Your Brain on Hurt: Patty Cake’s Ordeal

 

I looked at the clock. It was 2:30 a.m., not too unusual. I walked around, went to the bathroom, drank water, the usual. I was back in bed and drifting off, when I heard horrible sounds from outside: “Dogs fighting in the back yard!” I thought. Snarling, growling, howling, the sounds of biting.
“I don’t hear cat screeches, thank goodness,” I thought, as Maggie and I went screaming out onto the patio, shouting, beating on the iron furniture. By the time Maggie got to the sounds, the animals were gone. I was frightened for Patty Cake, even though I hadn’t heard her.
Maggie and I went down in the back, whispering “Patty, Patty.” It was now 3 a.m. and pitch black; I couldn’t see up in the trees, but I expected her to meow if she were there. We walked around for a few minutes, and I felt relieved not to find her hurt.
The next morning I opened the back door, expecting to see her. I was horrified. She was bleeding profusely and limping. She came into the house and I shouted for my husband. I ran out to the utility room to grab the cat carrier. Joe Lee got a towel and put her into the carrier. I must have been at the vet in 5 or 10 minutes, it seemed, all the way across river into Northport. I ran in with her, and they got her into a room.
The vet came in, picked her up, looked at what he could see of the wound, and gave her a tranquilizer shot.
All this happened last Sunday night and Monday morning. A week has gone by. I still can’t get the hideous sounds out of my head.
On Tuesday, I saw the horrible damage that had been done. The sutures went from under her belly on her right side, around near the tail, and up nearly to the middle of her back to the right of her spine. The animals nearly tore her hind quarter off. On Wednesday I went back.  Dr. Russell at Tidmore Vet had a grim look. Patty was completely listless, with no “attitude,” as Dr. Russell described it. She had a drain inserted.
“We don’t yet know if her bowel or urethra were damaged. We can only tell from symptoms, and infection at the wound is very bad. She hasn’t eaten or drank. We need to keep her.”
It was not until Friday that he seemed willing to give her any chance of surviving this horrendous attack. “I think you must have gotten out there just in time,” he said. “But we need to keep her over the weekend.”
She lost teeth and claws fighting for her life. She has advancing necrosis of her flesh near the wound. Dr. Russell said that will get much more horrible before it gets better. The dead flesh will get grainy and crumble; then other flesh will begin to contract to replace it.
On Saturday she began eating just a little.

Emotions in Living Color
The sounds keep replaying in my head. When I wake in the middle of the night, the sounds and images created from fear haunt me.
Maybe it’s the consciousness working through the garbage the unconsciousness dumps into our minds. The most atavistic fears, those universal nightmares, like being ripped apart by a shark, or eaten slowly by a grizzly bear, or surrounded by wolves, or chased down by a lion, or crushed by an elephant, or even simply bitten by a snake, those images, Carl Jung said, are part of the collective unconscious, shared by humans since the dawn of time. Sharing the worst in the collective unconscious, as he explains in “The Effects of the Unconscious upon Consciousness” brings “the individual into absolute, binding, and indissoluble communion with the world at large.”
My immediate impulse is/was to shoot the animals. Kill them, for hurting my kitty and causing me such pain. Instead, I’ll keep processing and neutralizing.
This human impulse is, in my opinion, completely different from the one that makes people go on safari and shoot down magnificent animals with the help of attendants who will make sure Bwana doesn’t get killed if he misses the shot; or empty creeps getting into a helicopter to shoot down packs of wolves; or catching sharks to cut off their fins while they are still alive, then throwing them back into the water to drown – just to have a bowl of shark fin soup; or slaughtering whales in unimagined numbers to light your way or wash your hair; or to kill elephants to near extinction for a necklace. This unspeakable behavior comes from humanity’s deadest soul, its darkest, meanest, most corrupt, most repulsive nature. Decent people have a responsibility to fight this human streak.
One of the most breathtaking advances in human knowledge is neuroscientists’ ability to see, in pictures, the emotions like fear and anger, as well as to NOT see the empty soul that feels no emotions, inside the brain. My fear when I heard or now when I imagine the dogs or dog and coyote fighting or attacking would now be visible. In a PET scan, CAT scan, MRI, for fMRI, my brain would light up like a Christmas tree. The neuroscientist could tell me if I am experiencing fear, or anger, or disgust, or pleasure. Amazing.
The pleasure and laughing in watching a homemade DVD movie I made out of video taken of Patty and Maggie tussling and playing is visible. The sadness I will feel if Patty doesn’t make it is visible.
Imagining what could have happened to Patty being torn apart feels like my brain is reacting physically, like how a bruise feels when you touch it. Yes, neurons are firing, but we can’t really feel it. We react emotionally, and our brains register the emotions and send messages to our body to respond. All this understanding will not stop tears or quell laughter or make you act reasonably. You just keep processing.
If Patty survives, she will have a long, long, long physical recovery; I don’t know how the trauma will affect her. It takes a lot of trust for a cat to lie on its back with its underside exposed to the world. I wonder if she will ever be able to lie in her most favorite, but unladylike, position. I really doubt it.

