I have some sad news – we had to take Binx back to her original owners. She simply would not give Peekaboo a chance. I know what you’re thinking, “But you didn’t give it enough time”. The fact of the matter is, Binx might never have gotten along with Peekaboo because, well, Peek isn’t a normal cat.

Peekaboo’s unofficial nickname is “Hermaphroditic Kitty” because she is, in fact, a little bit male and a little bit female. And I mean that in the most biological sense possible. Now we knew this before getting a new cat, but Peek had been around other cats before and there never seemed to be a problem, so we didn’t take this ambiguous gender thing into consideration. However, we talked to a vet on Friday and he said that because she does have both male and female biology, this could really throw her scent out of wack to other cats. So Binx, in growling and hissing and generally staying away from Peek, could have been acting perfectly naturally and normally because she could sense that something was not quite right with Peek. The vet said that Binx would probably eventually get over Peek’s odd scent, but that chances are Binx would never fully accept Peek and would tend to avoid contact with her. This was not a situation we wanted because the whole point of getting another cat was so that Peek and the new cat could play and interact. If Binx would just ignore Peek, it completely defeated the purpose.

Now as I’ve said in an earlier post, we had concerns about bringing another cat into the house to begin with. So the owner knew that if things didn’t work out with Binx that we would be bringing her back. When we explained the biological reason for returning Binx, she seemed to understand. It was a really tough decision for us to take her back; we’d both enjoyed playing with Binx and she really was a sweet cat. It’s a real shame that things didn’t work out.

But not all is lost in our search for a playmate for Peekaboo. The vet explained that the reason she was able to live with other cats in the past was because one was her brother and the other was adopted as a kitten, meaning that they both grew up with her strange scent and never knew any different. So if we are to find another cat, we are probably going to have to try a very young kitten that won’t understand that Peek’s scent is “off” and it won’t be as much of an issue. We plan on looking at some local shelters soon.

Other than the sadness that circled around taking Binx back, the rest of our weekend was pretty good.

Friday we spent the evening at the apartment doing the final cleaning and moved out the last of our things. We got home around 11:00 and that was pretty much our night, sadly.

Saturday we got up semi-early and did a little garage sale shopping. We got some great deals including a nicely designed antique chair for $5 that we’re going to tear apart and recover; a little retro end table that we’re not sure if we like or not, but the legs would be great for some other project, so the $1 we spent on that won’t go to waste; a 70′s heated serving plate that is very cool; a couple nice decanters for our bar; and a heavy-duty fluorescent office lamp from the 50′s or so. All in all we spent $20. Not too shabby.

After our shopping we went back to the apartment, collected the cleaning supplies and gave the floors one more vacuuming and then we turned in the keys. Man, that felt good.

The rest of our Saturday was spent working on the condo. I don’t even really know what we did, but we were busy until about 4:00, when we finally stopped for the evening. We got cleaned up, put on some decent clothes and headed to Chevy’s for dinner. Then we went down to UMSL and saw the Second City comedy troupe, much like we did last April, too. As always they were hilarious and very insightful with quite a bit of social commentary this year that was much appreciated.

This morning we drove over to O’Fallon (it’s weird for me to say that, because we live just barely outside of O’Fallon now, in St. Peters, MO) and picked up yet another CraigsList purchase – an antique card catalog. For those of you who were born post-1985, a card catalog is how us old fogeys used to have to find books at the library. Inside all these drawers were a bunch of little note cards with some cryptic numbers and letters written on them called The Dewey Decimal System. If my memory serves, this system was invented by a man named Dewey who hated people, especially high school students who started writing papers the day before they were due. Anyway, there was an old card catalog for sale on CraigsList and for some unexplained reason I’ve been obsessed with owning one for years now. A card catalog and an apothecary table. Apparently I like furniture with many small drawers. I don’t know. Well, I was able to check one of these must-have’s off the list and load it into the back of Andrea’s car. Now if only I had some idea of what to do with the damn thing…

Aside from fulfilling obsessions with furniture, Andrea and I spent the rest of today installing the sink in our kitchen. As I might have mentioned before, we put in a new, tile countertop to replace the hideous monstrosity that was there when we moved in and, frankly, it’s been the home improvement project from hell. So far the final output has promise, but it has been one disaster after another getting to this point. The sink, sadly, has not been much of an improvement. However, I think we’ve gotten it to a point where it might work and just a little fine-tuning in the plumbing is all we need to be in the homestretch. Then we can get started re-painting and re-hanging the cabinet doors. Ugh.

