the Earth-bound adventures of the Lost and Found

ash went on her first visit to the vet yesterday for a general check-up. the very nice dr. gorre (on r. landon st. i recommend him to everyone out there who has pets. very helpful. gave me very good advice on the phone last week although he had never met me) cleaned ashley's ears, gave her orange-colored, yummy de-worming medicine, vaccinated her against five cat diseases, and sprayed her with some anti-flea solution. except for the de-worming medicine, ash hated every moment of it. bit dr. gorre's hand as he injected the vaccine, tried to scratch his assistant tony's face, and yowled as i had never heard before, not even when i give her baths. in the end, as she shivered from the anti-flea spray, she looked defeated, but nevertheless still proud, keeping warm beside tony as i took her photo. not only did dr. gorre give me six cans of friskies tuna & mackerel, he also gave me a discount on the bill! we're supposed to come back in a month for booster and ant-rabies s...

ashley went missing today. for the first time. and i got worried because she ALWAYS comes running when i call her, no matter where she's sleeping or playing. so i knew someone must have taken her by force. like last time, when we were in laguna , she went missing because someone had put her inside a big, box-like wooden divider. good thing i heard her meow when she heard me calling. although i feared it, i knew it was unlikely that she would be run over by a car, or killed by a dog, because this baby's smart and knows how to take care of herself. so really, it could only be kid(cat)napping. anyway, what made the situation worse is that ashley bit my officemate's foot when she was stepped on last week, and we had agreed that ashely be observed for 10 days for signs of rabies (i had already paid for my officemate's anti-tetanus shots and antibiotics). now that she had disappeared, how could we observe her? i looked for her like crazy again and again all over the office...

thanks to ana , ashley now has a new playmate (a substitute for our kitten at home whom she befriended only after nights of catfights). a perfect match, just like caesura's . when i bought her a puppy roughly the same size, she snubbed it after one bite. but when i gave THIS one to her today at the office, she was rolling on the floor with it immediately. i even have a video of it =D i think she thinks it's a real kitten. when she sees its face she pokes it and wonders why it doesn't poke back.

One of the things my mother sent for Christmas--my own 6-piece bubble set!

well, you got a glimpse of how it was. here are the rest of the photos showing one of ashley's favorite activities. in davao, she finally learned how to play with another kitten, too. and got good at climbing up and down the stairs by herself to follow me. other favorite activities--climbing up the face of my screen door and up my father and brother's legs during meals, sitting beside visitors on the sofa.... i actually regret it a little that i had to take her away from all that, just when she was feeling so settled =( but i want to take her to the vet, give her shots and all that before i leave her in davao where we already have too many animals.

december 24, 2005 Davao City so there i was out in the garden at half past midnight, with only a towel on and the animal-print rain boots that my mother had given me. as i emptied the shovel into ashley's homemade litter box for the third time, i thought to myself: if this isn't love, i don't know what is. (no, this is not a fantasy or an allegory. i actually do stupid things like this. later that day, by the way, ashley almost died. but, of course, God was watching over my baby and saved her from the dogs) merry christmas everyone! can't post that much that often because i only have dial-up here. till next year! happy holidays and God bless you richly in the coming year =)

Okay, okay, so I'm obsessed. But isn't she ADORABLE? Photos taken December 15 and 16 at the office =) (i've taken to bringing her up to my desk in the afternoons because our big, gay office cat always eats up her food if i leave it downstairs). Have videos of ashley playing, too, but can't upload videos on Multiply anymore =( I LOVE MY CAT pin courtesy of cris , from the I Love You Store, where i got my oktomat =)

November 23 to 27, 2005. photos to complement my journal entry on ashley's first flight .

(an excerpt from my real paper journal, with some additions)   December 7, 2005 3:30 PM, My Room   perhaps this is an inordinately long break i’m taking from answering my scholarship forms. but look at this gray rain! and i suddenly miss the earthy music and dancing. even just tapping my fingers on my bamboo flute stirs up something in me.   it must be partly my cold, too, that as usual makes what is essential in this world more stark to my senses. whatever it is, i have totally forgotten my “real” life. i’m dreaming again, the way i always do when i’m under my acacia tree.   all i can think of is the smell of the rain, and how i used to sit up in bed, too, in Davao , in this same half-light, on days when only the rain mattered.   i suppose growing up had something to do with the loss of those rainy days. i’ve had to think of other people, how they need me, how i should be making myself available to them. selfishness has always been one of my great flaws.  ...

