Tag Archives: Leiber

Have a Great Weekend

In tribute to Leiber, the theme song for his life story. He was a sweet cat, but he wasn’t the brightest.

Leiber (2002-2019)

Jenny.

FatCat.

Benji.

Morris.

Woodrow.

Fitzgerald.

Gummitch.

Ashley.

White-Ears.

Jones.

Thumper.

Tramplemaine.

Cadigan.

And now Leiber.

 Out of the multitude of cats sharing my life over the last half-century, Leiber (pronounced LY-ber) was the only one where I knew his exact birthdate. April 13, 2002. This was due to his mother being a rescued stray who was already pregnant when she was rescued, and she was up for adoption at the same time as her kittens. We were still mourning the deaths of my two cats Jones and White-Ears, early victims of the Science Diet melamine poisoning scandal (and I still have no problems with forcing the executives of Hill Foods watch their children eat their products to ensure either that their products are safe or that a gaggle of psychopaths no longer contribute to the gene pool), none more so than Caroline’s cat Tramplemaine, so we had high hopes for the little ball of grey fluff that peered up with bright green eyes and plotted galactic domination. At least, that’s what we thought, hence his being named after the famed writer Fritz Leiber. For the next sixteen years, though, every time he’d trip on the carpet pattern or fall off the couch, I’d just sigh and tell him “I swear, if you get any dopier, I’m renaming you ‘Doctorow’.” That wouldn’t have been fair: the cat could occasionally say more than the same three catchphrases ad nauseam.

 Yes, we had hopes for our little mutant being at least as smart as Tramplemaine, and he gave every indication early on that he might live up to his namesake’s legacy. That lasted about three weeks, until I received a job offer to move to Tallahassee, Florida. On the day I left Dallas for the roadtrip to establish a new life in Tally, I kissed my fiancĂ© goodbye, rubbed the cats’  ears, and left knowing that the separation wasn’t permanent. Three months later, the project for which I was hired was cancelled, I was told that my services were no longer needed, and I flew back to Dallas the day after my layoff for a wedding and a reevaluation of plans. That reevaluation involved staying in Dallas, so it was time to fly back and load up the car with my Florida possessions, such as they were. The whole trip back, and I do NOT recommend a straight nonstop drive from Tallahassee to Dallas unless sleep is a friend who never visits, I kept thinking of that odd little kitten and how I’d finally get a chance to make his acquaintance. I arrived to discover that the woman running the cat rescue service handling Leiber’s adoption was just a little TOO attached to her charges and was freaking out that we dared change his name from “Pico.” That kept up for another five years of spot-inspections, as she was absolutely terrified of someone adopting one of her cats to feed it to a big snake, and she refused to acknowledge the name to which he’d become accustomed  in all of that time.

Leiber, the FreakBeast

 Not that the name made much of a difference: as with most cats, he responded to his name when it was convenient. What WAS different was that Leiber was a fetching cat: throw a cat toy past him, and he’d grab it and bring it back to be thrown again. His problem was that he apparently had heard of stopping himself to avoid collision with walls and objects, but only as an abstraction that didn’t apply to him. We very rapidly learned that he’d enthusiastically run full-tilt into walls, doors, furniture, sliding-glass doors, and anything else that might stop or slow his frantic chase of his favorite toys. Correlation is not causation, but after watching him attempt to impersonate Wile E. Coyote with the front door, we weren’t sure if his repeated collisions were a factor in his sweet but dopy disposition, or if his sweet but dopy disposition was a factor in his collisions. In the meantime, we aimed his toys toward soft objects and started to price cat-sized football helmets before he finally started to watch where he was going.

