Meet Copernicus

As I'm posting this, I hear the anguished cries of a stray cat. Sean and I have been joking frequently lately that I have the "mommy gene," and the discomfort I feel at the sound of those cries, the ache in my heart, reminds me of those jokes. The sound alerts Copernicus as well, as he leaps up and dashes toward the window.

Who is Copernicus, you ask?

Well, let me explain.

Thursday was my roommate as well as one of my best friends' birthday. The night began simply enough; dinner and drinks at a cute bar and restaurant, then off for more drinks at another bar a few blocks away. In the midst of a pretty cutthroat Candyland game (yes, this bar has Candyland), we noticed a girl with a tiny kitten in her arms. The establishment was always very welcoming of dogs, so we thought little of it and continued to play the game.

Shortly after that, however, the girl approached us and began to plead the kitten's case. He had been found in a friend's garage (gesturing toward a group of boys at this point), and could anybody take him in. She began to explain why she couldn't care for him, though I'm fuzzy on the details because at this point I was no longer listening. Instead, I was scooping him up into my arms and saying, "Yes, yes, I'll take him!" Unsure if I could keep him at this point, I needed to make sure he didn't end up in the hands of some drunken idiot. 


As the three of us girls cooed and snuggled this tiny malnourished ball of fur, Sean and the birthday girl's boyfriend stepped outside where supposedly, Sean grumbled "Well, I guess I'm getting a cat now." Though he only had to spend about 20 minutes with young Copernicus before falling in love with him.

Though, it'd be hard not to with this little guy:

We arrived at home with Copernicus, his namesake received at the bar, at around 1am. We bring him inside briefly when I discover that he has fleas. And so marks the beginning of my Very Long Friday:

1am- 4am: Spent spraying Copernicus down with an antiflea solution purchased at Walgreens, then picking them out of his fur as they died. With. My. Bare. Hands. I hate bugs, so this was awful for both of us. In an attempt to escape the chemicals, the bugs migrated to where I couldn't directly spray: his face. Pulling them out of the fur on his cheeks, chin and above his eyes was absolutely horrid. I killed at least 30 that night, combing through his fur OCD style and looking for more until there was no more to find.

5-7am: Changing on the back porch into clothes without the possibility of fleas on them under a halloween cloak, I went indoors to formulate a game plan for getting him vet care. Made a mental list of vets as well as what time they opened. Returned outdoors to give him company. Continued the search for fleas.

7-9am- Drove around, looking for a vet that would give us a discount or a payment plan given that we were trying to rescue an abandoned stray, with no luck. The entire time I'm so jacked up on energy drink, I feel like I'm experiencing all of the negative effects of taking amphetamines. My whole body felt strained, my jaw tensing up until it ached, my focus drifting away. Continue to search for fleas.

10am: I call my aunt, who told me she'd loan us the amount for the vet visit. Relief crashes like a wave throughout my body, downward into my fingertips and toes. Sean hears me thank her, and we share a look that my less than graceful use of the English language can describe. We make a vet appointment for 1pm. Continue to search for fleas.

Worn out little ball of fur

9:15-12:30: Unable to take him indoors and unwilling to leave him alone, Copernicus wait away the hours until his vet appointment on the back porch. We bring out his makeshift litter box as well as food and water bowls. A friend comes by with food and conversation. Along with not having slept, I also hadn't eaten since 3pm the day before as I didn't eat at the restaurant the previous night. Copernicus sleeps. And sleeps. And sleeps. Most of the time he's unconscious, but his waking moments slowly become more lively as he gets rest, food, and hydration. We leave to pick up my aunt and head to the vet's office. As before, continue to search for fleas.

One o'clock. We arrive for his appointment. We fill out the paperwork together, Sean and I. Another scary/exhilarating/exciting moments that make the whole "till death do you part" thing more real. Like when we got a joint savings account a few weeks ago.

Everybody in the vet's office is wonderful. Friendly, helpful, compassionate, sympathetic to what we've been going through. His checkup begins. He is about 12 weeks old, he weighs just over 2lbs. He's supposed to be around 3-4 lbs. Being underweight even 1lb is a big deal when it's 1/3 your body weight. They vet assistant brushes me off when I say I was thorough on checking for fleas, and I think I killed them all. He combs through Copernicus with a flea comb, only one dead one is found. He's given an instakill flea pill just in case.

They distract him with a can of cat food to take a fecal sample, which he devours into ravenously. A tiny growl during during the extraction, but he never even stops chewing. They draw his blood, and I have the realisation that I'm going to be that mom, when/if I have kids. When he cried out I felt a cold, helpless sort of panic. "But he's hurting my baby" is the exact phrase the went through my mind.

