet little Raven guilty of?" Well... everything, basically. She gnaws through the wires for laptop adapters, headphones, cell phone chargers, et cetera. I've spent about $200 over the years replacing power cords for laptops or cell phones, and my bf has spent probably more on headphones. She yowls in the morning if you don't get up at the usual time, for example, if you sleep in on the weekend. She also yowls if you don't feed her on time... or if you refuse to feed her early. A squirt bottle only buys you a few minutes' reprieve from the skull-penetrating yowls. (She'll usually spend those few minutes chasing her own tail in a fit of pique.) If she's overexcited, which is essentially any time she's not asleep, you have to stay sharp if you're petting her. She may suddenly decide to deploy a "love bite" or a "playful" swat with her razor-sharp claws.

Raven is a total attention-whore. No matter who you are, if you come into our house, she owns you too, bitch. She owns your lap, and if you're not using those hands to pet her, she will tell you what she thinks of that, buddy. (Meaning more yowling.)

She fears children, maybe because they're even crazier than she is.

For a cat going on seven years old, she is amazingly immature. When I first got her as a kitten, I consoled myself (usually while washing her pee out of my duvet for the umpteenth time) that as she got older she would mellow out, like the older cat that I also had at the time. I thought she'd eventually slow down enough to dispense with the uptight yowling and compulsive chewing and attacking visitors and such. No such luck. She's exactly the same today as she was at 4 months old. Points for consistency, Raven.

So, to get back to the original question: if she's such a pain in the ass, why do I love her? Well, why not? I love my family, and they're a pain the ass a lot of the time, too. I love her because I chose her, and she is who she is. She'll snuggle up to me even if I squirted her with the water bottle 2 minutes earlier to get her off the kitchen counter. She'll still come when I call her, even if an hour before, I staggered bleary-eyed out of bed and shut her in the downstairs bathroom so I could get one more half-hour of sleep without enduring her compulsive yowling.

I guess I love her because she obviously loves me enough to put up with me, so it's easy to return the favour. Come to think of it, isn't that why we love anyone?

The Ultimate Oscar Snub

Imagine a talented young man who appeared in several Hollywood movies, often alongside Oscar-winning actors, has died from an accidental drug overdose at the tender age of 25. Now imagine that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claims they couldn't find 10 seconds in a memorial montage that featured PR execs and studio bigwigs that the general public has never heard of to remember this talented man who has died tragically young. Well, that's exactly what happened in the case of this man:


Brad Renfro was left out of the memorial montage honouring film personalities from both in onscreen and behind the scenes, either intentionally because "it is simply not possible to include everyone" (unless, of course you are a PR agent...then naturally they have room for you!), or perhaps it was because he was not deemed worthy because of his personal problems.

Brad Renfro Snubbed

However, you'd think if the Academy were so concerned about actors with less-than stellar personal lives, they wouldn't have invited this notoriously drunken lout to the ceremony:


Drunken Lout Attacks Jennifer Garner on Red Carpet

Busey's behaviour before the show was embarassing to all who beheld it, even to those of us so far removed from Hollywood that the closest we get to the Oscars is watching from home while stuffing our faces with ketchup chips and beer, basically because everything we really want to watch was either preempted by the Oscars or in reruns because of the writers' strike. Whether we're watching because we want to or because we have to, we usually don't watch the Oscars to see a train wreck. That's what TMZ.com is for.

Nevertheless, a train wreck is what the Oscars have become, apparently. This was the all-time lowest rated Oscars. After seeing what I saw (and what I didn't see) while tuning in and out over the course of the evening, whoever wasn't watching didn't miss anything worth seeing.

Queen St. Fire: the Aftermath

A day after the fire on Queen St., there is just a hole where Duke's cycle shop used to be. If I remember right, there was a dollar store next to it that has also burned to the ground. You can see that the apartments that backed onto it from Richmond St. are completely gutted.

It really is a sorry thing to stand in the cold and stare at the remains of something you walked by every day and completely took for granted. As I snapped these photos, I wasn't alone. Many others were gathered with me on the north side of Queen St. to peer through the newly-erected fence at the devastated south side. As we snapped our photos and rolled our video cameras, we could smell the charred, acrid ashes of the rubbish heap.

Still visible is the iconic Suspect Video sign, basically the only recongnizable bit of the store that is left. Inside, I imagine, are piles of melted DVD cases with the discs fused inside them, blackend bits of vintage VHS tapes of foreign-language movies, essentially irreplacable now, and ashes of comic books and movie mags from eras gone by.

Out front, shards of icicles dangle dangerously from the lamp post, transformer and hydro lines, remnants of the fire department's gallant but failed effort to save this historic bit of real estate.

As I said yesterday, I really was sad to contemplate the demise of Preloved. Really a lovely little shop. I hope they decide to open up again somewhere else.

In case you're interested, you can donate to the "Queen St. Fire Fund" at any Scotiabank branch. The money will go to help the residents of these buildings who are now homeless in the middle of winter.

Queen St. Fire

Yesterday, a fire destroyed most of a city block at Queen and Bathurst, near my house. I took a few shots on my way to work.

This shot was taken standing at the corner of Queen and Ryerson, just across the street, at a little after 8 A.M. When I first went to my walkout at the top of my house at 6:30, I had been able to see flames shooting into the sky. You can see that the most intense flames are out by the time I took this picure, but even so, I could still feel the heat of the fire on my face. If you look, you can see that the road is wet and there are no icicles hanging from the wires in front of the involved buildings. That means the heat was keeping the water from freezing, even though it was -20 degrees with the windchill at that time.

The firefighters were still hosing the site when I got home from work at about 6:30 in the evening. My understanding is that afterward, when they were sifting through the buildings, there was another flare-up as the embers settled, and they had to pull out and douse the site again.

This second photo shows the plume of smoke streaming east and southeast from the site. The condo building on Richmond and over toward Spadina were completely enveloped in smoke. I can only imagine what these people's homes smelled like at the end of the day. I caught a faint whiff of it in my own house when I got home, even though I live to the northwest, the opposite direction that the smoke was blowing.

I had to walk over to Spadina that morning to get the streetcar, essentially the same direction as the smoke was drifting. I must have breathed in more of the smoke than I realized at the time. It was late afternoon before the unpleasant tickling and burning sensations were gone from my lungs and sinuses.

It's such a shame. I think one of the stores that was lost, along with longtime Queen St. fixures like Duke's and Suspect Video, is Preloved. I liked to browse in there, but I never bought anything because it seemed a bit expensive. Now I wish I had, of course. Too late now. I hope the business owners find the energy and resources to reestablish themselves somewhere new.

As for the people who lived in the apartments above and behind the storefronts, it makes me sad to think that they have lost every worldly possession, and have no homes in the middle of bitterest part of winter to boot. I saw one woman on TV who said she doesn't know what she's lost because she hasn't been back to check to see what she can salvage. She must still be in shock or denial because, trust me, there is nothing to salvage. You can see that from the TV reports, and passing by it again this morning just confirmed that for me.

I'd like to take a few more photos before they demolish the site, which is what I understand they're planning to do this weekend.