Max, The Smoking Kitten

I used to have this cat named Max.

Well, actually, I used to have a cat named Max, and then I had another cat named Max later. Both were solid grey, both were cute as hell, and both were the most evil pets I have ever encountered. Imagine that cute little kitty pictured down below, only also imagine that once you pick him up he will decide that your eyes are tasty, tasty human sushi.


photo credit: AlanH20

So, I had this little kitten Max, the first kitten in this line of two evil Maxes, and he was, as I said, evil, but he was tiny, so the evil was easy to pass off as kittenish tomfoolery most of the time. When he dropped from the tops of doors onto your head to swing his claws into your eyes, you could knock the quarter-pounder onto the bed. When he crawled under the covers repeatedly at night to tear at your nipples, you could duct tape him into an upside down laundry basket prison until morning. There were ways and means to deal with his itty bitty ferocity at first.

The problem with evil kittens, though, is that they eat, and then they grow, and their once goofy ferocity starts to become hie-thee-to-an-exorcist ferocity.

He took to launching himself at guests' crotches, especially if they were men, to rip at their tender balls. He leapt and then clung to women's hair to steady himself for blows to the ladies' faces. If you didn't share your food with him, he hurled himself repeatedly at your hands and arms like an enraged African killer bee. He was a fuzzy wuzzy widdle kewtie pie with the brain of a tasmanian devil.

So, here's where the story takes an uncomfortable turn.

I smoked at the time. I was unemployed, more than a little aimless, and didn't have cable, so I entertained myself by watching crappy fishing shows in the afternoons on one of our three available tv channels and smoking cigarettes.

As kittens are wont to do, Max was curious about the cigarettes and wanted to sniff the one I was smoking, so when he marched up onto my shoulder one day, I let him sniff it. I figured that he would hate it and back off. You know, like he'd learn a lesson about not sniffing cigarettes.

I was wrong.

Max leaned into the filter, pressed his nose firmly against it, and inhaled as deeply as he could. It was kind of horrifying to watch, but it was fascinating, too, because he did it like he'd always done it. He looked like a smoker having his first delicious cigarette after an involuntary stretch without, and, when he was done, he bounced away, as though this was the most normal thing in the world. I foolishly thought that that would be that, though, because surely this kind of strange performance could not be repeated. He couldn't have actually liked it, could he?

I was wrong again.

I lit a cigarette the next day and sat down to watch some fisherman net this huge trout or catfish or whatever, and Max trotted up onto my shoulder and tried to reach out for my cigarette when I took a drag. I batted his paw away. He reached out for my cigarette again. I batted his paw away again.

Max, not one to back down, launched himself into my cheek with his teeth, gripping me around my nose and the back of my head with his claws. He snarled and thrashed, but I couldn't just tear him off without both dropping the cigarette and further tearing my face with his claws, so I held the cigarette up to my shoulder to appease him. This was time for self-preservation, not ethics. Max let go, leaned up against my neck in a display of momentary affection, pressed his nose into the filter, and inhaled. When he was done, he bounced off my shoulder like he wasn't some kind of demon, and I just sat there in shock.

My kitten was a smoker, and I was going to hell.

Max showed no signs of becoming any more tame, and his violent behaviour only got worse and more pointedly abusive. The situation got to the point where, if only one person was home, Max had to be locked up in a room by himself, because he would stalk mercilessly with the intent to kill. I came home one night after having coffee with friends to find my roommate crying on her bed. She had two layers of thick blankets tucked in underneath her and the rest pulled up around her head. I could only see her eyes. They were streaked with wet mascara. She was shaking.

"What the hell is happening?" I asked.

"It's Max," she said, jerking her head toward the end of her bed.

There he was, vibrating with madness, pupils blown out so big that his eyes looked like black marbles.

"He's been launching himself at my face for two hours," she said. "Look." She uncovered her hands to show me her bloody fingers.

It was time for Max to go.

I called my mother in the morning to come pick up the cat and me for a trip to the humane society. This cat was going to die, but as much as I wanted to kill the little beast myself as reparation the last three months of injury, paranoia, and sleeplessness, I just couldn't do it. I was actually too afraid of him to try anything.

While we waited for my mother, Max and I shared a last cigarette. It was the only thing we ever did that didn't result in tears and duct-taped laundry baskets, and it was also the only thing that seemed to turn him into a temporarily normal cat, so it was fitting as a last goodbye. We needed some cat sanity if we were going to contain him in a vehicle without the use of a taser. Also, what's the harm in smoking when you're just going to death row, anyway?

