Remembering Roulette, 2003-2021

Roulette passed away today. She’d been slowly declining since last fall, and had been on a drug to help with arthritis. But in the last week and a half her decline accelerated, and the drug didn’t seem to help anymore. She had trouble walking and keeping her balance, so we were able to move up her planned vet appointment from Saturday to today. She was down to about 4-1/2 pounds, and the vet agreed that it was time.

Debbi adopted Roulette along with her brother Blackjack in 2003 when they were two months old. She was part of a pod of six kittens being fostered, and we think she was technically Blackjack’s aunt, but who knows, really? When we visited them she was playing by herself with a plastic rose, and she wasn’t very well socialized. But she (barely) tolerated me picking her up. Her foster name was Opal, but Debbi changed it to Roulette to match her brother’s theme. Plus she was a beautiful calico, so it seemed to fit.

Debbi brought them down from her apartment to my townhouse every weekend, and at first we confined them to the front bedroom. A week or two after she adopted them, she went back to visit her family, leaving me to sit for them. This turned out to be when we learned that Roulette had a tapeworm, so I got to give her a pill for it, and also clean up the worm segments (yuck!). Fortunately the pill did its job and she suffered no ill effects.

One day I was downstairs reading, and I looked up to see Roulette on the stair landing. “Hello little girl, what are you doing out of your room?” She had figured out how to climb the baby gate we’d put up and had started exploring. They got their full freedom not long after that.

Roulette latched on to my cat Jefferson as her best friend – and gave him no choice in the matter. She would also wrestle with Blackjack, but she loved to sleep with Jefferson.

She hated riding in the car. For a while Debbi let them out of their carrier when driving down to my place, but that ended the night Roulette escaped from the car after Debbi had parked, ran across the street, and hid in the back of my condo complex. After 2 hours of searching we finally found her and brought her inside. So she was probably happier than anyone when Debbi moved in with me.

Roulette also chose me as her human. Honestly I think she just liked men better than women. She was a little on the shy side, but after one party Debbi said, “Did you notice that Roulette came down and said hi to everyone?” “No,” I replied, “Roulette came down and said hi to all the men.” She was pretty happy to seek attention from male house guests we had, too.

Roulette had a rough time starting in 2010, when Jefferson (2010), Blackjack (2012) and Newton (2013) all passed away. Plus we moved to our current house in 2011, and we adopted Jackson and Sadie just before Blackjack passed away. I think it was too much for her. Plus Jackson became aggressive and harassed her, and unlike Newton who put him and Sadie in their place, Roulette instead just spent more time under the bed. I think it wasn’t until 2014 or 2015 that she started to behave more normally, carving out some preferred places to sleep, and standing up to Jackson. She probably would have preferred to be an only cat, and my one regret is that we weren’t able to give her a new feline family she could relate to.

Roulette was very playful when she was younger, but played much less after that. Granted she was over 10 years old when she got over her (I assume) depression, but I think she just wanted to be snuggled and didn’t want to attract the attention of Jackson. I could get her to play with the right toy as long as she didn’t have to leave the couch, but that happened less and less.

She did, however, love catnip and especially wet cat food. “Is it time?” was a phrase which would perk up her ears and often get her running over to the kitchen in anticipation of the paté goodness. Sadie and Jackson both have an on-again-off-again interest in wet food, but she loved it.

We warned her that if she lived long enough she might have to deal with more kittens, and she was about as thrilled as you can imagine by the arrival of Simon and Edison. On the other hand, these kittens also adore wet food, and I like to think that it helped acclimate her to them. Edison was also a bit of a bully to Rou, but he couldn’t bully her off of a bowl of wet food. Simon tried more gently to cozy up to her, and I think she tolerated him.

The last year or so she started sleeping with us at night, usually between my legs. Over the last couple of weeks she moved up to sleep between us, or even right next to my chest. I guess she was not feeling well and just wanted to be closer to us. She had her usual helpings of wet food, and she got one last comic book night with me last Wednesday. I think the others knew she wasn’t feeling well, as they gave her more space. She also became addicted to drinking water out of running bathroom faucets, and would sometimes meow at us to come water her.

Last week she growled at a cat who came up on our back porch. Defending our house to the end!

Our vet has not been allowing people inside for check-ups since COVID-19 started, but they make an exception for pets’ final moments, so we were able to go in and be with her at the end. She hated the car, she hated the vet, but we gave her a space to feel safe at the end. Old kitties are not very demonstrative with their emotions, but I hope she knew we were trying to make her more comfortable.

She was a willful, demanding kitty, but she was our willful, demanding kitty.

Thanks for everything, little girl.

One Year of Covid-19

These first two weeks of March mark one year since many Americans found their lives changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. March 9, 2020 was my last day in the office – I went in once more to collect my equipment to work at home, and then I wouldn’t go in again until a day in December when I had to clean out some stuff from where I’d been contributing to the M1 Macintosh project. And then again this past Friday to pick up a package I’d accidentally gotten sent to work.

That first month was downright weird. I continued my morning run, and added one or two walks per day as well. But I hardly saw anyone most mornings. There was one morning that I counted five people on my run. I did our runs to the grocery store by myself, staying distant from other people and sometimes admonishing them for not following the arrows for the one-way aisles. Masks weren’t yet a thing.

By the end of March my comics shop had temporarily closed, though it reopened later in the spring and has stayed open since. We ordered a lot of take-out, and cooked at home, discovering a few new recipes.

My wife has mostly avoided going out. The one trip she’d do every week would be to the Mountain View Farmer’s Market, which ironically is one of the busiest places I ever go. Otherwise she’d drive me places to get take-out.

