What once was lost has now been found... and is a whole lot dirtier

Okay, so, I've decided to initiate my return to blogging with a hair-raising tale of adventure and suspense! This story begins with a fish... a rather smelly fish... that was bought at the Loblaws down the street from me by a group of well-meaning Martha Stewart wannabes who vetoed my suggestion that we just order pizza and proceeded instead to carve this giant fish at my kitchen table. I took pictures of the whole event, but then inadvertently deleted them! I'm grumpy about that because they would have been good fodder for blogging. This fish had its eyeballs still in, it had fins and a tail, it had everything! In short, it still looked like a fish, and I generally try to avoid eating anything that looks like the animal it once was. Any vegetarians who read this are now judging me harshly (I can feel your rays of contempt!), but I can't help my need for carnivorous denial.

So I was very wary about this fish. It was placed in a baking dish full of salt (about 5 pounds worth, I'd say, and kosher salt at that so we were all feeling a little blessed that night), scattered over with lemons, and baked at 400 degrees. I spent this entire time eating baguette dipped in balsamic vinegar, thinking it would probably be the only thing I'd enjoy that night, so I'd better fill up.

The point of this story is not that the fish smelled bad (it actually hardly smelled at all, what with being covered over with another 5 pounds of salt so that it was in a little salt igloo), or that it tasted bad (it was, admittedly, quite delicious), but that the oven heated up my apartment to about ten million degrees above bearable, and these faux Martha Stewarts who had taken over my kitchen were actually all big burly boys and I was afraid they would fall over from heat stroke and I'd be helpless to drag their 200-lb bodies out into the fresh air. So I had no choice but to lock Tycho up in the bathroom, which was insulting to him because he thought the temperature was just fine and, being an odd little creature, didn't give a hoot that there was raw fish lying all over the place and really just wanted everyone to pet him and never stop. BUT my poor little man got stuck in the bathroom so that Marko, Michael, and their friend Mark from Toronto who was in charge of the whole enterprise could prop open the stoop door and get some relief.

So from everyone's perspective (except Tycho's) it was a wonderful night in the end: good food, fireworks down at the water that we could see from my street (it was Canada's turn to compete in the international competition, and I can't even begin to describe how impressive it was), and then several hours of playing pool not too badly at the place around the corner. We were even forward thinking enough to deposit the bag of fish remains in a public garbage bin so that my apartment wouldn't fill up with toxic fumes. The next day I realized the single error in our ways: because the stoop door had been open for so long, my whole apartment was a-hummin' with flies. Millions of them! Big and fat and dirty! I spent so long trying to control the fly population in my place... Tycho helped some, and got some extra nutrients as a result (aren't flies high in protein?)... and at one point I noticed a whole colony of them crawling over the window screen in my bedroom. So I slid open the screen and was satisfied to see most of them drift back outside, without the rolled-newspaper mass killing that had happened previously... and then... my near-fatal error... I forgot to close the screen.

That was yesterday evening. I got home ridiculously late last night from an evening that deserves a whole other blog entry, and, feeling deserving of a long sleep, I said goodnight to the T-bone and stuffed my ears with those foamy plugs to guard against the little three-year-old stomper who has moved in above me. When I finally woke up it was almost 10:30am... and I thought, that's weird, usually by about 9am Tycho is having a party on the bed next to me, a little tornado of excitement that no ear plugs could ever block out. And I thought I could hear muffled sounds of distress, so I staggered over the window and looked out. All I could see was my neighbour across the alley, who was waving her arms at me! When I went over and opened the stoop door, a little orange dagger shot inside and disappeared in the bedroom.

Tycho! He escaped! I forgot to close the screen on the window and sometime in the night he lept to freedom! The very thought makes me wince, because there's a pretty significant drop between window and alley... plus he's never been outside without a leash... plus he's just so little and cute and vulnerable! What if he got lost? What if he got in a fight with one of those scrappers that I see hanging around? What if he... gasp... tried to cross Sherbrooke St and didn't make it? My poor little buddy! But he is safe now. My neighbour watched him strut up and down the alley a few times, king of kings, until he lost his nerve and started howling on my stoop. She said he had been at it for almost an hour and she was about to come over and knock! Poor little dude! I was deaf to his tormented cries! What kind of a mother am I?! He was so hungry when he came in. He's also dirty as hell, and smells like a car engine. Seriously, it looks like he's wearing stage makeup for a part in Les Miserables. I don't know what to do with him... leave him a couple of days and see if he cleans the dirt off himself? But I've already noticed little sooty footprints everywhere, and even though I have stolen Derek's navy blue bedsheets and made them my own, there are plenty of other opportunities for Tycho to visibly dirty up this apartment. Especially when he does that thing where he dips his paws in the toilet and then walks on every white surface he can find. But I'm just so glad he's okay! And I'm glad I didn't have to endure any moments of knowing he was missing. And I'm extra, extra glad that he remembered where he lives! All these stoops look the same, but he came right back to ours... part of me thinks, hmm, maybe it's time to let him roam outside on his own a little more... but that is a small, small part. Most of me thinks OH MY GOODNESS MUST PUT HIM ON LOCKDOWN AND SMOTHER HIM WITH KISSES. mmmmmmm machine-oil kisses.

I think I'd better buy some kitty shampoo. This is worse than those days when he'd escape into the Woodward basement and make a bed in the coal. To demonstrate, here he is before his adventure began - note the gleaming white apron, good posture, every strand of fur in its place:


And here he is, as of five minutes ago:


Oy! Doesn't it look like he must have had quite the adventure? It reminds me of Mr. Lee, or even of Jeff, though Tycho didn't bring home any decapitated rodents. He seems to be very grateful to be inside again, but I'm wondering how long it will take for the memory of being free to develop a rosy glow. Will he no longer be satisfied with sitting in a patch of alley weeds on the end of his leash, while I look fondly on? You can take the cat out of the wild, but you can't take the wild out of the cat... oh whatever, Tycho is so small and squishy, how could he ever fend for himself? I must protect him! Little dude!

And I also must give him a bath. I've never done this before, so I don't know how he'll react. I hope I don't lose an eyeball!

Montreal continues to be grand, and I'm sorry I haven't been blogging. It's mostly because life here as picked up speed since school let out, and I hardly now what I'm doing half the time, because there are so many birthdays to celebrate and jobs to finish and songs to dance to! But I hope you're still checking in once in a while!