Six Trees

Hello from Tokyo!

I’m here! Not much to show yet, as I didn’t quite nail the settings for properly shooting such a light-ambient city on my first night walk around Tokyo.

The immediate neighborhood is midway between Roppongi and Akasaka, not far from Tokyo Midtown. The word Roppongi means “six trees,” and the name dates back almost four centuries when the area was marked by half a dozen distinctive zelkova, also known as Japanese elm.

Here’s an aerial photo of the district:

As you can see, there’s a nice balance between green areas and urban density. Whereas New York has a very straightforward grid layout and you can get a feel for the dimensions of the city by looking down certain avenues running the length or width of the island, it’s easy to see why some people say Tokyo feels never-ending, one big sprawl of twisting streets, hills and alleys.

There’s also a verticality that gives it a different feel from American cities. Manhattan is famous for its urban “canyons,” but oftentimes there’s a clear demarcation between residential and commercial, both horizontally and vertically. Stores and restaurants are almost always on street level, while upper levels are either apartments or offices.

In this part of Tokyo the restaurants, shops, karaoke bars and movie theaters are just as likely to be on the 10th floor as the first, and the signs are often inscrutable even when they’re in English: A sign for one place, called Seven, includes no information about what kind of establishment it is beyond a cryptic piece of text that reads “I like when fight pure.”

Maybe it’s a boxing gym where they’re really sensitive about the rules. Or maybe it’s a bar where Japanese women mud-wrestle. Either one seems just as likely.

Below are some day shots, including a koi pond in the courtyard of my brother’s building. I’m not sure if Buddy would lick his lips or run in terror from these koi. They’re pretty big. And orange. And they jump! Any one of those things are enough to strike fear in the heart of the scaredy cat. Strange to think they can live as long as 35 years.

Meanwhile back in New York…

Looking at this photo, it almost seems like Buddy’s laying there dejected, thinking “Woe is me! Where has my Big Buddy gone? I am lost without him!”

Yet my mom reports Buddy waited for me and barely ate the first night, then by the second night he realized he’s still getting treated like a king, so he’s over it. The little jerk!

Taking Care of Buddy: A Guide

This eight-part guide to caring for Buddy also includes a multiple-choice quiz and an essay section.

Congratulations! You have been entrusted with the greatest responsibility of your life: Taking care of Buddy the cat!

Buddy is a stubborn young lord who likes things just so and is accustomed to many comforts, so it will be your job to anticipate his needs, see to his whims and keep him content in addition to serving his food, cleaning his litter box, playing with him and telling him he’s a good boy.

For simplicity and reference this guide will be broken down into sections outlining your responsibilities, with a short quiz and essay at the end which are due no later than two days before I depart for my trip.

I – Responsibilities

Section One: Meals

Buddy’s favorite food is turkey, and turkey comprises the main part of his diet. However, it’s important that His Grace consumes a well-rounded diet, so you will be responsible for rotating meals in a way that will meet his nutritional requirements while also providing enough variety to keep him interested.

Turkey will be your lead-off and go-to meal, but it must never be served twice in a row. It’s also imperative to strike a good balance between poultry, fish and beef. See the detailed Guide to Feeding for more information.

Section Two: Litter Box Maintenance

His Grace requires a clean box, and it is your responsibility to scoop at least once every two hours. After scooping you should use the poop spatula to make sure the litter is evenly distributed throughout the box and smooth out any imperfections. When you’re finished it should look like an undisturbed beach without any dunes or ripples. This is important.

When His Grace is ready to use the litter box, you must accompany him and station yourself outside while he disappears through the flap to do his business. If you hear him grunting with effort or suspect he’s dealing with constipatory issues, he may require words of encouragement.

Afterward when he emerges from the litter box, you’re expected to clap politely and tell him he’s a good boy.

Section Three: Play Time and Entertainment

As Buddy’s temporary guardian you are expected to provide at least three (3) play sessions of at least 45 minutes daily. These should be interactive play sessions involving wand toys or balls. Directing Buddy to a solo toy is not acceptable!

Buddy’s favorite games are swatting bouncy balls and playing Mighty Hunter. The latter will require you to manipulate the wand toy to mimic prey. It is extremely important that you allow Buddy to “capture” his prey and simulate disemboweling it! Again, upon success His Grace should be politely applauded and told he’s such a handsome, strong and good little boy.