Leiber

 In the ten years that he and Tramplemaine were companions, we saw another side of him. Tramplemaine was in retrospect an incredibly competitive cat, who looked at Caroline as the ruler of the house and the rest of us as inconvenient but tolerated accessories. Since I at least had the ability to open cat food containers and use a brush, this meant that Leiber was at the absolute bottom of the hierarchy, and he didn’t like it one bit. This meant that for years, we’d go to bed and then hear Tramplemaine and Leiber attempting to establish dominance through war cries. To his detriment, the best Leiber could manage was a squeak that wouldn’t have worried a sparrow, so when he’d respond to Tramplemaine’s throaty yowl, the laughter that ensued when he’d emit a loud “MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!” just made things worse. Between that and his natural insecurity, he first inspired and earned his first nickname: “FreakBeast.” For his first ten years, his default expression upon hearing his name was a frantic “ohGodwhatdidIdo?”, and no amount of reassurance could convince him that we weren’t about to do something unnamed but completely horrible to him with no warning.

Leiber

 Not that Tramplemaine didn’t get back what he gave. In the years before the gallery, Saturday mornings were usually dedicated to lawn mowing and weeding, and then a quick nap before Caroline got home from her old day job. Tramplemaine usually crashed out on a pillow next to the couch, and he’d relax so much that he’d start to snore. That’s when Leiber would exact his revenge by carefully sneaking up and teabagging Tramplemaine, who was far too dignified to say anything. I speak from experience, there is nothing in this universe quite like being awakened from a dead sleep to the sound on one cat’s testicle-free scrotum smacking up and down on another cat’s forehead, and it was just bizarre enough that it would wake me up every time. He once tried it with me, and that’s when I learned that he understood one phrase in English on a genetic level: “Keep it up, and I’ll turn you into a Davy Crockett cap.”

 After Tramplemaine died in 2012, Leiber mellowed out considerably, and no longer felt compelled to push boundaries. instead, he challenged our respiratory systems. Every Saturday morning, he’d attempt to wake me up to play his absolutely favorite game. The rules were simple: I had to start brushing him and collect the accumulated cat fur, and the first one to scream “WHY IS THIS CAT NOT BALD?” automatically lost. His favorite time to play this game was right after I’d finished vacuuming the living room, where I’d measure the accumulated cat fur and dander in the Dyson debris receptacle in “Leibers.” Nine years at our current location, and I still get tremendous yields of sweet potatoes grown in the little garden out back due to all of the Leiber fur dumped in it for the last near-decade. (Seriously: dump excess cat fur in the garden. It not only makes an excellent source of slow-release nitrogen for greedy plants, but it improves the tilth to no end. Nine years of adding cat fur and compost to Dallas’s indigenous “black gumbo” clay, and the garden soil is so fluffy that you can harvest sweet potatoes with bare hands.)

Even with the brushing, and possibly because of it, Leiber fur could be found everywhere: coating ceiling fans, accumulating behind the toilet, clogging air conditioner filters, and attempting to gain enough mass to achieve sentience. Leiber also shared with tarantulas the ability to shed irritating hairs at potential threats, and he took being held as a Defcon 1 threat. Pick him up, and put him down with a nose full of what we called “cat felt.”

Cadigan and Leiber

 There are a lot of Leiber stories, such as the box turtle that fell madly in love with him, only to be frustrated by his climbing up stairs to get away from her. The oddness, though, escalated after we adopted Alexandria after Cadigan’s death in 2015. Alexandria has her own quirks: among other things, she’s completely silent, and we only learned what her meow sounded like after she’d locked herself in a closet. She also has a strange fascination with the garage: she has absolutely no interest in going outdoors, but she begs and rolls to be allowed to wander around in the garage, and she regularly meets us at the door when we get home from the gallery. Leiber had no patience for this, as the garage is where Odd Things Make Odd Noises, and he’d watched two cats leave through the garage and never come back. When we’d come home especially late after open houses, we’d find them both at the door: Alexandria trying to get free as Leiber tried to pin her to keep her from danger. When that failed, he started calling for her as we were getting ready for bed. Every night, as we were all winding down, he’s grab a particular cat toy with his mouth and wander through the house while letting loose the most pathetic yowl. It was so odd that I had to get video, if only because I figured that nobody would believe it otherwise. 

