radish times

So we got really nervous. We thought we lost BoBo.

But then, after 15 minutes of sitting very quietly, out from behind the absolutely empty couch…. came BoBo.

You tell us, where was he?

Saturday, BoBo completely disappeared. Peter and I looked EVERYWHERE. EVERYWHERE in our apartment we looked. We pulled out the bed from the couch, turned the whole thing on its side and looked in every area of it and found no BoBo. We looked through every closet, under every bed, behind every couch, under every piece of furniture.

So, yes, we are still using cat litter. We are using the absorbing crystals, not to be confused with the clumping kind or the sand kind.

I haven’t written about it recently because I am depressed about it. There are little white, light yellow and dark yellow balls all over the floor in the hall. The dark yellow ones are filled with piss. I could tell you more but you might be eating while reading this.

The Giganitic Petco in Danbury, CT, doesn’t have the big bags. Their small bags are expensive. They don’t carry any French brands. Do you think it has anything to do with Iraq? The small store on 91st street has cheap big French bags but they are half a mile away. I will never buy cat litter there even though I desperately want to. Peter will probably help me with this.

Sometimes the cats are put out and pee on the floor. I am more tired of this than you can imagine… or maybe you can. Cleaning more than 10 puddles of cat urine a year is excessive. If we are talking year to date, I am in the ultra-super-overly excessive category. If we are talking calendar year, I am doing alright.

On the bright side, I guess it smells less. Peter is sure about this. The floors do not feel sandy and gritty (unfortunately though it is possible to puncture the bottom of your foot with one of the little balls… or at least greatly indent it). It is easier to see whether the cats systems are working normally. None of their bowel movements is covered in sand, grit or saw dust. It is not as heavy as other litters.

And… it lasted almost 3 weeks, a week longer than our original hopes. So… it is our cat litter of choice at least for the time being.

So, I am back in New York where the garbage cans are enormous, the toilet paper very soft and the time is six hours earlier than it should be. The cats and I got back after a long but uneventful flight. Everything was smooth from Prague to NY.

The only excitement was when BoBo got diarrhea just when they were serving dinner on the airplane (about two hours after we took off). I cleaned it by using all the paper towels in the bathroom and horrifying a stewardess by doing so in the “galley” which is where they store the food. She asked me to remove my dirty animal immediately, which I did as I was already done.

After that BoBo slept all the way until the final descent into JFK when he started to cry. He cried through landing, taxi-ing, immigration, and baggage pick-up. He stopped crying for a little while when I gave him some water and then for good when he was reunited with his brothers and sister.

A very nice security guard helped me gather all the cats and bags and go through customs. Without him I would still be somewhere near the baggage claim in JFK airport - because they have a very peculiar kind of cart there… carts which wont move until you push the big cart handle down about a foot. If you let go of the handle for the smallest second, the cart stops immediately causing any loose objects on it to go flying forward. Also, it is impossible to move the cart backwards. Now, with two carts, one laden with four cats and the other with 150 lbs (64 kg) of luggage, it is very difficult to move far fast. The difficulty is further complicated by the crowds of irate travelers who can’t believe that some dumb girl has two carts sitting directly in the middle of the last stretch before they will be free of the airport. All to say that without this guard, things would have been much more difficult.

The customs people didn’t care at all that I had four cats with me. They only real thing the woman there did was peer inside each cat carrier to make sure they were really cats. Then, for show, she opened their little health books containing the Czech government certification that all the cats are healthy. She never did see the page with the certification. She was clearly not interested. Actually, she didn’t even ask for the heath certifications but as I had carried them with me for three thousand miles not to mention tramped all over Prague to get them that as soon as I got to the counter I shoved them at her. She probably had no choice but to at least pretend to look at them.

So after customs, we were home free. Mom and dad were waiting. We drove home, freed the cats, ate dinner, and then I went directly to sleep.

I have a two year old winter coat. It is black. It is made of wool. It is from Jones New York. When I bought it, one of the pockets had a huge hole. It still has a huge hole. Last year one of the buttons fell off. It is still off and by this time the button is probably somewhere in never-never land.

