i can't breath

No, I am not choked up because of the coming new year. I have allergies. The number of cats in my mom's house outnumber the number of humans here 3 to 1. The antihistamines in my body are outnumbered by the histamines like the number of mormons would be outnumbered in Panama City for spring break.

At some point when I moved out of Lincoln Park, my mom slowly evolved into the crazy cat lady of the neighborhood. This is partially my fault. In high school one day, the secretary made an announcement that a teacher was giving away hamsters. I don't know why she had hamsters, I didn't care why she was giving them away. I just wanted one, not even because I always wanted hamsters, but because, as many of you who know me already realize, i just like getting things for free, whatever they are. So I hopped on the bus that day with a shoebox and a fuzzy, blonde hamster I named Buckley after the teacher who gave him away, Mrs. Buckley who was a little crazy herself, but that's for another blog.

My mom found out I had a hamster and fell in love with it. She essentially adopted it from me. I didn't put up much of a custody battle. I liked Buckley enough, but no way could I match her love for this animal. He was quite precocious, like the main character in Shawshank Redemption whose name escapes me. He was always trying to escape. I bought him one of those plastic cages with the colorful tubes in which he could run and he chewed his way out. I couldn't fix the hole so I put an extremely thick and heavy book in front of it. One night I was sleeping and woke up to some odd chittering noise. I opened my eyes and found Buckley sitting on my chest, nose twitching. He actually chewed through five to six inches of a book to escape. If that's not impressive enough, I believe the cage was downstairs at the time and my bedroom was upstairs, so he actually climbed a flight of stairs and somehow knew which room was mine, opened the door, and climbed up my bed to sit on my chest. Perhaps the cage was in my room, I don't really remember. But this was a fairly remarkable hamster. And my mom loved him. She even had my uncle build Buckley a mansion of a cage, a split level with a built in exercise wheel and a ladder connecting the stories. No exaggeration, this cage was the size of a cage you'd use for a large dog.

But, even the remarkable in our world are mortal when it comes down to it. Houdini died, not even in some dramatic way as many rumors claim. So to did Buckley go, in winter, flat on his back in a corner of that giant cage. I'll save you the emotional details. My mom was very sad, wouldn't even let me bury him at first, wanted to hold him and asked me how much it would cost to have him stuffed. She relinquished fifteen minutes later and I dug a shallow grave in hard, frozen clay next to my house. My mom put plastic flowers at the site.

This was in January or February I think. So when Mother's Day came around, I thought it'd be a good idea to get her a cat. I thought it would be free, too, because I assumed strays were unwanted and you were actually doing the shelter a favor by taking them of their hands, like orphans. But it turned out to cost some money to get a fat, tuxedo cat named Hattie that my mom picked out. She didn't want one at first, she said. It still hurt too much. But the women at the shelter assured her cats tend to live longer than hamsters which usually peak at about 6 weeks.

So my mom and Hattie hit it off. I went to college, came back one summer and there was a new cat in the house along with Hattie. Bunso was its name meaning "youngest child" in Tagalog if I'm not mistaken. It also has an American name: Patty. According to my mom, it just ran into the house one day and she couldn't get it to leave, so she just adopted it. Maybe the reason Patty/Bunso did not listen to her was because my mom was screaming at her in Tagalog and she didn't understand tagalog. It's more likely though that Patty didn't listen because cats aren't dogs and don't give a shit about what you have to say.

I graduated college and moved to Baltimore, MD. I'd come back every now and then and there'd be a new cat in the house. I moved to Boston, MA, would come back home and there'd be yet more cats. All of them strays. I don't ever remember seeing stray cats in my neighborhood, or my entire town for that matter, growing up. My mom must have spotted one or two in the yard a few years back, put some food out, and of course, they went forth and multiplied and brought their extended and mangy looking family twice a day to my childhood home to take advantage of the hand outs. Leaving food out for strays will attract vermin, of course, so my mom started leaving food out just for the raccoons, too. I don't talk to the neighbors, but I can't imagine they are thrilled about this.

So at last count, there are six cats in the house: Hattie (who does not seem pleased with the rest of the cats), Patty/Bunso, Whitney, Jake, Kitty, and one other whose name escapes me. Not all of them just ran into the house. At least two of them are missing eyeballs and when my mom found them infected and near death as kittens, she couldn't bear to let them die, so she brought them to the vet for expensive operations and adopted them as well. I don't have this same compassion for animals. Actually, I'm suspicious these stray cats have heard how good they could have it inside my house and are purposely gouging out their own eyes so they have an upper hand in getting picked to be cat #7. They're no better than soldiers shooting themselves in the foot to get out of service.