Cats & Kids

I have seen this before on "Animal Hospital" on BBC. I was not a regular viewer of that show, but the idea that cats and dogs could be put on Prozac was fascinating enough for me to spend a few minutes focusing on the screen. But I never thought that I would actually have a whole conversation with a real person that I know (and like) about how her cat, who has been pissing all over her apartment in the past six months, was put on anti-depressants after the $500 tests did not reveal any physiological deficiencies...will update on whether it's working.

C, whose kids I am babysitting, also has cats. I try to ignore them when I am there, so after having successfully bribed the children into going to bed, I looked for a book that I could flip through while I was waiting for their mom to come home. And there it was, between "Cutting Loose - Why women who end their marriages do so well," and "Relocating to New Jersey," the book that caputured my imagination: "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions," by Arthur Naiman. Under the - apparently much studied - entry "goyish"I found this: "converting to Judaism [is] in fact such a goyish thing [that] no Jew has ever done it." This humorous statement pretty much says all there is to be said on the topic.

Today I went to see Natalie and her new baby, Amalia, for the second time. After a drug-infused night at Romy's place, it was nice to spend a good half hour at a bookstore in Park Slope browsing the children's books section. I picked out "Babar Goes to School," a couple of the Curious George books, and then I could not resist buying "The Little Match-Seller," by Hans Christian Andersen, described by the Chinese bookseller lady as the "most saddest" story of all. I loved this sentimental story when I was a kid. I would read it over and over again, hoping that the ending would be different every time I started it, which of course it never was. She had the same wonderful hallucinations each time and, inevitably, she would die with the soothing vision of her grandmother each time. On the subway, I re-read the story, possibly still nursing a faint hope of redemption for the poor girl, but by the Second Avenue stop on the F-train, I found myself weeping for her like I used to back when I was closer in age to the little girl.