I will likely know much more tomorrow.
For more information about the brain, The Dana Foundation has an interesting and bountiful Web site. A piece on How We Know is: http://www.dana.org/news/brainhealth/detail.aspx?id=10062.

Technorati Tags: Veterinary care,pets,coyote attack,Carl Jung,collective unconscious,brain imaging,DANA Foundation

Techs, Computers, and Rock ‘n Roll

This moment may be my last chance to tell you about my call to Apple. It turned into great fun, despite the oxymoronic nature of “talking tech” and “great fun.”

Knocking on wood as I type and thinking this round of computer headaches is nearing its end, I know fortune can change in a mouse click. Now I have to get familiar with, ugh, Vista and where all my files are located on the hard drive. This process will take a bit of time. But I had to call Apple.

Above: The Cleveland, OH, Rock and Roll HofF – one of America’ great places!

Oh, I dreaded it. I’m always afraid someone will say, “Look, lady, we have a FAQ on our Web site. Why can’t you manage just to go there and figure it out!? I cower.

I had some time to compound the dread while I was on hold, waiting for this mean human to answer.

“Hi, my name is Desmond. How can I help you?”

“Whaaaat? This is some kind of trick,” I thought.

I said, “Well, you see, I’ve got this new computer, and some of the stuff on the old one not even the magic Easy Transfer Cable can migrate to the new one, which includes some of the Apple iPhone stuff like MobileMe, Safari, and some programs. My iTunes stuff doesn’t seem to be doing right, and. . . .” The whaaa whaaa trailed off. “Oh, gawd, here it comes,” I thought.

“No problem, Mrs. Hutt,” Desmond, the faceless Apple techie agent said. “We’ll have that fixed soon. Here’s what I need you to do now, and we’ll stay on the phone for as long as it takes.”

The steps continued. There were lapses in the action while files were converted, realigned, chose sides, stepped up to the plate, got base hits, etc., etc., etc. During one of those times, he asked if I had yet put music on the iPhone. I said, “Not really. Except for one – my ringtone; it’s “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” by Aretha.”

I just knew he would think that was cool. He said, “Who?” I was flabbergasted.

This man, this Rock ‘n Roll infant, needed instruction. As Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” was converting, I asked him if he knew that one. “No,” he said. “I’m kind of young.”

For the next 30 or 45 minutes, in between the files doing their thang, I gave him the short version of the History of Rock and Roll. It went something like this:

The Real New Music

Well, at first there was this really silly black and white television show, Your Hit Parade. Maybe Snooky Lanson and Giselle McKenzie had decent voices, but if so, they were lost in the social mores of the mid-1950s that made this show utterly silly. For sure, Rosemary Clooney could sing, but even her songs sounded stupid on that show. “Did you know she’s George Clooney’s aunt?” I asked.

Watch the silly version below!

 

Meanwhile, there was an underground music movement afoot in Chicago. The really great blues singers and guitarists were black; they left the South for opportunity, and many got hooked up with an outfit called Chess Records.

Now, compare this Etta James version of "Roll With Me Henry" to Your Hit Parade's version:

“Hey,” Desmond said, “I saw Cadillac Records.”

“Yes, that movie documented the time and place and people of the Chess label singers. Remember Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Etta James, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry in the movie?”

“Yeh, I remember. Their music was great, but I didn’t really know anything about them,” said Desmond.

“Hear what I’m telling you. They were the pioneers. Here’s what you can do. Go to on-line music sellers, for example Amazon, and search for the 50^th anniversary CDs of those Chess label singers. At some of the sites you can listen to a song.” The “new music” was coming off the gold and black Chess label, the red and black Atlantic Records label, the black and yellow Sun label out of Memphis, and a little bit on RCA (Elvis) and Decca (Bill Haley and the Comets).