He went gentle on me and only gave me a few scratches for bogarting the smoke. It was like he knew it was our last few minutes together.

When my mother arrived, she picked Max up and said, "Why are you getting rid of this little guy? He's so cu..."

Her voice hitched in her throat as he sunk his teeth into the meat of her hand between her thumb and forefinger.

"I hope they gas him," she said.

"Me, too," I said. "Me, too."

A Security Device, Still Quitting, De-Centralization, On-Line Scrabble, A Good Film, And Victoriana

On the lid of the communal garbage can on my floor of the apartment building is a note. It is neatly typed in all-caps and protected by strip of scotch tape. It reads: “SECURITY DEVICE ENCLOSED.” I lifted up the lid and checked inside, just to make sure, and I could not see this purported security device. Curious.

I bet that after my last entry you thought I fell off the non-smoking wagon, that I caved, that I gave in to my lesser desires, that I was a miserable excuse for a recovering addict. I have decided that I have to be honest here. I did fall off, cave, give in, and was a miserable excuse for a recovering addict – on Friday night. My last entry was on Thursday, and I was as sad as I sounded. When the Fiery One returned home from work, I was not on speaking terms with the world, and so after a few quick pecks on top of my head, he adroitly retreated into the safety of anyplace away from me. Later, when my rage boiled down to a more manageable bitterness, I positioned myself on the couch with a large bowl of popcorn, watched television with a zeal I did not know I had in me, and tried desperately not to allow thoughts to roam around in my head, because they were liable to think of smoking. I feel ridiculous saying this, but Thursday was the most difficult and concerted effort of my recent life. It is now Sunday morning, and I have not had a cigarette since then. Instead of doing what I usually do when I try to quit, I did not immediately start up the habit where I left off as soon as I got a whiff of failure. I picked myself up and resumed the teeth whitening the next morning. And I feel good. After a week of not having cigarette smoke constantly lingering on my clothing, hair, and fingers, the aftermath of thick stench that I woke up to on Saturday morning was enough to put me off again for another while. So, keep cheering for me. I am not the most brilliant quitter, and I am prone to small bouts of failure, but I do have heart (and will continue to if I actually stay quit).

On Friday evening, before I gave in to cigarettes with such ferocity (I must have smoked an entire pack), I went in search of yarn, because I thought that I would give my bus friend’s suggestion a try and knit an I’m-quitting-smoking scarf. I thought that surely there would be a store in our downtown core that sold even a few balls of yarn. No deal. I searched high and low, but to no avail. You see, I don’t own a car, nor do I want to, but at times like that when the nearest ball of yarn is clear across town in some far-flung mall I have never heard of and sweet cigarettes are within five minute's reach, a car would have saved me my terrible, one-night downfall. This town has become so de-centralized that you have to go the farthest reaches south, north, or east in order to find most amenities, and our bus system’s speed could not rival a sloth. Normally, I do not notice this aspect of living where I live, because I am not a big shopper and have a grocery store within walking distance, but on Friday the de-centralization of my fair city nudged me over that edge. Now don’t get me wrong. I am not laying all the blame for my caving on de-centralization and poor public transit, but it sure didn’t freaking help any.

Since I tried to log onto Blogger and cannot seem to be able to, I decided to try a game of internet Scrabble on WordBiz. I haven’t played in a long while, so I was not expecting too much out of myself, when I suddenly played “registry,” which used all of my letters and landed me on a triple-word score. I scored 89 points in one turn! In the world of low-brow Scrabble, that is pretty damn good. I was really starting to get into the game when my opponent, pesh, “lost contact or quit.” You better have lost contact, buddy, because dropping out of a game just because I attained the personally phenomenal score of 89 points in one turn is really, really lame.

We watched “Donnie Darko” last night. It was one of those films that everyone else has seen but you have not, and although everyone talks it up, it sucks, only this movie did not suck. In fact, it was excellent. It also has one of the best web pages. I’m serious about how seriously good this site is. It is seriously good. Seriously.

Apparently, people have been hitting on this blog by googling the phrase “victorian age toilet.” Have I written about such a thing? I don’t recall if I have. Maybe I should. It seems that it would increase my popularity.

Yay! The first part of this entry was written yesterday, and I lamented my lack of yarn. Well, shortly afterward, the Fiery One and I went for breakfast with a couple we know, and they were nice enough to take us along with them to a mall they go to for groceries, and in that mall was.... yarn! So, now I have four balls of brightly coloured yarn with which to make a brightly coloured scarf, and I have already created approximately six to seven inches of said scarf, and I feel fairly accomplished. As a quit-smoking scarf, it has not yet been entirely successful, but I do believe it will fulfill its duties.

I must apologize, at least to myself. I cannot make the effort required for my “Facts and Links” segment, and with my love of facts, I promise to at least myself to make up for it in my next installment.

Malcontent, Hollowed Out, The Sweet Old Life, Trying, An Aside, The Combo, Loneliness, And Quitting Smoking (Again)

Okay, so it is now Thursday, and I hate this quitting-of-the-smoking bit that I have been doing. It is no longer something I want. This does not mean that I am done quitting; this only means that the wanting-to-quit part is over for the time being. It truly, deeply and honestly, sucks stinky feet to be doing this to myself. Until today, I was verily sailing along, quietly patting myself mentally on the back for having made such a fine and mature decision and for following through with it with such decency of attitude in spite of the symptoms of withdrawal. I was an idiot then, and now I am malcontent.

Here is a picture of me sans the popcorn and chips with salsa and whatnot that I use to fill the void that is my physical and psychological addictions.

Surfing about did nothing to improve my poor mood. In fact, I think it helped to worsen it. All I want is a lovely Benson & Hedges Special King Size cigarette and a pint of Sleeman’s Honey Brown. Oh, how sweet such a duo would be, especially on top of a table at my favourite pub next to a copy of some delicious piece of literature.

This isn’t working, this writing out my pain thing. I am really trying. I knew that if I came home and didn’t keep my hands busy, then I would be out smoking in about sixty seconds, so I decided to sit here and blog away. But it is seriously not working.

Here, I am going to turn aside from the main topic and speak to you about something else. It will be much like an aside in a play by Shakespeare, in which a character occasionally turns away from the main action of a scene to relate his or her thoughts to the audience, only my brain will be the main action and my turning around to talk about something else other than smoking will be the aside. You are the audience. Here goes.... I will be starting in a new position at work in a couple of weeks, which is very good news for me. My current position is a term position, which means that it ends in August, so I am quite happy to take a permanent position and not have to worry about unemployment insurance or finding new work for next fall. When I was riding the bus to work this morning, a couple of men sitting across the aisle from me were discussing some research that one of them was doing. It apparently required thousands of miles of travel every few months, pygmies, a lot of camera and video equipment, jungles, and the BBC and National Geographic on a couple of occasions. I found myself growing jealous, and then had to reprimand myself for being overly self-interested and silly, and thankfully had my attention diverted by starting a conversation with the woman next to me, who I have begun talking with in the mornings and who is a welcome alternative to most of the people I have to talk to every day. Anyway, what I am getting at is that while I was feeling all good about experiencing a sense of job security for once and juggling story ideas in my head, these two men were talking about jobs that I can barely fathom but sound brilliant. Maybe quitting smoking causes one to spend extra time re-evaluating one’s life, but I seriously thought to myself that it is about high time I quit thinking so much and started doing. (That’s right, I ended that sentencing with “doing,” and I meant it. Ha). This is not an altogether original thought, and I have thought it before, but it is still important nonetheless.

Still feeling a strong desire, nay lust, for the cigarettes and beer combo. I am imagining myself bellying up to the bar, scanning their backlit menu board, putting an index finger to my lip, and saying:
“I think I will order the Combo #2. Do you accept substitutions? Because I prefer a pint glass over a bottle.”
“Nope, no substitutions. What’ll you have?”
“Then I guess I’ll have a B&H King with bottle of HB, hold the lime. Thanks.”

See, this is getting really pathetic. I am now pretending to order cigarettes and beer in lieu of the real thing, because addiction is desperately sad, and withdrawal is a lonely experience.

Quitting Smoking Links:**
* QuitNet will help you “quit all together.”
* QuitSmokingSupport.com offers free support to help you quit smoking.
* QuitSmoking.com offers information and products to help smokers quit (They rely on people smoking in the first place to make their money, so I doubt that they are really on a rampage to get the world to quit).
* Smoke Away is a complete, three-part standard kit that promises to curb cravings without nicotine or drugs. Nothing like this works. Ask any smoker.
* The Tobacco Information and Prevention homepage offers everything from Surgeon General’s reports to ways to quit smoking to celebrity views on smoking.
*Allen Carr’s The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently is supposedly very good and often effective. I own it, it is sitting on my bookshelf right now, and I have not even picked it up. I am in deep denial.

** I have not actually read through any of the above sites regarding the cessation of smoking. I do not care to at this time. As a result, I cannot vouch for their usefulness whatsoever.