Silence of the Cat

A dog will fetch, play dead and roll over because it wants food. And possibly because dogs are playful. My cat will sit on the worktop while I'm cooking and scream at my face because it wants food. And definitely because cats are assholes. 

Trust me, I wrote a book about them.

You don't train a cat. You catch a cat doing annoying shit and make it stop. For as long as you're looking, anyway. One fun, efficient way to tell a cat it's not supposed to shit in the laundry, sleep in the washing machine or sit on top of the fucking kitchen door, waiting to jump you the moment you walk in is the Super Soaker.

If you think this is funny, wait for the damn thing to declare your back a designated landing zone.

Shooting the cat with a water gun is hilarious, painless and it stops the cat from doing whatever the fuck you don't want it to do. A less fun, yet even more convenient way to stop the little bastards is by shouting something. I just shout "ey!" and the cat knows it has fucked up. Claire's cat trying to kill my cat is an ey, cat trying to sneak out the bedroom window is an ey, cat jumping on the fucking worktop while I'm dicing meat is so an ey!

No, not like that.

The first step in my daily routine, right after getting my ass out of bed, leads me directly to the cat bowls. Today was an exception. Claire got up before me and fed the little shits. Which, of course, didn't stop them from screaming at me for food when I came into the kitchen five minutes later. Because it's my fucking job to feed them. It doesn't count when Claire does it. Not in their world.

So I'm trying to fix myself some breakfast and they wouldn't shut up. Meow, meow, meow, ISAIDFUCKINGMEOWASSHOLE, meow etc. - which is a major ey, of course. So what did they do? Did they go away? Did they leave me in peace? Nope. They just sat there whispering, breathing every meow from that point on. No voice. "Hchhh! Hrgk!" Unfuckingbelievable. Cat logic. I'm not making any noise, you can't ban me from the kitchen. Silent meows.

A really awesome year is coming to an end. When I got started in this job, I had to ask around for work all the time. But this year I actually had to turn down a few articles here and there, because I simply didn't have the time to write all the stuff people wanted me to write. We can afford a real goddam tree this year! Which may not sound like a big deal to most of you, but it is to me.

You see, for the past 15 years or so, Christmas with my family back in Germany has been rather depressing. The last time I actually got something for Christmas, my parents gave me Wing Commander Prophecy and a 16" crc monitor. Yes, that's how long ago that was.
Yes, I know, it's not about the presents and all that. Reality check - sitting around not exchanging any gifts whatsoever isn't very fun. And kids don't get all hyped up for a chance to spend time with their families during that time of the year, either.

Thing is, my family has never been all that great in the whole get together department, anyway. Well, "family". Basically, my newly-divorced father fell in love with the widow next door one day and they decided it would be a great idea to "merge" and get married. My brother and I, the neighbour, her kids. Random teenagers and two horny old people. And eventually it was decided that I had to refer to my new stepmother as "mama". Because you become a proper family by forcing your kids to do stupid shit like that.

My brand new combination of parents were a bunch of tyrants. Basically, I had to do everything "because I said so". You're 15 and you don't believe in god? Go to church twice a week for the next two years and get baptized, because I said so. I tried everything to get out of that shit. Told the priest I didn't want any of this and my parents were forcing me. He said I was very brave to admit that. And didn't do shit. Whenever I didn't agree to something they wanted to force upon me, they threatened to send me to boarding school, military school or whatever other kind of stupid shit they could come up with to get rid of me. I was about 18 or 19 when my girlfriend back than had her first apartment and when I went to visit her for a few days my stepmother showed up with a van. All of my stuff was in there. I was officially moving out, whether I liked it or not. I was still going to school back then, I didn't have a job, I couldn't support my girlfriend and my parents didn't think to ask her first, because fuck that, he's finally gone.

Christmas was the exact same fake, forced load of bullshit pretense everything else was with this family. My stepmother would torture the everyone with her god-awful Rock Christmas collection, cranked all the way up and don't you dare roll your eyes or ask for that shit to be turned down a bit, lest you'll be confined to your room for the rest of the day. We've also been forced into church the first couple of years to keep up appearances with the neighbours. I seriously hated Christmas. Everything about it. And then we stopped exchanging presents.

