Nice and cool

Hi Honey!  How's life today?  How was work?  I hope everything went great for you.  Oh, it's been such a nice and cool day here for me.  I'm in such a good mood!  I hate hot weather.  Last night was so comfortable, I slept so well!  I got a total of 7 and a half hours of sleep, which is awesome.  I actually kept my shirt on most of the day, it was so cool.  Finally the rain stopped in the evening, now I'm sweating again.  Oh well, nothing lasts forever.  But I'm sure it's going to be another cool night.  Beautiful dreams!  Dinner was awesome too.  I had some spicy marinara sauce left over from Ramadan.  So I heated that up, and fried up some sliced eggplant and some ground beef.  I topped fettuccine with the eggplant and beef, then poured the hot sauce over that, with a slice of cheese.  Awesome!  Want some?  Oh I ate it all!  I should have taken a snapshot.

Hi Natty Honey!  How's it going for you today?  I wonder what you are doing now that school's out.  You are probably working, since you are such a hot babe and in hot demand.  Relax, and enjoy.  Put in lots of lazy time!  I watched "Scarface" last night.  No, you don't have to watch it.  Not yet.  I found it so hilarious that scene where he's sitting at his desk in his office in his mansion, he's accumulated all that wealth, and he's staring at a mountain of cocaine.  Everybody wants to be rich!

Hi Honey

How are you doing today?  I hope you are doing and feeling great.  Of course I think of you all the time.  I love you and I will marry you inshaAllah.  Today is Sunday.  As usual I had to clean my mother's bedroom in the morning.  I have all this extra time now that the fasting month is over.  It's still not enough time though, plus I'm lazy.  It rained today, so I didn't have to do any yard work.  Instead, I worked a little on Shadowplay's next album.  What's it called?  It's a secret!  😆  I put down a few drum tracks with my wonderful new drum which I made myself.  It sounds so huge!  Real drums make all the difference for me.  Nothing special on the menu today.  Just leftovers from the Eid and fasting month, of which I have plenty to use up.  I had a dough ball that was one month old.  But that's what's so great about bread- it's now sourdough!  I LOVE sourdough.  Maybe I should always let my dough age a month.  Want some?  Oooh it's still gluten though...

Hi Natty Honey!  Wassap, beautiful girl?  Natty loves the drums!  Right?  Are you a dancing girl, Natty?  You certainly have the agility, but do you have the moves?  It's dark and gloomy here today, and very wet.  But I like that!  I loathe hot weather.  It's nice and cool right now, so I'm in a great mood.  The computer wants you to watch a movie today.  Sherlock Holmes!  "The House Of Fear" (1945).  This one is on YouTube!

Suicide is an animal instinct

Hi Honey.  How are you?  I've been missing you, I hope you are doing great.  Please stay fit and eat properly, rest a lot, and don't forget to pray.  I want you to know that I love you and I will not abandon you inshaAllah.  Someday, we will be married inshaAllah.

Hey Natty Honey.  That is really a beautiful snapshot.  I would love to see those eyes in the morning.  I hope you having lots of fun, and taking good care of yourself.  Please pray.  I want you to know that I love you and I will not abandon you inshaAllah.  Someday, we will be married inshaAllah.

People dump their cats in my yard, and expect me to take care of them.  When they are young and small, it is the abandonment that takes a toll on them, and they are already sick by the time I find them.  The weather was hot and dry, and they caught pneumonia!  I knew I would not be able to save Bob Cat III.  But I found it curious that he would always move towards the water, and would prefer to get wet.  As with his brother Marmalade, he died last night at midnight and I buried him then.  I had already dug the grave, because it's almost impossible to save a cat from pneumonia.  I brought him inside, and kept him warm and dry as best as I could.  The other cats, their attitude was "go ahead and die".  What complicated Marmalade's pneumonia is that he also caught a fever.  So I had to keep him warm and dry AND cool him down.  So I did my best to fight for the life of this baby cat.  My bedroom is hot, so when the fever hit I couldn't keep him in there with me.  I let him cool down by the bathroom door.  At one point, I saw some hope: he was becoming more active and breathing easily.  I checked up on him every 10-20 minutes, to keep his mouth and nose dry.  Then about 11:30 pm I went to check on him, and he had stuck his head into the drinking water bowl and tried to drown himself!  It was too late for him after that.  I held him in my arms until he died, then I could bury him.

