Tag: cats

2025 Year In Review: La La Land

Posted on by Elise
All podcasts are video now.

I began writing this after a relentless 24 hours of miserable news. Another mass shooting on a college campus, a massacre of Australian Jews on the first night of Hanukkah, the stabbing deaths of legendary Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle, in their home, by their adult son. The barrage of bad news in a concentrated period is not unlike the rest of this year, which started with my home of Los Angeles ablaze on the West side and the East side, in the mountains and along the coast. Elon Musk dismantled global food and medical aid like he was just dusting off dirt from his shoulder, and hundreds of thousands of children are dying as a result. And by summer, we were the first of many cities to face brutal ICE raids and effectively, kidnappings, and occupied by National Guard troops, sent by a president who views more than half this country and its millions of immigrants as his enemies.

In the midst of all this misery we still have jobs to do and bills to pay and children to raise. Compared to last year’s recap, this one feels decidedly more dreary. We’re in this time of both frequent natural disaster and self-inflicted national crisis (how is there still no meaningful gun control, it’s a known public health epidemic)!

One of my responses this year has been to create more art and try and make an impact and better connects people or deepens understanding. In the pursuit of generative work, I’ve enjoyed a very “LA” year, both spending more time living here and not traveling as much, and engaging in its entertainment industry. I went to the Oscars for the first time, finished writing the screenplay version of FLAWLESS (though it later died in development, and have spent more than 30 days on location, co-directing a documentary. It features four kids who either lost their homes or were displaced by January’s fires. They range in age from 12 to 17, and I’ve essentially taken on four other kids this year to text with and check up on, in order to embed with their families for mundanities and milestones. By this time next year, I hope we will have a finished film — WINDSWEPT. We need help funding it, so pitch in if you can.

Directing WINDSWEPT on Christmas Tree Lane, Altadena

And without further yapping, herewith a recap of my 2025.

Favorite Creator of the Year: Luke Holloway, the guy who turns awkward Tinder conversations into smash hit songs, none of which were bigger than “I have one daughter,” (no shade to K-Pop Demon Hunters)

Favorite Interview of the Year: Pooh Bear, the prolific music producer known for hits with Justin Bieber, among many many others. While we were on stage, he took a concept from the crowd and straight up wrote a hook and post-hook for it within three minutes, then challenged the AI tool Suno to do the same, “in the style of Poo Bear.” And right there on stage we all felt the ineffable quality of humanness in the actual human’s song, showing that at least for now, AI is still pretty mid. CLOSE SECOND: Stacey Abrams, who revealed how much she loves the Amazon TV show, Reacher.

New Places: The Narrows in Zion National Park, Jacksonville, Deadwood, SD, the Angeles National Forest

Favorite Films: Sinners, Rental Family, Splitsville

Firsts: Attending the Oscars, speaking at the Met, TED Talk launch, hosting a podcast for the BBC, pitching networks on my documentary, finishing a screenplay and getting paid for it, a Luchador show in Mexico City, inducing dog vomiting, finding a dead bird in my bed that the cat brought in.

Nerdiest Accomplishment: I won $10 in a category of my tennis pool. We bet on the four majors by picking players seeded 1-10, 11-20 and an unseeded player and see how they fare.

Live Show of the Year: Labiahead, the all-woman Radiohead tribute band featuring Lena TKTK and Charlene Kaye, who is also…

New Friend of the Year: Charlene Kaye. She’s a comedian and musician … a musical comedian. We met through my book, Flawless. She read it and reached out over Instagram, we became Instagram-friendly for a couple years, and this year I pitched her for a TED Talk and in November, she absolutely brought the house down as she closed out TEDNext with her performance-slash-talk that I cannot wait to share once it’s released. CLOSE SECOND: Jena Friedman, another uproariously funny comedian whose hourlong special, MotherF*cker, is a must-see if you can get a ticket.