Mostly due to Alexandria’s influence, Leiber settled down immensely, and the FreakBeast just became known as the Old Man. Around the time he turned 15, we knew every extra day was a gift. He’d already lived longer than any other cat we’d known, and until about two weeks ago, he was still getting around. He was a little too stiff to jump into windows, but he’d still roughhouse with Alexandria for a few minutes before deciding that it was time to get back into his heated cat bed and catch his breath. His teeth got sensitive to dry cat food, so we augmented it with regular treats of chicken and tuna and he kept plowing on. We honestly figured that with his indoor life, he might live to see 20, which was unlikely but actually plausible.

Just short of his 17th birthday, though, he scared us by suddenly refusing to eat. He rebounded about a day later, but it was then a slow decline, and we could only stand by and try to help as he faded. He could still drink and use the litter box, and he wasn’t in any pain, so we made the decision to leave him among familiar surroundings instead of traumatizing him with that one last trip to the vet.

I can’t get angry: 16 years was already an impressive life for any cat, and I’m glad that other than his first few months, the vast majority of it was spent sleeping on my feet. That said, if things go quiet around here, that’s the reason. For such a little cat, he left a bigger hole in our lives than we realized.

Have a Great Leiber’s Birthday Weekend

Since today is our oldest cat Leiber’s birthday, time for a pair of classics:

State of the Gallery: April 2018

Nearly a third of the way through the year, and April 2018 is already shaping up to be a lot less exciting than April 2017. Of course, this time last year involved frantic shelf-installing and box-unpacking after the move from the old gallery space at Valley View Center, so it’s all a matter of perspective. (And if anybody had any doubts about not getting involved with the Rock Candy Mountain promises of artist spaces opening up at the Midtown project allegedly replacing Valley View, they’re gone now.) Yes, the weather keeps fluctuating between “typical” and “too cold to get out of bed right now,” but we haven’t actually gone below freezing…yet.

As far as last weekend’s Manchester United Flower Show was concerned, April follows in the tradition of last February: announce a gallery event, get everything ready to go, and then watch the weather feeds for impending catastrophe as a sudden atmospheric fewmet comes to visit for a while. Last February, it was a last-minute ice storm that hit north and west of Dallas, making a lot of potential attendees understandably reconsider a trip into Dallas if the roads were going to be frozen over by the time they attempted to return home. This time, Friday festivities were greeted with tornado sirens going off over most of North Texas: we got a bit of heavy rain for about an hour, but a friend coming in from Chicago found shelter with a multitude of others in a furniture store north of here, and folks to the south and the west had their own issues with hail and lightning. What issues Friday brought were mitigated on Saturday, where chilly but otherwise excellent weather brought out lots of first-time visitors and Valley View regulars. If nothing else, the weather caused reevaluations of having an outdoor event in spring, because any tents set up in the parking lot would have been blown to Oz and back. Maybe next year.

And on that note, further events in April will be restricted due to the need to get ready for Texas Frightmare Weekend on May 4 through 6, and then things get interesting. It’s too early to discuss particulars, but everything leads to a gallery show on June 30, just in time for everyone uninterested in traveling out of town for the July 4 weekend. The subject of that show is a secret, too, but let’s just say that anyone attending can say with authority that they’ve never been to an art show like this one.

Lateral shift to go back to talking about Texas Frightmare Weekend: the vendor map and listings arrived yesterday, and we’re back on our favorite row. As for most of the decade, the epicenter of Frightmare is at the Hyatt Regency DFW in DFW Airport, thus making the entire wing of DFW Airport by the hotel available parking for the convention. As in previous years, the Triffid Ranch and Tawanda! Jewelry tables will be in the back of the Made In Texas Hall in the hotel basement, right next to the signing lines. Since this coincides with the first-ever Triffid Ranch show a decade ago, those already taking advantage of the Shirt Price discounts have an extra incentive to wear their Triffid Ranch T-shirts to the show: while supplies last, everyone showing up in a Triffid Ranch shirt or purchasing a shirt at the show gets a special present, no additional purchase necessary or needed. It’s just an extra bit of thanks to those who have not only made Texas Frightmare Weekend one of my favorite shows, but who have made the previous nine shows so much fun.