Ya Allah, I didn't want to experience that.  That made me feel awful.  I guess the lesson I had to learn is that those were kittens, not children.

Selamat Hari Raya

Hi Honey!  How are you feeling today?  I'm guessing that you must be busy, as usual.  Everybody loves you, but not as I love you.  You are beautiful.  Today is the Eid, marking the end of Ramadan.  There is another Eid, which marks the end of the Hajj ritual.  So Muslims have 2 Christmases so to speak, but I prefer Ramadan over the Eid.  But I am grateful that I don't have to fast again for another year.  Coffee!  "Selamat Hari Raya" is the local lingo for the Eid, the literal translation being Selamat (safe) Hari (day) Raya (celebrate).  It is a public holiday of course, meaning that it is a peak tourist season for this area.  Which also means I try to stay out of sight.

Marmalade is still alive at this time.  I had lost hope for his survival, I have never nursed a cat out from pneumonia before.  100% failure rate.  If he lives it would truly be a miracle, and a wonderful Eid present from God.  I kept him warm and dry last night and this morning by hugging him to sleep.  Marmalade is an ungrateful patient though, but he is a cat after all.  I was blessed to have antibiotics from my last visit to the vet.  Can't buy antibiotics over the counter in this country.  He couldn't keep it in his stomach, but at least it means that the medicine got into his stomach, his mouth, and his lungs.  Then he caught a fever.  He was so close to death, it was right in the middle of my voice training, that I had to force feed him some fever reducer.  So he got some energy back, growling at my every attempt to dote on him.  He can't stomach medicine, he throws it up, so I absolutely cannot overdose him.  I was blessed to give him a single dose of anything.  He's also been throwing up phlegm (cats can't cough), that is another good sign.  Now he needs to cool down, so he's found a station at the door to my bathroom.  I check up on him often, wiping his mouth.  But it's far from over.  We'll see what happens tonight.

Hi Natty Honey!  How's life in Nattyland?  I hope you are feeling terrific, and having a marvelous time.  Are you an honest cop, Natty?  Integrity is such a difficult thing to maintain.  We often hear gossip about musicians and artists trying to keep their integrity.  But who can actually do it?  Today the computer wants you to watch "Serpico" (1973).  It might be on YouTube, but I posted the trailer here.  I also posted an interview with the real Serpico, so you can see what he thought of the movie.

R.I.P. Bob Cat III

Hi Honey.  How are you today?  I pray that you are doing great.  Today is the last day of fasting, and I just had my dinner.  My Mom gave me some food to break my fast with.  I'm so happy, that I get to drink coffee in the afternoon again!  Alhamdulillah, for a great Ramadan.  Certainly one to remember.  The month ended with 2 kittens coming into my yard.  They were both boys, they were very soft and they had no fleas.  It was very easy to feed them pills, so obviously they were once raised by humans, and indoors.  Abandoned in my yard.  But since I had a house full of females, I can't have boy cats in the house.  So tiny as they were, they had to learn now how to be outdoor cats.  Bob Cat III was weak when I found him, and he died today.  I didn't know what was wrong with him, but when I found his body, he was lying in a wet spot.  So he died of pneumonia.  That explains why the other cats were afraid of him, because they smelled death.  I couldn't smell death, but they could.  This also means that his brother Marmalade is about to get pneumonia.  Sure enough, Marmalade started to lose energy.  So I brought him inside, and gave him some antibiotics.  Now he is sitting right at the keyboard with me, so I can keep a constant eye on him.  The difference now is that I know what is happening to him.  Is he going to die?  InshaAllah, he will get better.