Most Thrilling Sport Match/Game of the Year: It’s a tie between Game Seven of the World Series and the Men’s Final of the French Open, a grueling five-hour slugfest in which Carlos Alcaraz clawed his way back from two (or was it three) Championship points to best his rival Jannik Sinner,

And in no particular order, this year I:

Joined a hip new coworking space
Started filling in on KCRW’s Press Play
Became the mom of a teen
Covered the costliest natural disaster in global history
Fostered a cat fire survivor
Started filming a documentary
Joined the board of the Birthday Party Project
Hosted a medical podcast
Began hosting a weekly parenting podcast
Twice endured a live mouse in my house that the cat dragged in
Sat in the very front row of the Hollywood Bowl, something all should experience
Saw so much live music: Nelly, Ja Rule, Eve, KC of KC and Jojo, Keith “Babyface” Edmonds, Labiahead, Samora Pinderhughes and the Healing Project Choir, Joshua Bell and the Chamber Orchestra of America
Went to Mexico City with friends for my birthday, got violently ill, then had to endure a full body massage while having the chills and on the precipice of explosive diarrhea at any moment
Got my book and my podcast shouted out (on separate occassions) in the NY Times
Saw the Japanese edition of my book hit shelves
Got sharked by Mark Cuban for a speaking engagement
Decided to shut down our small business started with my girlfriends
Moved in with my man, well, actually, he moved in with us
Won a $35,000 grant for our documentary
Spent a countless number of hours in volleyball gyms and on soccer sidelines, as two out of three of my girls are on travel teams
Ran 149 miles, still way down from my COVID-era highs, but played a lot of tennis
Read 33 books
Wrote 25 newsletter dispatches
Flew 38,097 miles to 25 cities, three countries and spent 66 days away from home

PREVIOUS YEARS IN REVIEW

2024 | 2023 | 2022|2021|2020 |2019 | 2018 | 2017 |  2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010|2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004

Cat and Mouse

Posted on by Elise

Throughout 2025 my cat, Abe, has taken it upon himself to “go hunting” and bring me his spoils. True story: One morning I awoke to the sound of chirping IN MY OWN BED and it was a tiny motionless bird that my cat had dragged in.

This morning I awoke to the sound of my cat cornering a mouse (or a rodent of some sort) in my shower. He managed to chase it into the clothing hamper. I then proceeded to lift the hamper and try and take the tiny mammal outside. Frightened, that was when the rat came SCURRYING UPWARD AND OUT of the hamper and up the side of a doorframe. Now my cat is in a standoff with the rat high above him, a rat frozen in fear. I am similarly frozen in fear and decided to do nothing and instead write a blog post while this situation plays itself out.

That’s a rat tail.

I Heart LA

Posted on by Elise

The skies are clear today, making the contrast between the giant plumes of smoke out my window so striking against blue skies.

My home is in on LA’s Westside near the coast, but not in a canyon or the hills, which are the two types of places most threatened by the multiple fires that broke out this week. The cause of these fires is under investigation, but we know they are fueled by those unpredictable Santa Ana winds. Of those winds, I’m reminded of Joan Didion’s writing, in Slouching Towards Bethlehem:

“It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles to realize how radically the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination. The city burning is Los Angeles’s deepest image of itself. Nathaniel West perceived that, in The Day of the Locust, and at the time of the 1965 Watts riots what struck the imagination most indelibly were the fires. For days one could drive the Harbor Freeway and see the city on fire, just as we had always known it would be in the end. Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The winds shows us how close to the edge we are.”

On Monday, my friend Morgan and I were eating lunch out on a patio, soaking in the beautiful weather and feeling guilty that we had it so good in LA, while so much of the rest of the country was buried under snow and sleet. (Morgan is now out on fire lines reporting for NBC News.)

