I resisted the temptation to roll the luggage cart with Hodge on it out the fire door and down the fire escape.
For one, I’d probably have had to pay for the cart.
And there would be questions.
Temptation
Tag Archives: Hodge
“Flowers for me?”
Cat behavior, or Hodge and the fleecy green caterpillar
(After I wrote this, a friend took the following video on New Year’s Day, showing Hodge with his fleecy green friend.)
Sunday morning I was walking around while brushing my teeth with my 10-year-old Sonicare, which sometimes aggravates Hodge (the sound? the walking around?). I wasn’t thinking about Hodge at all when suddenly his furry body slammed into my legs. All I felt were fur and muscle — not a hint of anything hard or sharp, like teeth. I take this as a sign of the progress we have made since 2002.
In addition to fear aggression, two of Hodge’s behaviors mystify me. One involves standing on a soft object (cat bed, blanket, or pillow, for example) and lifting his right front foot, then his left front foot, then his right front foot, over and over, for as long as 15 minutes. As he does this, the expression on his feline face varies from deep concentration to inner pain. It doesn’t seem to be enjoyable, yet I’m not certain it’s right for me to distract him and get him to stop when he doesn’t seem to want to. Or is he not able to?
I had never witnessed Pudge engaged in this activity, so I mentioned it to K., who has more experience with more cats than I have. She nodded and said that she’d seen Morpheus doing the very thing I had described. One evening during my stay, she directed my attention to the other sofa, where Morpheus was standing on a blanket, lifting one front foot after the other, looking thoughtful and even pained. Unlike Hodge, Morpheus has claws, and it’s hard to guess whether this behavior is related to the feet alone.
In addition, Hodge has a toy to which he is either mother or master — I can’t tell which. It’s a foot-long, faux fleece green caterpillar that he drags around and even brings to my feet repeatedly when the mood strikes him. Sometimes, he grasps one end of it with his mouth and steps on it with his feet deliberately even as he tries to walk off with it. From my perspective, he looks mentally impaired as he tries to drag his fleecy friend along while pinning it down firmly. This, too, can go on for quite a while. It’s funny, yet frustrating, to observe.
When Hodge does manage to walk around with the green guy in his mouth, he sometimes vocalizes in a way that I’ve not heard from him in any other circumstance. It’s a loud cry that sounds more like a mother’s than a predator’s. His facial expression seems to be more of concentration and concern than triumph, although I suppose he could be thinking about where to hide his “victim” from others. I can’t imagine maternal feelings in a neutered dominant male. Given the idea that cats see people inconveniently sized, socially inept cats, I wonder if the caterpillar is prey — and if its arrival at my feet is intended as some kind of love-offering. In that case, I must be a disappointment to Hodge, as I do not accept in graciously in the same spirit in which it is offered.
Perhaps I am the one whose behavior is mysterious and disturbing.
Holiday party and a winter’s day
There’s something about spending a single night away from home that makes me feel more disoriented than returning after a week-long trip. J. and I went to the last Hyatt party Friday night, and it was Monday before my sense of strangeness started to dissipate.
On Friday at about 6 p.m., I met J. at Moonstruck, one of my favorite places downtown. We started the evening with watching the dancing, which become less coordinated and more creative as the night wore on. As I stood on the second level, I couldn’t help thinking of ballroom dancing in 1930s movies and how much has changed in what is a relatively short period of time. For a moment, I could imagine the sweep of tuxedos and gowns.
When most attendees were at their happiest and most uninhibited, Exhibit A shows me nursing a midnight coffee — proof that I am old or dull or both. For the first time at this event, I could not be persuaded to dance, although I am not sure what held me back.
On Saturday, after substituting breakfast for a swim in the pool that no longer existed, J. and I headed to the Rosemont elevated stop, where we saw a flock of perhaps 80 Canada geese divided into four parts nibbling on the small islands of grass along the Kennedy Expressway. It struck me as an odd sight, a glimpse of nature adapting to the unnatural and unpleasant speed and noise of the expressway.
The weather was perfect for spending an hour and a half at the outdoor Christkindlmarket — a little below freezing, not too cold, no wind, and with a steady flurry of snow coating everything. While J. shopped, I found myself fascinated by the snow-covered model train as it made its monotonous rounds. A few boys watched the train for a bit, then commented in a deprecatory tone of voice to prove that they were too old for such toys. I envision them in 20–25 years, telling their children about the model train at the Christkindlmarket, even if it is by then more of a feeling than a memory.
Near the train tracks we came upon a snow-covered bench occupied by tiny snow people, made of regular-sized snowballs with evergreen twigs for arms. I named them Peter and Héloise, as doomed lovers. They were such a charming couple that almost everyone who spotted them did a double take, then snapped a photo of them. One woman even looked at us strangely as though we were the responsible parties. I wish I were that imaginative! It was with great reluctance that I left Peter and Héloise behind.
When all I could feel of my hands was pain, I dragged J. away on the bus and home with me, where a well-fed Hodge greeted us. I lit candles, plied J. with Holiday Dream tea and a Homemade pizza and cookie, and put on the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol with Reginald Owen so J. could sleep through it. Fortunately, the pizza and cookie revived him in time for a second showing.
In the meantime, the weather had become truly frightful. At 8 p.m., when we went downstairs to wait for the cab that never arrived, the wind was whipping The Flamingo’s awning furiously, and snow was coming down heavily and even less realistically than in a Hollywood movie. Since J. had to wait another two hours for the next train, I plied him with fair trade hot cocoa while we watched a Judy Garland, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra TV concert. I told J. that times have changed; today, Judy Garland couldn’t get away with a bare stage, a simple dress, and pumps. She would have to have a full band onstage, scantily clad chorus girls and dancers, a light show, and fireworks. During this performance, though, the stage, lights, and outfit didn’t matter. All attention was on that tragic face and that remarkable voice. You don’t need to distract your audience when you have talent.
J. finally arrived at the train station, after a 20-mph taxi ride in blizzard-like conditions. I couldn’t see Lake Shore Drive from my bedroom window. When I called him at 2 a.m. to see if he’d gotten home in one piece, the weather was still howling and blowing. Yet by 8 a.m. Sunday, it was sunny, clear, and calm, with the new coating of snow the only evidence of the previous long winter’s night.
From Bristol Renaissance Fair
“My, what a handsome pillow it is!”
Dream: My dad and Hodge
I was napping, as I was (how often does that happen — that what I was doing in my dream was what I was actually doing?), then I needed to crate Hodge because he’d bitten me (which he’d done this morning for the first time in months). When I woke up (in the dream), I had a snarling, twisting cat to contend with — but his crate had been dismantled in the oddest ways. The door was gone, but it was suddenly two half doors, parts of which I found later. A square was missing from the top, which I also eventually found. It occurred to me that this was possibly the work of my father, and depressing evidence he might have dementia problems (my father hasn’t been in Chicago since the 1950s, and he passed away in 2001).
My dad came thundering in the door after I had jury-rigged a crate together from what seemed like disparate pieces from two jigsaw puzzles. He was furious about something, screaming at me about something I had done that was beyond all pales, all norms. My brother (who has never been in Chicago past O’Hare International Airport) was behind him and explained that Dad was upset that I had not visited and/or gone to the funeral of a particular Mexican woman to whom we owed so much (I don’t think my dad ever knew any Mexican women). Dad pretended not to see the cat carrier and wouldn’t calm down enough to listen to my questions.
I was just dazed.
Although I hated being yelled at, I didn’t want the dream to end, because at least part of my family was together again.