Category: Funny Business

The other day I was having a nice conversation with our youngest cat, Bane, while we sat on the steps leading up to the upstairs bedroom. For some reason, this has become “our” spot – a quiet place reserved for us and us alone.

“Who is my pretty boy?” I asked as Bane purred loudly while rubbing his head against my hand. “You’re my pretty boy! You’re my big, beautiful boy and daddy loves you very much!”

Now for those of you who aren’t “animal people” such an exchange sounds insane, but it’s really pretty common for critter folk. It’s basically just a version of baby talk applied to animals.

Certainly, I don’t expect Bane to talk back.

And I realize I’m not his biological daddy. That would be disturbing and likely invite comparisons to The Island of Dr. Moreau films – both the bad one from 1977 with Burt Lancaster and the worse one with Marlon Brando that was released in 1996.

Anyway, the point is that Bane is part of my family, and this is how we communicate. But ours is a multiple animal household – two dogs and two cats. And just as humans engage with other humans in different ways, my dealings with our animals varies from one to another.

Charlie is our senior dog, and quite possibly the sweetest creature to ever sniff the earth. I’ve never heard him say a bad word about anyone. Come to think of it I’ve never heard him speak at all but if I did, he would speak well of others.

He likes to relax between 23 and a 23 and a half hours per day and enjoys sitting next to me with his chin resting on my knee. I’ll scratch him behind the ears and pat him on the butt occasionally, and our conversations are simple and brief.

“You’re a good boy, Charlie,” I’ll say. “Daddy loves you.”

And he’ll look and me and say nothing because – you know – he’s a dog. Yet, he is convinced I’m sincere and his gaze tells me he feels the same way.

Our oldest cat, Thor, is six, and we had him three years before we brought Bane home from the local shelter. He’s a sweet little guy and likes to crawl up on my lap and lay his head and left paw on my chest every morning while I’m still in bed. His is a head that demands to be kissed, so I kiss it while saying, “I love my little T-Bone.”

(T-Bone is his nickname … I don’t love actual T-bones because I’m a vegetarian).

Unfortunately, Thor is a nervous wreck and always has been. I can sneeze or burp and he’ll frantically leap from my lap and haul ass to the porch. Hours will go by before you see him again, and when you do he is more often than not cowering in a corner, biting his nails and occasionally smoking a cigarette.

The poor fellow shakes like Luther Heggs in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken when he’s nervous.

Then there’s Steve, the Chihuahua.

Most people think Chihuahuas are cute, what with their wiggly butts and bulbous eyes.

But you know who else was cute?

Damien from “The Omen.”

He was just a precious little child right up until his nanny hung herself at the behest of a hellhound – and it was discovered the tyke had the number of the beast on his head.

He wasn’t so cute then, was he?

Such is the case with Steve. Without warning he’ll show signs of demonic possession, complete with levitation, cursing and projectile vomiting. I don’t have it on video, but I’ve seen his head spin completely around on several occasions.

He launches unprovoked attacks on the other animals, lunges at my hand and bites my fingers every chance he gets, and our conversations mainly consist of me yelling, “Dammit, Steve!” “Stop it, Steve!” and “Dammit, Steve, stop it!”

But you know what?

I dearly love him, just as I dearly love Bane, Charlie and Thor. I’m still gonna rub his belly and kiss him on the noggin because I’m his daddy (though not in the biological sense, which I established earlier).

Oh sure, I’ll burn sage in the house from time to time and I’ve found an exorcist on Craigslist, but Steve’s an important part of the family.

Bottom line is I love all the furry ones the same even if I have to treat them all differently. That might seem odd to people who don’t live with animals, but I’m confident those of you who do understand this perfectly.

In parting, my only bit of advice is that if you ever decide to rescue a Chihuahua, you don’t need to bring a nanny into the picture.

It might end very, very badly.

I think it’s safe to say that Mary and I have fully adjusted to quarantine life.

While millions of our fellow Americans seem content to pretend COVID-19 is no big deal, we’re erring on the side of science, following recommendations from immunologists, and using common sense. This means we’ll stay home as much as we can – at least until our sentient ape overlords take control of the planet and give us the all-clear signal.

When we do have to go out, we wear masks and stay as far away from people as possible. But in order to steer clear of harm’s way we buy up a bunch of food during our trips and try to make it last. This has been a learning experience for me because I’m ashamed to admit I used to be pretty wasteful when it comes to grub.

Take loaves of bread, for example. As you know, they come with “end pieces” or “heels.” In the past, I considered end pieces the children of a lesser flour god and never thought about eating them. Not only do they look vastly different from the other pieces of bread, but they also get abused every time you open the package. Since they serve as the first line of defense before you get to the cool-looking slices, the heels get touched and nicked and quickly start to look like Leatherface from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

When I would get down to the two end pieces, I’d thoughtlessly put them in the garbage can. (One time I allegedly threw them at our neighbor across the street, but my lawyer has advised me not to comment on that situation until we find out if the CCTV footage is admissible in court).

Well friends, those days are over. Now, the heels of bread are honored members of our diet, serving as wonderful vessels for spreads such as peanut butter.

Speaking of which …

We go through a nutload of peanut butter, and did so even before the pandemic. Give me a peanut butter and fig preserve sandwich (possibly served between end pieces) and I feel like I’m eating like Queen Elizabeth – providing Queen Elizabeth eats peanut butter and fig preserve sandwiches.

There was a time, however, when I would often toss the jar of PB away while it still had stuff inside. It was easier to simply open a new jar instead of scrounging for remnants.

I shouldn’t have done that.