I went to the vet today. The vet is VERY close by. I took two cats at a time. They got their yearly rabies shots. The vet doesn’t have a handler, so I helped him with everything. I was wearing my coat. By the time I was done my coat was completely covered with cat hair, most of it Krolik’s as he objected most fiercely to entering the cat carrier (there is a reason for this that I will tell you later).

Now I am trying to clean the coat (in moments I am not writing this e-mail). It is not so simple. The vacuum cleaner doesn’t help. It just makes a lot of noise. Our three shoe brushes and our cat brush don’t help either. Our hair remover thing is one of those rubber gadgets that is supposed to become sticky after you wash it with hot water. Ours is at the end of its life. It doesn’t get sticky anymore. So, I have tape. Tape works. But tape is slow. Sitting next to my tape is a bag with needles and thread. I am going to fix the button and the pocket.

Funny that I had to go to the vet in order to fix my coat. I wonder if I went to the vet last winter like I should have done if I would have fixed my coat then.

Krolik was the fiercest objector because he was the only cat that had to ride in the same kind of cat carrier that he was in on the airplane. I have four cat carriers but two kinds. Three of them are the strong plastic type. The other one is the sports bag type. BoBo rode in the bag type on the airplane. The other three were in the plastic ones. Going to the vet, BoBo rode in a Plastic and Kisco rode in the Bag. Then I let them out and put Pippin in the Bag and tried to put Krolik in the Plastic. He wouldn’t go in. I tried both the head-first approach and the butt-first approach. Neither worked. Finally I had to take the top off (at which point the door falls off too). I was ready for the door thing. I had that part of the carrier against the wall. I put Krolik and slammed the top on quick as lightening.

In the vets office, of course there was no problem. There all the cats want to stay inside their carriers for the whole time. If you let go of them while the are on the table they will run right back in their carriers - especially if they have just been stabbed with a needle.

Animal care is terribly cheap here. For shots for four cats, I paid 400 koruns - something less that $15. In NY, there is no shot for your cat that costs as little as $15 for ONE. And you usually have to pay for the visit too. I estimate that this visit would have cost us around $200 in NY. I may have them clean Pippin’ teeth here. It will cost between $10 - $20. In NY, it costs over $100.

The story which follows was created by our nephew, Alex, this summer while he was visiting Prague. I just wrote it down. The main ideas are his. I added a few flourishes and some of my own ideas.

Discovering Agent B

It was not so many years ago that I became strangely entangled in world espionage. Oddly enough it was only several months ago that I became aware of it. I live with my husband in Prague. We lead a quiet life. He works. I look for work. We listen to jazz. Our friends invite us to drink beer. Sometimes we accept. We search for our greater purpose and look for answers in the clouds.

This past summer we were visited by our nephew, a young man living with his parents in Maryland (he will remain nameless for security reasons). He goes to high school and visits his relatives abroad during the summer. He is intelligent and quite perceptive. While he was visiting us, he noticed some odd goings-on in our house. He conducted an investigation (quite thorough and dangerous from what I can tell but I would never want that to come to his mothers ears!) and this is what he told me:

“Several years ago,” he said, “in a land far away, you acquired something of great value, although you weren’t aware of it. This priceless thing is what brought you to the attention of some very powerful actors who now control what you consider ‘your life’ And, I said ‘acquired’ but this is not quite correct. It would be better to say that this thing was bestowed upon you.”

I racked my brain to figure out what he was talking about. He encouraged me to sit down, gave me a drink and began from the beginning.

“Many years ago, as you were just graduating from college, you were attacked by a madness to own a cat. You felt that it was just an extension of a general longing you had had for a long time. However, I can tell you now, that was not the case. You were actually attacked by a madness emanating from a source other than yourself. Now I can’t explain exactly how it was done. There are still things we do not know, but it would appear that they are able to do these things.”
“Who are able to do what?” I asked.

“Don’t interrupt me please. So, you had to get a cat. However, to their consternation you had some of your own ideas which they had not forseen. One of these ideas was that you needed TWO cats. This did not fit their purpose at all and they weren’t prepared for your obstinacy. Needless to say they failed in their objective.

