MEET KATE

Hugh Woodbury's Death & Mom and Dad's 50th

October 2025

On the day of my dad's wake,

I found this gravestone to a

18th century Hugh Woodbury!

My father died September 23rd, the day before his 97th birthday. His obituary, written by my sister Ann, provides complete and accurate details of his life.

The purpose of this post is to talk about what my dad was to me. He wasn't a perfect guy. I never felt an instinct to worship him (though since his death, I've been tempted based on the number of staff members in his assisted living community who spoke to me positively about him: he was never rude; he never made unreasonable demands; he was always upbeat and pleasant...).

When I was younger, I performed with him in plays. On church camping trips, I recited poems with him, including Lewis Carroll's "You are Old, Father William." I played the trumpet in high school because my dad played the trumpet when he was younger. Regarding school, he occasionally helped me with my math homework.

My parents and I both moved (separately) to Maine in 1996. They lived on Peaks Island but came to the mainland for church on Sundays. Every Sunday until COVID lock downs, we ate lunch together, usually sandwiches prepared by my mom.

Eventually, my parents left Peaks Island for a series of retirement homes. I began to accompany my dad to his doctors' appointments as his "scribe." Starting approximately four years ago, after my mother moved into Memory Care, I began to see my dad twice a week: once after I visited my mom and once when I picked him up for church. Every Sunday, I would pull up to the facility and watch a very thin, stooping man with (usually) uncut white wild hair--yet immaculately dressed in a suit with tie and maroon sweater--slowly make his way out of the building to my car.

2025 saw a radical change. After a stint in rehab, he did not return to physical church though we continued to attend on Zoom. I also began to eat breakfasts with him. I would order blueberry pancakes and Eggs Benedict, then split the meals between us. About this time--and to my eternal gratitude--hospice took over much of his care.

In May, it seemed that the final days were close. However, as hospice told me in wonder, "Your parents are a surprise!" My dad kept going. His long-term memory was mostly gone (though occasionally he would remember information I'd passed on to him about my job), but he continued to read books I brought him, to watch the cars and trees outside his windows, to now and again check the news on his home computer, to take whirlpool baths, to spend time with my mom (staff and hospice would arrange for them to sit together), to watch Zoom church, including (marvels of technology!) our old ward in Schenectady, New York, and to treat all visitors with great friendliness.

At the end of every visit, as I was leaving, he would say, "Say, 'Hello' to your cats!"

At some point on this blog, I will comment on my relationship with my mother. It was more complicated than my relationship with my father--and what I got out of the two relationships, in terms of positives, was quite different.

From my father, I got a lack of judgment. It wasn't only that he refrained from lecturing me: telling me what I should do better--pronouncing how much he loved me in the same breath as asking me why I wasn't leading a completely different life--scolding me for not performing certain actions...


Pastel by my mom of my dad with
my sister's cat.

He didn't do those things. More importantly, it never occurred to him to do them. And I worked hard to show him equal respect even when I had to make decisions about his care. A belief in agency--the other person as a whole individual--was a common thread between us.

When I made my visits, I was simply Kate, his youngest. I was me; he was Dad. I never had to wonder if he would be happier if I was someone else. Although a romantic and an idealist, he had the touching and remarkable ability to accept what was before him. Life is life.

I will miss him very much.

And, Dad, my cats are doing well.

***

June 2005

My parents' 50th Wedding Anniversary is today: June 29th. Which is impressive (comments like "When one considers today's society..." being taken as read). And I thought it would be appropriate for me to write a little something about them, in terms of popular culture, of course.

My parents are, on paper at least, opposites. My mother is an artist with a B.A. in Art from Brigham Young University and a M.A. in Printmaking from SUNY Albany. She taught for several years before her first child was born. Like everyone in our family, she reads a lot, especially mysteries and currently Forester's Horatio Hornblower series.

She also reads history, and is something of an amateur historian on a few subjects; when I taught seminary for our church, she was my go-to person for The New Testament. My mother read to me up until I was in Junior High, and she probably would have kept going if I hadn't turned into a teenager and persisted in finishing the books we started. These days we share a love of books on tape.

My father labeled this image

"Joyce out-standing in her garden."

My mom used to invent stories as well, mostly about a troll named Milo. Her considerable artistic talents are more visual (she understands abstract art!), and in the last ten years that creative flair has expressed itself more and more in her flower garden(s).

My father is a scientist with a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. He worked at G.E. Research & Development all his career and was part of the team that recreated the first industrial diamond. He claims not to understand Quantum Mechanics, which is kind of like Shakespeare disclaiming higher education (it may be true, but come on, it's Shakespeare). My clearest childhood memory of my father is of him paraphrasing science articles at the dinner table. Even now, he will pass on tidbits from Greene's Elegant Universe or articles he has read, and he helps me considerably with my sci-fi stories. Despite being the introvert in the relationship, my father has acted in a number of plays and once recited Lewis Carroll's The Song of the White Knight with me playing the part of Alice. Nowadays, he plays the stock market, levels the lawn (and levels the lawn...and levels the lawn). He also has a penchant for history and when I taught seminary, he was my go-to person for Old Testament and Book of Mormon.

So, on paper, my parents would seem to be opposites, complementary opposites, but opposites nonetheless. Extrovert/Introvert. Science/Art. Language/Math. However, these are false dichotomies. My parents operate, as the saying goes, on the same wavelength. One component of that wavelength is their service in the Mormon Church (in which we were all reared). They work in the Boston Temple every week which, for people living in Maine, entails a fair amount of time and money, all volunteered.

Another component, and the one that brings us back to popular culture, is their commonsense. They are commonsensical. Not given to sentimentality (although a romantic streak runs through the family) but people who have a high level of discernment. There's not any cynicism involved. They just see the world as is and keep going. (Maybe it's a gardening thing.) Which isn't to say my parents, like all of us, don't have their pet peeves, their soap boxes and their sacred cows but they also, to a remarkable degree, try to look at themselves objectively. I'm not saying they always succeed. Does anyone? But the point is, they try.

What this character analysis boils down to is: they did not raise their children to be relativists. Life might all be some mind game, God might be a boiled egg and time might not exist, but if you're an artist and a scientist of my parents' schools of thought, you start from the proposition that something is going on around you, you are collecting and reacting to data. Sure, it could all be in your head, but that's a totally boring approach to life so why bother going there? Start with the proposition that some sort of reality does exist, that we are all experiencing some degree of synchronicity and then accept the hard work of trying to understand it (which hard work should not entail either angsty self-righteous intellectualism or undisciplined "oh nobody knows anything anyway" gloopiness) and, well, life rapidly gets very fun.

Which is what my parents taught me and is what I'd like to thank them for here. Life is great! Life is fun! My parents are kind of like spiritual anti-Augustinians. The body is good! The physical world is a blessing! It's swell to be alive! Isn't it interesting? Isn't it grand? They are Mormons born and bred (and I am deliberately using the "older" term since pioneers thrived in both my parents' ancestries), and their particular attitude towards life is influenced by the progressive positivism implicit in Mormonism: that life matters, that it isn't just some way-station where we hang out and mope until God snatches us home; it isn't simply an experiment where God prods us with a few trials and notes our responses and pats us on the head.

Life is worth living for its own sake because only living life (for its own sake) can prepare you for the next stage. Life should fully engage us. God wants it to. You can't live in heaven if you don’t know how to live on earth. Come Judgment Day, God will hand out as much freedom and experience and love as we can handle. If we can't, if we settle for dry, stale ideologies, if we weigh ourselves down with distrust, anger, guilt and cynicism, that's the kind of heaven we'll settle for.

So, in a way, the relativists are right, because the heaven you think is possible is the heaven you will get. The point of religion, Mormonism in particular, is to train us not to settle for less. And it starts with our immediate surroundings.

Okay, morphed a bit there into my own opinion, but it all goes back to my parents. I grew up knowing that my parents had a multiplicity of interests that went beyond their family and for that matter, each other. Those interests often dovetail (like the lawn, the dirt, the vegetable garden, the flower garden and the fruit trees: ALL related) in their theological beliefs as well as the arts, but my parents were always individuals in my eyes, which, for a child, can be revelatory if a little frightening. These people, one learns fairly early, are not just here for my benefit. And too, I grew up seeing that, contrary to an attitude I've run into lately, religious observance does not limit a person to a bland-room-with-bland-curtains-and-bland-floor mentality.

Now, my parents have never been into The Top 40. They don't particularly like action movies (Schwarzenegger variety). They detest commercials. They have never, to my knowledge, attended a rock concert. And we grew up without a TV (well, for most of the time). You couldn't have paid my mom to watch soaps. Which isn't to say we didn't go out to see movies (where my father, the most honest man alive, would let us sneak food into the theaters). Still I mostly grew up going to ballet and listening to opera and classical music and seeing Shakespeare. My parents truly enjoy doing those things. But—here's where the commonsense comes into play—it was never "we're seeing this because of how important it is"; rather, "we're seeing this because we like it." They also like Agatha Christie (my mom), Alice in Wonderland (my dad), Peter, Paul & Mary, Garrison Keillor (before he got popular, mostly), chocolate (my mom!), Tolkien, shaggy dog stories (my dad) and so on and so forth.

And the more I study popular culture and listen to academics talk about popular culture, the more I've realized that this liking is the missing component. Academics can read between the lines like nobody's business. They can analyze till the cows come home (it's not that difficult a skill to master). But at some basic level, they don't understand why people really like what they like. So they make up reasons. If they like it themselves, they give themselves Freudian complexes or shake their heads at their own cupidity (I've been brainwashed by the corporate capitalistic conspiracy!).

