ATM for Tuxedo

When Corrie and I were in Berlin, in the summer of 2005, we took a bike tour. Our guide was an Aussie named Randall, his hair was probably the same shade of strawberry-blond as mine, but his was in dreadlocks, and still longer than mine. He told us the story about how he came to be in Berlin ("a dodgy British passport I got from the Canadian consulate in Havana after my original was stolen somewhere else in Cuba") and how he normally lived his years: bike tours around "Buhr-leen" for a few months, the rest of the time he spent living with his fiance, a pretty Costa Rican, and traveling around Central America.

What exactly does this have to do with ATMs and our cat, Tuxedo? Well, the ATM I'm talking about isn't that thing other nationalities call a Bancomat, but rather, what Randall told us we were going to attempt at a specific point in our bicycle journey: an Advanced Traffic Maneuver.

Last week Corrie and I got up early enough to cram our fuzzy little boy into his crate for a fun-filled morning excursion to the veterinarian clinic, right around the corner from Corrie's office.

Oh, you bet he loved the waiting at the bus-stop for the bus to take us to a direct train to Grand Central...he really loved the bus ride itself. Don't forget the commotion of the busy subway station and crowded trains.

Walking through Grand Central...walking the nearly mile route to the vets...actually, he handled it pretty well. Better than me, probably, since I was carrying his crate, which, Corrie and I guess, has the same amount of volume, when fully constructed and operational, as Corrie herself. I suppose; imagine Corrie crouched in a ball, made of plastic and hollowed out, with a handle and an angry cat inside--that's this crate.

Tux has been venturing outside lately, in our backyard space (through a tear in the screen) and we thought it was smart to get him his shots and whatnot.

They let us take a fancy cloth carrier that was much easier to deal with; the original owner didn't need it anymore (hopefully because the got a newer carrier, right?) and the vet just gave it to us. I took him home with no problems, and he was back to his spazzy, frisky self in no time.

The vet congratulated us on our ability to bring his weight down to the exact mark we were supposed to get him to, a weight that I originally thought was ludicrously low for Tux's size and shape. For anyone who's ever met Tuxedo, you'll be happy to hear he's now a lean mean spazzing machine, weighing in at just over 10 pounds! Can you believe it? He went from being mistaken for a shag bean-bag to an animal where you can see his hips as different from his back...and his pooch is almost no more.

Here is how he whiles away the heat and humidity we're getting nowadays: