"Bah, Humbug!"; no, that's too strong...

I am not very good at this catch-neuter-release thing. I am honest about my weak points, and this is one big one.

Pre-trivia, I had Not Crap. So I left it up and decided to come back after and check. Eviljob was deserted anyway, ‘cos everyone was at the party.

Trivia was fun, though they ask dumb ‘pick one’ questions before the game that serve no purpose whatsoever, and I had to choose where I would rather be—Hogwarts, or Gotham City (amongst others). Geez…make it tough, why don’t you? Snape, Batman; Snape, Batman…hmmm.

Don’t rush me; I am thinking. :-)

When I went to the trap après-triv, I had a cat! For half a second, I thought it was Mehitabel, but as I pulled the cage out of the bushes I realised it was too big to be Mehitabel. This was a big, thick, jet black cat…that had a face just like my Squoosh! I think this has to be SquooshDaddy, or SquooshOlderBruvver, or something. And he was big and thick, just like I can tell my Squoosh will be one day…provided he quits eating Mr Clean Magic Erasers, that is. And Possible SquooshDaddy also has a tiny patch of white on his décolletage, or whatever you call that on cats. Not the throat, but the upper chest just below. And Squoosh looks much different from this current crop of brothers and sisters, so Mehitabel must be keeping company with someone other than SquooshDaddy. Whomever she is seeing these days is much more angularly shaped, whereas my Squoosh and this cat have very round and thick faces and bodies.

Butsoanyway.

So I collected him, and when I picked the cage up, he tried to make a dash for freedom (into the back end of the cage), and did a *very* Squoosh-like thing; he tried to take his precious tuna can with him! It was 99% empty, but he threw himself on it, and tried to push it to the end of the cage where he was planning to escape. I am pretty certain that he meant to do it, ‘cos when I had to set the cage back down to move my purse and stuff off the passenger seat, he did it again—this time trying to escape (and take the tuna can) on the other side. And once I had him in my car, he got into meatloaf position (after throwing himself at the end a few more times) sitting right on top of his tuna can!

Ok, so I started crying. Squoosh protects his things like that. If it is a cloth mouse or something, when he is taking a break from playing with it, he will sit on it. If it is something like his round chirpy ball, he will try to sit on it and end up with it right in front of him. I tried to talk to Mr Cat, but he did not feel talkative. So I turned on some Christmas carols (not too loud), and we drove to the vet’s, where I put him in for a neutering and rabies shot.

I will not even go into how I started crying when they took him back; the people in the waiting room probably think I am insane, ‘cos I know they heard me say it was a stray, and it was *clearly* in a cat trap. I was filling out paperwork on him, and had placed him behind me. When I looked up from the paperwork, Mr Cat was gone. I had wanted to say good bye to him. So I paid and left.

This vet has a *long* driveway that empties out onto the main road leading into a subdivision; he is planning to expand, and has a HUGE piece of property surrounding a house (or what was originally a house) that was built before this subdivision. So at the end of his driveway, I am facing one of the subdivision’s first houses; if I go right, I go into the subdivision and if I turn left, I catch a road towards the highway. So I come to the end of the driveway, and stop for a minute to look at the elaborate display this house has set up—they have a chorus of plastic lighted angels surrounding a plastic lighted crèche, Frosty, Santa, candy canes…just everything. And it is a little corny-looking, but they have the lights rise and fall, highlighting different scenes. And I stopped for a minute, because the station I was listening to (more about that later) was playing The Carol of the Bells, my favourite Christmas carol of all time. I simply have to go out and look at Christmas lights this year. I am deprived.

And I could not help but think about poor Mr Cat as I sat there. I am glad that he liked the tuna. And I feel horrible over having tricked him; that bothers me almost above everything else. But I am glad that he will not have to spend the next two days in the cold, ‘cos the vet was too full tonight to do his surgery, so they will do him tomorrow night. So he will be warm, safe, and fed tonight. And I *know* that there are nice cats all over, and I *know* that I cannot keep every cat, and I know all of that. But it makes me sad. I do not want to put Mr Cat back out there. I would bet money that he is related to Squooshable, and the thought of my Squoosh out there breaks my heart.

And Chrissy took Nice Cat. He went to a foster home, where they will try to get him friendly enough to be a pet, and then Chrissy will take him to PetsMart(s) to be adopted. I think Nice Cat *was* a pet once. He is too friendly. After several months of staying away from me (but showing me his tum to prove he was a Nice Cat), he finally came to let me pet him…that is just not like a feral cat.