It never seems to occur to them that it's fun! That's it's funny! You don't have to believe that watching action movies involves a deliberate suspension of belief to which all parties are privy (the secret compact theory of popular culture); you just have to believe that people like doing it.

So, Mom and Dad, thanks for teaching me that life is fun, that enjoying life is as much a part of religion as praying or reading the scriptures, that the world is a fantastic place that it never harms us to find out more about and especially for loving life and each other.

The Nine of Us

Kate and Her Cats

2022

Friday, June 17, 2022, I agreed to euthanize my cat, Charlie or Charlotte.

Charlie was the smartest cat choice I ever made. All my cats have been wonderful, but in all truth, Aurora was something of a lucky "guess." Max was not the best fit for apartment life. Bob was better. However, he is somewhat unbalanced, being skittish to the nth degree.

When I got Charlie, I had just binge-watched The Dog Whisperer. So when I went to the Greater Portland Animal Refuge League, I kept Millan's advice (for dog adoptions) in mind. I paid attention to personality and vibe, not just "ahhh, soooo cuteeeee."

In a cage of several kittens, Charlie was curious but not spastic. Friendly, not too shy.

She fit into the household like no other cat (so far). She was perfect for Bob. They were the first cats I've had who never had problems with each other. Aurora tended to ignore Max and Bob when they annoyed her. Max would get aggressive with other cats, including Aurora. Bob has a billion triggers and hides.

Charlie smoothed out all the rough edges. She was cuddly but not demanding. She was fun and active. She stimulated Bob and only occasionally chased him. She enjoyed watching birds out my current apartment's windows.

The circumstances of her illness were somewhat traumatizing and unforeseen (though not in retrospect). However, in many ways, the decision was easier.

Charlie was only 8-1/2, which for me is very young. She likely suffered from feline hepatic lipodosis, which affects female cats (more than males) over the age of 7. It has no known cause. It can be linked to an underlying cause--which I suspect is true in this case. It often kicks in after a stressful event.

This spring, Charlie was sleeping more than usual, even for an aging cat. Otherwise, she behaved much the same. This summer, our apartment building underwent extremely noisy construction while I was away at work. Within two days, Charlie was no longer eating or drinking to the point where she became jaundiced.

Some of this I saw coming. Some I didn't. A year ago, if anyone had asked, I would have said that Charlie would be the cat who outlasted all my others. Not so. Her poorer health was likely several months old but her decline was rapid, less than a week. My interventions were unsuccessful.

I couldn't take her to my regular vet, which was all booked up. So I took her to a local PetMedic, which types of services have apparently expanded greatly in the last 8 years! I was impressed. Charlie's condition was explained to me matter-of-factly. No blame. Two options were fairly presented. However, from the doctor's tone, it was clear that Charlie had no chance, really, of recovery and that euthanasia would be kinder.

I chose euthanasia. I was allowed to go in (these days, animals are dropped off and picked up Curbside). As with my other two cats, I chose communal cremation and a memento. I thought I was getting a paw-print ornament (as with my other two cats). I wasn't. I was actually relieved with what I did get. My other two cats' paw-prints hang in my bedroom by my mirror, and I like them there. But the idea of adding to my "wall of death" was a tad creepy. Instead, Charlie's paw-prints hang out with my cat statues.

I was unnerved by the experience since it was so entirely unexpected. But 25+ years as a cat owner makes a difference. This time around, I don't question my decisions as I did with Max.

I am a big believer in companion cats--I've always owned a male and female (both fixed). Consequently, I intended to get a kitten over Independence Day weekend to keep Bob company when I return to more on-campus teaching in the fall.

However, I realized Saturday morning that skittish Bob may or may not have been grieving. He was reverting to his nuttier side. He could not go a full two weeks without a new sister. 24-hours was bad enough. 2 weeks would make introducing a new cat into the household nearly impossible.

I also determined, rather to my surprise, that I didn't want a kitten. Kittens are cute and delightful and exhausting. I decided to go for a 1-year-old cat.

I looked up available cats at the Greater Portland Animal Refuge League. I selected three, starting with Chloe, as strong contenders.

I went right when the League opened. In 8 years, the location has been entirely renovated. The changes are FANTASTIC! I am highly impressed. I have always recommended the Greater Portland Animal Refuge League. I do so again with an exclamation mark!

I walked in--I saw a cat in the new and improved cages area through a glass partition. I said, "That cat has the right vibe."

I got permission to go into the cages area. The cat I saw was the first cat I'd selected online: Chloe.

She comes from Georgia. She has had at least one litter of kittens. She has been fixed and has all her shots. She looks more like the cat I grew up with, Chica, than any of my other cats. She is curious, independent, surprisingly sociable, and fearless without being aggressive. (She does like to chase Bob--I am utilizing my Millan techniques to stop this behavior.)

