"And the Lord Said, Give Me Two of Every Creature...

Time to get back down to bidness. Summer's over (though it's been about 95 here all week). Labor Day has come and gone. Time to get back to school as it were. I've been on a lazy, beachcomber pace, as far as the writing goes, but it's time to get back to work. Lots o'things to tell.

First of all, my life took a turn for the bizarre a few weeks ago. We live in a four-apartment house here in W. Hollywood. We represent the lower left-hand quadrant of the house. Between 6 and 9 on the clock, if you will. Our shower is in the back, "overlooking" the garage. So a couple of weeks ago, Bubba's taking a shower, and here's this faint, high-pitched alleged cry. Sounded like it was coming for the wal, so logically, when she was done with the shower, she went outside to check it out. Nothing. Couldn't hear anything. So, she went back to business. But whenever she went to the bathroom, there it was again. I come home, and I hear the same thing. "I think it's a cat," she says. "Ehhh, I don't know." The musician in me took over. "See, the pitch and the meter are way too constant for that to be any type of creature. No being communicates that consistently. No, I think it's the pipes." I even said explicitly, "Mary, I don't know WHAT that sound is, but I can say without a doubt, it's NOT an animal." (foreshadowing alert)

That night, around 4 a.m., we were awakened by the most mournful howling we've ever heard. This cat was outside our place just WAILING. This gave more creedence to the "maybe it's a cat" theory. So, come the next day, Bubba and our neighbor Jules, set out to get this creature out of wherever it was.

Cutting through the minutiae of the fruitless calls to various animal institutions, when I came home from work that day, there were two fire trucks and about 8 firemen and my landlord in my back yard. West Hollywood's Bravest were busy hacking up the back wall. By the time I got to the back of the house, there was already a TINY lil' black and white cat in a shoebox. Great! Miller Time. 'Ceptin' that there was ANOTHER cat still in peril. Not only that, but this bad boy was STUCK. Really stuck. Our working theory is, Moms found this crawl space in the back of the house where she went to birth this litter in private. Problem was, these two cats gell down a ways, and momma couldn't get 'em out, and had to leave them ultimately for the sake of the others.

So, after a few hours of hacking away, my landlord CRINGING with each swing of the pick-axe, they finally got #2 out. Somehow, and there was no discussion by anyone on the topic at all, by virtue of our phonecall, these became OUR de-facto cats. Technically speaking, they weren't ultimately outside of OUR apartment. They were more upstairs. As a result, they last two weeks have seen me bottle-feeding these little souls. I've never been around cats this small before. Both about 7 inches long, less than a pound. The second of the two is REALLY small, but fiesty as all get out.

To complete the absurdity, it was kind of taken for granted that these were both male cats. I don't know why, but no one ever questioned it. I took them to the vet the other day, armed with a slew of male duos to name them after, when it was time to do their charts. Kramden and Norton. Cheech and Chong. Itchy and Scratchy. Bird and Dizzy. And so on. Of course, I get to the vet and they're like, "No, they're BOTH girls." So, in need of girl names, I panicked and gave them Laverne and Shirley. I think I'm now leaning towards Lucy and Ethel though. Lucy is the small one. She's mad cap, wide-eyed and zany. Ethel lays back more, willing to go along with Lucy's antics, but never the instigator.

At press time, we're leaning towards keeping one, Lucy, and giving Ethel to this fella who's expressed a great interest in one. We'll see. This pair had some intro into life, and we'll see if we can break 'em up. Problem is, Scuba's getting Ark is getting a mite crowded over here.