The fear of that first month drained away over the next couple of months, maybe due to exhaustion more than anything else. Not that we were being less diligent, just less fearful. We got together with friends, keeping 6 or more feet apart for drinks in the driveway or in our back yard. The only visit we made to see people inside was to visit my boss and his wife, who were fostering the kittens who we eventually adopted as Simon and Edison. (Who are doing great, by the way!)

We had coincidentally done a lot of things to prepare for shelter in place shortly before it occurred. We’d made a Costco run and had plenty of toilet paper. I made a couple of big grocery runs. We’d both been to the eye doctor, and I’d been to the dentist. We’d taken the cats in for their annual check-up. Lucky, really.

Since then I’ve been to the dentist – twice. We’ve both been to the eye doctor recently. We’ve made numerous trips to the vet for the kittens and for our elderly cat Roulette, but we never go inside. Our parents have been vaccinated, as has my sister. It will probably be a couple more months for us. We made one trip to Half Moon Bay on a day off last summer and ate at a restaurant outside, but otherwise we’ve only left our county to go to the vet. We’ve eaten outside at a couple of restaurants here, but none of them have wait staff.

I try to call my father every other week, and mostly succeed.

In January I joined the people who celebrated a birthday at home. I’ve done that before, of course, but this one wasn’t by choice.

We watched the numbers tick up as hundreds of thousands of people died who probably wouldn’t have if we hadn’t had an incompetent, racist, narcissistic President in the White House. The depth of his failure to act – or even to show the barest human empathy – was breathtaking. Meanwhile the whole Republican Party is careening into fascism.

I miss all the things everyone else misses: Hanging out with friends, eating at restaurants, going on vacation. Even going into the office – working from home has never been my thing.

It’s gradually been wearing me down. More than most? Less? I have no idea. Last year was the year I was going to take more vacation than usual. Well.

While racist impeached President Trump deserves credit for “Operation Warp Speed” to get vaccines developed, he showed his incompetence once again in refusing to expedite distribution. Things have gotten a lot better under President Biden, and tens of millions of Americans have been vaccinated. Hopefully most of the rest will be by summer. Then we mainly have to wait for vaccines to be approved for children – maybe by next fall or winter?

So much more I could write, from the election to the job losses to the concern about vaccinating the rest of the world.

I don’t expect things will change much for us for the rest of 2021. Maybe by fall we can eat at restaurants? I doubt we’ll fly anywhere this year, though.

But I’m ready to. I can really use those postponed vacations.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

We finally got around to watching Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) last night. As the film rights to Spider-Man are still owned by Sony, the film isn’t available on Disney+. Fortunately, we’re GenX’ers, which means we still have cable and a TiVo, so, go us!

I actually hadn’t been very spoiled about the story. I knew it was based on a comic book story – which I hadn’t read – and starred the Miles Morales version of Spider-Man – which honestly know almost nothing about – and that the animation was supposed to be great.

It was all that and more.

It was amazing.

It’s a take on Miles Morales’ origin story, and it has a surprisingly slow burn (the film is nearly 2 hours long, which is pretty lengthy for an animated feature film), building up to Miles getting his powers over the first third of the movie. But with a twist, as there’s already a Peter Parker version of Spider-Man in his dimension, and they both run afoul of a plot by the Kingpin which rips a hole between universes, resulting in five other Spider-people ending up in Miles’ dimension. Miles ends up being trained by an older, sadder Peter Parker, but also meets the others, especially Spider-Woman, Gwen Stacy on her world, who failed to save her best friend – Peter Parker.

As a Spider-Man origin story, it hits a lot of the beats you expect such a story to have: With great power comes great responsibility, death of a loved one, the outsider trying to fit in, triumph over great odds.

But this remix has a lot of touches which make it different, too. Miles isn’t being raised by his aunt and uncle, he’s being raised by his parents, and his policeman father wants the best for him, loves him dearly, but pushes him in a direction Miles doesn’t want to go. Miles finds a different father figure in the older Peter, but their relationship has issues, too, due to Miles’ inexperience. One always senses that Peter’s wisecracking persona as Spider-Man was a front, an escape from the sorrow that undercut his life. But for Miles it’s his true self, not an escape but an ability to be free, and so to gain confidence in his abilities in both his lives. Including an appreciation for his family.

The film is smartly written, upending a number of the conventions of Spider-Man, such as: Aunt May, who’s a much stronger figure here (I think inspired by J. Michael Straczynski’s version from his run); the older Peter’s sense of humor being much sharper and acerbic; and playing a little loose with secret identities.

It’s also very fun, and very funny. While there’s a sequence in the middle where Miles and Peter are breaking into a lab which is trying too hard, otherwise almost everything works. Peter has a quip for the gizmo they need to find to hack the device to send everyone home. He also shows his experience in escaping when Miles ties him up, but his not-really-caring attitude causes problems too. He needs this adventure to find himself as much as Miles does.

And of course there’s the big moment where Miles gets knocked down as far as he can go… and bounces back to become his own Spider-Man. It’s a scene that got a lot of accolades, and they’re all deserved.

The animation is beautiful. It’s not for everyone, as it’s frenetic and flashy and jerky-jerky (by design – some of the “how the animation was done” videos are pretty neat). The art style is just about perfect – how far computer animation of human beings has come in the years since The Incredibles. The staging of some of the action sequences must have been insane to storyboard and then animate.

This was one of the most fun superhero films I can recall watching. Highly recommended if you haven’t seen it.