“You should soak a cotton ball in tuna juice and tie it to the end of a string.”

Happy Memorial Day!

Years ago, on a Gaslamp street corner, a homeless Vietnam Vet I gave a few bucks to said something to the effect of, “You can sacrifice your life for your country and never even get killed.” It was a moment that made me feel green, fortunate, and sick.

And how were we being observant of his literally departed brethren on this day of their memory? By driving around aimlessly, always last minute hopeless, and thinking in blanks, with nary a clue as to what to do. Hey, maybe we’ll just go pick up some sandwiches and have a little picnic. Okay, sure, in what already jammed park? Oh, right, traditional picnic holiday. Hmm. We decided to settle for sandwiches in a mini-mall parking lot. As we ate, we tried mustering brain cells once more to duty: maybe we could just lie out on the grass at Presidio Park afterwards. That’s not like a whole picnic, we won’t need a table. So we drove up the winding hill through the park. Amazingly, empty parking spaces were impossible to find. How could that BE? Ahem. Well, we tried, let’s just cruise through Mission Hills and head home-- Wait, how about Cabrillo Monument? Mom’s never been to the lighthouse, let’s go there. Sounds great, let’s go. Fifteen minutes later, traveling south along the surprisingly green hump between Point Loma and Ocean Beach, we soon found ourselves stuck in gridlock traffic on the erstwhile Catalina Boulevard. Forced to escape via u-turn, I remembered, of course, there’s a big military cemetery up here, and there’s a Memorial Day event. So much for the lighthouse. Sharp foresight yet again by Mr. Doperson. Next time maybe we’ll try it on Veteran’s Day for a smaller crowd.

We. Are. Dim.

Unlit candles. Bumbling as the legendary drunken toddlers of the west. And we’re “educated” people, our selective mental incapacity is not for a lack of worthless university paper. We simply possess an inexplicable reasoning deficit when it comes to planning on holidays. We’re like Santa with seasonal amnesia: “Hey, what the hell are all these reindeer doing in front of us? And when did I get so fat?” Predictable and frustrating, but always amusing. In retrospect, that is. During? Yikes. You couldn’t cut the tension with a chainsaw. Though I usually try. This time I just started laughing.

“We’re like Groundhog Day with this act,” I said. “It’s so predictable now it’s hilarious.”

My lovely and astoundingly patient wife gave me a semi-entertained frown.

“Maybe next year,” I added with an increasing chuckle, “we can go skiing on the fourth of July. At least it won’t be crowded.”

So we just went home. For us this isn’t so bad, though, since we can see Mission Bay from our back yard, all the way to the ocean beyond, the Giant Dipper roller coaster at Belmont Park a tiny white toy in the distance. A long way from 34th and Monroe in the N.H., where our view was of crumbling pavement and the gargantuan, diseased, soot-stained date palm tree in front of the house, which would fall into the street – TIM-BER!! – shortly after we sold during the high times and moved out. For certain prostitutes, they’d lost a true natural resource in that tree. They’d liked to utilize it, and its sequoia-wide lower trunk, to shield their parked and penile business from house view. Hence all the condoms we’d found on the grass or sidewalk or in the gutter. (Hey, anonymous John, I’m thrilled you’re practicing safe sex, but could you possibly keep the sack o’ sperm in the car there? Toss it in that old Big Gulp cup, or use one of those empty Roberto’s bags, then get yourself to an actual trash can. Work with me here, Mr. Romance.)

Not that I don’t have my decent share of fonder NoHi memories. But the view I enjoy today always reminds me instantly that things could be worse. Appreciate it.

I used the bathroom when we returned home, and while I was engaged I heard my wife and son in the back yard, yelling at the dog.

“Buster! No! NO!! BUSTER!!”

When I emerged, asking what the hell was going on, I was met by my wired son.

“Dad, we found a kitten! We found a kitten!!”

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My wife was holding it; it was barely bigger than her hand, our little black and white terrier mix, Buster, excited and leaping at her side. The kitten was the size and shape of most of our dog’s toys, and his terrier blood was boiling: “I wanna chew him, I wanna chew him, I wanna chew him!!” The tiny kitten looked maybe five weeks old, scrawny, striped in varied shades of fluffy gray, and it seemed as friendly as any homeless kitten could be, assuming it was feral or partially so. It wasn’t scratching or trying to get away, and it seemed comfortable, if understandably stressed-out, in my wife’s arms. It had been living with its mother, whom I’d seen before, in the giant and unruly hedge where Buster’s terrier instincts had been tempted and taunted by other little critters crawling around inside that thick wall of foliage.

