Put Your Paws Up!

Forgive my ongoing obsession with Lady Gaga, but who could escape seeing her this past weekend? Gaga was everywhere! And I can’t help focusing on the parallels between her life and mine. OK, that’s admittedly a gross overstatement, but here is some fascinating evidence:

1) We share a rallying anthem: “Put Your Paws Up”!

2) We are deeply dedicated to our “little monsters”: Gaga to her billions of fans, I to Lucius and his multiple personalities.

3) We believe in equality for all species.

4) We are petite women who can wear catsuits (Gaga’s is made of spandex and skintight, mine was a Halloween costume I once wore when I was in my twenties).

5) We do not abandon our dreams.

I suspect Lady Gaga would like this photograph from my slice of life in the museum world. The work is titled Climbing Cat, by Ron Evans. Paws up, indeed!

Query of the Day: Would you consider calling me "Cat Lady Gaga"?

A Cuddle Costs $0.80 a Minute

That’s right, Cat Ladies, and you can do the math.

If you are traveling during this Memorial Day weekend and want to board your cat at one of the centers run by Best Friends Pet Care Inc., and you want your cat to be cuddled while you are on the road, you will be charged $8 for 10 minutes.

I have never thought about putting a price tag on cuddling any one of our ten cats, but I would need to dip into savings if Cat Man and I ever decide to take a vacation together without the Catland crew. To be honest, we gave up a long time ago on vacationing as a married couple who leave their pets at home. And it’s been impossible to find someone, even another enthusiast who dreams about felines, who wants to take care of ten cats for a few days and nights. I’ve tried upping the ante, offering more than the going per-diem rate of $20 per feline. Sorry, no takers.

Still, I can’t imagine paying an upscale “professional cuddler” to caress Lucius, Lydia, Lillie, and Leo, and to stroke Linus, L.B., Perkins, Miss Tommie, T.J., and Alvar. But maybe I’m in the wrong business, after all.

Query of the Day: Is the cost of cuddling your cats priceless?

Born This Way

I am of a certain vintage that remembers when Cher and Dolly were considered to be freak shows. So it comes as no surprise to me, though Cat Man can’t believe it, that I am fascinated with Lady Gaga. I watched HBO’s special this past weekend, “Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour,” and now I can’t stop singing (to myself, don’t worry) “Born This Way.”

I wonder if Lucius was “born this way,” meaning a cat who is half-empathetic and half-demonic. Prior to my Gaga sighting, this thought also came to mind when Dr. O. introduced me recently to a six-week-old orange-tabby foundling who was discovered at a Houston-area high school. The kitten is all sweetness and light, and could Lucius ever have been described in this way? Or, was he born to be sensitive and neurotic?

I can only imagine Lucius in his early youth, as I met him when he was already two years old and had developed his distinct point of view, otherwise known as an attitude. I have since watched him become a senior cat with a vengeance. I don’t mean to flatter myself, but perhaps if I had intervened when Lucius was a toddler, he would not be quite so nutty today.

Yet I love that Lucius is who he is, and I certainly can’t write with any conviction that he and I have a “bad romance,” to quote another one of my new and favorite Gaga tunes. As Lady Gaga herself convincingly sings about humankind’s shared DNA, “Ooh, there ain’t no other way, baby.” And as Lucius might refrain, “I’m on the right track, Cat Lady, I was born this way.”

Query of the Day: Were your cats born to be wild or kind, or both ways?

“It Takes Tu-na”

I am in the business of evaluating words and whether they are used economically. I laughed this morning while catching up on clippings that fellow editors had sent my way. One article made it to the top of the stack because with a headline like “Why a Good Script Is Like a Thong Bikini,” there can be no cause for delay. Another article was about the dedicated volunteers at the Anti-Cruelty Society in Chicago, who attributed their recent success in trapping feral cats to “a lot of tuna.” Those four words say it all and also reinforce the thong-bikini philosophy of covering ground sparingly.

“A lot of tuna” brought back vivid memories of setting humane traps for Lillie, Perkins, T.J., and Miss Tommie. It took the two of us, Cat Man and Cat Lady, to catch these then-young cats who were born beneath our pier-and-beam house and to bring them safely to Dr. O.’s for their initial checkups and vaccinations. Now, eleven years later, I can still remember the routine of opening can after can of smelly tuna in our backyard, hoping to lure and domesticate an innocent mama kitty and her litter of two calico girls and a grey-tabby boy.

I don’t recall emptying the shelves of the supermarket, but my husband and I definitely needed a lot of tuna to fulfill our mission. As a result, I rarely order tuna sandwiches for lunch anymore, although Cat Man swears that a bit of mayonnaise might make Fancy Feast’s flaked fish-and-shrimp combo edible for humans. I advised him to stick to his day job and leave culinary flights of fancy to a new generation of cat rescuers. That said, he is allowed to spread the word that “it takes tu-na” to make the cat world go 'round.

Query of the Day: Do you feed tuna to your cats?