Therapy, Thy Name is "Flight of the Conchords"

"Flight of the Conchords" has to be the funniest show I've seen in the past five years. Laughter really is the best medicine.





--Matt

Two Very Large Posts Incoming

Due to recent events I'm really in no mood to write much of anything fun. I'll get back on the horse tomorrow or the day after though.

--Matt

RIP Unnamed Kusu Kitten, 8/21(ish)--8/27

I woke up Monday morning to find my adopted kitten laying still next to me in bed. At what point in the night she died I can't say, but it wasn't preceded by any frenzied meowing so I'm hoping the passing was painless.

Things genuinely started to level out by last Thursday, I felt, and I'd resigned myself to spending the next several weeks tending to the 'lil one before she became anything like self-sufficient. Where things went wrong I haven't the faintest. I did away with the heat pad-lined box as it was too confining and instead set up the pad on the floor of my closet with towels and a couple of clean undershirts to act as a bed. When I couldn't be here during the day she'd be in there (I spent my lunch breaks at home for feeding, of course) and when I was home reading or on the computer she'd be on my lap or beside me. I made sure she never shivered from lack of heat.

I found some special newborn cat milk at the local pet store last week and she'd greedily drink it from the dropper. However, on Saturday that amount began to steadily decline until the midnight feeding on Sunday when she was down to one dropper of milk from a previous high point of six droppers. She just refused any more than that. She started sleeping a lot too.

Other than the vets at livestock auction yards on the east side of town I haven't found a pet veterinarian in Kusu yet, but I wouldn't really be able to afford one anyways. My supervisor warned me of another problem with me, a foreigner, taking animals to the vet, but I only scarcely understood what she meant. I don't think the problem was digestive toxicity since I was helping her go to the bathroom every now and then. Maybe something related to the bizarre eye scabs.

*****

Pet husbandry, I imagine, can only scarcely be compared with caring for an actual child, but it's still daunting. Perhaps ratcheting up the difficulty and anxiety by several orders of magnitude would get close to an approximation, I don't really know. Whatever the case, I'm still left with a newfound appreciation and respect for my parents and the phenomenal effort given to raise me and my sister. We humans are helpless and physically dependent for so much longer than cats, and then there's the financial dependency and the bullshit mischief we stack up like a rotten layer cake--reproduction and the human condition are a barely penetrable mystery to me.

Anyways, there's an infinite quantity of things I can say about how I was raised--I wrote and erased about ten of them in this space already as there's just no way to concisely express them--but the most important is simply to say that whatever you did, mom and dad, it worked. I'm alive here writing this, and though my heart is filled with a terrible sadness over the loss of this kitten I can't fathom trading it for any other life.


--Matt

Cupdate 2

Those scabby things over the eyes are starting to give way a bit and the kitten is, at times, actively chipping away at it. I tried rubbing it away with a saline solution and warm water, but it doesn't like that very much so I left it be after a couple tries. I suppose it's best to let the kitten handle it.
Some advice I got from you guys and the websites were to keep the kitten in a box or enclosed area with a heating pad. I did that and the cat hates it--won't shut up meowing when put in there. I'm letting it run around when I can supervise and it seems to know the lay of the apartment pretty well even without seeing anything.

--Matt

One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer

Many of my friends in other parts of the prefecture and even Japan were treated to a welcome party by their contracting organizations within the first few days of touching down in their new homes. Mine was just last night, two weeks after arriving. I'm not saying I'm entitled to jack, don't get me wrong.

And the wait was definitely worth it.

At exactly 6PM on the dot my coworkers and myself all filtered into a mom-'n-pop fish joint on the street between the town hall and the station, about twenty people in all. In the tatami-lined, shoji-screened back room an impressive spread was laid out and I was seated between the education department head and the school affairs section head. Both of them gave speeches I scarcely understood and then it was my turn to give a speech that I hardly understood. Or maybe I just don't remember too well after the drinks, who knows. My god, how the beer, sake and shochu flowed.

