Video + Art Pals + Schmutz: A.J. Schenkman’s Kitty + Podcast

A friend enquired about the novels I’m trying to get published, and wanted to see the documentary that David Hunt and I were nominated for, before the one that won us an Emmy, so here it is below or you can click here if the box below is glitchy…

Here’s a version of it at my Spotify podcast page…

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5LXKP8pyCh4n0oShppceG9?si=f71082e546454ba6

Subscribe, listen to, and share Happiness Between Tails Podcast on most any platform; from Spotify and Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts and Breaker, to Pocket Casts and RadioPublic and Castbox and Stitcher, plus many more and an RSS feed. Click here for the full list of 50+ places.

Spring has sprung and COVID restrictions are lifted. It feels utterly delicious — practically naked — to venture out in public without a sweater and a mask. Moreover, it’s LGBT Pride Month (which commemorates the Stonewall Riots), so what better time than now to don a rainbow-hued dress and a yellow taxi purse to peruse art studios? This was my first Biennial Long Beach Mid-City Studio Tour, wherein artists fling wide the doors to where their magic happens.

Connie DK Lane, my artist friend you met here before when I participated in one of her installations, and another one too, and we saw her work other times.

There wasn’t enough space for visitors at Connie’s (artist Nancy Voegeli-Curran to her left also does great work that you can see at her site)…

…nor was there sufficient room at the studio of Connie’s artist husband William Lane (who has a website for his paintings)…

…so fellow artist Annie Stromquist (who’s got amazing stuff to see at her web page) shared with them the patio in front of her own studio…

It was fun meeting Susan Hartman, who uploads her art as @skhartman26 at her Instagram…

Annie’s neighbor, Loren, looked so chic that I couldn’t resist adding a pic of her too. Doesn’t she like an artist, too?… 

Today’s guest post: How much do you know about local, regional, and national history? A. J. Schenkman, based out of New York, blogs, publishes books, and writes for newspapers, magazines, and academic journals about that and other subjects.

Schmutz Cat by A. J. Schenkman

I was not looking for a cat in 1998. My partner at the time and myself had a geriatric cat named Pebbles. She had been rescued from her father who was at his wits end with her peeing in the house. So, we feared introducing her to another animal would not help the situation. Pebbles had been a tough outside cat who was not pleased being made to stay inside because of her advancing age and coyotes. What I realized when throwing out the garbage is…

…sometimes life picks us, we don’t pick life.

One morning I was driving down our long driveway. I was tired and thought I had seen something small slip under the door of our barn. It is not impossible because we lived on the edge of two state parks. One was Minnewaska State Park in Ulster County, and across from us, which I saw from my bedroom window, was Catskill Park. I just forgot about what I thought I saw and went inside the house.

Later that night I took out the garbage and saw the same corner of the eye movement. It was late at night and felt I would deal with it in the morning. We did not want something living in the barn. Even worse, a couple of cats chose our barn to die in after getting hurt. I had to seal the barn up a little better, I thought to myself. Especially, since the “apparition” seemed to be black and white. I was hoping it was not a skunk.

The next morning was a Saturday. It was October and getting colder. The sun was shining through the Spruce Tree we called Grandfather Spruce. It was Rockefeller Christmas Tree big. While drinking my coffee I noticed a little black and white figure nestled in the above ground roots system of Grandfather Spruce. I called my partner. It was too late for this kitten had heard me and flew under the barn door.

There was no doubt that if we did not catch this kitten, it would either die from the cold or become a meal to some animal. We could hear the coyotes howling that night in the field. We hoped the kitten was safe inside the barn. How to catch it would be the topic while falling asleep, and while eating Sunday breakfast. The best course of action according to a friend and animal rescuer would be a Have a Heart trap. I went to the local hardware store and slapped the trap on my credit card. When I pulled into the driveway there was the kitten clawing with a stretch in the early autumn sun. Like a flash it was gone.

I opened the door to the barn and put the Have a Heart together. I went inside to find a can of tuna fish. Even though it is not the best for them, I never found a cat who could refuse it. I placed the can with some crunchies in the back of the trap and waited for it to do its work. I fully expected to see that hungry kitten in the trap the next morning. What I found was all the food eaten and the trap still set. This went on for two more nights. There was really no other way to save this poor creature, that I estimated was less than eight weeks old. Unfortunately, it is all too common that kittens or cats that are not wanted to find themselves dumped in barns.

The third night I still had not caught that kitten. What happened in my dreams perplexed me.

In my dreams the kitten was communicating with me that I could catch him if I agreed to keep him. I know this sounds quite crazy.