Hey Natty Honey!  How are you today?  I'm busy being a doctor for a cat right now.  I hate being a doctor, it's such heartbreaking work.  A successful doctor never finishes his work, and has many failures.  A bad doctor has nothing but failures.  This morning, I was cleaning out the cat box and Marmalade was with me.  Then a black snake showed up- a cobra.  It was a small snake, a baby.  So the baby snake and the baby cat were facing each other.  By that time I had returned from getting sand, so I grabbed a brick and threw at the snake.  I didn't kill it, but it didn't run away- it had its hood up, ready to pounce.  So I grabbed a steel pipe next, and whacked the snake with it.  Its stomach burst, but it was still wriggling.  So I smashed its head next, and threw the carcass into the baby mango trees.  Now it's night time, and they are calling the Isha' prayer right now.  Marmalade just threw something up.  I took a closer look at it, and it was bones and skin of a black snake.  Black puke.  He had eaten the cobra.

Marmalade

Hi Honey!  How's it going today, my darling?  I hope you are doing and feeling great.  It's a relatively cool day here today, and it's much easier to fast through the day when I'm not sweltering in sauna type weather.  Alhamdulillah.  Dinner was fettuccine in spicy marinara sauce with sliced chicken.  My new kitten Bob seems to be doing OK.  He's not active at all though, and it makes me wonder if he will survive.  But when I look closely at him, I don't see anything wrong.  His brother Marmalade behaves more like a kitten.  Lots of energy.  It took me 10 tries to get that snapshot, he just wouldn't sit still.  He likes to follow me around like a puppy.  Yeah he's cute now, but he's going to make a big and ugly adult with big balls.

Hi Natty Honey!  Oh, I like that song too.  But you don't have to wish for being young again, you are young.  So I sincerely doubt that you have peaked.  We've only just begun.  If I had met you 30 years ago, I would have only met your Mom.  But I was an active hiker back then.  Especially in cold weather, I would even march through blizzards.  I found it enjoyable.  I would prefer city streets instead of wilderness, because I would march and read a book at the same time, and use my peripheral vision to keep an eye on the traffic.  Today the computer wants you to watch another movie, "X-Men 2" (2003).  Please watch the movies I ask you to watch when I ask you to watch them, so we watch them together.

Bob Cat III

Hi Honey!  How are you today?  You must be busy, so please get lots of rest and take proper care of yourself.  Are you hungry?  For dinner I made chicken chow mein again.  I was still fasting when I made it, but I can make fried noodles without having to taste it.  Fasting month will be over in a couple of days, and my fridge is full.  Alhamdulillah.  Around here, the challenge during Ramadan is not to gain weight.  Rather, I think I lost some weight this Ramadan.  I went to the supermarket without putting on a belt, and my jeans kept on wanting to fall down.  There is a new kitten in the yard, and his name is Bob Cat III.  He's so small and delicate, but the other cats are terrified of him for some reason.  When I fed the outdoor cats, he came over for a few pellets of cat food.  The other cats wouldn't touch the food since, and they still haven't, a few hours later.  I brought him inside to give him a bath, and the indoor cats acted similarly.  His predecessor Bob Cat II would claim all the cat food as his.  But this kitten is so small!  The other cats are three times his size!  Floofy was not pleased with me that I let him in the house.  I worried that perhaps he was carrying some biological hazard that I can't detect, but the best I could do was give him a bath and feed him anti-worm and anti-fungal medicine.  He's not an active kitten, either.  All he does is observe.  You can see it in his eyes.

As it turns out, it was all a setup.  Bob is actually older than his size.  He acted all helpless to win my trust, so he could get his brother a home as well.  Yes, he has a brother.  It's an orange cat, and he's bigger than Bob.  Good thing they're boys, so they can live in the yard.  I've never had an orange cat before.  I'm running out of cat names.  I guess I'll just call him Marmalade.

Hi Natty Honey!  Are you excited?  Are you?  Are you?  Are you ready to catch the big fish?  Now that you've graduated, one might think you have lots of spare time.  OH NO!  Anyway, the computer wants you to watch a movie.  It's a German movie, "Stroszek" (1977).  I guess you could call it an artsy movie.  This movie has tremendous influence though, in the underground music circle.  You are blessed that I found this movie on YouTube with English subtitles.  The version I have is subtitled in Mexican.  I feel it kind of resonates with your freshly graduating, about the hopelessness of a "normal" life.  Or the American Dream.  What do you think?