“For some years they let you be. For one thing, the madness didn’t work quite so well on you anymore as you already had two cats. For another, they looked far and wide to find a person as appropriate as yourself to work their business upon. Unfortunately they failed in this also.

“So, three years later they began trying again in earnest. You may remember your sudden desire to take home every kitten you saw. Your relatives surely do. However, once again, they found that you were not as receptive to the madness as they had hoped. You never acted on your desire. They actually placed the precious ‘thing’ quite near your house, but for some reason you never walked by or looked at it. They were about to give up when one of their lowliest stupidest informants let drop a piece of information that caused your downfall and sealed your fate.

“He, quite innocently, yelled one day in the middle of the morning that he couldn’t believe that your close friend had many times been to see this precious thing when you hadn’t even been within 100 feet of it. He had been gathering background information as it was usually quite useless in cases such as these. However, here was a nugget of gold. Not only had your close friend seen this thing, but she was also incredibly talented at getting other people to buy things for themselves. So, all they had to do, they realized, was spread the madness a little to encompass her and she would do their business for them.

“And they were quite right. The very next day she called you and told you there were some incredibly cute kittens at the local vet’s office who needed homes. She told you that she knew you wouldn’t get another cat under any circumstances, but what was the harm in just looking? So, you set out together to see the cats. They were indeed very very very cute. The madness worked so powerfully on her that in the end she even paid the kitten’s vet bills and gave you the cat as a gift.
“When you got home with the cat an hour later, he immediately hid. You felt that this was normal – as he had been homeless for four months and seemed afraid of people. However, it gave you time to recover from the madness and begin to wonder what in the world had come over you. And it gave him time to contact his people and let them know the mission was accomplished.”

“Him who? What people? What are you talking about?”

“OK. Here we come to our first major difficulty. Sit back down! You must recover from your amazement. Plainly, your third cat, BoBo as you call him, is actually an internationally renowned secret agent. It would be more respectful to call him Agent B… but for now, as you are more accustomed to it, you may continue to call him BoBo.”

Silence reigned for a stunned moment.

“As you know, all government research is not publicized. It has been several decades since government scientists discovered the secret of communicating with certain species of animals, dogs and cats among them. Dogs, they soon found, were too honest and loyal to be of any benefit to the government and they discontinued their work in that area. Cats, however, were something completely different. Sly, selfish, generally unconcerned with honesty and loyalty but very trustworthy if the rewards were sufficient. Also, cats generally dislike any change in their commanding officer – so once a cat has done one job for you it will work for you for the rest of its life. This is one reason that kittens are so important.

“While the government found cats to be very helpful, they were also confronted with a range of problems that the secret service had never dealt with before. For example, cat agents are very particular about their human ‘owners’.” For them to live and serve faithfully they must have a certain positive chemistry with their ‘owner’. At the beginning when the secret service disregarded this seemingly ludicrous demand, the results were disastrous. When they realized how important it was, they began trying to figure out how to predict this chemistry. They couldn’t keep on introducing cats into households and then removing them after a short time – it was expensive and emotionally draining for the families and the agents, not to mention that it began to arouse suspicions amongst the populace (not any correct assumptions, but they were damaging enough). So, they began a line a research in which they brought together as many people and potential agent cats as they could. Incidentally, this was the beginning of public animal shelters. They tried not to accept dogs, but public pressure was such that…ack! I get off track.. where was I?

“Oh, yes, so they began to research the chemistry between potential cat agents and people. They found that certain families of cats had the same kind of chemistry with certain families of people. Therefore, if they found one good fit, they knew that all the relatives of that person would also fit. They also found at around the same time that certain strains of cats were particularly talented at certain things. In your case, these two findings added up to the fact that your family was found to have excellent chemistry with one of the most talented cat agent families.”

“How did they find that out?”

“I’m sorry but that’s classified. Any how, Agent B, errr I mean BoBo, comes from a long line of very talented agent cats. Your family has excellent chemistry with him. How they came to choose you was easy. You lived in New York, were young, mobile, able to travel overseas. You also have a characteristic very rare among those people found to have good chemistry but absolutely indispensable – you are the type of person who would travel around the world WITH your cats. At the beginning, they thought your other two other cats might be a liability. Even among people willing to travel with a cat agent – there are very very few that would travel with three. But you lived up to their every crazy expectation: when the time came you packed all four of your cats onto the plane to Prague.