December 6, 2005 9:55 pm, Fine Cuisine   i woke up at dusk after a long nap, and for the first time, i didn’t feel the loneliness and vulnerability that i’ve always felt at dusk ever since i was a child. instead, i welcomed the solitude and the coming darkness. have i, perhaps, finally grown up? or am i just numb today?   just last night, i was feeling sick, partly caused, i believe, by some inexplicable emotional turmoil. but anyway, when i’m physically out of sorts, i become even more emotionally/ physically vulnerable. it’s like i lose all my energy to do anything by myself and long for a warm body to make me feel safe [so, ana, i ALMOST didn’t make it to the movie because you’d gone ahead to ayala]. good thing lots of water and prayers made it disappear by the time i woke up, and now i just have a cold.   right now i’m supposed to be doing my scholarship application, but i’m just missing ashley =( she’s been kicked out of the house. just yesterday, new house rules wer...

...as cris said. so here are the post-birthday presents that still made it in november, in order of arrival: 1) from jemi - a Jude Deveraux book (about three women who have the same birthday and travel back in time to change their lives =), reminiscent of high school and the classic A Knight in Shining Armor) and a Maya Angelou card 2) from mama (who likes to give in excess) - aside from a balikbayan box of clothes that actually fit me, gummy candy, the november angel , and some other stuff that came in september, plus the bill for my birthday dinner , this package arrived last sunday: a denim jacket, a black purse, clinique lip gloss, birthday candles, other little things, and food (which you can no longer see in the picture) 3) from cris - flowers (with silver dust and beads of water to boot!) that arrived yesterday. the delivery guy even got lost because of a wrong address and started calling all the houses in our compound looking for me. sent from a cebu flower shop, t...

like all first-time mothers, i was a bit anxious about my baby's first plane ride. but as before, i was more anxious than she was. she was so behaved, and eventually treated her carrier (which again i had borrowed from ana , who bought it when she had to bring caesura from manila to cebu as a baby) as if it were her private bedroom. (gave her a warm bath the night before, with more neighborhood kids trying to help out). you can check out the photos in my album .                                                      and of course, everywhere i go, she's always a conversation-starter. i had to check her into the live animals section, and a mean man at the airport was saying, "gamay pa man ni. mabuhi kaha ni?". other popular questions...

at church, in a jeep, at the office, at the beach...check out the Traveling Cat in my journal ;-)

here are the photos to match the birthday journal entry. i don't think i need to explain, but i think i should warn you about the graphic self-portraits =P really, the things you think of doing when you're alone with a tripod and a camera. i tried my best to post only the most decent ones. brace yourselves.

it's just been a week and a half since i found ashley, and wow, her teeth have really grown. and claws, too. the scars on my hands are proof of that, especially when she's really hungry. but we've adjusted to each other better, especially after our trip south for my birthday. surprisingly, she wasn't afraid of the waves, which were quite high last week because of a typhoon somewhere in surigao. she didn't mind the bus ride as much as i did, either. a summary of my birthday weekend: 17-18: took a leave from work to rent a cottage by the sea in south cebu. went snorkelling only three times because of the bad visibility the first two days.  and with a portable tripod and a digital camera with a self-timer, you can just imagine how i spent my time   moon was full, though cloudy. took some long exposures of it with my trusty manual camera and tripod. 19: woke up to catch the orange (this time) sunrise on my birthday  was supposed to go diving on the day itself, but so...

lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia to be published on November 19, 2005     Because this is supposed to come out on my birthday, I had started writing about something else entirely. And then SHE walked my way.   So there I was, taking a stroll after a solitary dinner. I was supposed to be hurrying home to write this column, but I had deliberately gone round the long way, in the hope of bumping into someone I knew. Instead, I bumped into her. She was shrieking on the sidewalk, too tiny to feed on anything but milk. As I am wont to do in these situations, I picked up the filthy ball of fur to return her to wherever her mother was. Problem was, no mother was to be found. Someone had dropped her there, a man on the sidewalk said. She would just die if I didn’t take her home, he said. What else was I supposed to do?   After a quick stop at a convenience store to buy powdered milk, I carried her home, quite appropriately, on top of my “Poetry for the Earth”...