It is just what I thought when I went into the barn to have my coffee armed with a can of tuna. I put it open in the middle of the barn and stayed back drinking my coffee. The only place this kitten could be hiding was by the straw behind some old, unhinged doors from the house. I looked behind them and there he was staring back at me with a cocked head followed by a little hiss. He wanted to get away but had nowhere to go. I left the tuna and left for work.

My partner and I had a conversation after I fed the kitten that night. It was an unusually warm night, and we were sitting outside. I fed the kitten and came back out to rejoin the discussion. It was about the kitten and whether we should keep it. This runt of a kitten who looked more like a skunk than a feline was inching its way into our lives, and we never even realized it. My partner said, “ya know he has chosen this barn and us.” I laughed. I said, “we will keep it until we find a new home for it.” Just then, we heard a snap and looked at each other. I opened the barn and there he was a little scrawny and very hungry looking kitten. He was so small!

He was meowing and intermittently hissing; then somehow combining the two. I picked up the trap looking at him, I said “hello Schmutz!” I said that in response to what looked like black dirt below his nose which was white. He hissed his anger. “Where does he sleep?” my partner asked, “I guess the basement,” which was not really a finished basement at all. It was cold and dark except for the boiler. Looking back, it must have been very scary. I was able to inch some food and water into the back of the trap. I would think about it in the morning.

The following morning, we went to a local shelter to discuss what to do. The woman behind the counter said that we need to get the kitten into a large crate and then to be seen by the doctor. We went home, got the kitten and brought him back to the rescue. We were able to move him to the large airport dog crate with food, water and a small, litter box. Schmutz, as I took to calling him, spent his next night in a spare bedroom after removing everything from the room. Pebbles, the other cat sniffed around the door but did not seem to care. I had purchased a heavy pair of gloves to handle Schmutz. Each day I went in and removed him from the crate and “forcibly” pet him. He would purr, and then hiss, and then purr with a hiss mixed in for good measure. We then moved to leave the crate door open but everything else closed. I watched through the old box lock keyhole. He explored the room and made it to the window that would become his favorite for the majority of his life. Later in his life, if the window was not open the huge cast iron would suffice.

The time came when I wanted to remove the gloves and pet him. I did this too early because he bit me through the finger. However, we gradually made headway until he rested in my lap after eating. His tummy was getting bigger like a little ball. Still later, when he was done resting, Schmutz explored his new surroundings, scenting everything with his face. Eventually, during the day, when we were home, he was allowed to explore the house. He made friends with Pebbles and began imitating how she cleaned herself or swaggered down the hallway. When he went for her food, a stern tap on the head kept him at bay. Pebbles was quite a mouser and Schmutz must have learned from her. He became quite the mouser catching his last mouse in 2016 a few months before the end.

When I met my present-day wife, the two of them became thick as thieves. Schmutz took to sleeping between the two of us. We liked to joke that once all the lights went out at some point in the night, he would go out to hunt. Meaning he would go downstairs to the kitchen to look for the occasional field mouse coming in from the cold. If he could catch it, he tried to bring it upstairs depositing it in our room. It took some explaining to my wife that it was an honor. He was trying to teach us to kill a mouse. My wife respected the honor, but she never quite got used to it.

We continued to live in the old house, and the years passed. He was a good cat! When our son was born, Schmutz wanted to sleep with him. He was also very tolerant, only scratching my son once when a tail was grabbed. Since my son could not pronounce the name Schmutz he took to calling “his” cat MiMi.

Around 2015, we decided to move over the mountain for a closer commute to work. Schmutz went about his business as usual “hunting” in a new kitchen. Before retiring to bed, he always checked on our son.

It was Christmas Eve 2016, when we realized something was wrong. Schmutz was having trouble breathing and would not eat. It was obvious he was dying. It had been already a hard year. My father had died in August after being hit by a car while riding his bicycle in New York City.

Needless to say, we were still in a deep state of grief. My wife and I were so sad now about Schmutz. We had a very young and impressionable son. Somehow, we needed to not create trauma in his life. Schmutz passed peacefully that night with the family he had chosen and loved so much.

A year later my son and I were outside looking up at the starry night. I pointed out the big dipper to him. He asked me, “which one is MiMi?” We had told him that the stars were our loved ones who had passed. When the stars twinkled, it was all our loved ones winking at us as if to say we see you. A star twinkled and we agreed that it was MiMi. The second star we agreed on was grandpa letting us know MiMi was just fine.

Have you ever dreamed about your pet?