“Just as a side note, you know when they cancelled your flight that night? While you were waiting for the plane, Agent B got emergency notification that he was needed in Westchester. They had no other choice but to cancel the flight.

“You thought he was just afraid of people. Actually he is incredibly brave but he needs the personal space from you to be able to do his work. You thought that you were crazy when you looked every place in the apartment but you couldn’t find him. You were right. He wasn’t there. He was just out on assignment.

“Kind of strange, huh? Well, think about it. It really explains a lot of things. Did you ever wonder why it was Peter who moved to New York, instead of you moving to Prague, before you guys got married? Actually it’s quite obvious – Agent B still had work to do in New York. And do you know why the Radio in Prague offered Peter that job when they did? Simple. Agent B was transferred.

“Do you wonder why BoBo always hides when people come to your house? He doesn’t know who they work for. Until he is completely sure they are safe, it would be folly for him to show himself. Who knows who might recognize him?

“Do you wonder why you and Peter had such a desire to get a fourth cat? Also simple. Agent B needed a body guard. Think about it. Pippin and Kisco aren’t cut out for it. They were born in the suburbs. Never really been outside on their own. Pippin is very smart but far more interested in kaleidoscopy and refraction than the vulgar physical sciences. Kisco is a princess and prefers sunbathing in the shade to the effort involved in moving in the sun. But Krolik! He is big, muscular, active, not terribly intelligent and he can be completely vindictive. Perfect body guard for Mr. B.

“Do you remember that time you went up to your parents house and took Mr. B with you? You didn’t see him for the entire week. Think about it. It was just after the Clinton’s moved to Westchester.

“If you think, I’m sure you’ll see how it all fits in. During the floods in Prague, did you see a lot of BoBo? How about the time that Mrs. Bush visited the Radio?… Anyway, I’ve got to get going. You should get some rest. You don’t look so well. Maybe we can talk about it some more later.”

READER’S ADVISORY: THE FOLLOWING E-MAIL DEALS WITH TOPICS OTHER THAN THOSE YOU MIGHT WISH TO EXPLORE AT YOUR DINNER TABLE. DO NOT READ IF EATING. DO NOT READ UNLESS INTERESTED IN LEARNING INTIMATELY ABOUT THE ELIMINATION HABITS OF CATS. NO OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION IS CONTAINED HERE BELOW.

The fact must be that having four cats in the Czech Republic is not normal. Peter and I have been having the greatest problems finding a cat litter which will support the waste of our four co-resident shitting machines. This may not seem on the surface like an important problem - and I guess it depends on whether you would be content to live in a house that continually smells like cat shit. But, Peter and I are not content to live this way - so we have been struggling against the implacable void of quality cat litters in the Czech Republic.

When we arrived here at Boleslavova 28, we were very much pleased that our apartment provided an almost ideal place to put the cat litter - at the end of our hallway of closets. It is out of the way of guests. No one has to sit on the toilet or shower in a bathroom that smells faintly (or not so faintly) of cat excrement. Cat litter will not stick to the bottom of your feet when you step out of the shower. There is a fairly long hallway area that can help prevent the spread of cat litter to the rest of the house. And finally, there is a vent right above the cat litter providing ventilation for the area.(Later found to blow air in just such a way as to create a permanent cloud of cat excrement odor around the kitchen table.) However, it was not long until we understood without good cat litter none of these things matter in the least.

A little about cat litter: Initially I thought there were two basic kinds, clumping and non-clumping. Clumping cat litter means that you fill the litter box with cat litter and each day you can scoop out all the clumps (which include everything your cat does in the litter box) - so that the litter stays fresh for months. Every now and then you have to add some litter to keep the level high enough. Then about every 3, 4 or even 6 months you clean the whole box and add completely new litter. Non-clumping litter means that you have to empty and clean the whole box regularly (on an interval depending entirely on how many cats you have - with four cats that interval comes VERY often).