By Tuesday, winds had shifted and picked up so fast that the speed of spreading wildfires was measured in miles per hour. On that day, the largest of the many fires in LA county, the Palisades Fire, burned to ashes the neighborhood where my partner Rob and his family grew up. The humans are safe, but so much property is wiped out. The post office where his sister mailed her college applications. Where they bought their Thanksgiving turkey every year. Where they rode their bikes. (Rob’s sister Joanna wrote heart-wrenchingly of this, for The New York Times.)

Below is video of the Palisades Village part of Pacific Palisades, on Tuesday night at sunset.

On Wednesday morning, I awoke to a message asking whether I could be on Morning Edition in 20 minutes. Before I went to sleep the night before, I had reached out to my old colleagues at NPR on the national desk, which is the desk that springs into action in a disaster. By the time I woke up, the editors of this metastasizing story were hungry for more coverage and I frankly felt relieved to be able to pitch in to contribute. So far, between a near constant stream of spot news dispatched, I’ve reported on folks who lost their homes in Pasadena and the Palisades, and the extraordinary volunteer effort to aid during this disaster.

Thursday the girls were all home from school, as their classes were canceled. We held a morning meeting as a family to discuss how to help. Eva suggested fostering kitties, because she is a cat person. Luna suggested making sandwiches for those in need, which is something we do for displaced people at other times during the year. Our most anxious child, Isa said, “WHAT ABOUT US?! What if WE need to evacuate and our house burns down?” By evening, we had made the sack lunches for Covenant House, a shelter for displaced young people, and I delivered them to K-town since I was reporting in that neighborhood anyway. Seeing the outpouring of donations and community come together in this crisis moved me deeply; I love Los Angeles, I love all its shapes and sizes and colors and the faith folks have in this place and each other.

Volunteers at the Koreatown YMCA on Thursday

And folks on Instagram got us in touch with a woman in the Palisades who lost her home and needed to find shelter for their eight cats. Now we have Minx, a fire victim and evacuee, at our house.

Palisades Fire evacuee temporarily at the Hu house.

Friday, thanks to enduring relationships with NPR producers, Janet W. Lee, who happened to be in town, mixed our K-town piece while I tried to keep the kids occupied, as schools remain closed. By evening, Rob’s mom, who thought she was okay to head back to her Brentwood house, had to heed the warnings to stay out of the mandatory evacuation zone, for the officials had instituted a dusk to dawn curfew, which remains in effect.

What a year this week has been. There is no one in this county of 10 million that doesn’t know someone who lost everything. The scale of this disaster will change this special place forever. We count ourselves among the fortunate ones. Still cozy, in our own homes, with our creatures, and with all the food and water and power we need. Please consider giving to these aid organizations, which my friend and fellow Angeleno Chris Duffy shared this morning:

2020 Year in Review: Brave New World

Posted on by Elise

“It felt vaguely like being forced to live in a building splintered by a wrecking ball before the rebuilding had begun. Quarantine didn’t just take things away; it revealed — with a harsh, unrelenting clarity — what had already been lost.”

—Leslie Jamison

Into the unknown. L to R: Eva, Luna, me, Isa

This year forced us to our knees. Like so many others, I found myself disoriented and trapped inside, falling to my emotional nadir. We lost Kobe Bryant. John Lewis. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And some 300,000 Americans to the plague. We yearned for the days when the rule of law was a given. America as we know it came apart at the seams. Even our best efforts to bridge differences won’t work by themselves, they require that the digital platforms shattering reality in the name of “consumer choice” will have to dramatically change or be regulated into doing so.

I experienced COVID year primarily as a loss of innocence — the year I finally, finally had to grow up. At one point this summer, we were under stay-at-home orders (for rioting) in the midst of stay-at-home orders (for coronavirus). Did we ever think we’d miss each other like this, that we’d yearn for the joy of company and coincidence, serendipity and surprise, the magic of sharing poorly ventilated spaces with strangers? Grief, loss and identity shift defined 2020, both in the universal sense, and in a personal one.