As with all my cats, I tried that thing people tell you to do where you put the cat in a room with a locked door--separate the new cat from the resident cat. This approach has worked with none of my cats. They become more frustrated by not knowing what is going on (scent with no identifiable attached object) than with the discomfort of a new animal in the vicinity. I did try to put Chloe in the front room in a wire cage. She got out, once through the back; once through the door (not sure how she did the latter). Ah, my escape artist!

I'm keeping her name. I informed her in the car that if she had been named, "Bubbles or Snowflake, I'd be giving you a middle name." But Chloe is a great name for a cat who has no qualms about her place in her new home.

Bob has qualms. Frankly, I have qualms. Chloe has none. She is a notable and worthy successor to Charlie.

* * *

2014

This week, I decided it was time for my oldest cat Aurora to go to kitty heaven (which actually, yes, I do believe in).

Aurora was 19-1/2 years old, the oldest cat I have ever known personally. The decision to euthanize was easier than with my cat, Max (see below). Max was 14, which is within the expected range but seemed relatively young to me (I grew up with a cat that lived to be 3+ years more). I wasn't prepared to make THAT decision. Consequently, I put off making it far too long.

I refused to let Aurora decline and suffer as badly. When she stopped eating, I immediately begun to watch for other signs. This past Saturday, I made the decision to wait until after the weekend. It was the right decision since I got to take her to our regular vet: The Cat Doctor. It also meant that both she and I were ready. The decision was still difficult (it is never easy!), but comparatively easier than with Max.

Living without her has been far more difficult. Aurora was my "first" cat. (I don't count Sidney, my cat in high school. Aurora was the first cat for whom I paid the vet bills!)

I got Aurora from a private owner when I was living in Washington State (1995). She was actually too young, being barely 6 weeks. (Many shelters won't let kittens go until after 8-10 weeks). She literally fit into the palm of my hand. When I was at work, she would creep into the gaps of my box spring mattress. The first time I came home and couldn't find her, I desperately called her name. I heard "mew mew mew" and turned around to find her scampering to me from under the bed.

At night, she would sleep in my hair--yep, I had long hair in those days!

I felt so guilty about her being so young and having no playmate that I would drive 20 minutes each way at lunch to see her: that meant I could only spend 20 minutes petting her, but I didn't mind! At the time I lived in a studio apartment; to entertain Aurora (she was quite active in those days), I would throw balls of paper from one end of the "shoebox" to the other. After we ran through one pile (about 20 of so paper balls), I'd switch positions.

We drove across country in a 1989 Dodge Colt that

looked very much like this 1983 model.

I moved from Washington to Maine (with a month's break), starting August 1996. Aurora took the trip alongside me! After several test drives during which she snuck under the brakes and clutch (it was a stick-shift), I finally broke down and got a large wire kennel cage that took up half the back seat (every book on traveling with pets says to do this anyway). I added an upside down cardboard box that she could either sit on or sleep inside--plus lots of blankets, a tiny litter box, and bowls.

I discovered pretty quickly that, like her owner, Aurora gets car-sick in the backseat. Every single day started out the same: I started driving--Aurora threw up--I cleaned out the cage--Aurora was fine the rest of the way.

The car was also not air-conditioned--which on the highways made no difference. In the cities and in states with lots of construction (yes, Utah, I mean you!), the car would get unbearably hot and Aurora would start hyperventilating. I would pour water on her head from a water bottle which sounds awful but actually helped.

During that trip, she stayed at a house with a ferret (which freaked her out), a house with another cat (which she didn't mind so much except she and the other cat got into a pissing and pooping match--who can fill up the other cat's litter box the most?!), multiple hotels (which she liked), a cozy bedroom in West Virginia (which she liked) and a basement in Ohio (which she didn't). She spent a few days in upstate New York before we both drove on to Maine, where she stayed on Peaks Island; there she met her brother Max.

Aurora and Bob

From Peaks Island, Aurora moved to an apartment on Woodfords Corner, then an apartment in the West End, and finally (for her) an apartment off Forest Ave; this means that over her lifetime, Aurora adjusted to a total of five apartments (in Washington, I lived for six months in a much larger and much nicer apartment than the studio apartment before moving to Maine). She was happiest in the last: more roomy than some of the others, fewer intruding smells. Truthfully, by the time we moved into this apartment, Aurora had reached the utterly-unfazed-by-anything stage of life.

Feed Me!
Courtesy: Jen Jones

She also tolerated two brothers, Max and Bob. Max she mothered and played with. Bob she accepted and agreed to play with (she did perk up after Bob arrived). She is survived by Bob--and me.

In terms of idiosyncrasies, for most of her life, Aurora would eat anything, including curry! She had a VERY loud yowl. She was shyer with people than my male cats have been. She was a better hunter than my male cats with sharper eyes (spotting birds on telephone wires) and (up until recently) better hearing. After Max died and gave up the position of animal-who-gets-to-sit-on-Kate's-lap-while-she-watches-TV, Aurora took over that position, only relinquishing it in the last two weeks. (When Bob took it over, I realized that both animals were sending me a message.)