Kusu is a drinking town like so many other remote municipalities back in the states. I guess the typical nightlife equation in the states is sex, drugs, booze and rock, but there's no drugs here so the booze has to pick up the slack. Kusu is also a major rice producer in the prefecture, being in a valley and with plenty of water, and the town puts its bounty to use in at least three sake distilleries. My coworkers were soused within an hour.

Not me though, at least not entirely. Despite the widely held Japanese custom of anything-goes drinking with coworkers I wanted to err on the side of caution. It was a good thing too because the mayor arrived around 7PM and plopped down next to me and I got to pouring him drinks. He gave a little speech too and I understood it better than the previous ones, probably thanks to the beer ears. See, I understand and can speak much better Japanese when tipsy or even downright pickled, I think because normally I consciously over analyze what I'm saying and hearing instead of just setting the subconscious language nodes on the task of translating what I already know. Drinking lubricates the process, but one still needs to remain somewhat vigilant not to slip.

The antics among my drunk coworkers got pretty nuts at points. One has to remember that many actions normally taboo are considered A-OK when drunk in Japan. So a stroll down a somewhat uncomfortable memory lane last night has a gay swim instructor trying to get me out of a closet he seems to think I'm in, a married (but very cute) coworker flirting with me for over an hour and a P.E. teacher 8-years my senior all but throwing herself at me. Oh boy.

So I played my cards right and didn't make a jackass of myself. Kudos to me. After the restaurant bit let out I headed out with my immediate supervisors Goto-san, Nogami-san and a few others to a nice bar whose name I can't possibly remember, but I'm definitely going back, maybe even becoming a regular. The owners were twenty and thirty-something surfer types who ran a very spiffy ship: reasonably priced, tasty and massive cocktails; a preserved German leg of pork on a spike adorning one end of the bar from which they cut paper-thin slices for appetizers; good pasta, surprisingly (rarer in Japan than you'd think); and finally just a chill atmosphere.

I couldn't stay too late due to my kitten situation and took off at about 11PM. It's about a three minute ride back to my pad, but I learned a valuable lesson in just that short time. I guess I'd never done it before, surprisingly, but alcohol and roadbikes really don't mix well. No catastrophic accident here I assure you, but man was it hard to keep my balance at slow speeds and control the thing when the equilibrium is off just a bit. No more of that for me--if I crashed Honey Flash (my name for the bike this week, subject to sudden change) I'd be beside myself, as well as completely screwed as far as transportation.

The Spread. The two in the back are Goto-san and Hiramatsu-san

The mayor and I

Michi, the P.E. teacher and I

Seriously, the room erupted in dance for no reason

A really bad shot of the kitten. I can't get good lighting with the crappy incandescents here. Notice the eyes, if you can see them--what the hell is that? It's doing much much better now, not wheezing anymore, eating well and meowing much less.

--Matt

Cat Update ("Cupdate"?)

The cat I found was wheezing yesterday, having trouble breathing, but that's since stabilized. I have put it in a fairly spacious box with an electric blanket on low lining the floor covered with newspaper and a somewhat dirty white shirt I had. I'm pretty sure it's not too hot in there. I was able to find a special newborn kitten formula at the local Home Depot-esque place and it's eating much more than it was just this (early) morning. I basically didn't get ANY sleep last night due to the lil' bastard, so I'm turning it early now.
I may have found a home for it with my friend Caitlyn, but we'll see what her boyfriend says, I guess. I don't know, there's a weird crusty, scabby thing covering the cat's eyes too. Lisa said it could be an infection and I believe her. I tried washing it off with a mild saline solution with no luck. I'm wondering if this is some kind of injury (did someone poke out it's goddamn eyes?) or will this just scab away? I don't have pics because the lil dude won't stand still two seconds for me to get a detailed shot!

--Matt

I Need Your Help, Really

I've got a Class III emergency here and need immediate help.

I was coming home today and found a newborn kitten abandoned in the parking lot in front of my house. I could hear the crying from my living room so I took it in, against my brain's better judgment. Its eyes aren't even open yet. I have no idea what to do.

I read online not to feed it cow's milk, instead substituting goat's milk infused with other goodies. Problem is there's no goat's milk here. I'm about to go around to various markets to see what they have in the way of formula or something, I don't know...

Seriously, WTF should I be doing?

--Matt