My first thought was that there had to be more kittens, and that we would have to keep Buster inside, and monitor his toilet trips to the back yard, until we were sure. Otherwise, I feared, we’d have a repeat of the possum episode we had with Alex back in Normal Heights.

Alex, unlike the diminutive and behaved Buster, was a big hyper dog crammed into an undersized bungalow with no yard. The math does itself. Her walks were the proverbial dragging of the owner down the sidewalk, though less so with me than with my wife or her sister. Many times, when we could tell Alex needed to cut loose, we’d open the back door and screen so she could do laps: from the front door all the way out into the tiny concrete backyard, disappearing into her doghouse, where she’d snap around and sprint back inside, thunder into the living room, leap onto the couch, spin in mid-air and push herself off the armrests like a swimmer into another lap, shoving the couch back a few inches with the force of each turn. It was house pet energy and power of the variety that broke many a table leg and accessory; and her whipping crocodile tail emptied many a drink onto the floor. The entirety of Alex tested mightily the rubbery will of her owners.

Then one night, much to our “delight,” we found out there was a possum under the house, and that, even better, it had recently had babies. The touching and admirable persistence of urban wildlife was an oddly beautiful thing.

Not, however, when Alex was the one who discovered it.

She “informed” us of her discovery by showing up at the back door with a blood soaked mouth, an enthusiastically wagging tail, and a dead baby possum on the ground next to her. Ah, natural instinct. Lovely. All night, one after one, four bloodied and dead or dying baby possums appeared. I disposed of the victims, my wife cleaned the blood from Alex, and we both felt as if we were covering up a homicide.

We made up a box for the kitten, with a towel inside, poking holes in the top of the box for light and air. I was worried that the creature wasn’t going to make it, which my son did not want to hear. I had to apologize for suggesting it. We’d had several cats when I was a kid, often took in or fed strays, had a few kittens this way, and it gave me some perspective. Not that I didn’t want it to survive, it just seemed very small and scrawny to me. It looked like the kittens I’d seen as a kid that didn’t make it.

While my wife and son tended to the kitten, I asked my boy if he still wanted to play tennis, as we’d talked about doing on the way home. He said he’d changed his mind, that his best friend, A, was coming over to see the kitten. I wasn’t surprised, as anything important earns a call to A, and if it’s animals, she’s always interested. She’s an eccentric little tomboy, her family has several dogs and birds and a large lizard at home (which they’d originally given my son as a birthday present, but which we’d only kept for a month – dinosaurs as pets, and live food, did not agree with us, we quickly learned). In addition, they keep several chickens in a coop on the side of the house, from which they gather eggs, a few of which have ended up scrambled on a plate in front of me. One thing about A that stands out to me is her odd desires when it comes to birthday presents and holiday gifts. Last Christmas, for example, she originally asked for (are you ready for this?) a wheelchair. One only can wonder what twisted scenario she wanted to play out, or what fantasies of speed she harbored as she imagined riding the chair down their steep street in Ocean Beach. Rejected on the wheelchair request, she settled for her second, equally screwy choice: a unicycle. No simple bikes or ordinary wheels for this girl. It’s wheelchairs and unicycles. Maybe next year she’ll take a cotton to logging and ask for a wood chipper. Or perhaps she’ll become infatuated with pirates and plead for a peg-leg. Nothing would really surprise me.

As for the kitten, I knew we couldn’t keep it, and I didn’t want to think about having to get rid of it (no matter how cute the kitty, there are few things worse than trying to foist a baby pet on someone), so I returned to my office to write – although, at this point, the kitten’s appearance had made it difficult for me to think about much else, and my writing soon became an attempt to reshuffle my fantasy baseball lineup. (The Phillies’ offensive swoon is killing my squad. I have Ryan Howard, Placido Polanco and Shane Victorino. And I’m dead last in all the power categories. Wake up, Philadelphia.)