However, now I have discovered that there is a third kind: Bad Clumping Cat Litter. Bad clumping cat litter does not clump - or at least it does but only for the first two days. This means that when you try to remove a clump from the box, it breaks apart releasing a burst of odor which takes your breath away. Once the clump is no longer a clump it is impossible to fully remove it from the box. So the urine soaked granules that you cannot remove join the thousands of other urine soaked granules that you were unable to remove previously and, being heavier that the rest, settle at bottom of the litter box eventually forming an entire layer of urine soaked granules. This layer simply lays and waits for the next cat paw or litter scoop to disturb it so that it may joyously send forth its odor to the world. If left for too long, this layer begins to throb on its own sending forth a constant stream of odor day and night. At this point, if you try to scoop anything from the box, it is literally difficult to breath - as the odor physically hurts your throat and nostrils.

I believe that Peter and I have tried every variety of bad clumping cat litter on sale in the Czech Republic. Today we gave up and bought non-clumping litter. Maybe… maybe… it will be better but its first 30 minutes have not been terribly promising.

It has been my great recent good fortune to meet the six year old daughter of our friend Arkady. Her name is Liliana and she speaks Russian, English and Czech. She has been to our apartment two times and she is very interested in our cats. It has been something like this:

- Which one is this?
— This is Pippin.
- What does he like?
— He likes to sit on my lap and cuddle.
- What else does he like?
— He likes to play with the stick cat toy there.
- Really? What else does he like? What does he specially like?
— He likes light reflections. I will show you. [DEMO]
- Oh. What else does he like?
— Uhhhh….
- Which one is this?
— This is Krolik.
- What does he like?…

I have not thought so consciously, so in depth about what each of my cats specially likes. And it is not so easy as telling an adult. Liliana wanted a demonstration of everything I mentioned that the cats liked - even when it was clearly impossible.

- Well, we can just try. Can’t we try?

The only answer to this is:

— Yes, of course we can try…

She wanted me to show her how BoBo will chase a cat toy and bring it back, like a dog. There are several circumstances that made such a demonstration completely impossible”

1. BoBo at the time was hiding, scared to death, under the huge bookcase in the living room. This is BoBo’s usual state whenever someone visits us. He had absolutely no intention of leaving the said hiding place, even if a line of living mice formed offering themselves to him for dinner.

2. Even if the moon were blue and BoBo came out, he won’t play this game even in front of Peter. If there is any other movement in the apartment, BoBo is unlikely to play this game.

3. If he did decide to play the game, Krolik would never allow him to take the toy anywhere.

But for Liliana’s sake, I tried to show her.

Eternal optimism. It makes me feel how much I have grown old and cynical. It also makes me acutely miss being around children and teenagers!

So, as the pace of life has slowed down a little, several things have come to mind that I want to share with you. Two of them have to do with shopping.

As always, I now need to buy some cat litter. When I first came to Prague, Peter had already done some investigatory work at our local pet store. He had found some cat litter that was supposed to be “clumping” cat litter - you know the kind where when the cat pees it makes a hard little ball that you can just scoop out of the box instead of cleaning the whole box all the time. However, upon trying this cat litter, we found that it was only semi-clumping and very soon the cat litter smelled bad. Also, I believe that this particular cat litter is made of the exact same stuff that they put in bean bag chairs. You know - the little white Styrofoam balls that are impossible to sweep up because they are repelled by the broom.

So, together we went back to the pet store and found another kind that also claimed to be clumping. We bought it and it worked really well. It also smelled good. So when we ran out, the idea was to get the exact same kind. It is here that I ran into the big problem: no pet store sells the same kinds of cat litter (or food, for that matter.) There seem to be a gazillion brands of litter because every store has different kinds. So, mistakenly, I decided to explore other pet stores in the area. I didn’t recognize any of the cat litters. So, I thought it would be better to go back to our local store. The problem was that I was in some other area. I thought I was cunning enough to find my way back to our pet store - but I was wrong. So, after being lost for about 30 minutes I finally found the store I had already been to but didn’t recognize anything. At this point I thought that it was absurd to spend 2 hours trying to buy cat litter. So I went in and bought another kind of litter. It worked too but it didn’t smell nice.

