Friday, March 30, 2018

Brought to Imagine the Growing Disquiet



Fleabus, post-vet visit yesterday. The Best Cat Ever hates doctors more than I do. I cuddle her for half an hour then put her in the bathroom five minutes before vet arrives. She knows. She howls while vet first does Napoleon then Olive then Jess then Rosie then Stanley. Order is always the same, easiest to hardest. If Fleabus wasn't locked in the bathroom she'd have ferreted herself somewhere in the house and we'd never find her (or find her and bleed trying to extract her). The vet finishes with Stanley, sighs OK, grabs his leather cat gloves (the size and thickness of welders'), his cat straitjacket, heads for the bathroom. Grunts and screams, screams and hisses. Shampoo bottles fall. Out comes vet with blue bag of Fleabus. Prettiest blue eyes I've ever seen on a cat, says vet. Stomach prodded, eyes, ears, and teeth examined, shots administered, released. I cuddle her for half an hour.











[DEAR ANGRY MOB]

Joshua Beckman

Dear Angry Mob,
 
Oak Wood Trail is closed to you. We
feel it unnecessary to defend our position,
for we have always thought of ourselves
(and rightly, I venture) as a haven for
those seeking a quiet and solitary
contemplation. We are truly sorry
for the inconvenience.
 
Signed,
 
                                 Ranger Lil
 
 
PS            Ofttimes as the day ends
                      on a wet bed of yellow leaves
                            or the sky densens gray and dark
                 I am brought to imagine
                      the growing disquiet
                             in the hearts of my countrymen 



5 comments:

  1. 0)like fleabus, i too have negative experiences, at a young age, with medicine being practiced on me - i tell myself "doctors are friends, not fiends" but i still get high blood pressure when i'm there

    beloved animal companion dinah hated vets, and i stopped taking her for the last several years of her life - she passed away at age 18


    1)in my search to know more about the author of today's poem, joshua beckman, i discovered that the cd he and his friend matthew rohrer recorded in the early 2000s shared its name with a book published by vachel lindsay in 1914

    Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty



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  2. Wait! You're saying the Vet comes to your house? As is makes house calls? GTFOOH

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  3. Yes, Dr Bender, Grove Center Vet, house calls. *You* try to get Fleabus into a cat carrier, I quadruple dare you.

    Thanks, Charlie, for the note on bad link. Fixed.

    I think if Napoleon didn't come and go inside and out we'd probably do the vet for indoors every other year, but since Nap does, we need do yearly, *especially* for Nap and keeping up w rabies vaccine.

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  4. Jeff, in our book, more credit in heaven for caring for ONE feral than for writing ONE MILLION pwems, all credit, but hey -- does that homecare vet have astral travel, and accept barter... ? What say Doc??

    Because we're a thousand years old, unemployed, crippled, poor, stranded in haunted house on collapsing hillside, no car, took up care of a family of five abandoned ferals (abandoned by badnews squatters) early on in this LOONG winter, and... of course they are all riddled w/problem, esp dear old clipd ear guy w whack hip and both eyes glued shut conjunctivally...

    But forgive tangent.. It's a blogger thang.

    Uh Joshua who?

    On the other hand, fuck pricegouging vets. even w/astral carpets.

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  5. Then again, good one Josh!

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