One ancillary note about Frightmare, not for this year but for next year: I’m regularly asked about getting vendor space at Fan Expo, the local convention that inspired the “Malcolm Rule” mentioned a few weeks back. I’ve balked for many reasons, and now my refusal became personal. Ever since the old Dallas Comicon was purchased by out-of-town convention accumulators and turned into Fan Expo, it and its associated Fan Days events always conveniently scheduled themselves against other similar events so that local attendees could do one or the other but not both. (Longtime fans may remember when the Dallas Fantasy Fairs did the same thing in the early Nineties, stunting or killing up-and-coming conventions that simply couldn’t compete against the Flimsy Fair hype machine and guest lists. Those fans who aren’t longtime fans might not be familiar with the name “Dallas Fantasy Fair,” as the Flimsy Fairs blew up very spectacularly in 1996 after choking out all other competition, just in time for the big comics speculation bust that caused Marvel Comics to file for bankruptcy at the end of the year.) Five years back, Fan Expo’s parent company offered to buy Texas Frightmare Weekend for a pittance, and when told no, attempted to run a horror convention within the main show that was an unrelenting disaster. Since then, Fan Expo management concentrated on scheduling opposite the A-Kon anime convention, ultimately causing it to move out of Dallas entirely, and then settled for running two weeks after All-Con.

Well, that was 2018. You can imagine the surprise vendors at Fan Expo 2018 had when they received advance registration forms for 2019, and discovered that Fan Expo had moved its date to the first weekend of May. Not only does this directly conflict with Texas Frightmare Weekend, forcing attendees and vendors to choose one and only one, but May 4 is also Free Comic Book Day across the US and Canada. Frightmare never competed against the many comic shops in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex participating in Free Comic Book Day, but Fan Expo’s list of comic artist and comic adaptation film and TV star guests does, and not just with comics dealers and stores having to man a booth at Fan Expo during their stores’ busiest day of the year. Fan Expo management hasn’t released a statement as to why the schedule suddenly needed switching, but I’ll bet $10 that when it’s finally released, the statement will bray something along the lines of “this is a pure coincidence.”

I’m sure it is. Of COURSE it is. Likewise, it’ll be a pure coincidence that everyone involved with Frightmare, from staff to vendors to guests to attendees, will spend the next year doing nothing but amping their games so Frightmare isn’t just the biggest show in Dallas on that weekend, but the must-attend show of its kind in all of North America. It’ll also be pure coincidence that so many of us involved in Frightmare will do our utmost to have the backs of our comic shop brethren when May 4, 2019 comes around. Refusing to advertise with venues that continue to do business with Fan Expo, for instance, or otherwise demonstrating with dollars or shoe leather that scheduling opposite established events with the attempt to create a monopoly may not turn out the way everyone expected. After all, the Dallas Fantasy Fairs attempted to create a similar monopoly, and a little voice should have told their organizers what Fan Expo management really needs to hear:

And now on a purely friendly note. It’s been about three years since the last Cat Monday event on this site, mostly due to the time taken by the gallery, but its main subject, Leiber, is still going strong. As of Friday the 13, Leiber turns 16: he’s still the so-dopy-he’s-cute FreakBeast he was when we adopted him in August of 2002, but he’s a little stiffer today. Aren’t we all. Those who have met him are welcome to wish him a happy birthday, although he’ll probably only care if the person offering the wishes brings cat treats as well. And so it goes.

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

Cat Monday

Leiber

More subtlety, more grace.

Cat Monday

Cadigan
Cats: grace, refinement, and subtlety, even when sleeping.

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Cat Monday

Leiber

Cat Monday

Leiber

“There is no Leiber. Only Zuul.”