So I will be a suck-ass person and see if Chrissy has any room at all for Mr Cat. I should not ask. I really shouldn’t. She is taking the kittens and Mehitabel already, and she took Nice Cat, and I am at the point where she is probably wishing that she had never heard of me. :-\ But Squoosh is so smart, and therefore probably Mr Cat is as well, and so maybe he would calm down. If he had a lot of food…Squoosh loves food, too. I mean like, a LOT. He starts purring as soon as he sees that I am going to feed him; feed Squoosh, and you have won his heart. Maybe Mr Cat would be that way, too.

Butsoanyway.

There is a radio station that has been playing Christmas carols all day, every day since…hell—back in July, for all I know. I never listen to it except at Christmas. They are normally a “lite rock” (god, how painful to type!) station, and the main reason I never listen to it is because their normal music fairly blows, and the whole format is like cable’s Lifetime Channel. There is this god-awful hostess whom I refuse to believe is nationally syndicated, so I will call her Miss Lonelyhearts, for purposes of obfuscation.

I seem to be unable to avoid Miss Lonelyhearts whenever I am forced to listen; for example, the pancake place near me seems to be *always* tuned to this station, and whenever I go, I somehow luck into hitting the Miss Lonelyhearts Show. It plays at the place I used to go when I needed an oil change, more stores in the area than I can think about without having my skin start crawling again…you name it. If the place is too cheap to pipe in Muzak, they are probably tuned to Miss Lonelyhearts’ station, Ethereal 71.4 FM.

Okay, so I made the station up.

Holy crap. I have just actually bothered to research something, and…she *IS* nationally syndicated. God help us all. It’s Delilah, one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. No need to obfuscate. She was not where I used to live (and still isn’t, to look at her station list), so I swear to god, I thought she was local for all this time. How can she have a listenership to support this? Oh, good lord…

And her photo so totally looks like she is about to bite a child, duddnit? Or chomp down on some of those cute little teddy bears. And she has freakishly-white teeth, probably from bleaching all the blood off, methinks. Eek. I’m skarred. Put the tooth-tray *down*, Delilah; find a twelve-step program for Crest White Strips addiction. And stop dyeing your hair that colour. And…and…and GET NORMAL, DAMN IT!

Butsoanyway. I might have a look at her recipes later.

I cannot stand the show because of the…well, the everything. It would be nice if I could narrow it down to just a problem with the host, callers, or playlist…but I can’t. It is the gestalt of the whole damn thing to which I object. And gag.

It would be cool to have those little teddies become animated and see them pummelling and ripping Delilah apart.

But I digress.

*This* is why I hate Delilah:

