@bethostern

I recently started following the Instagram account of Beth Stern. Beth (we're very close at this point) is a model and animal welfare advocate who is married to Howard Stern. She has the BEST LIFE EVER. Here she is sunning herself on the balcony of her and Howard's oceanfront Hamptons compound.

But I don't say "best life" because of the enviable real estate/bikini bod. It's the kittens. Beth fosters kittens. Her feed is 90% kitten photos. All day. Every day. 

Like I said: best life ever.

Never one to keep my obsessions private, I immediately clued in some fellow feline-crazed coworkers. Soon enough, we were sending each other screenshots of her cutest charges on a semi-daily basis with messages like "I CAN'T!!!!!!!"

Beth's own cats are the cast-offs - the blind, the in-bred. For example, Yoda, below with the squashy face, has a heart defect. He spends his days in the foster room, grooming the kittens. He is REALLY adorable and entertaining, and unless some miracle of veterinary science manages to keep his heart going (fingers crossed), the day he dies is going to be a rough one in the office.

Anyway, one day, while skimming the comments on a particularly adorable photo, I saw that Beth has an email address for people wanting to adopt her fosters. 

(Side note: when you foster kittens, you don't keep them. You socialize the kittens with lots of human interaction so they'll eventually make good pets, and help keep the shelter less crowded. Once the kittens are two pounds (!), they can be spayed/neutered and put up for adoption. Carla and Bianca were Mom's first foster kittens). 

I sent the email address to my co-worker, whose beloved family cat died earlier this year, and who had mentioned that they were finally ready for a new cat. She immediately freaked out and wrote a long, touching missive to Beth.

It was a BRILLIANT email. "Now is not the time for subtlety," she said, showing it to me. It included many photos of their deceased family cat, displaying his integration into their family life. There was a Sears-style Christmas card photo of my co-worker at age nine with her sister - and the cat. There were photos of Socks as a kitten, and as an old, happy house cat, to show off their track record as a "forever family." She threw in a shot of Socks at home, so Beth could see that they live in a nice house and aren't paupers. 

It worked! Beth wrote back, and the process was started. My co-worker is adopting Archie and Dweezil, below, and their two thousand Instagram likes. 

Cat ladies are the best. I once asked my team if they went home at the end of the day and complained about how I make them look at pictures of Carla and Bianca like, sitting around. One of them gave me a look and held up her new iPhone case, emblazoned with a cat and the caption "CHECK MEOWT." We squeal equally over kitten photos and shots of our fat old family cats doing nothing. "But LOOK AT HIM!!!!!!!!!!" we squee. "LOOK AT HOW CUTE HE IS JUST SITTING THERE!!!!!"

The Littlest, Furriest Pilgrim

Marty hopes you had a lovely Thanksgiving.

Nice Little Saturday

A few weeks ago Mom came over for the day, while Dan was out of town. We hit Smorgasburg on the first day of New York's perfect weather and sat on the grass eating lobster rolls. "I feel like I'm on vacation," Mom said. She was right. Then we retired to my apartment for a Million Dollar Listing New York marathon, where the most momentous thing ever happened.

Behold:

To me and Dan, our cats are complete snuggleballs. To everyone else, they are but ghosts, disappearing under the bed the instant a strange footstep comes up the stairs. We don't know why; we know they've been pampered since they were handfuls of fluff. So Bianca not only emerging, but coming up to cuddle was a pretty exciting occasion.

We rewarded her with a glass of chardonnay.

Then I lured Mom out to a local restaurant, where Scott, my aunt, and her husband were waiting as a surprise. Hoopla! Aunt Mary was in town for a conference on short notice and somehow we pulled off a surprise.

Cat surprises, family surprises; all in all a good day.

Pictures From My Phone

When bored on the subway, I go through the photos on my phone. Here are the results.

I tested a scone from the fruits of my best-goddamn-scone recipe search (this one won) and the sight of a single solitary scone on my giant half-sheet pan was pretty funny: 

A guy from work defaced this Mad Men poster at the Nassau G station:

I experimented with green eyeshadow and took this picture in which you can see none of it:

Shenanigans at the Standard Beer Garden:

Cats, obviously:

Another co-worker cut out the entire suite of Downton Abbey paper dolls whilst on a conference call:

More cats (Bianca found a new sleeping spot):

A surprisingly unterrible picture from New Year's:

This awesome photo from the Aimee Man show we went to:

Super Bowl party aftermath:

And finally... more cats.  I have problems, and no desire to fix them.

NYR

Carla's New Year's resolution: to finally catch the shadow of Dan's hand.

MY New Year's resolutions:

• complete through level three of Rosetta Stone Spanish
• pet a lion
• go to the gym three times a week
• eat more vegetables
• eat the same number of oysters (it's a lot)
• drink slightly less wine

Frankly I think mine are a lot more doable than Carla's, but she's a striver.