Nowadays I scrape and scratch and dig for every last bite of butter – right down to going full Winnie the Pooh and sticking my nose and tongue in the jar.

(The next time I’m faced with that situation I’m going to put on a red shirt and take off my pants to get the full Pooh experience).

We’re also big into fruit bowls – not the container itself but bowls filled with actual, edible fruit. Mary will dice up cantaloupe and pineapple and mix the pieces in with blueberries and that makes for a nice snack, especially during the summer months. Thing is, after a couple of days the cantaloupe gets bored and turns translucent.

There’s nothing really wrong with it – it just loses some of its flavor and is a tad off-putting from a visual standpoint. In the pre-COVID era such chunks would be chunked, but now even the see-through pieces of cantaloupe get gobbled.

And finally, there’s the potato chip issue.

A staple of my diet since I was a child, I used to take great pleasure in opening a bag and carefully pulling out a large, unbroken crisp. None were ever completely round and often came in interesting shapes. I remember one back in 2014 that looked like former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev’s head, although I sometimes wonder why I’d remember the shape of Gorbachev’s head 23 years after he left office.

Anyway, I would eat all of the whole chips before finally consenting to nosh on the half chips, but once I got down to the quarter chips, I’d throw the bag away.

Not anymore.

I now devour every last piece of chip dust to the point that – when I’m done – there is nothing remaining in the bag but the bag itself.

One day – maybe five, 10 years down the road – the coronavirus crisis will hopefully pass, but I’m confident the lessons learned from quarantine will stick with me.

Going forward I’ll continue to respect bread heels, enjoy peanut butter to the last drop, and leave no chip behind.

Oh, and I’ll probably still stay away from most of you people. It’s nothing personal – I just don’t want to have to share what’s left of my peanut butter.

Ten years ago today, I smoked my last cigarette.

I realize you probably don’t care, but I’m going to write about it anyway because going an entire decade without sucking on a lung dart is a pretty big deal to me. Keep in mind, I was not a “casual” smoker or “social” smoker – I was addicted to the point of being obsessed. My entire day was built around filtered menthol cigarettes.

Smoking was my first official act of any given morning.

The alarm would go off, I’d cough profusely, reach for my glasses, then reach for my lighter, then reach for a cigarette, then light it and take a drag, then cough profusely again, then take another drag.

After I finished my first one I’d have another with my starter cup of coffee, then a third one with my second cup of Joe.

My fourth was smoked when I took the dog out, and what’s interesting here is that for years I didn’t even have a dog. Still, I took him out anyway because I needed to get some fresh air while I burned one.

I’d even smoke in the shower – I kid you not. I mean, how sad is that?

Basically when I shower I wash my hair, rinse, lather my body, rinse, then use a wash rag to give my bits and pieces the ol’ dust and shine. This is not a long process and I think most people could’ve made it through without a cancer stick.

Still, there was a period in my life when – after the hair wash and rinse – I’d peek my head out from behind the shower curtain, dry my hand, and fire up a smoke that I would furiously puff on before the hot water started to run out.

It sounds ridiculous, but it’s no less true.

And going to movies was a real chore. The whole time I was watching “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers” I was hoping he’d just go ahead and kill everybody so I could leave the theater and light up.

Damn, that was a long 88 minutes.

By the time I reached the end of a day I’d gone through at least two packs of cigarettes and would’ve smoked more except doing so proved to be difficult while I slept.

When you build your world around gaspers the coughing gets worse and you develop yellow teeth and yellow fingers. But as glamorous as all that sounds, at some point (hopefully) you realize smoking is not a good decision.

I reached this point in June of 2010.

Mary had begged and pleaded with me to quit and I kept saying I’d try, but I wasn’t trying nearly hard enough. Despite the fact that I would get out of breath walking from the couch to the kitchen and wheezed like Muttley the cartoon dog, I kept smoking like I was getting paid for it.

Then – on June 10 – it came to a screeching halt.

While reading about the adverse effects of smoking I came upon a photo of dogs and monkeys being forced to inhale cigarette smoke during laboratory tests.

I had tried a nicotine patch before (it gave me vivid nightmares), nicotine gum (it was merely a shot to my cigarette chaser), and stop-smoking pills (a side effect was cranking up my depression level to 11), but the desire to smoke never truly ceased.

I even considered hypnosis, but was afraid I’d wind up like those sleeper agents from the movie “Telefon” who are activated by a code phrase and then start blowing up shit.

When I saw that photo of animals being abused, though, I decided to never put a cigarette in my mouth again.

Anyone who knows me knows that overall I prefer critters to humans (not you, though – you’re terrific), and seeing this kind of cruelty was a real “scared straight” moment for me. I couldn’t and wouldn’t support an industry that supported this.

I called Mary and said, “If I ever smoke another cigarette, hit me over the head with a 9-iron.”

Turns out, she never had to whack me, because I have yet to fall off the wagon – and I see no scenario where it might happen.

I find the smell of wafting cigarette smoke extremely unpleasant, and when it’s on people’s clothes it gives off the scent of a wet goat that stuck its butt in an ashtray.

To know that I once smelled like this is embarrassing.

Now, this is not intended to shame anyone; I tried to quit many times before I was finally shocked into going cold turkey.  Depending on who you are there are varying degrees of difficulty, and you have to make a commitment and find a quitting plan that works for you.

But 10 years later I don’t cough unless I’m sick, I don’t wheeze at all, I have real dogs to walk, and I can walk for miles because my lungs don’t hate me anymore.

If I can quit, anyone can do it.

And be honest – you don’t want to smell like a wet goat that stuck its butt in an ashtray, do you?