An hour later I emerged from my fantasy GM session. I hadn’t heard anyone arrive to the house, but when I walked into the kitchen I was met by the sight of A's father, David S., bent over the counter with a tape measure extended in front of him. My first thought was that he and my wife were talking about some kind of home improvement project, which confused me, but that’s what it looked like. I asked what was going on, how the kitten was.

“He found a hole, daddy,” my son told me. “And he crawled up into it.”

Ah. Of course. Excuse me?

In short, the kitten had crawled through a previously unknown hole on the underside of the baseboard, crawled into the wall essentially, and we couldn’t get it out. Our only saving grace was that we could tell, after examining the configuration of the corner cabinet, that the kitten was almost assuredly in a closed space and couldn’t simply flee further and more inaccessibly into the maze of wall framing. At least we thought so. He was tiny, though, and kittens can be like roaches or mice, squeezing through very tight spaces.

You see stories like this on the news: firemen cutting out a segment of the wall to rescue some terrified and emaciated feline. But we rent this place, knocking in a wall wasn’t a choice at that point. A’s dad may not have been a firefighter, but he has the kind of odd tastes and talents that one could suspect, after getting to know his girl, A’s father might have. In addition to the animals (he built the chicken coop himself, of course), he’s a member of the Rare Fruit Grower’s Association, has a boat he takes out into the ocean, throws pots, builds a variety of other things, he could very well speak fluent Vulcan for all I know, the guy has such an oversized grab-bag of interests. If anyone could get the kitten out, I figured he’d be the one. (I, on the other hand, am about as handy as scissors with one blade. I’m the guy you come to if your project needs serious screwing up. If, for example, you want to ruin some good lumber, just give it to me with a tape measure and a saw. I’m the king of cutting boards a quarter-inch short. Just enough to render them worthless.)

Even for man-o-handy, however, extricating the kitten wasn’t so easy. After they’d all tried to reach into the hole, after the kids’ smaller arms had also failed and come up just short of the cornered kitty, after trying to place small pieces of tuna just inside the hole hadn’t worked, I made my suggestion.

“You should soak a cotton ball in tuna juice and tie it to the end of a string. Then toss it in. Like kitten fishing.”

A pure idea man, that’s what I am. I don’t just think outside the box, I keep most of my good shirts there, as well. So we tried it. Watching my wife soak that white ball in fishwater and tie it to the string, I felt even sorrier for the poor little kitten, dependent on suburban McGuyvers to get him out. He’d be happy with mom right now in that hedge if it weren’t for us. Here, oh helpless creature, we will save you, come with us and wander into a dark place of no escape. We were the kitten’s worst nightmare up to that point. He should trust us as much as he’d trust a coyote.

David S. tossed the tuna lure into the hole, but the opening wasn’t big enough to allow a good throw. He tried again, to the same failed end. My brilliant idea had collided with our spatial limitations and been thwarted soundly. For a moment I thought about suggesting a small rubber band slingshot of some sort, but the exact design of the device eluded me, and I chose not to mention it. Instead, in a fit of satirical impulse – but utilizing all the substandard acting skills I’d developed as the son of lapsed thespians and the holder of a university degree in theatre – I suggested sticking a hose in the hole and flooding him out.

“Like we did to the Taliban to get that sumbitch traitor, John Walker Lindh,” I said with an entirely straight face.

David S., a thoughtful and uncertain squint pressed into his face, couldn’t quite tell if I was joking (or perhaps he was pondering it, I don’t know, since he mentioned water damage as he mumbled something in distracted reply).

“Or smoke ‘em out,” I added in a gruff, sergeant’s voice. “Like our boys did to those goddamn VC in ‘Nam.”

Now he knew I was goofing. And my jokes were just about all we had left at that point. We knew we could leave food by the opening and that it would come out to eat eventually, but we couldn’t stand watch 24/7, and the animal would know when we were gone, so it seemed an overly arduous proposition with limited odds of success.

What to do, what to do…

Finally, having heard the anguished cries of the kitten in the wall for an hour, which my son and his friend would return in kind to comfort it, David S. cruised back to his house to get a couple of saws he thought might work on the underside of the baseboard, the only place we could cut and leave no visible signs. He planned to saw where the hole was, make it a little bigger, and hopefully the larger opening would allow us to reach in further and nab the little needle-clawed furball. And by “us,” of course, I mean someone other than myself.