Sean and I had discussed the possibility of this not going well back home. "We have to be prepared for the possibility that he might come up positive for feline leukemia," I told him. Even so, it was an emotional moment when the vet announced that all of the tests were negative. FeLV, Heartworm, FIV: all negative. To hear that all he had was a few roundworms at the end of an emotional day with no sleep and little food released all of the stress at once. We both got a little misty. Sean asked if we could be his forever home. I asked the same question back. They gave him his first round of vaccinations, and we finally were able to go home, with the newest addition to our family. 

And he was finally able to go inside.

This is him today, already looks so much better!

The Jeffrey Dahmer Tour: come see a bunch of abandoned buildings for 30 bucks

This past Saturday held the first official Jeffrey Dahmer walking tour in Milwaukee's Walker's Point, and after  much soul- and internet- searching, I ultimately think this to be in poor taste. This wasn't an easy conclusion for me to reach, being a person with focused intent on visiting places like the Museum of Death in Los Angeles and a genuine curiosity for abnormal psychology. Jeffrey Dahmer in particular I am fascinated by, for multiple reasons. Along with being a generally a good specimen of abnormal psych, I have a very personal interest in the man. As a native Milwaukean who was a child of 6 years old at the time of his arrest, I first heard the name Jeffrey Dahmer in the whispered voices of adults attempting not to traumatize small children. This man, his crimes, and their aftermath shaped this city; and this city shaped me. 

My first thought was to look for precedence. Surely this isn't the only example of a tour centralized around the murder sites or hunting grounds of a serial killer/mass murderer. I wanted to learn what Boston's reaction was when tours began featuring the exploits of the Boston Strangler and such, to find that Milwaukee's residents were giving in to sentimentalism. While it's true there are tours all over that feature their city's famous killers, usually they are part of a generalized ghost tour. On my brief search, I was able to find information on 2 killers with their own tours: Charles Manson, and the Night Stalker. These tours are also both in Los Angeles, which, as a person who has more than once defended LA against a reputation of vanity and superficiality which I think in most cases it doesn't deserve, the culture surrounding death is very different there than a small midwestern city. After all they show outdoor movies in the Hollywood Forever cemetery. 

The other thing I noticed is the time difference. The Night Stalker is the only one who's time frame came close to Jeffrey Dahmer's, who's last killings were in 1985 (Dahmer's were in 1991). As to why the Nightstalker's tour is not offensive, I think this quote from SCPR sums it up nicely:

“This is not a celebration of someone who has committed horrible acts,” [Guerrero] said. “It is a celebration of his capture, and the sense of community that came together to enable his capture and put him in jail.”

 Perhaps if another decade had gone by before this concept was attempted the public's response might have been different. As time passes, atrocity becomes history and the traumatic becomes interesting. Perhaps there's a math equation that can express when a joke passes the threshold from "too soon" to "funny." Maybe Randal Munroe will write it for us, if we ask him nicely enough.

In the midst of searching for information, I also kept trying to find more information on the tour. A phone number, a website, something that was not skewed perception. So, not an Op Ed piece (let's leave the objective journalism debate for another post). I wanted to see how the tour branded itself. And also possibly buy tickets as I was still on the fence. Well, if there's one thing all the news coverage succeeded in doing is give the the tour an abundance of negative press as well as make it impossible to find any detailed or contact information on the tour. Their official website was completely buried by headlines from as far away as the Daily Mail (a British Tabloid). I was about to give up when I noticed the story released by Fox 6's website was unsurprisingly the only news source willing to link to the official site.

If you care to take a look, the website is here (why not, I've linked to everything else in this post), and viewing it firsthand is one of two things that firmly set me against this venture. The language used on their site is clearly angled toward sensationalism. The writer also quotes himself on the same page of the original text. I sincerely hope whoever wrote the info page on their website isn't the same guy who wrote the cue cards the tour guide uses, as I can only imagine how "sensitive" the language is during the tour. Based on their own words as well as detailed accounts of the first tour (which seem to measure up to each other fairly well), without having actually seen it myself, it seems as though those running this tour are under the impression that stating things using Inflammatory Language is being Hard Hitting, but saying it with a Solemn Face is being Respectful.

My last criticism of this tour, again based on accounts and not my own personal experience, is that it doesn't really seem like they're saying anything new. It sounds as though I could print off the wikipedia page as well as a chronological list of the bars he frequented and save myself the 30 bucks. What I would be interested in is a tour that maybe delved a little, psychologically. How did Jeffrey Dahmer's presence affect what it was like to be a gay male in this city in the 80's and 90's? Was there a reaction of sympathy, or hate/fear/disgust? What were his personal relationships like? They call him a monster on their website, but he was a person. To call someone a monster because their behavior is extremely out of the societal norm is to oversimplify things to the point where you lose understanding. Ultimately why people have a fascination with figures like Dahmer is to try to find understanding in the horrifyingly inexplicable. This is a good thing. A tour that takes a psychological/sociological perspective; a tour that delves into his past as well into how that past has affected the culture of our city's present: that is a tour I'd be very interested in seeing.