Despite a year of radical change, I write this post feeling privileged and contented. The threat of the virus took away so much — loved ones, freedom, hugs, travel, an entire way of life I took for granted. But it gave, too. A return to nature. A stillness in which, egad, we could be alone with our thoughts. Time for introspection! And for me, a real deepening of my relationships. Because there were no longer the “friends” you just run into at a drop-off, or at conferences, you had to be intentional about how you spent your time and who you reached out to check-in on. I was more deliberate with my friendships than ever, and I felt that intention among the loved ones who supported me. 

I’m also fortunate to be surrounded (more than ever, since they aren’t in school) by my loud, vibrant, healthy kids who remind us how adaptable humanity is at its essence. To borrow from Des’ree’s anthem from my millennial coming-of-age, we gotta be a little bit badder, a little bit bolder, a little bit wiser, harder, tougher.

Culture That Got Me Through 2020: Bong Joon Ho (just his entire energy), PEN15, Run, I May Destroy You, Younger, BTS’ “Dynamite,” Palm Springs, Dave Grohl’s epic drum battle with a 10 year old he met on social media, the series ending of Bojack Horseman, this TikTok about Mitch McConnell 

Moments of Unadulterated Joy: This gas station in LA, the day the networks finally called the election for Joe Biden. These kids, experiencing the drum solo in “In the Air Tonight”

MVP New Friends: Jenn and Drew, who are the parents of my daughter Eva’s good friend Leif. They were rocks as we made Sunday pool time a regular thing to get through this hell year. Sarah Svoboda, who is my producer at VICE, became one of my closest girlfriends overnight. Rob, with whom I’d split giant breakfast burritos after five mile runs. I am now simultaneously fatter and in better cardiovascular shape.

Big Ideas: The fallacy of emphasizing individual responsibility over systemic fixes. We’re in a care crisis that connects to everything else in our society — the economy, gender, education, politics. The nuclear family ideal is not workable on its own. Neoliberalism failed.

MVP Snack: Brown sugar boba popsicles saved my 2020. I became an accidental boba pop influencer! My only other influencing was for the Saved by the Bell pop-up in West Hollywood, which was a special treat.

Firsts: Book deal. Hosting an hour-long nationwide radio special. Global pandemic. Shelter in place order. Wearing a mask every day. Not leaving the country all year. TV work for VICE. Homeschooling my children. Social distancing. Going a year without being with my parents.

The Energy To Bring To All Things: It’s what I call the Michaela Coel energy, after reading this landmark profile of the singular artist who brought us Chewing Gum and I May Destroy You. We say this, from here on out: ‘This is what I need. Are you good enough to give it to me?’ Not ‘Am I good enough to deserve the kind of treatment that I want?’ 

Fave selfie. Celebrating Luna’s 3rd birthday, at home.

Regrets: Never did learn how to play the ukulele. Barely made progress on my book, which was supposed to be mostly done by now, in a parallel universe. My relationships felt very COVID-blocked, to different degrees.

My Gamechanger: Jungian depth psychology with a dream analyst. This is the most woo-woo I’ve ever sounded, I realize. But after dipping in and out of traditional, more conventional cognitive behavioral therapy for most my adult life, Friend Jenn told me about her dream analyst and I started seeing him over Zoom and I have never had a clearer and deeper understanding of my inner life. I feel more whole and more grounded in an organizing philosophy for meaning than, well, ever. I credit it with keeping me contented through the crucible that was 2020.

One of the year’s proudest achievements, squatting for around 15 minutes straight to conduct an interview with a man experiencing homelessness.