As we waited for A’s father to return with his saws (what few inadequate tools we own are scattered around the house, frightened by the very sight of us), I slipped and made another remark fearing for the kitten’s life. Again, my son wilted, and I had to apologize once more. Issues, always my issues. Mr. Doperson is right.

My son and A and my wife continued meowing to the kitten to comfort him, which the cat returned. As I listened, however, I could never tell which meow was human and which was kitten. I would say, “the kitten still sounds strong,” only to have my son or A or my wife reply that, no, it had been THEIR meow I’d heard. Cat whisperers, every one. It was maddening to my tricked ears after a few minutes, though I informed no one of my torment. I simply returned to my office to search the waiver wire and ponder trades -- for a player, any player, who could give Dipsy Doodle Bye-Bye some desperately needed HR’s and RBI, and a good batting average wouldn’t hurt either. (NOTE: Dipsy Doodle Bye-Bye as my team’s name is an homage to Kirby Puckett, the late great Minnesota Twins center fielder, whom our league, KPML, is named after. Once, when hanging out with the Twins in Anaheim after a game with the Angels in the 80’s, my friends and I had overheard Kirby in the hotel bar talking about the prospect of facing old Don Sutton and his junkballs the next day. “If that old man comes at me with that dipsy doodle sh-t,” Kirby predicted with confidence, as he mimed swinging a bat for a homer, “then it’s gonna be dipsy doodle…bye-bye! Dipsy doodle…bye-bye!”)

Next I knew, David S. was on his side, awkwardly using a short, narrow hand saw to try to enlarge the opening. The angle and access were difficult, the electric jigsaw hadn’t been possible, and after several minutes my wife said she’d do it for a while. (Here you can see how handy I am in actual crises. How could I not jump in and take that saw before my wife did?

How? With focus and dedication, that’s how.)

Fortunately for her, she only had to start sawing fir a second before reaching her more slender and polished hand into the hole.

“I have a paw!” she announced.

We gasped. Then, as if particle board and laminate could give birth, she pulled out the tiny kitten that I feared we’d never see again. Truthfully, he was still small enough to look newborn. He meowed and meowed, crawled up legs and sleeves, and, one assumes, was generally happy to be out of the dark dungeon into which we’d let him stray.

After sweeping up the sawdust and plugging the baseboard hole with a wad of cloth, David S. and his daughter departed with tools and tales. My wife and son went to the pet store and bought some kitten formula and a little bottle with different nipples for different types of small animals. On the package, in addition to the usual litany of small pets, it included otters on the list of animals that could use the nipples. If you are bottle feeding a stray otter at home right now, you have all my sympathies. I can’t imagine trying to foist one of those pups on someone at work. Giving away a kitten will be task enough.

That night, my son fed the kitten from the bottle, and it reminded me of something out of a nature show. (More nature show would come when we were worried the kitten needed to poop, but he seemed unable. A little research led us – and by us, of course, I mean my wife – to learn that you can help them get their bowels moving by rubbing a warm, moist cotton ball on their anus. It almost worked, but when the poop started to come out it became stuck halfway. My wife had to help it the rest of the way.) When I tried to feed the kitten, however, she hissed at me like I was demon spawn. She’d probably heard those “flood him out,” Taliban remarks I’d made when he was in the wall, and he must still be grudging. I tried to convince him that I’d said Caliban, the Shakespeare character, which had also been the name of a jet-black cat I’d had as a very young boy.

"I meant Caliban, really. Here, try some more milk."

HISSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

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EPILOGUE DIALOGUE:

Wife: I have a woman at work who’ll take the kitten as long as it’s a girl. Take it to the vet and find out for sure.

Vet: Congratulations, you have yourselves a boy!

Son: Daddy, daddy! The kitten pooped and I accidentally stepped on it.

Dad: Oh, nice, and look, you tracked it all over the cream colored carpet, too. Those brown stains really accent it nicely.

Buster: Sorry everyone, but I’m so excited by the kitten that I just threw up. At least I did it on the tile and not the carpet. Can I see the kitten now? Please?

Kitten: Are YOU my mother?