Section Four: Meal Locations

In addition to his traditional dining nook, in the warm weather Buddy sometimes takes his meals in his solar, also known as the balcony.

In that event, you are to bring him his meal and beverage on a tray and set it before him. Be sure to clear it when he’s finished. He doesn’t like tardy service.

Section Five: Sleeping Arrangements

Buddy is accustomed to curling up with his Big Buddy for warmth and comfort. Often, he sleeps on top of Big Buddy. You will be required to snuggle with His Grace and act as a substitute Big Buddy. Nothing can compare to the real thing, of course, but it’s important for Buddy’s well being to have a human to burrow into or sleep on.

Locking His Grace out of the bedroom at night is cruel and is tantamount to animal abuse. Do not be an animal abuser. Do the right thing.

Section Six: Doors and Other Physical Impediments

Closed doors are unacceptable to His Grace. Do not place him in a room with a closed door, and make sure you keep the bathroom door open when you make use of the facilities so Buddy can stop in and supervise as needed.

Section Seven: Proper Petting Protocol (PPP)

Lord Buddy prefers a soft, rhythmic petting pattern and enjoys it when humans stroke his chin, his cheeks and the top of his head. Do not pet his belly under any circumstances. If he bites you, that means you’ve erred and should promptly apologize.

Always take care not to over-stimulate him. If you see his tail swishing that means he’s agitated and you should stop!

Section Eight: Well-Being Verification

You will be required to send a daily email with a photograph of Buddy next to that day’s edition of the newspaper, with the masthead and date clearly visible. Your daily correspondence should also include a record of His Grace’s bowel movements, meals and activities.

II – Personal essay

In no less than 500 words, describe how you would take care of Buddy in my absence. How would you spoil him? If he’s frightened by a garbage truck, how would you comfort him? What do you admire most about Buddy? Describe your reaction to the honor of being trusted with his care. Provide specifics.

III – Quiz

1) You awake at 2:45 a.m. and realize not only has His Grace relegated you to only 32 percent of the bed, but he’s claimed almost the entire blanket with the exception of a small corner. Do you:

a) Go back to sleep.

b) Carefully exit the bed so as not to disturb Buddy, walk to the closet and retrieve another blanket.

c) Retire to the couch and let Buddy sleep on the bed.

2) You’ve just returned home after running errands, but you’re more than an hour late because of heavy traffic. You’re famished, and so is Buddy. What is the appropriate course of action?

a) Ignore your hunger and immediately prepare and serve Buddy’s meal before making dinner for yourself.

b) Ignore your hunger and immediately prepare and serve Buddy’s meal, standing at a respectful distance as he eats because you know he feels safer eating when someone is watching his back.

c) Ignore your hunger, prepare and serve Buddy’s meal, attend him at his litter box and play with him for 45 minutes before making dinner for yourself.

3) Oh no! A natural disaster! You and Buddy are trapped in the house without access to the kitchen. You’re left with only a bottle of water, a can of tuna and two Slim Jims. How do you ration your supplies?

a) Reserve the entire can of tuna, half the water bottle and one Slim Jim for Buddy, leaving one Slim Jim for yourself.

b) Reserve all consumable food for Buddy, knowing that His Grace requires a considerable amount of protein.

4) You’ve invited several friends over to dinner, but one of them mentions she’s allergic to cats. Do you:

a) Rescind the invitation.

b) Tell her she’ll have to deal.

c) Offer to put her in a room while Buddy socializes with the other guests.

5) You’ve accidentally stepped on Buddy’s tail. How do you rectify the situation?

a) Prostrate yourself before His Grace and beg forgiveness.

b) Apologize profusely and tell Buddy he’s such a strong and fearless cat for enduring the pain.

c) Immediately retrieve delicious treats, make an offering of them to His Grace, and beg forgiveness.

6) You need to go to work, but Buddy is lonely and meows at you to stay with him. What is the proper solution?

a) Take a sick day and stay home with Buddy.

b) Take a vacation day and stay home with Buddy.

c) Bring Buddy into the office where people will lavish attention on him and tell him what a good boy he is.

7) You’re watching a movie and Buddy is napping on your lap, but you need to heed the call of nature. How do you proceed?

a) Resolve to hold off any bathroom trip until Buddy wakes and moves.

b) Cruelly wake His Grace and use the bathroom.

c) Wake Buddy, present him with turkey treats as an apology, and proceed to the bathroom.