Well, that about does it for now, really. I know I don’t usually give you a full weekend report, but, well, I just kind of felt like writing tonight. I hope I didn’t completely bore you with my tales of feline and sink-related woe, but sometimes life can be less an adventure and more of a weekend spent wandering the aisles at Home Depot.

It’s stuff like this that makes me sad…

They think the painting they’re selling is The Art Institute of Chicago.

Last night we picked up Binx, the cat we found on CraigsList, and brought her home. She’s a very thin cat with dark fur covering the upper half of her body and white on the lower half. She has this barely perceptible squeak for a meow, making her sound a bit like a mouse. She’s really pretty and sleek and in good shape health-wise.

Binx had a rough night of being moved in a crate and then dropped into a strange environment, so her stress level was high to begin with.

Then we introduced “The Peek Factor”.

Peekaboo (note the spelling correction from yesterday; apparently I don’t spell her name often enough to know how to properly do so) noticed the crate and crept up to it. She sniffed at the crate and was greeted by a hiss. Peek responded in kind…and then the growling began from inside. Binx was definitely on the defensive and, frankly, I can’t blame her after the night she’d had. We let Peek investigate the crate for a while, sniffing at it, meowing, and sometimes hissing in reply when needed. We fed Peek some treats and even some soft food in an effort to show Binx what she could have if she calmed down. None of this worked.

We decided we needed to try to coax Binx out of the crate and see if we could get her to relax a little. So I held Peek while Andrea opened the door to the crate. Binx didn’t move. She just sat there and growled occasionally. Peek wanted to go see what was in there, but I wouldn’t let her – the last thing we needed was a big cat fight in the basement.

After about a half-hour of not getting anywhere, we figured maybe things needed a night to calm down. So we took Binx up to the spare bedroom, setup a litter box, some food, and shut the door behind us. She came out of the crate and immediately ran under the futon. We let her be for a while to show her that she was safe. Later I went back in and joined her on the floor trying to lure her from under the futon with toys we were given by her old owner. At one point I flicked a toy towards her and left my arm extended, lying on the floor. She sat there for a minute, sniffed my hand, and then nuzzled against it, asking me to pet her.

Ah! A breakthrough.

And it was. Since then, every time I go into the room, Binx will stay out in the open and greet me by nuzzling against my leg. I put my hand down and she sniffs it, then nuzzles against it again, begging to be pet. She follows the sound of my snapping fingers, moving back and forth in an effort to catch up with them so that I’ll pet her again. She is making progress, at least when she’s alone.

Then this morning while I was in there with her, Andrea came to tell me about a baby bird on our porch. She opened the door slightly, just wide enough to get her face in, and Peek, who had sniffed around outside the door all night, walked up to see what was in there. She didn’t get in the room, but Binx definitely saw her and jumped back, hissing. That was it for the morning – she ran under the futon and wouldn’t come back out.

Through all this, Peek has been completely calm and even accommodating. She hasn’t growled or hissed unless provoked. She hasn’t run away from anything and has actually treated Binx more with curiosity than any kind of animosity. She seems to be just as friendly and playful with us as she ever was. If we can get Binx to calm down, I think we’d have a great match for our household. It might take a few days, but we’re willing to give it a try. Thankfully the owner said she could take her back if things didn’t work out since they aren’t moving until June. I really hope we don’t need to return her, but that’s really up to her at this point.

I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

“Practice Kids” is what some people call the pets of couples that don’t have children yet. Before Monday night I only prescribed to part of that metaphor because Andrea and I have a cat – a traditionally semi-independent pet. While the rest of our friends are running home to take the dogs out every 8 hours, Andrea and I will often heap an extra pile of food in the bowl and leave our cat, Peek-A-Boo, alone for an entire weekend. It’s like having kids that are old enough to leave home alone with only $50 in cash and the warning, “No parties”. Sure, you still have to buy cat food and clean out the litter box, but otherwise they’re a lot less work-intensive than most animals (even fish, in my opinion). And Peek is no exception.