Wetfoodwetfoodwetfoodwetfood

Our cats' thought process used to go:

Sleep sleep sleep hair tie hair tie hair tie sleep hair tie soft surface naptime eattime cuddletime soft surface warm lap sleep hair tie.

Carla and Bianca, gamboling about the window seat in simpler times.

Then we introduced C&B to wet food, and they immediately went all Jesse Pinkman's Junkie Girlfriend on us.

WET FOOD.  WET FOOD.  WET FOOD.  hair tie? no, wet food. wet food.  GET UP, FUCKER, AND FEED ME SOME FUCKING WET FOOD.  YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU'RE DEAD.

Wet food has turned our snuggleballs into jittery little assholes.  It starts about ten minutes before our alarm goes off in the morning: sensing that we will soon be awake and capable of filling their bowls with stinky chunks of processed meat scrap, Carla and Bianca begin their assault, first crawling on top of me and then all over Dan, kneading their little paws into my bladder and resting their full weight on various pressure points.  When one of us eventually gets up and staggers to the bathroom, they sprint ahead, their little bellies flapping side to side, and then stand by their bowls, glaring.  Bianca inevitably shoves Carla to the side as Dan (it's usually Dan.  Thanks, hubby!) spoons a can of slop into their bowls.  Carla then sits just outside the bathroom, looking longingly at the wet food until Bianca is done.

Whenever we run out of the wet food cans and force a temporary switch to dry kibble, I see them staring at our television, trying to figure out how best to steal and sell it for a fix.

Who am I kidding.  This crap entertains the bejesus out of me.  Wet food 4evr!

Hurricane Irene/Sasha

Mom and Scott, without consulting Marty, took in an adorable houseguest for the hurricane:

Marty was not amused.

Furmination: Spreading the Wealth

Scotty scoffed at my Furminator ("so it's just... a brush?") until I had one sent to the house in Jerz.  Now Marty is Furminated 2-5 times per day.  He sheds a lot.

A colleague also purchased the Furminator based on my recommendation, and was FLOORED by the amount of fur.  "It's like having a second cat!" she said.  "A Ghost Cat!"

Maaaaarty the Ghost Cat has invaded!

Foster Kittens

The parentals have two foster kittens for the summer.  Mom didn't name them this time, thinking she would get less attached.  Not so much.  Name or not (my brother dubbed them "Flapjack" and "Bad Luck Chuck"), they are predictably adorable.

Marty is less enthused.

Too Much

What's that? You wanted more cat pictures?

Mom and Scott are visiting Aunt Mary and Uncle Mike in San Fran this week, so Mom picked up a catnip toy to bring to sweet Mildred, their cat. (Remember Mildred?)

Unfortunately for Millie, Marty caught wind of this plan and was like, "getting a toy for someone else? Ish don't think so. Clearly I must somehow remove it from its cellophane wrapper and go to town."

After a brief, torrid affair, they fell to the ground, spent.

He's bad.

(Photos by Mom).

On The Other Hand...

We already get to hang out with animals in the city...

Don't Leave Me; I Won't Let You

What Bianca didn't realize is that I have other pairs of socks.

Puppy Bowl Sunday

Better than the Super Bowl?  The Puppy Bowl.  Three hours of baby canines playing in a faux-stadium.

Better than the Puppy Bowl?  The Kitty Halftime Show!  Baby felines batting at toys!

Better than the Kitty Halftime Show?  Nothing.

One looked just like Bianca.  

Yes, I called my parents to make sure they were watching.

As The Snow Days Continue

Just kidding - I don't work at a school.  Time to go back to work.  So as Bianca basked in the sunshine and Carla worshiped my forebears, I reluctantly picked out my cleanest jeans and some stupidly snow-inappropriate boots, and trudged into the street.

             

Obviously, the streets were unplowed.  The steps into the G were packed in ice, so I held onto the railing backwards with my ski gloves, slowly lowering myself into the station as I dug in my heels like crampons.  The man behind me grunted impatiently, as if I should have remembered my toboggan.

That same man and I were the only people going to work.

I had just missed the train, so I took some time to study the new subway ads.

Whoever Photoshopped Kevin James into a poreless wax figurine on The Dilemma posters should be fired.

I got to work late, but I didn't really care.  My boss, as it turns out, was still stuck on the runway at JFK... and would be for the next seven hours.

H.A.G.S.

I may have eaten a sub-par lobster roll, but my main Red Hook destination was IKEA, home to cheap but not entirely crappy-looking frames. Yaaaaay frames!

Carla is so happy that she'll be immortalized on our walls.

In addition to enabling our cat obsession, I also got a frame for our wedding "guestbook." We put out a mat for people to sign at the reception and then stuck a big group picture in there - my older sister did that for her wedding eleven (!) years ago and I always liked the idea. And now it is framed and on our wall!