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

Introducing Ipomoea batatas

Sweet potato vines

Although she rarely has any involvement with actual growing facilities at the Triffid Ranch, the Czarina asked for an exception this year. While my dislike of sweet potatoes isn’t on a par with that of butternut squash or bell peppers, planting them for my own use never really came up on the radar. However, she adores them, and she regularly shares roasted sweet potatoes with our cat Leiber. Yes, the cat loves sweet potatoes, and since his consumption seems to cut down on piles of cat vomit randomly encountered in the dark, that’s a reason alone to try my hand at growing my own.

The reality is that half of the fun of experiencing a new plant is not knowing anything about its initial growth, and watching the whole process. The other half is having a growing area that was criminally underutilized. Since the big silverleaf maples came down two years ago, this space had little to no shade during the worst of the summer heat, and the usual assemblage of tomatoes, white potatoes, or other essentials burned off by mid-June. When the Czarina gave me a stored sweet potato that had started sprouting and asked if I could plant it in the space, I told her “I’ll do what I can, but I can’t make any promises.” I knew they could handle Texas heat, but could they handle our ridiculously low North Texas humidity?

As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. The growing area had become the depository of nearly five years of kitchen compost, dead Sarracenia and Nepenthes leaves, extra potting mix from repottings, and the occasional bag of grass cuttings dumped on top to keep things moist. Five years of earthworms, ox beetle grubs, and the occasional armadillo later, and the soil in that depository had become a fluffy, rich loam, absolutely perfect for both growing and harvesting any root crops growing in it. Harvesting wasn’t a matter of digging out as it was simply brushing off dirt and hauling it in.

Sweet potato flower
But I get ahead of myself. Much like the sweet potato cousin the moonflower (Ipomoea alba), the biggest issue with sweet potatoes is getting them established. I suspect both species work in symbiosis with fungi in a commensual relationship, because the first year of trying to get either to grow is a bear, but after that first year, the seeds or tubers practically sprout the moment they touch the ground. I don’t know if I actually got any sweet potato seeds in the growing area this year, but judging by the number of stunning flowers growing under the foliage, I may luck out. Unlike other members of the genus Ipomoea, these flowers remain hidden under multiple layers of foliage, and I suspect that they fluoresce extensively under UV light, possibly encouraging night pollinators.

Sweet potato foliage

About that foliage, that’s one thing about sweet potatoes. It’s not shy about taking over the planet. By the beginning of August, mowing the lawn around the greenhouse was a proposition, as the sweet potato vines spreading outward tend to wrap around and tangle up lawn mower blades. This was about the time we discovered that sweet potato leaves made excellent additions to stir-fry or as a substitute for spinach in various recipes. At that point, the questions was whether the sweet potato would ask for UN citizenship to protect it from the Czarina’s depredations. It actually worked out well, because until Halloween weekend, it was growing new leaves faster than she could strip them out. In the meantime, the vines also offered great shelter for praying mantises and anole lizards, so building a trellis alongside the greenhouse and encouraging sweet potatoes to act as shade plants might be an option.

Sweet potato stems

Sadly, with Halloween came the threat of cold weather, and if there’s one thing that will ruin a sweet potato harvest, it’s the rot spread by dead and dying vines killed off by a good frost. This meant that they had to come out and start curing in a high-humidity area before they went bad. As mentioned before, the soil was so loose that the only hardship was finding the base of the plant. I say this after the vines had swallowed a rain gauge, two sprinkler heads, and a chiminea, but lifting up the mat of intertwined vines finally revealed the crown of the plant, and some quick grubbing around it came across the first of the tubers.

Sweet potato harvest

Having never done this before, I fully expected the usual beginner’s harvest: two or three tubers, and won’t I feel great about my accomplishments? Apparently, though, all of those composted Sarracenia leaves contributed to the tilth, because one removed tuber would reveal another. And another. And another. By the time things were finished, I managed to get nearly 15 kilos of tubers out of that tiny little space, and I still think I missed a few.

