That's not effing the verb, but rather the exclamation. Effing kittens.

On his way home from Bible study last Sunday night, under the big shrub near our bedroom window, Monstro saw a kitten. Flashlights wouldn't scare the thing out, so we opened a can of tuna, fashioned a box with foam and a dark towel and set it all under the trailer in our utility lot next door. Next day, we saw two kittens. Then three. Finally, the mom. She was orange and pretty, clean. One of her babies was also orange, the other two a mottled/stripey/tortoiseshell brown and black. Still fluffy, but eating solid food. At least, they seemed to understand what tuna was all about. The kittens would race along our neighbor's cinderblock fence and play in the hollowed-out tree that stood ten feet away from the trailer. Our own cats — shelter kitties themselves — were jealous/interested. We'd stare out our bedroom window and say we were watching the Nature Channel.

“Want a kitten?” I asked Sistermom.

“I would love one, but my cats wouldn't.”

Put them to sleep,” I advised. “You know, a fesh start.”

(She didn't go for it.)

We called the Animal Control officer and she NEVER called us back, though the ACO in the town over was helpful and gave me a couple of places to call.

Nobody wanted them. After three days of trying to place them, asking for cat traps on Freecycle, and reading feral-cat websites (“there are feral-cat websites?” my mom asked. Yes there are, and http://www.feralcat.com/ was particularly helpful) my buddy from MassWildlife offered traps and expertise, and came by Thursday at noon. We had the momma and the orange baby (my favorite) by 12:15. I called a woman I'd spoken with on Tuesday, but upon hearing that the orange kitten was the size of “two beer cans,” she demurred. And then my friend who was helping me got bit and everything went to hell.

My vet — rather, the vet where our cats are patients — was closed until 2:00 for an “emergency staff meeting” but we drove there anywhere, and a woman loading furniture up the ramp to the front door gave me a sheet of paper with directions to the MSPCA. (“Don't take them to the MSPCA in Springfield because…” said a lady I'd spoken to on Tuesday, not needing to finish the sentence.)

So then of course we get stuck in traffic, the cats quiet as mice in the hatchback. “Animals foretell doom,” my friend said. And that made me feel like shit, because of course my baby was with us too, and he didn't know anything that was going on, and he was really too little to be a part of this grim show, and we had planned to do the shopping for his first birthday party that afternoon anyway, and not deliver animals for slaughter.

The MSPCA is around the corner from the store that fired me when I was pregnant so I found it really easily, and we surrendered the big cat, and then took the kitten to the hospital across the room, because of course it was the kitten that bit my friend and would now suffer the desecration of a post-mortem rabies test, for which I was charged $193.00, for which my town is saying they're not going to reimburse me, regardless of the underlying public-health issue, and the long and the short of it is that on Thursday I hated Massachusetts more than I have ever hated Massachusetts in a single day, and there have been so very many of those days, I assure you. I dropped off my friend at the UMass health center to get her rabies shot, and got home to see the other two kittens in the traps we'd, uh, previously emptied. So I called the Mytown Animal Control Officer again, and upon hearing “If this is an emergency, please call the Pollice,” I left her a message at 4:10 and then called the cops. One came out and did nothing but get back into his patrol cruiser to call his supervisor, and then bring the cages up to our screened back porch. What followed was our biggest storm of the season to date, so Monstro asked, “do you want me to bring them down to the basement?” and I said “yes, and I'll help,” to which he responded, “no, I don't want you getting attached because you know what's going to have to happen,” but I helped anyway and hated New England even more, and my church and these dour people and God's Plan.

The Animal Control Officer got off her effing fat ass and called me at 7:00 Friday morning and I'm afraid I wasn't very nice to her at the end of it. She then called my potentially rabies-stricken friend and said she'd spoken with my husband twice that week, which was such a lie it still makes me sputter. In desperation, I googled “no kill cat shelter” and found one in Ludlow via 1-800-save-a-pet.com. Wouldn't you know it, it was run by the “two beer can” woman I'd spoken to the day before. I didn't let on that we'd previously held any conversations, which isn't as bad as what the ACO did, and anyway, screw you if you think it was. These kittens were significantly smaller than orange baby: I said they were “about a beer can” but they probably were more like a 16-ouncer. I surmise Orange Baby was that large because he was a Tom.