Looks pretty good, right? Framing it allowed us to relive all of the touching messages of love from our friends and family.

Thanks Matt! We did have a great summer.

The Tealster

Teal, the family mutt, has come for a visit!

My parents are away for the weekend so we're watching him for a few days.  I admit, I was a little worried.  Teal is a weird dog.  He is an indeterminate mix of lord-knows-how-many breeds, but one thing he decidedly is is very, very easily freaked out.  He's had a wound on his paw for two years, because whenever he's anxious he chews on it and it can't heal!  Nothing will get him to stop - not socks, not creams, not stinky sprays, not even a cone (yes, we coned him.  The craziness won).  An unexpected visitor?  He chews on his paw.  The mentally disabled kid from down the street walks by the house?  He chews on his paw.  You get the idea.  For whatever reason - maybe my parents put him on doggy Paxil, I don't know - it's been better in recent months, but I figured if anything were going to aggravate his Anxiety Wound, it would be a trip to Brooklyn, the land of noise and unfamiliar smells, not to mention frequent dissing from our dog-hating cats.

"Get away from me."

Yet it turns out, miraculously... that Teal loves it in Brooklyn.  He bounds up and down our big stairwell with his occasional limp every time we walk in the door, ready and eager to go out and smell more new stuff.  He happily tugs on his leash to say hi to the nice Polish couple with the Polish baby.  He joyfully follows me from room to room in the apartment, even when I am clearly not going to get him a treat.  And see the red blanket on the floor behind him?  I put that down for him to sleep on, but he loves our floor so much that he just sleeps next to the blanket, as if to preserve the experience of sleeping on something soft for his next visit.  He's very spartan that way.

Looks like Teal just needed a quick visit to the big city to spice up his boring suburban life.  I do wish the cats had larger memory capacity in their pea-sized brains.  Then maybe they'd play with him, or at least be willing to hang out on the same plane.  Don't they know he was their guard dog when they were kittens?

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Things I Have That I Love

This is a new series here at MV:TB, wherein I will wax poetic about things that I have that I love.

First up: my ancient espresso pot.

Why did it take me so long to learn to use this thing?  Sadly, I cannot tell you where it's from: I found it, cobweb-covered, in a storage cabinet at my parents' house.  I always thought making espresso (fine, it isn't great espresso.  But I don't care) would be tricky, but I taught myself after seeing someone use it in a TV ad in Spain, so obviously it is not.  This pot allows me to recreate every morning in Spain that began with a cafe con leche.  Thanks, stovetop espresso pot!

Item #2: The FURminator.

I know you were all biting your nails about this thing.  Would it really remove enough fur from our cats to create a third and possibly fourth cat?  Would Bianca treat it like her food bowl and never let Carla near it?

GOOD GOD, PEOPLE.  I had no idea our cats had so much fur.  Only a light brushing last night removed a sickening amount of fluff from each of our felines, and another brushing this morning found our bathroom once again home to a mountain of undercoat.  The kitties seem to enjoy it.  Carla kind of thinks its her boyfriend.  Hopefully it will help them survive this 10000 degree heat without leaving bits of themselves on everything they touch.

Oh yeah, it's literally 103 degrees in New York right now.  (Okay, that's a lie.  It was 103 yesterday.  Right now it's 97).  But the sickening, debilitating heat wave brings me to our next Thing That I (kind of) Have: the G train.

People loooove to hate on the G.  It's unreliable, they say, and useless.  It's half the length of a regular train, forcing you to occasionally sprint for it even though you were already on the platform when it started pulling in.  It only serves Brooklyn and Queens!  But I love the G.  The Nassau stop is right outside our apartment, so on putrid New York days like today, I need only traipse onto the train with a minimum of exposure to the outdoors.  During rush hour, it runs fine.  It's actually pretty predictable.

Thanks, G!

Also this morning I kind of snapped and said to myself, "It's 103 goddamn degrees out.  I'm wearing shorts to work."  But my shorts were all wrinkly!  Enter my Rowenta Steamer That I Love!

I have never owned an iron.  Neither has Dan.  His solution for wrinkly shirts is to send them to the cleaners; mine, to just wear them as is.  We embody both Banker and Hobo Chic, respectively, and also I can never figure out how to close up an ironing board.  Then we got this nifty thing as a wedding gift:

And dude, it is awesome.  I plug it in and in 30 seconds am happily steaming wrinkles out of my shorts, taking them from Totally Not Appropriate for the Office to merely Mostly Inappropriate for the Office.  What a random gadget to turn out totally useful!  Plus, steaming is fun.

And finally, my last thing.

Is it the cats?  My husband?  The way the cats are perched on my husband?

...or is it my husband's iPad?

I'll never tell.