8) Your friend texts you to say she’s won a pair of tickets to see Eric Clapton, one of your favorite musicians, and she wants you to go with her. What do you tell her?

a) “I’m sorry, I wish I could go but I have to take care of my son’s cat.”

b) “Do they allow cats at the concert venue?”

c) “I’m sorry, you know how much I love Eric Clapton, but I’m currently taking care of my son’s cat and he is absolutely delightful. Thanks for the offer, but I’m going to stay in and hang out with Buddy.”

Going to Japan

Big Buddy heads to Tokyo and the kitty-obsessed Land of the Rising Sun!

Big Buddy is heading to Japan for a couple of weeks. What does that mean for Pain In The Bud?

Photographs! I plan to shoot as much as I can while I’m there. Snow monkeys (Japanese macaques) are on the itinerary, and I can’t wait to shoot Japanese night life and Tokyo itself, but Japan is a famously cat-obsessed country so I don’t think I’ll have any trouble finding kitties and kitty-themed everything to photograph.

Of course I’m also planning on visiting a cat cafe or two while I’m there, because I’ll definitely miss my Little Buddy.

Which brings me to the next order of business: Buddy himself will be in the care of my mother. This gives me an opportunity to lay an enormous guilt trip on her for refusing to allow Buddy to sleep in bed with her.

“Think of poor Buddy, mom. All alone, missing me terribly, accustomed to curling up with his beloved Big Buddy at night, and you’re not going to allow him in the bedroom? What kind of person is so cruel? You’re telling me you’re going to hear his plaintive meows for comfort, his tiny little paws beating on the door as he desperately seeks human contact, and you’re going to coldly lay there and ignore him? You’re a terrible person.”

I’ve already made it clear I expect daily photographs of Buddy next to the current day’s edition of the newspaper, so I can verify he’s still alive and well in the ~~care~~ evil clutches of my mother.

In reality he’s probably going to drive her crazy, so the joke’s on her. Muahahaha!

(Mom, if you’re reading this, you know how much I love you!)

Finally, there’s the matter of separation anxiety for the Buddies. I’m going to leave a dirty t-shirt or two on my bed so Bud can take in my familiar scent — which smells of victory, bad assery and Curve all at once — and take comfort from it. As for me, I’m going to see if he’ll acknowledge me via Facetime through an iPad screen. That should be interesting.

The last time I was gone for an extended period of time, I walked in the door and Buddy was so excited he puked. I hope he keeps his lunch this time around. 🙂

I am going to miss my Little Buddy!

Pain In The Bud will be updated a few more times before the trip, and by late Sunday or Monday I should be updating from the Land of the Rising Sun!

The CIA Thought It Could Control Cats. lol.

The CIA should have realized cats are indifferent to the petty squabbles of their lessers.

No one tells a cat where it can and cannot go.

Some nameless CIA agent came to that obvious conclusion while surveilling a Russian compound one afternoon in the mid-1960s. The site was so well-secured and heavily-guarded that Soviet officials felt comfortable discussing business in the open air, where American spies could see them from a distance but, critically, couldn’t hear what they were saying.

The Russians weren’t leaving anything to chance: No one could slip through the perimeter without them knowing about it, making infiltration impossible.

Except, the CIA officer realized, for cats. Human trespassers would be shot on sight. Any deliveries or strange pieces of equipment would become the immediate subject of suspicion. But not even grizzled KGB veterans would dream of trying to stop cats from chasing rodents or finding a sunny spot to nap.

‘No one tells a cat where it can and cannot go!’ the CIA officer thought in a flash of inspiration, envisioning the wealth of intelligence that could be gathered with a small army of felines trained in spycraft and equipped with tiny microphones hidden in their free-swiveling ears.

Two years and $20 million later the CIA abandoned Project Acoustic Kitty after realizing cats make lousy spies for precisely the same reason guards don’t try to stop them from entering secure compounds: No one tells a cat where it can and cannot go.

“Our final examination of trained cats [REDACTED] for use in the [REDACTED] convinced us that the program would not lend itself in a practical way to our highly specialized needs,” a recently-declassified CIA memorandum notes.

To put it in simple terms, CIA agents couldn’t get the cats to stay near their marks. The cats would get distracted or hungry or bored, which all resulted in the same thing: Wandering off and leaving the Americans with only fragments of conversations.