Also this year, in no particular order, and an admittedly incomplete list:

Wrote letters to more than 50 strangers, got the most moving responses
Got to know all the parks around here
Ran 301 miles
Held a squat for 15 minutes while conducting an interview
Watched 252 TED talks
Gained five to eight lbs, depending on the day
Never once got to hug my mom or dad 
Signed my first book deal
Went to so many Zoom meetings, Zoom parties, Zoom milestones and Zoom conferences that I never tracked it
Helped link doctors so they could share COVID lessons in its earliest days
Started hosting TED Talks Daily
Didn’t go to TED (the conference, because the plague canceled it)
Started working as a freelance correspondent for VICE News Tonight
Signed with my broadcast agent in January, who negotiated a lucrative deal by December
Co-created and hosted Labor, an indie podcast about why motherhood’s messed up  
Meditated more than ever before
Drew my first zine
Got a new cat, Abe
Did not get COVID19, at least not yet
Volunteered every Tuesday in the summer, delivering meals to neighbors in need
Got to know the homeless community in Venice
Went drinking with my high school economics teacher, Mr. Coates, 20 years after being his student. He re-explained the Laffer Curve to me at a punk bar in Chicago!
Reconnected with Matt Weiner
Read 39 books, a far cry from the 52 books of previous years
Moved into a new town home
Got a sandwich named after me — The Elise Hu, which is, shockingly, vegetarian
Flew 24,469 miles to 10 cities, never once left the country and spent only 29 days away from home — all of it, before March 13.

Previous Years in Review

2019 | 2018 | 2017 |  2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010|2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004

Life in Lockdown, The First Sunday

Posted on by Elise

A dispatch from coronavirus social distancing, once in an indefinite series

Fortuitous that the family got me a kitten for my birthday because now I have a new lap buddy for all this time at home.

I have never before in my life eaten so much cheese. I stocked up before the store shelves went empty and now just working my way down through the stash, at rapid speed.

Matty absconded with the two older daughters earlier today and entertained them all day, so we were able to divide and conquer without cannibalizing one another.

The baby of the family, two-year-old Luna, learned how to use the Amazon Echo and has been making Alexa play her go-to jams of “Juice” by Lizzo, “Call Me Maybe” and some sort of “Say Cheese” kid song on repeat. I tried to get her into Radiohead and she indulged me for half of “High and Dry” before calling it quits.

Have been intimidated and would feel guilty about trying to go to Costco for one last run before these stores inevitably shut down, and am instead already bumming toilet paper rolls off my better prepared mom friends who can spare.

Update: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti just announced that LA is shutting down at midnight. Retail businesses, bars, clubs, gyms and fitness centers will all close until March 31, at least. Banks, grocers and pharmacies stay open. Restaurants will be available for takeout only.

Rest in Peace, Cheese

Posted on by Elise

Cheese, on his last day at home with us. We are all missing him so much.

By Tuesday, after being hospitalized and on an IV for an evening, Cheese‘s condition hadn’t improved. The vet said Cheese was in advanced renal failure. He was in and out of consciousness by the time my spouse and spawn went to say goodbye. (I couldn’t bear to see him again, after I’d shuttled him to the vet and back on Sunday and again on Monday, when they decided to hospitalize him.)

Cheese was one cool cat. Probably the coolest dude in our whole family. He only lost his cool on the day we moved into the new house in Washington, when he went missing for the entire day. We went running up and down the streets in our new neighborhood, asking anyone if they’d seen Cheese, trying to call for him but he’s a cat, so, that wasn’t gonna work. We thought we lost him, back then. Anxious and dejected we returned home at dusk and heard a few meows from somewhere upstairs. Cheese had hidden behind the washer dryer all day. That memory just came back to me this morning, when I was getting dressed and found a stray white hair on my dress. Our other cat Caesar is all black, so it had to have been Cheese’s.

Matt, who started his career at The Dallas Morning News as an obituary writer, wrote one for Cheese. It’s a moving tribute to our furry friend.

Please, Cheese

Posted on by Elise

Cheese in 2009, at home in Austin.

Cheese is sick. His eyes and nose are snotty, he stopped eating a few days ago — a big deal since he jumps up on the table after dinner every night to try and find a stray piece of salmon, and is known to squeeze in to share beverages with whipped cream. Today he’s barely moved from a single position. The vet (who happens to be the great-nephew of Sam Moon of those Dallas discount stores), says it’s probably pneumonia but he can’t rule out organ failure because Cheese is 15 years old.