I'm skipping your house this year, bitch! And next year! And the year after! Ho ho ho!

Thanks to scary amounts of death and disease, my newly acquired stepmother was loaded. Former hubby died of cancer and 90% of his family died along with him. Also cancer, mysterious plane crashes and other weird shit. Lots of tragedy. And money. Got lucky at the stock exchange and all that. Then she hooked up with my dad, we all moved in together in their house and we could have lived happily ever after. As millionaires. But they had to have custom-built cars. A whole fucking custom-made house. We had magazine people coming over to take photographs of our fucking designer bathroom. Couldn't take a shit without somebody trying to take a picture. I imagine that's what living in Japan must be like.

Their decadence and urge to show off reached grotesque new levels when they built that new house. It was in the middle of nowhere. No cinema, no McDonald's, no other kids - I had to get up at 5:30 in the morning if I didn't wanna be late for school. And our new home was directly oppositve of the local graveyard. I shit you not - if you looked out the window in any of the children's rooms, you'd see a fucking funeral. Did I mention that my stepsiblings' father had just died of cancer? That's the kind of selfish, cold-hearted fuckers I'm talking about when I mention my parents.

I tried to have a talk about all this with my father once. He actually said he was sorry, but with a major but attached. "...but that's the way it always has been. My parents did what they wanted and it didn't matter what the kids wanted." Well, that makes everything okay, doesn't it?
There's a lesson here, people. If you're sad and lonely and you feel that there's something missing in your life, a ton of money is not the answer. They wasted it. Every last penny of it - and tons more. When all the money was gone, they started spending my stepsiblings' inheritance. And when that was gone, they went from their unsuccessful self-employed work to regular dayjobs and a modest, humble lifestyle they could actually afford.

Haha, fat chance! Loans, friends, family! And for what? To move from the custom graveyard house to a slightly smaller house. To trade the Range Rover for a slightly smaller SUV. The weekly steak dinner came from Aldi now. They looked at the stuff as though they had to eat dog food. And my stepmother would be sure to remind me that my old man had ruined her life and that he had also ruined my stepmother before her and my real mother before that one. And that he ruins the lives of everyone he gets in touch with. Actually, I've heard that from a lot of people, including my uncles, grandparents, friends of the family and a few others, but it's not really the kind of thing an 18 year old wants to hear from his stepmother. Every day.

She also made me wear dresses.

Anyhow. No money + fucked up priorities = depressing Xmas. Apparently, we needed a gas-guzzling SUV, because "I can't be a real estate manager and drive my customers around in a shitty compact car." Turns out that appearances and impressive cars alone don't sell anything. So Christmas had to go. Eventually, the "gift" for everyone was sitting together at the dining table until my dad would get up 20 minutes later to go on a guild raid. Because he gave up on all things real life and moved his affairs to Azeroth. I'm not even kidding! He once failed to pick me up at Frankfurt Airport when I got home from the UK after midnight with a ton of luggage and no train tickets and left a message on my mobile, telling me he was on WoW and I should just grab a taxi or something.

I could spend another dozen paragraphs derailing this entry by moaning about how my family broke apart a little more each day, up to the point where I packed my shit and left the country and most of them couldn't even be bothered to say goodbye. It took my stepmother two years to respond to my emails, asking me to stay in touch, asking to send a couple photos and stuff. She didn't even say why it took her so long. She didn't apologize. And you know what? Go fuck yourself. With a rake.

So when I pay for the shitty little roof over my head in the UK, when I go place my own god damn Christmas tree in my own living room, when I pay for all the decorations and fluff and presents with my own money, which I've earned through my hard, honest work, based on a business I've started from the ground up, when I fucking celebrate Christmas, it's not because I give a crap about tradition, Christian holidays or any of that shit. It's because I fucking earned it!

We can't afford much, but it's the thought that counts.

See, something else had happened when I moved to the UK. I had a chance to hang out with Claire's family for Christmas. A few times now. Those guys are slaving away day and night to make ends meet. The family business has to run all day, every day, including Sundays. The car breaks down more often than not and if there's no money for the bus, well... nothing better than a nice, long walk home after an all-day shift at the shop. They don't eat steak twice a week. Or once. Or ever. And if there's no money for the monthly Age of Conan subscription, well... time to play something else for a while.
They have the most awesome Christmas celebrations.