Of all my cats, Aurora has been the most classic: short-haired tabby with all the proper markings, beautiful brown-tipped fur with a golden layer underneath, and huge, huge eyes.

Altogether, Aurora Woodbury had a remarkable life--for a human, let alone a cat--and bore it with remarkable sangfroid, even for a human!

* * *

2010

My cat, Max, died this morning at about 10:30 a.m. (July 26, 2010). I had him euthanized.

I'm writing this partly because writing helps me work things out but also because I want this post out there for anyone who ever feels as overwhelmed and anxious as I did about this decision. There's a lot of different opinions on the web about cat care; over the past week, I think I've read and synthesized most of it.

Although this was not the first time I'd seen a pet die, it was the first time that (1) the decision lay on my shoulders; (2) the cat's condition wasn't something I'd encountered before. Max had been failing for several months (rapidly over the course of the last week), but he wasn't actually paralyzed and occasionally looked alert.

What happened first?

First, I got Max in October 1996. I was living with my parents at the time, and I got him on Peaks Island. He was the friendliest of a group of kittens I went to look at. My older cat, Aurora, demonstrated some maternal instincts when he first showed up after which she promptly decided he was nuts. They more or less got along over the past 14 years.

Max always had to be where people were, investigating them and their stuff. He also wanted affection on a pretty constant basis: my high-maintenance cat. He was the kind of cat who would beg you for food, eat a couple of bites, and then rush back into the room to climb all over you. There were times when I thought he was going to climb inside my skin, he wanted affection so bad.

The first sign of trouble was this May when Max had labored breathing. The emergency animal clinic put him on prednisone which seemed to help; however, about the middle of June, he stopped eating. I switched from dry to wet food and got him to eat a few times a day. He began to get very weak in his back legs. He was no longer grooming himself, so I did that; he would still visit the litter box.

This past week, he stopped eating entirely unless I forced him though he would drink. He also began to search out hiding places. This, of course, was a radical personality change from the Max I was used to.

This weekend, he began to wheeze while laying on his side. He seemed to be in a catatonic state rather than asleep.

He did not cry although picking him up in certain ways obviously hurt him. Animals do not always show when they are in pain (they certainly don't have signs, saying, "Excuse me, I'm in pain"), but I formed the conclusion that he was.

Late Saturday night, I questioned whether I should take him to the emergency clinic to be euthanized even though I had just had his records moved to a regular veterinarian and wanted to take him there. After doing some research on the web, I formed the conclusion that he might die at home (which might be best) and that if he didn't, waiting until Monday to be absolutely sure he wasn't going to improve was the best option.

This morning, Monday, his condition was the same except he was slightly perkier (the weather is cooler). I made the appointment and took him in.

From my perspective, Max was very unhappy. However, based on the stuff I had read on the Internet, he certainly didn't look like a desiccated, hair-matted, eyes-filmed-over, at-death's-door cat. A part of me thought, Maybe, it is just asthma. We'll be going home with medication in two ticks.

However, I kept reiterating to the staff that I didn't want him to be put through lots of complicated and anxiety-producing tests. I would be doing it for me—and I was perfectly capable of doing it for me: What's VISA for?—not for him.

The extremely experienced vet (The Cat Doctor in Portland, Maine) was wonderful. She was practical and sympathetic without being maudlin or feeding me any "this is what you should have done" or "this is what GOOD owners do" stuff. It was clear within a few minutes that to her, Max's quality of life was so diminished that keeping him alive would be more for me than for Max. We took him into a room where she did a cursory exam (to make me happy, I think), and she was able to state that his problems were likely lung and/or heart-related and not the types of problems that could be cured or even managed without causing the cat a great deal of distress.

That wasn't what I wanted, so I gave the go ahead for him to be euthanized.

The Internet made it sound like he would be hooked up to some crazy machine, but she actually did it right there, right then. She pulled out a needle, already prepared (over the phone, I had put forward the possibility that Max would need to be put down, and she actually had two needles with her), and inserted it. She told me that there might be a brief struggle as the animal felt himself falling to sleep. But actually, Max didn't struggle at all. He was gone in less than two minutes without a complaint.

By the way, The Cat Doctor has tissue boxes ALL OVER THE CLINIC.

My options were to take the body with me, have a private cremation, or have a group cremation.

My parents offered to bury Max on the island which would have been appropriate, but I really didn't want to carry my dead cat around Portland. The idea of keeping an urn of my animal's ashes is thoroughly creepy. I opted for the group cremation and to have a mold made of Max's paw print.

The whole visit cost $100. I feel this is very reasonable although I realize other people may want cheaper options. Based on my Internet research, some shelters will euthanize for free. However, most vets charge around $50 for euthanasia and $50 for cremation (more, for personal cremation).

So what about my older cat, Aurora?