I could almost hear Desmond thinking, “Yes, m’am, whatever you say lady.” But he kept asking questions. “Did it really happen kind of like Cadillac Records laid it out?”

The Blues Baby

During 1955-59, my friends and I huddled together around an AM transistor radio, often under a blanket, sneaking to listen to this “new music,” which couldn’t even be listed on mainstream Billboard. We heard it late at night on WLS out of Chicago.

Parents , preachers, do-gooders, the media were all horrified. This stuff was subversive and threatened the Fifties values and way of life.

Here’s what happened: All those different strains of music – blues, country, pop, even jazz and gospel – all entwined and metamorphized into Rock ‘n Roll. Here’s how Muddy Waters put it: “The blues had a baby and named it Rock ‘n Roll.”

Disc Jockey Alan Freed was the first to put it all together in a 1952 Rock ‘n Roll show, The Moondog Coronation Ball, in the Cleveland Arena; the teenagers went nuts – dancing, screaming, grabbing, crying. There were more such events to come. The rest is Rock ‘n Roll History.

Wanna hear some good stuff? Go here for a year-by-year juke box.

http://upchucky.com/music-jukes/1955/player.html

 

“Desmond, it’s working. You did it! And it was fun,” I said.

“It looks like it. Is there anything else? If you need us, just call. And thanks for the history lesson. I’m checking out Chess right now.”

“Bye, Desmond. Thanks again.”

Technorati Tags: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,Apple Inc.,iPhone,Aretha Franklin,Your Hit Parade,Giselle McKenzie,Chess label,Atlantic label,Sun label,Muddy Waters,Cadillac Records,Etta James

Godzilla Raccoon and the Stolen Food

 

Special Note: Since my last post moaning about my computer problems, my new computer system has arrived. While this seems like a PRESTO solution, things are always more complicated under the surface. I’m still limping and asking for your patience. Slowly, very slowly, I’m getting files and settings on the new computer. Gazing still at my Y2K snowglobe, I see a trip to the computer tech guys in my near future.

Meanwhile here’s a true story about Godzilla Raccoon.

Raccoons love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I found this out years ago, when we first moved into this house. The raccoons in our woods were cute and friendly, so I fed them. Through the years, raccoon generations have come and gone. The last group somehow disconnected the wires to the fans on top of the roof and got into the attic to live. You could hear them roaming around, scratching, waking up for their nightly foray around the back yard looking for food, especially the dog food.

The dead give-away was the rising temperature in our upstairs – in lock-sync with the rising temperature in the attic where the hot air built up every day; how the raccoons lived in that heat is a mystery.

We managed to trap that group in our Have-a-Heart cage by luring them in with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They now live down in the country in those woods.

So, who is this NEW masked stranger, able to screw off the lids to the plastic garbage cans in our garage that hold the dog food and the birdseed, who’s roamings caused our Lab, Maggie, to wake at all hours of the night, run down the stairs, barking until we wake to let her bound out into the dark? It must be Godzilla Raccoon. He must have filled the void in the territory of our back yard.

All these goings on went on for several months. Night after night. Grrrrr.

Now, our white cat, Patty Cake, is a fat cat. She lies around a lot in a most undignified position -- on her back, feet spread, tail flat on the floor. I figured that is why she seemed to always be whining for more food every morning. Or was Maggie sneaking downstairs to eat her cat food and lick the bowl every night? In any case, I filled it up a lot.

Recently I woke up in the middle of the night. I was on my way downstairs for a glass of milk. Just as I got to the bottom and rounded the corner to the kitchen, Maggie came out of nowhere, bounding down the stairs, barking at the top of her lungs. Then I saw it:

A very bushy tail was diving out the cat door. Godzilla Raccoon.

The next morning I spotted the evidence and got a picture of it. Everything I know about forensics I got from CSI. HA! The culprit’s footprints.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My turn to set a trap. I don’t know what I thought I would do if it worked, but I sneaked out in the middle of the night when Maggie was deep in sleep, camera in hand. Then it happened!

Here Godzilla comes. 

Closer.

 

 

Very close!

Oh, my gawd, it’s Rocky Raccoon’s little brother! A baby. I’m not thinking of trapping him/her. At least not for now.

But we did have to board up the cat door.

 

Technorati Tags: Y2K,Godzilla raccoon,Spittin' Grits