The Last Goodbye

A few years ago, I came across a yellow cat with a bob for a tail wandering the areas around my block. He was somewhat temperamental, and also extremely scared at the time. I tried looking for him because I was interested to see if he was a new stray who had not yet been sterilised, but he didn’t show up so frequently. I came across him twice over the period of a month or so, and on the second time I managed to feed him. He looked fairly well-groomed, actually, and I guessed that his owners had let him go or he had escaped somehow. He also bit me because he was scared.

My mom also managed to feed him once. He was big-sized and ate a lot. He was also very hungry, another sign that he had probably been domesticated prior to this and was struggling to find things to eat.

Eventually he got to trusting us, and we named him Bag Bag. He came to our place and we would feed him.

Later, through the network of cat aunties, we learnt that he had owners who were looking for him. By this time, he had taken to staying outside our door. We didn’t take him in because we didn’t have enough space for him, and it also didn’t feel right taking in someone else’s cat. His owners came for him after a while and we thought that it would be the last we saw of him, which was good in a sense because he hadn’t adapted to living outside and there were also wild dogs.

Then we saw him again. His owners came for him again. Then he came back. His owners too. This cycle went on and on. Sometimes he would show up for a couple of weeks. Sometimes longer. Sometimes his owners would find him the next day. Whatever it was, he always came back.

A few months ago, he stopped showing up completely. We heard from people in the know of it that his owners had made it harder for him to escape. Which was all good, really. We missed him, certainly, but it was better that he had a home.

A couple of weeks ago, he showed up again as my mom was watering the plants. I was outside, and she gave me a call immediately. She told me that he seemed particularly affectionate that day. I sighed because I didn’t want him to have to put up with life outside again. She also said that she tried to feed him but he wasn’t very interested in all of that. Then he was gone, and he didn’t show up the next day either.

Just now, one of my mom’s friends called and said that he had died. Apparently, he finished up a last meal and went to sleep for one final time. He had been ill, it seemed.

I tried to say as little as I could about it, but I couldn’t help thinking that I had missed his last goodbye.

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I Know What You Did Last Weekend

Semi-Productive

Over the weekend, I did up my individual report for the project. It’s not done yet, but it’s close. This means that I can spend the whole week on my presentations and lab report. Wow, it wasn’t so long ago when the exams seemed a little far away. They’re too close for comfort now.

I didn’t exactly manage to accomplish a lot over the weekend, but it’s better than nothing, and at least it now looks as if I have some realistic chance of finishing the race. We’re not out of the woods yet, but it’s looking better. It’ll all be over in about ten days (or under), after I’ve completed my presentations and finished up with the final test of the semester.

Ideas

Some ideas, here and there, but nothing completely satisfactory for a new project. I had all of these nice ideas before, yes, and I was so keen on making it this massive project that was going to occupy me for a few years. But the way things tend to go for me, I spend all my time planning and planning and planning, then I find that it’s not working one morning and I dive straight into another idea completely. It was the case with The River, which I thought of one morning on the way to school and after abandoning a project of a few years. It was also the case with Bukit Merah, which I did after some substantial planning into something else that I abandoned completely. I made almost no notes on Bukit Merah at all.

I kind of think it will be the same this time.

Mang Is Here

My sister’s cat has been deposited at our place for a few days. It’s always nice to see Mang. I remember when she was still a stray, all those years ago, and I was, what, 13? 14? Can’t really remember. But it is nice to see her; Mang is love.

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An April Morning

On this day, people tend to want to play little tricks on you. Not here! this humble establishment! Only the truth here! Instead, we (that’s me and the Web Walrus) would simply wish to remind you to flip your calendars.

On another note, Mario has (I think) found a new home. A friend of my grandmother’s. I hope he does well there. It was nice having you here, Mario!

And that’s it. No tricks. No gimmicks. No hidden Easter Egg. Really. You ought to believe me.

Though if you didn’t, it might help you to pass the time.