She's extremely healthy physically (she's two years older than Max, being 16). In terms of her mental? instinctual? state, I'm not sure. She ignored Max over the last two months. Animals can tell when other animals are dying; Aurora was actually, probably, the best indicator I had for how far gone he was, I just didn't see it.

She loves that I now serve wet food (mixed with dry).

Whether she will miss him or not, I have no idea. When she wanders around the house, it is hard to know if she is looking for Max or hoping I left some food out somewhere.

People say pets grieve, but I'm very wary of believing what people say about their pets: so often, it seems that the wish precedes the evidence. They want to see their own grief reflected in the remaining animal. The animal may actually be reacting more to the owner's emotional/instinct-based aura than to anything else.

In which case, Aurora is just going to have to suffer. Sorry. But I miss Max like crazy; I can't just switch it off.

How about another pet?

It is very tempting to go out TODAY and get a little kitten. But I'm opposed to that course of action for three reasons. The first is that I wouldn't be replacing Max; I would be trying to soothe my feelings. And the new kitten wouldn't BE Max. (This would be true even if I cloned Max; the new kitten would be itself; I've never understood why people think that two things are the same just because they share the same DNA. This isn't a nature or nurture thing. It's just a reality thing.)

Second, according to Cesar Millan, when an animal comes into a grieving household, it doesn't say, "Oh, I am so sorry for you all. How sad!"

It says, "These creatures are weak. Weak creatures are bad. I must control them!"

Or, rather, it doesn't think at all. It just does it.

I don't want a new kitten running my house. In any case, it deserves more equilibrium.

Finally, I have a more steady paycheck in the fall. New kittens cost!

Still, the new vet is all lined up!

Conclusion

To conclude, if you have an ill/dying/unhappy cat, and you are really worried about what direction to go . . . I can't really tell you what to do except you should trust your observations. One of the websites I read said, "My vet told me I would know when it was time." In retrospect, this is totally correct.

It is retrospect. However, when I told the vet, "I've been expecting him to be dead every morning over the last few days," she replied that when an owner feels this, it is likely time for the pet to go. I think this is close to what I read: the owner knows better than anyone what quality of life the animal is used to.

If you are worried that the vet will berate you for choosing euthanasia, the good ones won't. They will give you multiple options. If I had walked in there and said, "I want the full work-up! Save his life at all costs!!" they would have done it (as much as they could, at least). But it would have been the wrong decision, and the vet was very clear about where Max stood health-wise.

If you are worried that the process is ultra-expensive, it isn't although you can make it ultra-expensive! I feel that I gave Max dignity without sacrificing my checkbook to some ridiculous extravaganza that would make me feel . . . well, just as bad actually since it wouldn't bring him back. (If I were more solvent, I would have gone with the private cremation and sprinkled his ashes on Peaks Island; I don't think Mom's tulips would have minded. But I will never keep an urn of anyone's ashes in my house. I understand bones; bones are cool. Dirt is just dirt. And, in truth, I kind of like the idea of my cat being cremated with lots of other animals: it's a circle of life thing.)

And finally, if you are worried that it is painful for the animal, from what I witnessed, it wasn't at all. My vet did let me stay with Max which I'm not sure I would have been able to do if I'd taken him to the emergency clinic. He was calm when he got the injection, and I pet him until he passed. They also did all the administrative business in the room, so I didn't have to go bawl in the waiting area which made me very grateful.

Max was a really good cat, and he had a really good life. R.I.P.

Meet Kate

In many ways, I'm almost a cliche of myself. I live in a city apartment with two cats. I write short stories and novellas. I teach English Composition at local colleges (as an adjunct). I have a master's in a (sort of) useless degree--no, not philosophy: American & New England Studies (my thesis is on popular culture and literature and can be found here).

I'm a conservative libertarian (which may or may not break the cliche), a Mormon (which probably does), and a lover of popular culture from manga to sitcoms, mystery shows to romance paperbacks. As a writer, my short stories are mostly fantasy and science-fiction; my novellas are Victorian world fantasy, historical tributes, and contemporary mystery.

I adore stuff like string theory although I don't understand much of it, and am a skeptic about anything that gets too labelly. (See my philosophy below where I go on and on and on about that.)

I can be reached at nitaheerk@gmail.com (it's an anagram).

Many of the pictures below were taken by Jen, my friend since kindergarten. Without Jen, I would probably have no photographic record of my adult life since I'm the kind of person who takes cameras to places and then overexposes the entire roll (or accidentally deletes all the pictures on a cell phone). Thanks, Jen!

This picture, however, was taken by my mom:

My Other Life

Foggy Day in Maine

Jen and Kate

The Things People Don't Know About Our Family . . .