Sweet potato harvest

With the soil not consisting solely of Black Prairie clay, cleanup was remarkably easy: a quick wash with the hose, setting them in the sun to dry, and a quick inspection for damage or rot. Both the wife and the cat were even more impressed by the harvest: Leiber has never had interest in raw sweet potatoes before, but he looked half-tempted to take a chunk right then and there.

Monster sweet potato

Another thing about this adventure is the realization that what we think of as “typical” sweet potato sizes are more dictated by market pressures than by any plant-imposed maximum. The first few dug up were “typical” in size, and then this one revealed itself. I now understand the source of canned sweet potatoes, as this one was too big just to cook up and eat, so it became the core of several batches of sweet potato bread. I had no real interest, but judging by the way friends were tearing into it, it was that much more for everybody else.

Sontaran head

Finally, we got this beast, nearly the size of a soccer ball. Upon seeing pictures of this one roasting in a casserole dish, after FIVE HOURS of roasting to get it cooked all the way through, old friend Cat Sparks exclaimed “That’s not a sweet potato! That’s a Sontaran‘s head!!” I couldn’t disagee, and if I can get more spherical ones such as this, I may have a viable replacement for pumpkins for Jack O’Lanterns that can grow in our heat. But first, I’m training the next batch to climb up trellises, grow up onto the roof, and shade the garage. I have my priorities in order.

EDIT: Since people started asking about the sweet potato bread recipe, here’s the Czarina’s own recipe, in her own words:
So, I’m giving you the recipe for sweet potato bread. However, be warned. I’m renaming it ‘crack bread’. You have no idea how addictive this bread is. On one side, it is low in carbs, and does have some protein, but it’s not calorie-free.
You’ve been warned.

Sweet Potato bread-

2 cups of brown sugar
1 cup of white sugar
3 eggs
2 cups of cold mashed sweet potatoes
1 tsp of vanilla extract
2 3/4 all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 (or less) tsp of salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup of chocolate chips, dark chocolate preferably.

Now this mixture will get Thick, so I’d pull out the mixer. I nearly killed my little handheld mixer.
In a bowl, combine sugar, eggs, sweet potatoes, and vanilla. mix well.
add all the spices, mix well.
combine flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder, and mix in gradually into your sweet potato mixture. Lastly, add chocolate chips, or if you prefer, a cup of pecans.

Bake at 350, for about 45-50 minutes, testing to see if a toothpick will pull out cleanly at the center of the bread. Time may vary on oven. One mixture equals about three smaller loaves for me.

Now don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber and Cadigan

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Sharing the Cat Bed

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Cat Monday

Laserblast

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Cat Monday

Fighting over the cat bed

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Cat Monday

Cadigan & Leiber

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Cat Monday

Cadigan and Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

Cat Monday, the Explanation

Cadigan/Leiber/Steadman books

Every once in a while, people come across this silly little blog or actually come to the house and visit, and they ask about the cats. Well, they don’t ask about the cats per se, but they ask about the names. Everyone knows that cat people have a thing about odd names, but people who know me know that I have a thing for reasonably obscure ones, too. This is a deliberate effort to confuse visitors, so they don’t stick around long enough to discover that I don’t name the plants. Believe it or not, it works remarkably well. The only problem is that they continue to ask about the cats, wondering “Why would you choose those names?” When they realize that I used to be a professional writer before I came to my senses, they simply smile and nod, instead of screaming and running for the door. Not that I mind their screaming and running, but the Czarina has issues with this when her parents come over: they have enough of a problem with the life-sized Nanotyrannus head hanging over the toilet in the spare bathroom.

As it turns out, a run on a used bookstore week before last dredged up some beauties, giving me the opportunity to illustrate the examples. Well, that and torment the increasingly more sporadic visitors when they come by.