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Not Quite Goodbye, Mario

Too Loud

The new cat (named Mario… did I tell you?) found a new home yesterday, and left us in the night night. I was going to tell you this:

Hope he settles in well there. I’m sure it’ll be fine. And I’ll hopefully be visiting him every now and then.

But in any case, hope you enjoyed your stay here, Mario.

Then he came back. Because he was too loud for them. Well, it’s true that he does have a particularly loud voice. I think he basically couldn’t adapt, especially with the prospective owner’s cats, so it was best for him to come back anyway. Welcome back, Mario.

Too Many Ideas

Sometimes, you just get too many ideas, to the point of you struggling to write them down. The problem with this is you’ll never use half of them anyway, and if you tried, you’d only be doing yourself a disservice. The truth is, with these sorts of things, most of the ideas that turn up are nonsense ideas anyway, but you just keep thinking that for every hundred of these, there’s going to be at least one. There must be one.

School

Boring as it is to talk about these same things over and over again (well, but it is a journal), school has been rather remarkably busy these days. There’s still a test or two to deal with, some lab sessions and a project thing that I’ll be grappling with this week.

Tastes Change

I kind of have a feeling I wrote this down somewhere before, but I’ll just guess that it wasn’t here. I read Atonement not too far back, about a couple of weeks ago, and the funny thing is, I’d read it all before a few years, and the effect it produced on the two occasions was completely different. Back then, I absolutely adored it, but it’s been more of a calm respect for the novel in my most recent outing. In fact, I struggled to get into it at first. There was just a sense of alienation that I couldn’t quite put a finger to. I think it can only be attributed to a change in my tastes in books. I mean, it does sound like a perfectly reasonable thing, but now that I’ve actually experienced it first-hand, I can’t quite shake the tingles, as if something’s not quite right.

Funny sensation, this.

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New Cat

Here’s my new cat.

He doesn’t yet have a name. At least not a fixed one.

We found him outside sleeping under a car. He was wearing a collar that seemed too tight for him and his fur was all up in tangles. The car went driving off and he didn’t move an inch, and it was then that we realised it would be dangerous for him outside.

He’s four years old.

We snipped off the knotted fur, removed the collar, and fed him. He seems happier now.

He mews very loudly.

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Metaphors On Monday

Metaphorical

My dad doesn’t get metaphors, I realise. Yesterday, he was watching a Taiwanese movie, and he attempted to describe it to me. It had some flashback mechanism (I didn’t watch it), and apparently at one point, the kid (who is a kid at the start of the show) lives to a happy old age of sixty-something and is confronted by his mother, who has not aged one bit.

He told me that he didn’t get it. At all. And he wasn’t going to try.

Oh well, you know, different strokes, different folks.

Muah Chee

There’s a new cat in the house.

We took her in on Friday because she did seem too friendly and wasn’t likely to survive very well outside. Her name is temporarily Muah Chee. We’re in fact looking for someone to adopt her, so do spread the word.

She’s less than a year old, I think, and we’ll be taking her to the vet on Wednesday. In the meantime, she’s a very quiet and placid tortoiseshell, and I’m sure she won’t be difficult to take care of.

Once again, do spread the word. Thanks.

Some Science

‘Junk’ DNA might prove useful after all. [via PhysOrg]

Also, scientists have discovered a fungus that naturally synthesises diesel from cellulose. [via Wired Science]

Harry Ransom Center

Images from the Harry Ransom Center, including Norman Mailer’s colourful plot document for Harlot’s Ghost. [via The Elegant Variation] Always interesting to see how differently writers work when compared with each other.

Pigeons

Someone get me this T-shirt. [via Topotaco]

Creepy Doll

Neil Gaiman performs Creepy Doll. [via YouTube]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mik4qw8Vbs0]

And Finally…

I was just trying to relax and read a photography article when, to my horror, I saw quantum physics. [via The Online Photographer] Can’t I take a break from the science for once, Mr. Heisenberg?

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