November 2006

Satomi mailed me on Thursday that Kuma-chan our cat, had been in a fight and had a BIG BITE on his tail. I was unfaded. Kuma still thinks he is the king pimp of the neighborhood, but he is almost 10 I think that is almost 50 in cat years. Recently he has been in a number of scraps with neighborhood cats and has had to see the vet. I like to think that the other cats have had some problems too. Friday I got home and took a look. There was a big bandage and I didn't want to open it but he did have a big heavy Elizabeth collar on to keep him from messing with his tail Saturday morning I woke up and Eric and I got our hair cut while Satomi took Kuma to the vet to have his bandages changed. Again I did not see the wound and niether did Satomi. Sunday morning I heard some noise around 830 and ignored it in favor of more sleep. Around 900 or so I got up to the sound of more banging around. I came down stairs to see Kuma out of his collar cleaning himself. He was licking his body and his paws and rubbing them against his head. Cats are very clean animals by nature so I was not surprised he was busy cleaning himself and thought ...... it would be nice to have a shower after a couple of days w/o one. I turned to check out some of Erics toys and POOF he was gone. Kuma now unencumbered by the collar took the opportunity to escape. He ran upstairs and ran into Eric's room where I had been sleeping and hid in the futon closet. Then when Eric and I walked in and looked for him, Kuma scooted out the door behind us and down the stairs. Eric and I searched the downstairs a handful of times and could not find him. Finally Satomi called out that she found him and he was coming down the stairs. I caught him and put his collar back on but it was too late the pain from his wound had made him so crazy he wanted to chew off his own tail. He had bit his tail a number of times and it was now bleeding allot. I scooped him into the cage and in a rush grabbed Eric and we took him to the vet. I was relived to bring Eric cause when we arrived Eric explained what happened to the cat and why we needed help in Japanese for me. It was really comical as I stood there and tried to explain what happened and the vet looked at me with a puzzled look, only to finally to turn to my 5 year old son and have him explain it in about 5 seconds. ERRRRR I love Japan. Eric played with some free kittens in a case for a bit till we were called into the room to have Kuma-chan examined. Kuma had chewed new holes in his tail. I asked the vet and she confirmed that cats tails are like peoples heads the smallest cut will cause a lot of blood. So the Vet was not surprised by the blood coming from his tail. then she cut away the bandages to rewrap everything since we were there. I was shocked to sam the least by the extent of the wound on poor Kuma-chans tail. Here are the pics of the initial damage to poor Kuma-chans tail. When I looked at it I could not believe that a single cat no matter how big had done that. I think it looked more like a raccoon or as we would call them her in Japan Tanoki. Here are some pics of his bite. What do you think? Kumas tail Either way I brought him home and was not shocked when he wanted to get outside. I figured he wanted to take a piss or shit in private. I followed him and I figure this would have been no problem except Eric followed. While I was trying to tell Eric to go home and let me take care of Kuma, Eric insisted on stay and did to the point he spooked Kuma and he ran away so fast I could not keep up. Eric and I spent the next 2 hours trying to catch up with Kuma and almost caught him a couple of times, most notably was when Eric crawled into a small space behind the neighbors shack and grabbed Kuma. The action scared Kuma and he began hissing and scratching which scared Eric and he had to let Kuma go. I can't blame him I was surprised he held on to him as long as he did. I wanted to wait for Kuma to come out. I wanted to be there to open the door when he came home but I had not eaten all day and I went to lunch. I know I am a piece of shit pet-owner but I also know "cats are smart" they will come home when they are ready. Sure enough 2 hours later when Satomi arrived home there was Kuma-chan on the porch waiting. Kuma's collar and bandaged tail. Here are some shots of Eric and Miku feeding Kuma-chan by hand.

Japan the only place where dressing like a idiot is a fashion statement. Tonight on the train back to Tokyo there was no lie a man who was dressed in the following; A black knit hat a white based rainbow striped button down shirt a v-neck something another v-neck w/ a pink triangle at the apex with a gray and pink aregiale design a gray sport coat (that did match the gray in the sweater a paisley back pack dark blue denim jeans with gold stitching and to top it all off or bottom it all off .... low cut Chuck Talyor's Converse with with different size & (primary) color spots. The funny thing is in America he would have stuck out like a sore thumb. Here he looks like most others to the untrained eye. I wish I could have gotten my camera out.

Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year, and of all the American/Western holidays celebrated here I think it is the most excepted. As always my buddy Brent had a big party at his bar. I went as Viagra which I made out of a large piece of card board spray painted blue. Unfortunately I forgot to snap a picture of it before I took it off. It was just too dam big for a bar packed full of people I was smashing into everyone. Here are some pictures.

Not really a lot to say except I came I took pictures and I drank. Allot! Here is a link to the whole album Enjoy! PS if you want copies of the pictures get in touch with Brent and have him tell me what you want.