In the case of Cadigan, she actually had things pretty easy. Her story actually starts twenty years before she was born, when a then-girlfriend came up and told me “You HAVE to read this book.” At the time, I got a lot of that, and was already starting to blanch over the word “cyberpunk” being thrown around about it. At the time, the word was less a description of a certain subgenre of science fiction involving situations where technology outstrips ethics and becoming more of a marketing catchphrase, like “steampunk” today. Worse, by 1992, the subgenre itself had gone from being more punk to more cyber, attracting both writers and readers with an unhealthy obsession with downloading their personalities into computers and leave the meat behind because, as I wrote later, “they couldn’t get laid in Tijuana with a jockstrap full of $100 bills.” (Yeah, I was a little angry back in the early Nineties.) After trying my best to plow through many of the more recommended books at the time, and realizing that the people who read Bruce Sterling novels do so because they can’t handle the depth of characterization in Microsoft operation manuals, I shuddered and gulped, and took a chance on her recommendation. And that book damaged my fragile little mind.

For those who know Pat Cadigan, you already understand why I named my little orange cat after her. For those who don’t, let’s just say that they both have the same curiosity and general attitude about life. Science fiction enthusiasts talk about how Arthur C. Clarke developed the idea of the geosynchronous communications satellite but failed to patent it, but if Pat had the time back in the early Nineties to file patents on many of the ideas in her novel Synners alone, she’d own half of the planet right now. Bill Gates would be her personal doormat, and Steve Ballmer would dance every time she shot at his feet. Just tell yourself, tell yourself, that you could look into the eyes of a kitten with exactly the same expression that Pat gets when she’s on a roll and not think of naming that kitten after her?

Sadly, Leiber was a mistake, at least as far as naming him was concerned. He also had the glint in his eye as a kitten, encouraging me to name him after the much-missed author Fritz Leiber. (The Czarina’s nickname itself came from Leiber’s famous chess ghost story “Midnight By the Morphy Watch,” included in the pictured collection, because of her intensity in learning how to play chess.) Both the grey fur and the green eyes were regular themes in his novels, so it seemed like a good idea. Something happened, though, while I was living in Tallahassee at the end of 2002, and I came back to find him a bit broken. He’s a sweet cat, and enjoyable in his own way, but to call him “dopy” is to be nice. I once had a dog that was smarter than Leiber is, and this was a dog who regularly walked into sliding-glass doors. Combine this with his incessant one-note chirping, over and over and OVER all night long, and I’ve threatened on more than one occasion to rename him “Doctorow”. In that situation, the name might fit, because if this cat could speak English, all he could manage would be “Humperdidoo!”

And the third book? Well, we’ve run out of cats, but this one had particular significance back around 1997 when it came out. Not only did I have a ginger cat named “Jones” at the time, but I also had a savannah monitor at the time named “Steadman”. When friends would ask for that story, and they learned very rapidly not to ask again, for anything, I just told them the tale of the baby lizard I brought home for my birthday in 1997. The hatchling lizard that went into a large cage, loosened his bowels for maximum effect, and very promptly managed to make the inside resemble a Ralph Steadman painting. That was the day, after removing him from said cage and having to climb inside to clean the filth he’d managed to spatter on the ceiling, that I first coined the phrase “a stench that could burn the nose hairs out of a dead nun,” and he rarely disappointed me in new opportunities to use it. Most savannah monitors tend toward personalities that blend David Bowie and Sid Vicious, but Steadman was pure G.G. Allin. In that case, he was the perfect personification of my writing career at that time.

That about sums it up at the time, although the Czarina makes vague noises about another cat, and I’ve made my choice of next pet very plain. With the next cat, the deal is that s/he who pays the adoption fee gets to name the beast, so I suspect she’s saving her pennies in anticipation.

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Cat Monday

Cadigan & Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber

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Cat Monday

Leiber and Cadigan

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Cat Monday

Leiber and Cadigan

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Cat Monday

Leiber

Have a Great Weekend

It shouldn’t be any surprise that Leiber and Cadigan practically sing this every morning, should it?