Cheese is not my most unusual cat (that would be Fitz), or my most affectionate cat (that would be Caesar). Cheese is my husband’s cat, and he has tolerated — without fully accepting — me living with him for the better part of his life.

I am Cheese’s stepmom. Despite Matt Stiles’ preference for grey tabbies, his ex-girlfriend picked him out from the Dallas SPCA in 2003 because she liked Cheese’s black-and-white tuxedo look. His asshole tendencies showed even when he was a kitten, but Matty and Cheese became best buds. When I met Cheese a year later, he instantly gave me side-eye that has lasted for FOURTEEN YEARS.

Cheese with Miguel, a kitten we fostered for a few weeks.

Note: For a couple of weeks in the summer of 2004 I tried to win Cheese over because I was at Matty’s apartment a lot when he was at work. This resulted in Cheese taking approximately two (2) naps on my legs which amounts to our peak affection level. After that, I moved to South Carolina, got Caesar and Fitz, and only saw Cheese every few weeks during visits back to Texas.

Eventually Cheese reluctantly moved in with me in Austin. He and Caesar became brothers and united quickly. We lived together in Austin, then Washington, then Seoul. In Washington the boys would use Saidee‘s doggy door to sneak out at night, and one morning at dawn when I was sitting on the front porch waiting for my buddy Wes to show up for a run, I caught Cheese and Caesar stroll down the sidewalk together, jump the fence in our yard and then head back into the house. Who knows what those two were up to all night. I sincerely hope they led the underground rebellion in the otherwise staid DC cat world.

He’s always had a heart murmur. His tummy isn’t too tough. The vet reports his weight is down more than a pound. Today he’s letting me pick him up, which he almost never, ever lets anyone do. He probably still doesn’t consider me his mom and I mean, I get it. Think about it from his point of view: He was living large with his road dawg, Stiles, doing the single cat sidekick thing until some rebound girl showed up and stubbornly never left, adding extra cats, a beagle and eventually three (3) small humans to his world. It’s not cool!

He still merely tolerates me but I love him deeply and want so much for him to pull through this.

Cone of Shame and Other Blunders

Posted on by Elise

Caesar’s in a cone of shame for a week. But I should be wearing it.

Caesar is in a cone because of my neglect. I am in charge of trimming the kitties fingernails and I have done so on the regular, for the past 13 years, in which our cat ownership has ranged from two to, at one point, five cats (one was a foster kitten, Miguel, for whom we found a “forever home.”) After Luna was born and I had to go back to work, I guess I just forgot about Caesar’s nails and yesterday when I tried to trim them, I discovered that several of them were ingrown, that is, they got so long that they GREW INTO his paw pads. Needless to say, I felt so horrible that I flipped out. The vet said we could come in right away, but I was cycling through crippling guilt so Matty had to be the one to take Caesar and receive the poor parenting lecture, which was then relayed to me. Caesar seems to be okay now and mainly relieved that someone finally remembered him.

Eddie Rodriguez, Memorable Running Buddy

Speaking of kittens, I’ve been really missing my old Austin running buddy, Eddie, lately. We used to have these rather insane experiences because we trained at five in the morning and you see some weird stuff at twilight. The scariest incident was catching a glimpse of a NUTRIA on Lavaca Street in downtown Austin and then watching it disappear down a sewer. That image still haunts me. Or there was the time we were speeding up the stairs of a bridge over Town Lake (I’m gonna keep calling it Town Lake, mmmkay?) and we were confronted with giant human feces on the steps. It was really, shockingly large. I suppose it could have come from a mastiff or something, but Eddie and I are convinced that dump was of the human variety.

