Author: Brian J. Noggle

As you might recall, gentle reader, we had a cat euthanized last month.

So a share from Instapundit on Facebook really hit home.

“It turns out that pets also have last wills before they die, but only known to vets who put old and sick animals to sleep.” Twitter user Jesse Dietrich asked a vet what the hardest part of his job was.

The specialist replied without hesitation that the hardest thing for him was seeing how old or sick animals look for their owners before they fall asleep. The fact is 90% of owners don’t want to be in a room with a dying animal. People leave so they don’t see their animals leave. But they don’t realize it’s in these last moments of life that their animal needs them the most.

Vets are asking owners to stay close to animals until the end. “It is inevitable that they die before you. Remember that you were the center of their lives. Maybe they were just a part of you. But they are also your family. Even if it’s hard, don’t give up on them.

Don’t let them die in a room with a stranger in a place they don’t like. It’s very painful for vets to see how pets can’t find their owner in the last minutes of their lives. They don’t understand why their master left them. After all, they needed the consolation of their master.

Veterinarians do their best to make animals not so scared, but they are totally strangers to them. Don’t be a coward because it’s too painful for you. Think about the animal. Endure that pain for them. Be with them until the end.

You know, we’ve had to put down four cats and a dog over the years, and I’ve always been with them to the end. Galt expired on my wife’s lap as we were on the way to have him euthanized, and Ajax died in the yard.

Yeah, the hardest part is not the grieving. The hardest part is watching someone you love grieving.

You know, back about 1990, I would have been hard pressed to say I had a favorite New Kids on the Block song because in my neighborhood, the New Kids on the Block were uncool. If pressed, I guess I would have said “The Right Stuff” or “I’ll Be Loving You Forever”. I guess my neighborhood jumped off the New Kids on the Block train early, as they had a number of albums after 1990, and my younger cousin is still a squeegirl about them.

But thirty-two years later, I have a clear answer: “Bring Back the Time”:

This is also my favorite Salt-n-Pepa song, my favorite En Vogue song, and my favorite Rick Astley song simultaneously.

Also, how about a selection from Billy Ray Cyrus?

You know, I got a speeding ticket recently, and that should have made me feel young, but in the hair color slot, the officer wrote BALD. C’mon, man, I am not completely bald–I have short hair, and it’s blond or maybe steel grey. I mean, I would go full Statham but my wife is against it. So I have not just gone full Statham yet.

And I am growing uncomfortable going to my mother-in-law’s retirement community because I’m often mistaken by other residents as being a new neighbor. Hopefully, it’s just a matter of those ninety-year-old ladies thinking that anyone from forty to seventy looks young and not that I look seventy.

FCC orders phone companies to block auto warranty robocalls

Clearly, the spam auto warranty calls were blocking the spam political calls, and the politicians demanded action.

I kid you not, we have been getting calls from one robopolling company several times every hour for several days.

You know who election year phone calls is killing? The phone company. We’re one of the last holdouts with a land line, and we’re about to dump it just so we can get our scam and spam calls on the go on our mobile devices.

(Link via Wirecutter.)

So on Saturday, after a rare martial arts class for me, I dragged my youngest to Rublecon at Relics Antique Center. As you might remember, gentle reader, I visited this small comic book and collectible convention in 2019, when I bought Potbelly Mammoth Volume 1. Of course, with the Ever Recent Unpleasantness, I have not been to a similar convention since then.

But we went in, not long before the only cosplayer present, someone dressed as Cobra Commander in battle mask, arrived. This person was putting on the helmet as we crossed the parking lot.

So it was a little smaller than Gaming Arts Media Expo and LibraryCon (RIP, apparently). I’d taken out some cash from the automated teller machine machine using my personal identification number number before hand, and the first two tables counter-clockwise were Anthony Hunter and Matt Decker, the comic book artists behind Lame Brains, Silent Sillies, and Zombie Dave. Which kind of explained a bit of my confusion: Both have zombie-themed comics, and I see them every (couple of now) year(s) at cons. So I was not sure about which issues I’d had of their work. So I overbought to be safe.

So, basically, the comics were it. I got:

• Silent Sillies #2 and #3, although research indicates I already had them.
• Lame Brains #3.
• Zemara #0, a preview issue of a new series that Anthony Hunter is working on.
• Zombie Dave #4 and #5. The son helped keep me straight as to which issues we had in this series.
• Cub Team Alpha #1, which looks to be a kids’ series.
• The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray by Robert Schnakenberg at a retro collectibles table. It was $10, but it’s BFM.
• The History of Pierce City Through Post Cards, Photographs, Papers, and People by David H. Jones at a table with old magazines and whatnot. The author, the guy behind the table, is a historian and librarian from Pierce City, so of course I told him the story. The book is not in the picture because it slid around in the back of the truck, so I didn’t grab it with the other gleanings. I was pleased when I went back to the truck and found it–I was afraid I had set it down on a table and left it there.

So it was about sixty bucks, but I saved a lot of money.

One table had old video game systems and had an Atari 2600 in its box ($150) along with some cherry cartridges in their original boxes including several Star Raiders complete with keypad controller. But I already have, what, five or six Ataris in both black and wood trim and an Atari, Jr., floating around here? So I told my youngest, “Ah, but if they had an Intellivision or ColecoVision…”, and I looked to the other end of the table (to which the helpful proprietor was gesturing, and lo, an Intellivision with all the accoutrements. $200 could have bought me the lot, but I demurred. I am thinking of downsizing my collection as it is.

Another booth, the one where I bought the Bill Murray book, had some off-brand first generation table tennis game that also accepted cartridges along with several cartridges for $300. I don’t think I’ve seen one like it ever before. But, again, fiscal responsibility and thinking about unhoarding while people my age have some spending power.

It doesn’t look like there’ll be a LibraryCon this year, and apparently the GAME con here in town will be the last one. Which, too, will help my fiscal restraint. But not Saturday.

Yeah, verily, some might think we worship cats at Nogglestead. We have several (three indoors these days, one outdoors, and another that comes around but has a day home or day job). We have statues of cats. We have paintings with cats in them. When one is at Nogglestead, one sees cats everywhere. Sometimes when there isn’t actually a cat.

Such as this tableau that appeared on the table for a couple of weeks. The table downstairs, now a larger table after my mother-in-law’s downsizing, is not only the staging area for numerous Good Book Hunting photographs, but it’s also an accumulation point for the downstairs detritus. Books and toys (even now) that should go back to the boys’ bedrooms; Christmas cards and thank-you cards gotten out for periodic card-writing and then not put away for a while; articles of clothing (not socks) that need to go up to the laundry; puzzles and games gotten from the game cabinet but not returned; and a throw blanket or two.

From time to time, a cat will hop up there to have a rest amongst the soft nesting materials. So when I saw this, I thought the black cat had done so:

But the black cat was passing through on my lap.

Apparently, my pattern-matching algorithm favors cat in the house, as this was other things.

Instead of a cat, we have a crumpled cleaning cloth (made from an old Telerik Tools t-shirt, if I am not mistaken) and a Phillips 66 cap.

Even knowing now what I didn’t then, I would still want to pet it. As I do with an old stuffed cat that has found its way onto the back of the sofa in the living room (not Tristan II, who is still hanging above the bed) and the other scattered stuffed cats–c’mon, man, of course, Nogglestead has stuffed cats, too–or throw blankets that are arranged with corners sticking up on the sofa in the dim light.