Imagine it: “Yes, Yuri, we have finalized the details for our strike against American interests in” (drowned out by loud MEOW) “which we will launch when…” followed by the cat taking off after seeing a bird.

The CIA should have realized cats are indifferent to the petty squabbles of their lessers, even if those petty squabbles bring humanity to the brink of nuclear annihilation.

Mutually assured destruction may be a grim doctrine for students regularly participating in air raid drills or families investing in personal bomb shelters, but to cats it’s merely the regrettable loss of a species that faithfully served them for 10,000 years.

If humans nuke each other into oblivion there will still be plenty of rodents to eat, and a surviving primate species — perhaps bonobos or rhesus macaques — could serve as a suitable replacement in servitude to felines.

As for Project Acoustic Kitty, how much of that $20 million was spent on treats used as rewards for getting the cats to participate in training?

The CIA thought it was using cats. As usual, it was the other way around.

Dear Buddy: MOAR Treats!

Buddy learns humans keep delicious snacks like whipped cream and cake in the bathroom!

Dear Buddy,

You’re always going on about food as if your Big Buddy doesn’t ply you with snacks. I know he does, because you’re getting chubby.

But that’s beside the point: You’re a cat! You don’t need humans to feed you. You could venture outside and grab yourself a nice juicy mouse or a plump bird!

It’s time for you to get in touch with your roots and your inner predator, Buddy.

– Rodent Hunter in Rhode Island

Dear Rodent Hunter,

First of all, I am NOT chubby. It’s called a primordial pouch, okay? Cats from fierce warrior lineages have them to protect us from the claws of our opponents and the talons of raptors. (The avian kind, not the dinosaurs, although if dinosaurs were still around I’d kick their asses too.)

Secondly, I would totally go outside and hunt me some snacks, but I can’t. It’s in my contract. When you make a living off your devastating good looks like I do, you can’t just get into scraps like a common cat.

– Buddy

Dear Buddy,

If you say so. But humans are constantly leaving tasty treats all over the place. You just need to know where and when to look.

For example, did you know humans eat whipped cream in the bathroom? It’s true! The next time your Big Buddy is shaving his whiskers, find some way to make a distraction that will draw him out of the bathroom.

While he’s distracted you can eat the whipped cream. There will be entire globs of it all around the sink! Just gobble it all down really fast and get out before Big Buddy realizes you’re eating his yummy snacks.

You’ll have plenty of time to savor the taste of that delicious whipped cream once you’re out of the bathroom. When you taste it, I want you to think of me. That’s the taste of victory, Buddy!

– Rodent Hunter in Rhode Island

Dear Rodent Hunter,

Thanks, my friend! It’s nice to know my readers love me so much. Big Buddy usually shaves at night.

Tonight I feast on sweet, yummy whipped cream!

– Buddy

6426923E-AD5D-455D-8E01-AC2CF49AA6F3 — Mmmm, so creamy and delicious!

Rodent Hunter,

WHAT THE &$@#, DUDE?!? That was NOT whipped cream! It didn’t taste like victory either. It was gross! I had to wash my mouth out eight times and eat half a bowl of kibble just to get the taste off my tongue, and then I got sick.

Do you think Big Buddy knew I was going to steal his whipped cream? He knew, right? That’s why he put that disgusting fake whipped cream for me to find. It’s the only logical explanation.

– Buddy

Dear Buddy,

You’re as sharp as you are handsome, Buddy! That’s got to be what happened. Your Big Buddy must’ve known and he played a prank on you. Makes total sense.

I eat the whipped cream all the time when my human shaves, and it is creamy and delicious! Maybe you should try again. Be really slick about it so your human doesn’t know you’re coming and put the fake whipped cream out for you. Be stealthy!

When you outsmart your human and you get that first taste of milky, creamy, silky deliciousness, remember that you’re a genius and you’ve earned it. Your persistence will pay off!

Let me know how it goes. 🙂

– RH

Dear RH,

I was outwitted again. 😦 I don’t know how he knew I was going to steal his whipped cream again, but somehow Big Buddy found out and pulled another fast one on me. What’s that saying? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on you again!

Well I won’t give him the satisfaction of a third time! I’m done trying to steal whipped cream for the time being.

– Buddy

Dear Buddy,

I’m really sorry to hear that, bro. You’re really missing out on a yummy treat. Oh well.

What about…? Nah. Nevermind. It’s better you don’t know about the cakes.

– RH