Delilah: And our next caller is Gladys! Hi, Gladys!
Gladys: Hello, Delilah!
Delilah: And what can I do for you this evening?
Gladys: Well Delilah, I tell you, this has been a hard year for my family, and I was wondering if you could play a song for me that would make everything better.
Delilah: Oh, no! I am so sorry to hear that! What has happened?
Gladys: Well, first off, at the beginning of the year, my Deke got laid off work, and we lost the house, Delilah. They even repossessed my terrier, Buttsniff, Delilah. Deke bought her for me last Christmas on a payment plan, and then he defaulted in February.
Delilah: Gladys, I am so sorry to hear that! I’m going to pick a special…
Gladys: Oh, that ain’t the end of it, Delilah; we’re only up to February. There’s more. Then Deke started drinking again…
Delilah: Oh, no!
Gladys: Oh, yes, Delilah! Deke started drinking, and at the time we was livin’ out of a cardboard box behind Safeway. And I would tell him that I was unhappy because I didn’t have a radio to listen to your show with, and I didn’t have a terrier, and the kids never wrote…
Delilah: What happened to the kids, Gladys? Where were they?
Gladys: Deke sold ‘em at a rest stop for a bottle of Thunderbird, Delilah.
Delilah: Oh, Gladys, that must have been so hard for you! I tell you what; I’m going to play…
Gladys: Delilah, we’re only up to March.
Delilah: Oh. Well, go ahead—what happened then?
Gladys: Well, so I started complaining, and then Deke started beating me again like he used to.
Delilah: Oh, Gladys! How awful! And what did you do?
Gladys: Well, at first I tried to ignore it, Delilah. But then he started hitting me in the head with the bottle of Thunderbird, and let me tell you—those things pack a wallop! So after I got out of the hospital…
Delilah: The hospital? From his beating?
Gladys: Yep.
Delilah: What did you do then?
Gladys: Well, I suggested to him that we try to find the children and reconcile in time for the holidays.
Delilah: The holidays? I thought this was in March.
Gladys: Well, by the time I got out, Delilah, it was September. I was in a coma.
Delilah: Boy…I hate it when that happens. Gladys, you sure have been through it…
Gladys: Oh, there’s more, Delilah.
Delilah: More?
Gladys: Oh, yeah. So I get out of the hospital and track down Deke. By then, he had gotten a job as a door mat at a strip club…
Delilah: A door man?
Gladys: No, Delilah—a door *mat*. The Boob O’Rama already had a bouncer, and Deke’s just a scrawny little thing, anyways. So he was working at the Boob O’Rama, and he had shacked up with a fifteen year old stripper who had lied about her age…
Delilah: Gladys! I hope you gave him what for and left him!
Gladys: Well, sort of. I says to him, ‘Deke, she has to sleep on the couch’. I mean, I am the wife; I should get the bed, right Delilah?
Delilah: Well, certainly!
Gladys: But I couldn’t have the bed, because Tiffani—that’s the fifteen year-old—has a back problem from all the years she worked in kiddie porn, but Deke said that he wanted to work on our marriage, and that he would help me get the kids back.
Delilah: Oh, how wonderful!
Gladys: So we robbed a 7-11…
Delilah: You did what?!? Why?!?
Gladys: We robbed a 7-11 to get money to buy assault rifles to go raid the white slavery den where our kids were being forced to work, Delilah. And Tiffani was real helpful, too. She drove the getaway car, both times!
Delilah: Well, bless her heart!
Gladys: Truly, Delilah! Tiffani has truly been a blessing to my family! Deke and I…we couldn’t have done it without her!
Delilah: It’s heart-warming to hear of someone giving so selflessly to help a family in need.
Gladys: Oh, there’s more, Delilah.
Delilah: Wow! More?
Gladys: Oh, yeah. Well, when we raided the warehouse where our children were being held, I accidentally shot a pimp named Tito…and our esteemed Mayor.
Delilah: Oh, no! Gladys! That must have been so traumatic for you!
Gladys: Oh, Delilah, you have no idea. It brought me back to ‘Nam. I started having flashbacks real bad!
Delilah: ‘Nam?
Gladys: Yes, Delilah…’Nam.
Delilah: You were a soldier in ‘Nam?
Gladys: No, Delilah; my parents shipped me over to ‘Nam as a sex worker when I was twelve. But I saw a lot.
Delilah: I bet! You know, war is a horrible, horrible thing…
Gladys: Oh, tell me about it, Delilah! And I thought it was bad *before* I was captured by the Viet Cong!
Delilah: You were captured by the Viet Cong?!?
Gladys: I was, but back to last year, Delilah. So we got our kids back, and I was up on capital murder charges, and Deke was still beating me. But then the District Attorney let me plea-bargain down to jaywalking, which we had done to sneak up on the warehouse…
Delilah: What a kind man!
Gladys: I’m tellin’ ya; I couldn’t have made it through the year without the kindness of strangers, Delilah.
Delilah: Kindness is always so important, isn’t it? I hope that we all, in the coming year…
Gladys: Delilah, there’s more.
Delilah: Oh! I’m sorry! Go ahead.
Gladys: So I got out of jail with community service, but then Deke was diagnosed with leprosy.
Delilah: Leprosy?
Gladys: Yes, Delilah—leprosy. Apparently this is an occupational hazard when people put their feet all over you.
Delilah: Well, I learn something new every day!
Gladys: And so Deke lost his job when his legs fell off, and we had to move back into the cardboard box, but we moved it behind the Ronald McDonald House so that Deke could be near the hospital. And Tiffani helps me tend the kids and cook, and now, with Deke’s arms having fallen off, this past week has been wonderful, Delilah! I haven’t been beaten once!
Delilah: Oh, Gladys! I am so happy for you!
Gladys: And Tiffani’s been working despite her bad back, and she even got a job for my oldest, Jennifer. So with *two* incomes now, I could afford to buy a radio to start listening to your show again!
Delilah: Gladys, it makes me so happy to have faithful listeners like you!
Gladys: Well, thank you, Delilah! But I should be thanking *you*! Your show is the bright spot in my day! And because I focussed on a goal—getting a radio again so I could listen to your show—I feel so empowered now! And it is all because of *you*, Delilah!
Delilah: Oh, Gladys…thank you so much! Thank you for sharing your heart and being an inspiration to us all!
Gladys: Anytime, Delilah! So now, could you play a song for me?
Delilah: Gladys, I would love to! What would you like to hear?
Gladys: Could you play Christmas Shoes, by Bob Carlisle? It just makes me so damn happy, Delilah.
Delilah: Gladys, for you I will play it twice! Have a beautiful night!
Gladys: Thank you, Delilah!
Delilah: And say ‘hi’ to Tiffani for me!
Gladys: I sure will Delilah! She’s sitting right here on a crate!

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And that is why I hate Delilah. If you think I am exaggerating…

Okay, well I *am* exaggerating. But not by much.

It has to be the most depressing show EVER. *EV-ER*. Its only redeeming feature is that it can be made fun of. Easily. And I have been putting up with it for a few weeks now, *just* to listen to Christmas carols that I mostly already have on cd. I do not know what is wrong with my mind.

Maybe I just like laughing.