We were nearly out of newspaper by this time but found some for another hatchback trip with caged felines. Monstro drove them to her house. And she agreed to spay/neuter them, and then they'd be released to us, and live in a styrofoam cooler-house in our backyard, and we would feed them. “For how long?” Monstro asked. “Forever,” she replied. And that was great, I was fine with that, until two hours later she called back and the miracle had happened, her feral-cat expert deemed the kittens “rehabilitatible” and they would get sent to foster homes for socialization and, finally, adoption. They were fixed, uh, sexually, yesterday. This week they're being de-wormed. “They're much better than I'd originally thought,” said Beer Can Cat Lady. And if the rabies test comes back positive, we'll call her. But it won't. I just hope those concrete results come in before my friend has to get the series of shots in her abdomen. And two of the four were spared. I take comfort in the fact that the two that lived will live WAY better lives than we would ever have imagined. But where I come from, fifty percent is still an F.

“Are you there?”

“Yeah.”

Beep Beep Beep Beep

Baby turns one-year-old on Sunday and we are all once again aghast and amazed. The birthday party is sporting a “Teddy Bears' Picnic” theme; five children, ranging in age from eight months to three years with a mean of 11.2 months, have been invited. I have purchased a chocolate cake mix in case my first cake doesn't gel. And I certainly haven't ripped a bunch of “Bear” mp3s from the internet, not including Mitch Hedberg's “Koala Bear” bit, nor the winning version of “Teddy Bears' Picnic” by a band called The Goons. I need not to find more of their music through LimeWire. It's no wonder my husband has brought up my “mp3 ripping is stealing” speech during Disciple I study last year.

Baby was at the UMass Child Development lab today for a tactile-and-12-month-olds experiment; he grabbed the measuring cup and the rattle in one hand simultaneously. The researcher said, “I'm impressed.” Of course, the researcher also said, “Most infants bathe every day.”

And now my son is turning one year old. Gestationally, he already is, having been due November Fifth. When I first moved out into an apartment, I had a pointsettia plant. It was a late-November birthday present from a guy who harbored a, as it turned out, unrequited crush on me. I kept it alive for a year. Then my galbuddy Joe moved in and got fish, and most of them ate each other, but the ones who survived lasted another year. The next year, I adopted a cat, or rather, she adopted me. And I had her for years and years until my next roommate got a cat and OJ-the-cat took off. I won't even go into how many times my Amaryllis bulbs bloomed until our first Massachusetts winter killed them. I didn't know! And Baby doesn't have a new snowsuit yet but he's got lots of sweatpants and a big yellow hooded jacket. And heating oil at $2.56/gallon.

Dear Anthony & Caroline of the ACLU,

On Nov 14, 2006, at 12:55 PM, Anthony & Caroline, ACLU wrote:

>…if President Bush has his way, the impact on all of our rights

>will be anything but lame.

Or, it will be TOTALLY lame. Whichever. Either way, we're probably screwed.

Sincerely yours,

Lynn

Today, I voted for Teddy Kennedy.

When you live in Massachusetts you vote for Ted Kennedy. It's the rule. I'm not joking. In all the talk of the governor's race (which 45 minutes after poll-closing has Patrick the Dem over Healey the Rep, doggystyle), I never once even HEARD that Kennedy's Senate seat was up for vote…uh, reapproval.

I turned Prep in fourth grade and Republican in sixth. I'd name every essay in P.J. O'Rourke's Republican Party Reptile, in order. I wrote-in the presidents I wanted — Jack Kemp the first time and E. Dole the second — but doggedly stuck to my party. I made campaign calls for Bruce Herschensohn. But now I'm so ashamed of my party, its So-Called Christians and the like that I hung my head and did the obvious: voted Kennedy

I voted as Democrat as one can possibly vote. I am now a New Englander, a Massachusettsian, a Masshole. Yet, even with all these descriptors, I don't know who I am anymore.

Oh yeah! I'm the bee-yotch whose funny new play, “Lindsay Lohan's Birkin,” is going to be the hit of Forbes Library Coolidge Room tomorrow night! Can I hear an A-men!

I want a church that supports its members first and above all others on this planet.

I want family and friends with no secrets and nothing but love and tenderness for one another.

I want one job that will pay me a living wage.

I want Rhythmball to be the next ThighMaster.

I want everyone who hasn't bought it yet to tell me why.

I want a little credit or just some grocery money for being a good mom to our genetic-jackpot kid.

I want the balls of the company that fired me when I was pregnant.

I want Monstro to stop getting jerked around by his school so he can write his dissertation already.

I want Monstro to stop having to work three jobs while also working on his Ph.D.

I want the good teachers to receive the recognition, both personal and financial, that they so richly deserve.

I want to be back on the West Coast.

I want Sherry Ann to start talking to me again.

I want people in the Pioneer Valley to learn how to fucking drive.

–LBJ

P.S. Happily, Julie has been praying for me since this past Tuesday, and that's a start. But the rest of you only have seventeen-and-a-half days. So get cracking. Please?