My Seminary Students (I Confess, I Taught Them to Read the Scriptures & Fight)

Woodbury Ladies: Kate, Beth, Mom, Ann, Kezia

Kate, Mom, Ann, Kezia at Lobster Shack

Kate, Mom, Ann, Kezia, and Dad, the Patriarch

Teacher Kate Profile Pic

Kate and Her Philosophy

Popular Culture and Orthodoxy
What do I think about popular culture?

There are, in sum, two positions taken by scholastics towards popular culture.

(1) Popular culture is a negative: the purveyor of all that is crass, low-brow and disgusting. It promotes/produces greed, capitalism (which is perceived as a negative), class warfare and immorality.

This argument has been around for thousands of years. You just have to read Plato to realize how long people have been twisting themselves into knots over "low" culture. Plato wanted to get rid of it, but others have wanted to "correct" or "fix" or "improve" the tastes of the "low," and they've wanted to do it since, probably, the first hunter/gatherers found they had a little extra time in the evenings. Probably Adam walked out of the garden of Eden, went, "Yo, football," at which point Cro-Magnons tried to earnestly educate him in the importance of cave art, except for the guy actually doing the cave art who wondered what all the fuss was about.

(2) There are hidden, da Vinci code-like messages within popular culture. Despite the fact that popular culture is run by crass, greedy capitalistic studios, publishing companies, etc., true artists have managed to sneak in their avant garde theories about sex, politics, economics, etc. Agatha Christie was really promoting a lesbian, Marxist agenda--that sort of thing.

I think this is nonsense, but not because it isn't true. It might be true. All art at some point has contact with an individual mind—even Hollywood dramas, believe it or not. An individual has to write the script, seven individuals if it is team-written. An individual has to direct. Several individuals have to work the cameras, lights, etc. Individuals have to speak the lines. And we view it as individuals, even if we're sitting in a movie theatre with three hundred or a thousand other people. We may be members of our communities, but we live in our own heads and die in our own heads. And what is created will subsequently always have an individual component.

What makes (2) nonsense is how far it gets taken. After all, you can find an agenda in anything or anywhere if you try hard enough. Look at what people do to the Bible. Look at what people do to themselves. Eventually, you end up with "heads I win/tails you lose" approaches. I've heard the Statue of Liberty described as chauvinistic because it is a "silent woman," i.e. our country is built on a patriarchal system which subjects women to the role of torch-bearing silent wives and mothers. Which could be true. But if the Statue of Liberty were a man, it could be interpreted as a chauvinistic symbol for promoting the male image as protector of the nation, implying that women are too weak to be protectors (and are silent since they don't even get their own statue). "Lose/lose." Ideologies are not the best way of figuring out what something means to the culture at large.

And popular culture is, to a great extent, about the culture at large: what people want to see and hear and watch. Whether we like it or not, what ends up in the popular culture is going to be a reflection, at some point, of consensus. And we can either belittle that consensus or try to persuade ourselves that it isn't what it looks like ("Red States didn't vote for Bush because they like him; they just voted out of fear.") or we can try to understand it.

Which brings us to possibility (3):

(3) Popular Culture is the voice of orthodoxy--the assumptions and conventionalities of society--and that isn't automatically a horrible thing.

Of course, if you combine my initial assertion, that we are each undergoing an individual existence, with this secondary assertion of a "crowd" or "mass" orthodoxy, you're going to get an orthodoxy that is riddled with exceptions, alternate orthodoxies, orthodoxies within orthodoxies and subcultures: a multiplicity of layers. Nothing is what it seems.

For the purposes of this site, the orthodoxy of Popular Culture (i.e. what you see on TV or read in popular books) refers to those (often conservative) assumptions that are embedded within culture from political speeches to television episodes.

Take, for instance, the show House. It isn't a preachy show, but there is an underlying morality (like with many crime or mystery shows): (1) everybody lies because everybody has something to protect; (2) science is good and modern medicine is usually right; (3) rules and restrictions prevent smart people from doing their jobs; (4) telling the truth is more important than being kind and may save someone's life; (5) kids are products of their environment, i.e. lying parents.

We can agree with these assumptions; we can disparage them; we can point out (which is more interesting) when they conflict within the show. We can make generalized ideological statements about them: "These assumptions reflect the heremetic commodification of goods in an imperialistic society." Or we can say, "People respond to these assumptions. Why? Where else are these assumptions reflected? What do they reveal about human nature?"

We can, in other words, let the orthodoxy speak. And speak for itself. We don't have to agree. But we can give it space to breath. We don't have to judge (which that is what ideological approaches usually lead to). This approach allows for appreciation and understanding without judgment. Nobody is trying to save the world here. We just want to see it.

Why I Think I Can Do This

Why I think I can do this (let the orthodoxy speak) is because I am a conservative libertarian raised in an intellectually stimulating household by iconoclastic parents in an orthodox religion.

Basically, I'm an active, somewhat unorthodox Mormon who votes conservative and doesn't like intellectual bosh. How this happened is beyond me and, I think, to my equally independent siblings as well.