So thinking about this problem of a gazillion brands of everything I realized why it seems this way to me. In New York, we also have lots of brands but it doesn’t bother me for the following reasons:

1) If I read the name of a cat litter in New York, I am likely to remember it. For example, Ever Clean or Fresh Step. Here in Prague the names are in Czech and very difficult for me to remember and keep separate.

2) In New York we had a television that continually reminded us of the different brands of cat litter. Here we don’t have a television and even if we did, we would run into problem #1.

3) In addition to telling us the name of the cat litter, the television also lets us know the attributes of the cat litter and why it is different from the other kinds. Here even if we had a television, I would not be able to understand what they were talking about.

And actually, these problems hold for almost any kind of product. The only way for me to make distinctions between them at first is: these are the products our friends use AND these are the products our friends don’t use…

The second thing about shopping I wanted to tell you is related to the first one. I want to explain the feeling of being in the dairy section of a large supermarket in Prague. It is absolutely baffling. To start you should know that in the supermarket with slippery floors, there are six HUGE aisles filled with dairy products. Sure, there is the milk section and it is the equivalent of two entire dairy sections in a New York supermarket. Then there is another aisle that sells only kefir and plain yogurt. There is an entire side of an aisle selling only butter. Then there are at least two entire aisles selling flavored yogurt. Then there is an aisle selling “spreads” - these are something like cream cheese spreads but they are not so cheesy and they are partly made of cream. Also, you should know that sour cream is not the same as sour cream ala New York. It is much more like just cream. And then there are all the cheeses. When I first came here I couldn’t even try to understand the differences between all the different dairy products. It was too overwhelming. Now I have begun to explore. But sometimes I just walk through the aisles smiling.

So what else about life? This past weekend was our birthday party weekend. On Friday we had a party for Peter which ended around 6 am on Saturday. And then on Monday we had a party for me (though mine was in a restaurant, not at home). So the whole weekend and part of the week we were either preparing for, participating in, or recovering from a birthday party. Peter got one game to play at home, one game to play outside, a wallet, a silver chain, a book, a tea set, and a bottle of whiskey. I got some slippers, a book on the Czech language, an onion slicer, some bath balls and gel, a bottle of whiskey, a nightgown/evening dress (we don’t know), and lots of beautiful flowers. For Peter’s birthday we cooked at home. Peter made some really tasty pork chops and several salads and I made some other salads. Then we had a birthday cake with candles. For my birthday we went to this very excellent restaurant. I ate a delicious chicken dish with pineapples and bananas in a creamy curry-ish sauce. Mmmmm. You can look at our website (www.shkin.com) to see pictures of Peter’s party. (We didn’t take the camera to my party).

Our friends, Ostap and Lena, went to Germany for the weekend. So I am watching their dog, Ela (short for Eliphant). Ela is a large shaggy black dog who likes to bark loudly. This has caused Ostap and Lena some serious problems as their neighbors don’t appreciate dogs who like to bark. However, Ela is the sweetest dog. He is very obedient and very loving. So I will be going over there and taking him for a walk two times a day. Last night was my first time. I was a little nervous because I wasn’t sure that Ela would listen to me when we were outside. He is used to walking without a leash. But I didn’t need to have worried, he does listen to me and he is very good. A funny thing happened. When we got to the little park near their house, there was a man peeing in the bushes. Ela ran right up beside him and started peeing too. I don’t think the man was embarrassed but it was many minutes before him and his friend stopped laughing.

I am beginning to get some good leads on where I may be able to volunteer. I went to a meeting of English speakers for Amnesty International. There I met several people who had ideas about who I could contact to find some volunteer work. I may even help out in the Amnesty International office. There are two interesting events coming up that I may help with: An ecumenical service for victims of torture and an evening dedicated to the women of Afghanistan.

If all works out, my Czech language classes will begin on February 4. Also I have been studying Russian with our friend Olga. Our lessons were disrupted by the holidays but are now getting back to normal. My homework assignments these days are to prepare to tell a story in Russian about something that happened to me. Yesterday I told about taking the cats to Prague. Today I will tell the story of my birthday party and maybe about my experience walking our friend’s dog.