We’ve been talking about getting a second cat for a while now. We wanted to back when we were living at the apartment, but due to the size of the place and the need for an additional pet deposit, we decided to wait until we got into the condo. Then we decided to wait until life settled down a little and give Peek a chance to adapt to her new surroundings. Then, sort of out of the blue, an opportunity to bring a new cat into our lives came upon us.

Binx is a one-year old female that has been spayed and declawed, has lived with another cat and gets along fine, and is being given away free on Craigs’ List. Her owners move frequently and all the commotion and stress of moving doesn’t work too well for Binx (their other cat takes it all in stride), so they wanted to find a good home for her before they have to move again in June. It seems like a slam-dunk decision for us, but instead it’s been grueling.

Peek-A-Boo, our little feline friend, has some emotional issues that we have to take into consideration upon getting a new cat. Peek grew up in a household with two other cats that were bigger than she is. The other cats would kind of pick on her and when the play got too rough, instead of standing up to them, she’d run and hide. This eventually led to her being a recluse for most of her life. Since we’ve had her for the last two years, she’s thrived being the only cat in the house. She runs around our apartment like a whirling dervish, scratching her post, jumping on the bed, sleeping at our feet, climbing on us whenever we sit still long enough; Andrea says Peek is the happiest she’s ever been. Sure, she still hides when company comes over, but a lot of cats will do that. Peek will even come out eventually if things are quiet enough. She’s getting better, but she’ll probably never be one of those cats that welcomes strangers at the door.

Thanks to her past experiences, getting another cat is a traumatic decision for us. What if the new cat is more dominant than our little Peek and bullies her around? We don’t want Peek to go back into her shell again. Or what if having another cat around makes her even more anti-social, even when it’s just us in the house? God forbid if the cat has any health issues like feline leukemia, FIV, or worms? The last thing we want to do is literally hurt Peek-A-Boo.

So in considering this new cat, we’ve been tossing around all kinds of potential problems, solutions, and outcomes if the cat and Peek don’t get along. We’ve been getting as much information as possible, including requesting the name of the vet that has been taking care of it so we can get medical records. We might as well be looking for a nanny for our kid. We’ve been looking at things from every conceivable angle – from the impact on Peek to the impact on our pocketbook. We’ve thought it all through and, frankly, we’re still not 100% certain that this is going to work.

But, we’re going to give it a shot – we pick up Binx tonight (the name may or may not stick if she’ll respond to something else). I’m actually pretty nervous about it, but there’s only one way to find out how Peek is going to respond. I really hope she’s ok.

And so this is why I’m now conceding to the idea that we are “practice parents”. We’ve been fretting over a cat. We didn’t buy it caviar or jeweled collars, but we’ve been stressing out over the emotional impact a further shake-up in life will have on our “practice kid”. Imagine what we’re going to be like when we have a real child to worry about. But, I suppose it’s better to worry a little than not care at all. Maybe we’ll be ok at this child-rearing thing after all. But hopefully we won’t have to find out for a few more years. In the meantime we’ll keep training with our practice kids.

This is yet another one that I waited on due to simply not being interested in seeing it despite all the Oscar talk. Well, once again I’m glad to have finally made myself watch this one. Maybe it’s the writer in me who wishes he could think like a child, or maybe it’s because I could relate to the feelings of losing a parent to illness, but this film really had an impact on me. I loved the way Depp played Barrie – fun, caring, but yet slightly aloof, like he had one foot in this world and the other was in Neverland at all times. And I really liked the way the relationship between Barrie and Sylvia grew. They were obviously right for eachother – best friends who “got” one another – and it was nice to see them have at least some time together. I could pretty much go on all day about how much I enjoyed this film. I’m not sure that everyone will like it, though, simply because, much like the play Peter Pan, I think you have to allow yourself to be taken in by the story to fully appreciate it. If you look for the cliches and the Michael Jackson-esque creepiness (which is there if you want it to be), then this one won’t work for you. I chose not to see the real world of the film and preferred to only see the fairy tale and enjoyed it very much.

4 out of 5 bananas