1/3rd of the Family

I was raised in a house without a TV, not for any religious or cultural reasons; for no other reason, really, than that my parents didn't want it around. We went to movies quite a lot. The first movie I remember seeing was Star Wars, the original, which I adored. I now own a TV, VCR and DVD as do all of my siblings. But I don't regret being television-less as a child, although I sure did complain about it at the time.

We had bookcases in every room in our house, and they were filled with just about every possible combination of books and magazines: Tolkien, Sports Illustrated, Star Trek novellas, Cricket Magazine, Reader's Digest, National Geographic, The Bible, The Book of Mormon, World Book Encyclopedia, Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, art books, history books, C.S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, the Melendy books, Steven Kellogg, Brothers Grimm, Hilda Van Stockhum, John Irving, religious commentary books, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Shakespeare, Japanese magazines, computer manuals, books on ballet, Highlights Magazine, archaeology books, library books.

Our family attended Shakespeare plays and operas and ballets. My dad listened to opera every Saturday morning. My mother, who is an artist, had paintings by Van Gogh and Bruegel hung about the house.

Such an upbringing would—you'd have thought—have produced a bunch of intellectual snobs.

Well, we may be intellectuals. And we may be snobs. But we aren't intellectual snobs, or at least we don't bear the traits usually associated with intellectual snobbery.

This is because, thank goodness, I was never fed any accompanying ideology to all this high culture. We went to Shakespeare and listened to opera and watched ballet for the same reasons my parents didn't own a TV—it's what they felt like doing. They liked Shakespeare and opera (at least my dad) and ballet. It was natural. We didn't go because it was Important or Educational or Significant or Intellectual.

Furthermore, I don't remember my mother (who read to me up until Junior High) ever asking me "What Does This Book Mean To You?" The artistic experience was not cluttered up by any Deep Thinking or even any Deep Moral Thinking. I was allowed to enjoy the book or the play or the painting or the poem or the whatever. Without judgment. Just cause I wanted to.

Which isn't to say my family isn't opinionated. I can remember arguments over The Merchant of Venice, The Black Stallion (the movie) and Midsummer Night's Dream. I can also remember arguments over the Yankees, the Dodgers, science, art, religion, and mowing the grass.

So basically I had lots of purposeless high culture and lots of low culture (despite the lack of a television). And I had smart, opinionated people speaking their minds all over the place. And I went to church. And still do. Mormonism has a strong, theological base which spells out profound and yet (in a theological sense) uncomplicated doctrines. Mormonism has tended towards the practical throughout its history. There are icons within Mormonism but the day-to-day experience of Mormonism is, for a religion, comparatively unpretentious. Pray, read your scriptures, go to church, be nice, pretty much sums it up. Don't be stupid is in there somewhere as well.

My feelings about the institutional side of belonging to an organized religion are somewhat more complicated and I address some of those feelings in a series of talks. In sum, the practice of balancing a faith-based belief with an empirical-biased mind within an iconoclastic personality creates . . . a lot of reflection.

So, what does all this have to do with popular culture?

It means I believe in free will. It means I think that people watch reality shows because they want to, not because they've been brainwashed by the media. It means I think the trite, orthodox and conventional messages of popular culture are there because people want them to be there, and I include myself in with "people." And finally, it means that I believe that popular culture is fun and trying to over-intellectualize can also be fun but not necessarily insightful.

One or Two More Thoughts

NOTE: What Do I Mean by Ideologies?
I refer to "ideologies" several times in this Introduction and usually disparagingly. What I mean by ideologies is any perspective that uses the word "construct." I probably use it myself on my blogs so I apologize in advance; still, I get nervous around phrases like "nationalistic construct," "racist construct," "regional construct" because such phrases are inevitably followed up by a view of human nature that excises the personal, individual and idiosyncratic not to mention free will. It's one thing to look at life from a macro and then a micro point of view. It's another to excise the micro altogether: like Marxist ideology which presupposes that everyone reacts according to type. It's a bit Asimov's Foundation series-ish, and although I admire Asimov tremendously, I never bought into the premise.

It's All Real

It's Official!

The Graduate

I received my diploma from the University of Southern Maine in Spring 2006. I now have a Master's degree in American & New England Studies. Now that I have finished, I should be able to tell you what one does with a Master's in American & New England Studies. I will use my graduate level training to answer: "One is able to reflect on the interconnectiveneness of the reciprocity of dialectical imperatives enclosed in the ideological codification of perceptional, nay, liminal, social processes in which commodification, marginalization and imperialistic contracts are envisioned."

Oh, and lots, lots more.

In fact, I have been able to teach courses such as New England Folklore and Working Women in America due to my degree 😃

2008 Pictures

I have mentioned elsewhere that photo-taking is not one of my strengths. My friend, Jen, is my unofficial official photographer. She has many other things to do, but when she visits every summer, we take tons of pictures and another year of my life is luckily recorded.

Here are the 2008 Photos: