On a recent trip to NC to visit my parents, we couldn’t help taking volumes of pictures of their sphynx S’Belle, who is a sister of my sphynx, Siobhan. (David took the opportunity to dress S’Belle up like Miss Monroe, and take a few shots of her loveliness).

I’ve always thought that S’Belle is the most beautiful and sleek one of the litter, because she looks like a little Clydesdale horse. She has fluffy tufts of white hair on her feet, and she is sleek and slender (very much unlike Siobhan, who has quite the pot-belly).

Something we’ve noticed, however, is that every time we see S’Belle, she’s got more hair! Already she had more than Siobhan. She started off having a very bushy tail, and the white fluffy feet as I mentioned. But she also exhibits another odd hair-trait that seems to be unique to the sphynx breed. Periodically, she will get hair wings on the sides of her body. Siobhan gets them, other sphynx I know of get them, it’s just a very odd and funny looking abberation that occurs every year. But this visit, we noticed something brand new that just takes the cake.

S’Belle has developed chest hair, and I’m thinking it’s the coffee. As you can see from the picture on the left, it’s fluffy white chest hair that were she wearing a wife-beater, she could comb it up and over the top and fit in perfectly with some of the inhabitants of a few unnamed Raleigh suburbs.
So I started looking back through some pictures that we have taken of her in the last couple of years, and I discovered that this odd hair phenomenon has not been limited to chest hair, or wings. She actually went through a phase where her entire body was covered in more hair than is normal. Here are a couple shots of hairy S’Belle.

The picture on the left shows her very hairy paws and tail, while the picture on the right shows her body covered in quite a bit of fluff. Siobhan doesn’t exhibit nearly the same type of body hair, in fact, aside from the wings, her hair is limited to the back of her ears, and her tail. Now every so often she will get oddly shaped wing hair, but it’s still hair on her sides, never on her chest. So I’m still going with the coffee answer. Notice below…no chest hair. Maybe it’s because she drinks tea instead of coffee.

[ratings]

The weekend was going so nicely…I had spent several hours hanging out with Rachelle on Saturday, ending with a delicious sushi dinner at Nishiki. Sunday rolled around and I was up and about getting ready to go to the gym. I had my gym bag all put together: towel, water bottle, iPod, wallet, phone, keys…it was just about time to down some coffee and head out the door.

That’s when I heard the “OH NO!”

The “OH NO!” came from David, just as he was walking into his home office. At first, I thought that Rowan must have thrown up some food onto David’s chair, or keyboard (as he’s done before). But David was looking into the corner of the room, where I discovered (as I walked in behind him), Lasher was standing sniffing at something on the floor. At this point, I thought he must have found some kind of spider or something, and was tormenting it. But David was a bit too rattled for it to be something that simple. Then I heard…”I think he just pee’d on the floor!”

David went for the flashlight, to see if he could see something on the hardwood floors, and I thought we should get a paper towel and put it on the floor to see if anything soaked up. As I went over to the corner with the flashlight and the paper towel, I discovered that indeed, Lasher had peed. Not onto the floor, but he’d actually peed onto the side of some boxes that were sitting in the corner of the room. He hadn’t just peed, he’d marked the corner of the room.Now Lasher is not a young cat. I got him, and Rowan, from the Sacramento SPCA back in 1998. In his 8 years on the planet, he has NEVER sprayed. In fact, according to the vet, having them fixed before they hit “puberty” tends to prevent spraying. This was something I had never dealt with before. But unfortunately, it didn’t end in David’s room. Off Lasher went to the bedroom, and off we went chasing after him with paper towels and the flashlight. He went directly to the corner of the bedroom and sprayed the bookcase, before I had the opportunity to hiss at him. He then ran around the house, then back to the bedroom, into the closet and sprayed three pairs of my jeans that were hanging there. And then it stopped. He laid down for a bit, then went to the litter box, used it, then slept the rest of the day.

So…what is up with Lasher spraying? He only did it three times, then stopped after using the bathroom. And why this behaviour all of a sudden in his life? Was he upset about something? Did he sense something that we could not? Was he having a premonition about an earthquake? Or was he simply trying to exert some authority over the house, letting us know that he was in charge - Rowan would not agree with this one.

I also thought perhaps he was jealous, because I’d spent a lot of time that morning being affectionate with Rowan. When the weather gets cold, all three cats sleep in the bed. That morning, Rowan was sprawled out next to me soaking up the heat from the heating blanket, so I was giving his belly a good rub, and he was purring like a…well, like a cat. Lasher was staring at us the whole time, from the foot of the bed, and it was only an hour later that he was running around the house peeing on all of our things. Jealousy? I’m not sure. But all night I followed him around making sure he left my freshly washed jeans alone. Perhaps we’ll never know what caused the spraying, but if you ever come to our house and smell incense burning, you’ll know what’s going on.

I was looking back through some old photo albums, back before I had a digital camera…and discovered some images of the apartment I lived in down on P Street from about 1997 to 1999.

It was in that apartment complex that I met many of the people who are still my friends today. People like Rachelle, Sarah, Patric, Tamara, and Kelly. It was like our little Melrose place there. There were two apartment buildings that shared a common courtyard area. We would often socialize out in the courtyard or in each other’s apartments, and this was the location that started the annual tradition of the White Elephant Party.

But this isn’t really about that…it’s about that apartment. I was astounded, looking over these pictures…oh my goodness I had bad taste. It’s sometimes hard to believe that I’m gay when I look at the images of my decorations. I think I must have been going through a period of complete and utter craziness during those years. There’s simply no explanation for what you’re going to see in some of these images…

For example, the entertainment center in my living room. It was absolutely COVERED in crap. There are plants, candles, more candles, more plans, and even more plants and candles.

Down below, you see a television that is entirely too small for the space allocated to it, so I filled in that space with books. At least it was a Stephen King book, so I do get some redeption there. Farther below, you’ll see (shudder) VHS tapes. I know, I know, but I don’t think DVD’s had been invented then…it was the 90’s you know. So yes, it was full of VHS tapes…from what I can make out the front ones are: Star Trek the Next Generation, Final Episode “All Good Things”; Good Morning Vietnam; Silence of the Lambs. I do have good taste in movies.

Off to the right you’ll notice a CD case. With, you guessed it, candles on top. I attribute this to Rachelle always having Partylite Parties. She forced me to buy candles every time.

Next let’s look at the fireplace. Oh dear. More plants? Looks like three more to me… Ok, here’s the deal about the fire place. It was a gas fire place, however, the chimney apparently wasn’t built to code and wasn’t wide enough for the fireplace, thus they had disconnected the gas. Nice. Really nice waste of space people. So i used it as a sleeping box for the cats (Rowan and Lasher were adopted from the SPCA while I lived in this apartment).

Some other things you’ll see here, that I’m not proud of, are more candles (on the speakers), and a poster of Mulder and Scully from the X-files. No, there’s nothing wrong with liking the X-files, in fact I have a season pass to it on my DirecTV DVR. But…the poster from the show is NOT appropriate decoration, unless you are in a college dorm…and even then, it’s iffy.

On the left speaker, that’s actually a page from a scrapbook. That’s right, we had scrapbooking parties. Perish the thought.

Final picture on this journey…my office. This was a two bedroom apartment, so I used one as my actual bedroom, and the other as my computer room / office / storage room. Here you’ll see my bike, which hasn’t been ridden in approximately 8 years…it’s currently hanging in my garage.

Storage boxes lined most of the walls, and that’s a glass top table on the far wall to the left. My computer is actually sitting on a picnic table (which I still own and it’s outside on the back patio and only used for gardening), and that’s a director’s chair with another chair directly behind it. Still have the wood chair but now the director chair.

You may have noticed that in my description I avoided talking about the curtain. But really, when you looked at the picture that was the first thing you noticed wasn’t it. It’s not a curtain…it’s a sheet. A very, very, orange sheet. I don’t even want to talk about it.

So this ends our walk down memory lane, for the time being. I have a few other pictures of this apartment that I can share, including one of the most hideous coutches ever manufactured. But let’s not go there right now…

This makes me sad…they really need to be more sensitive in the words they use. This deer could be completely scarred if it read that it was about to be “dispatched”.

[and how corporate / jargon is that with them using "2B" instead of "to be"]

Couldn’t we say something like, “please relocate the deer to more deer-appropriate location”.

Or something…maybe I’m too sensitive…forgive me, I’ve been sick for the last 4 days and I’m on a lot of medication

Incident: 0110
Type: Animal on Road
Location: HWY 395
as of: 5/10/2006 10:40:08 AM

ADDITIONAL DETAILS
9:58AM DEER THAT NDS 2B DISPATCHED

RESPONDING OFFICERS STATUS
9:59AM CHP Unit Enroute

Incident: 0469
Type: Traffic Hazard
Location: AVENUE 56 AT M 109
Zoom Map: 15 8E
info as of: 4/3/2006 2:04:37 PM
ADDITIONAL DETAILS
1:43PM COW WANDERING AROUND

RESPONDING OFFICERS STATUS
1:46PM CHP Unit Enroute

What an easy life…..eat grass…wander around…sleep…steak. I tell ya, the CHP is hopefully getting pretty good at dealing with wandering cows. This is a pretty consistent traffic hazard that shows up for California.

This one made me pause, and reflect on life for a moment.
A brief moment, yes, while I pondered lamb chops for dinner tonight (no I didn’t really - but would it be wrong of me if I did? am I an evil person? - seriously, that thought never crossed my mind until I started writing this - I don’t eat lamb.)

Seriously though….what is the CHP going to do? “Here little lamb, get back inside your gated community…“

Can I just say, I love the fact that using italics actually italicizes an elipses? That’s just cool.
Before: … After: …

Ok so I’m wierd.

Incident: 0630
Type: Animal in Roadway
Location: SR49 AT FRICOT CITY RD
info as of: 3/15/2006 12:17:40 PM

ADDITIONAL DETAILS
11:39AM 1039 A/C
11:39AM BABY LAMB ON SIDE OF RDWY TRYING TO GET BACK IN

RESPONDING OFFICERS STATUS
11:49AM CHP Unit Enroute