Our most insane running adventure was the time we were on one of our final training runs before the San Antonio marathon and had to log 20 miles. Nothing memorable happened until we had only four miles to go and we heard the distinct sound of kittens crying from inside some bushes. We stopped to see what was going on, found kittens clearly in distress and no sign of a momma cat, so we somehow lured the kittens to us and withstood clawing to pick them up. We then held them against our bodies — he had two, I had one — and ran, bouncing up and down, WITH CLAWING KITTENS IN OUR ARMS for three miles. I took them home, we called Austin Pets Alive and got them fostered until they were adopted. That was dramatic, man.

I haven’t been to Austin since those four hours I stopped there for Hannah’s baby shower, so when I get back there again, Eddie and I are going on a reunion run for the ages. I hope we do not see nutria.

No Alarms (and No Surprises) Please

OK Computer turned 20. I am really enjoying all the tributes. The New York Times breakdown is the most thorough, but I also liked that NPR dug into its archives for the interview with Radiohead when it came out. During my quarterly existential dread, I play ‘No Surprises‘ in a loop and that’s how spouse Stiles knows that it’s time for my quarterly existential dread. I THINK I’m a cheerful person, but then again, my favorite song is ‘No Surprises’ so maybe I’m actually catatonic. “This is my final fit…”

Today Isabel broke our Obama bobblehead, which I feel like is a really sad metaphor. She ran around the house yelling, “BROKEN, BROKEN!” at the top of her lungs.

Cheese, The

Posted on by Elise

We have a male cat named Cheese, one of two remaining cats in the family. Typically at the vet you register your pets with their given names and their humans’ last names. For example, our beagle was Saidee Hu. But instead of registering Cheese as “Cheese Hu-Stiles,” my husband Matty insisted registering him as “The Cheese.” This resulted in Cheese’s official file listing the cat as “CHEESE, THE.” That’s the only way you’ll find his records folder.

Fitz Happens

Posted on by Elise

You may recall my cat Fitz from my earlier blogs. Friggin’ Fitz. He’s my orange tabby who likes living on the edge. Most cats live one of two ways: domestically, in which they stay inside or occassionally go outside and stay in the general home area. Or they’re feral, in which nature is their home. My cat Fitz lives in the area in between. He “runs away” for a year or so, and then surprises us by wandering back into the house through the dog door.

He’s back, for now. Last time he was home was spring 2009, if you don’t count the time he popped into the backyard to say hi real quick on Thanksgiving day.

Friggin' Fitz.

In 2008, he came home on Iowa caucus night bleeding from his neck. It sounds bad, but since I was too busy watching the Iowa caucuses and Fitz is perpetually getting into trouble, I just locked him in my room until all the precincts came in. Fitz has almost died numerous times. He’s on his 18th life or so. The last time I did a count of the numerous times he almost died was early ’08, and since then I’ve stopped counting.

9th life: Being born onto the streets of South Dallas. We’re talking the Oak Cliff area. Somehow finding his way to “safety” on the infamous grassy knoll, which happens to be at the mouth of a major interstate. (Hence the name “Fitz”, short for John Fitzgerald Kennedy Hu-St!les)

8th life: Getting taken into the Spartanburg Humane Society, which has one of the highest animal euthanasia rates in the country. He was miraculously rescued because the same day he was brought in, my friend Myra was outside doing a live report. She saw him and had to take him home with her… which is how I wound up with him.

7th life: Accidentally eating ibuprofen. It looks like he took in at least two Advil liquigels, which is toxic to cats. Almost died, stayed in the Emergency Clinic overnight with an IV in his little arm. Had to shoot him with some sort of subcutaneous fluids for two weeks.

6th life: Running away for two weeks. To this day we don’t know where Fitz was during the last half of September, 2007. We thought he was a goner, fer sho. But then he just came strolling back in when October came around.

5th life: Dog bite. How he got away after a dog got him by the neck is still a mystery to me.

I stopped counting, but I can say without question that the vet fees have cost more than my own healthcare.