It's funny when you think about it. They have just about enough to eat and pay most of the bills. They never skip Christmas. Everybody gets something.
They all chipped in to get us our new pet last year. You know, Hugo Bosc, our monitor lizard. Not just the actual pet, but a tank, light, heating, the whole thing.

"Don't worry, he won't get much bigger than that!"

"...oops!"

We're sending back and forth a list of who needs what, everybody helps out the best they can and everyone gets something. And there are no fights, no arguments, nobody slams any doors and nobody runs off to play WoW. I'm no family guy, I prefer to be on my own and a day or two full of Christmas-related activities will be more than enough for me, but I'm actually looking forward to it all. Amazing what you can do when you give a fuck. When you care enough to do something. Christmas used to be happy with my family, too. A long while ago. I'm not completely sure what happened.

Oh well. New home, new life, new everything. No point dwelling on the bad stuff. May as well go all the way and get our own tree and all.

Oh, speaking of changes: We've survived our first month of healthy eating! We did go overboard with the unhealthy shit again on my birthday the other day, but other than that it's mostly vegetables, some tender beef or skinless chicken and lettuce, fruit and all that. No bread, rice, pasta, potatoes or anything, no cream, cheese, bacon, pepsi, crisps, puddings, yoghurts or any other fun stuff. The first two weeks were hell. Constant cravings, feeling hungry all the god damn time and you can only eat so much broccoli until you finally crack. But not only do we fit into some old clothes again, but for some strange reason I also have amazing skin all of a sudden. No bumps, zits, spots or any of that other shit I should have left behind with my teenage years.

And there's no daily coma. Not too long ago I'd hit a certain low point every day, where I'd be more dead than alive. Sleepy, not in the mood for anything and ready to take a twelve hour nap, followed by a nice, long day in bed. Right now I could totally go for a two hour walk. Which I won't, because why the fuck would I exercise when there's a perfectly functional internet connection in the house, but the point is, I totally could. Without falling asleep on my feet. 

We've also reached a point where we're going a little easier with the whole thing. We're gonna have some junk food this weekend. We crave it, it's been much too long without it and it's right back to leek and bell peppers and salad the next day. But having one or two days a week where we eat whatever garbage we want isn't so bad when the rest of our weekly diet is healthy.

This can be risky if we aren't careful, because it's easy and very tempting to cheat. Our change of diet can't just be a phase, something we do for a month of two. This is for life, because otherwise it's pointless. If we go back to "whatever we want, whenever we want it", we're gonna undo everything we've achieved so far, probably two-fold.

So that's what we're going with now. Pig out every Saturday and/or Sunday and other than that it's still a massive NO on carbs, fat, sugar and just about everything else fun. And I think we're actually getting used to it now. Once it becomes routine, once you've spent several weeks eating only stuff you've cooked out of low-fat yoghurt and greens, it gets a little less depressing each day. Ironically, I'm actually feeling pretty bad when I look at all the cheese and bacon I'm gonna put all over tomorrow's dinner. It feels wrong. It's been ages and it's not gonna kill me, but it'll ruin a day of healthy eating or two. But I guess I didn't feel guilty enough to not buy that stuff in the first place.

There's no chocolate in the house, no ice cream, no crisps. Just apples. Heh.

And since I don't exercise, I have to be extra careful not to cheat and fuck myself over. I do exercise one thing, however: My fingers. King of Fighters and Street Fighter this weekend. Grudge match. A friend and I will battle to the death, voice chat and everything, put it all on the 'net to amuse the common riff-raff. It's been years since I've done anything like it, I have no idea if and how the whole thing is gonna work over the internet lag-wise and everything and I have no idea how good or bad my friend is at the whole thing and whether or not I'll be able to keep up. But there's no point overthinking it. We just want to have a bit of fun and that's what we're gonna do. I can't wait!

My life is happier than most of you could ever imagine.

I'm still playing STO with Claire, too. I kinda wish I could get her into beat'em'ups, but I don't wanna push my luck. Besides, playing MMOs together is one thing. Playing Street Fighter ruins relationships. It's probably best to keep that between myself and my buddy. I'll share the result here if we can get the whole thing to work. Watch this space!

-Cat