Post 76 - May 26, 2020
Day 76…
And just like that, it’s another day.
Something seems to happen each day that identifies what day it was when we are trying to remember things. The days of the week are, of course, pointless markers during the pandemic given that you need to know what day it is now, to be able to judge what day it was then.
And who knows that?
Instead, we have had the Day of the Haircut, the Day of the Pie, the Day of the Call with the Family and many others in that vein.
Yesterday, was The Day we Clipped the Cat’s Claws.
Both Michael and I have had cats for almost as long as we can remember.
Growing up, we each went through many of them.
At one point when I was a kid, we had seven of them.
My father found homes for three of them and we went back down to four.
These days we are living with a cat named Ziggy that I got in San Francisco while I was doing JERSEY BOYS.
The Zig is a very chill cat.
He’s a very fluffy black and white mutt.
While he started out as mine, the Zig is now, being taken care of by both Michael and me.
When we both come home, he still tends to come to me, but only because he knows that I am more of a pushover when it comes to feeding him.
Other than that, he generally deals with each of us more or less equally.
When both of us are traveling he thankfully has several Aunts and Uncles who seem to adore him as much as we do.
As long as someone is feeding him, he loves them.
The Zig is more or less amenable to ANYTHING except getting his claws clipped.
Now, I know how to safely clip a cat’s claws.
I clipped my last cat’s claws for years with never a complaint.
Even from the time he was a kitten, however, Ziggy has HATED it.
The bigger he got the harder it was to do.
It is like we are impaling him with a hot poker.
Hissing and yowling and mad, desperate clawing.
We have a great Vet who doesn’t have an office. She comes right to the apartment to do check-ups.
If something more serious needs doing, she has agreements with various facilities where she can do them.
She, herself, is tiny, and is no match for the Zig, but she has an enormous assistant named Nii.
He towers over both Michael and I - we call him the Zig Whisperer.
He holds Ziggy in his gigantic hands and talks to him softly with his deep gentle Jamaican accent. While he’s clipping the cat’s claws, he never gets agitated. He’s strong and steady.
Ziggy still doesn’t like it, but he gets through it.
Nii mesmerizes him.
Well, Nii is clearly not available these days.
We have area carpets in both the living room and the bedroom, that, with his over-long claws, Ziggy couldn’t walk across without getting stuck on.
His claws had gotten long and sharp as needles.
It was time.
Michael and I have a method.
It’s imperfect, but it works.
It is extremely traumatic for all three of us.
Michael sits on the edge of the bed with his legs together and hold’s Ziggy on his back in the crevice between his knees.
I get behind Michael and get Ziggy’s back legs between Michael’s back and his arm so the cat can’t see what I’m doing.
Once I get his back claws done, then he can’t really hurt Michael kicking with them as I do the front claws.
We were expecting a call from Animal Care and Control for reported cruelty.
The yowling and hissing and thrashing were epic.
We got through it.
The second we were done the cat was totally fine.
Completely calm, no residual anxiety or trauma at all.
He sauntered over to his food dish confidently knowing that he was going to get something good from his guilt-ridden caregivers.
He got his treat.
Ate it.
And purred.
Michael and I had a glass of sake.
Maybe two.
The New York Stock Exchange opened for business this morning.
Only at 25% capacity with masks and distancing, but for the first time in two months there will be live trading.
Most of New York state is now reopened for phase one.
New York City is the one area of the state that is not there yet.
It looks like we will be able to start phase one here in a week or two.
Phase one will not actually change that much for us.
It is mostly about construction, manufacturing and wholesale trade.
The big difference will be retail - but even there, stores will be limited to curbside or instore pick-up and drop off.
New York has seen a steady decline in new cases, new hospitalizations and deaths over the last few weeks.
As we start to reopen, those numbers will be carefully monitored and if they start going back up, then the move to reopen will be slowed or even pulled back.
New York is behind a lot of the country in terms of the speed with which we are reopening but seems to be one of the few places that is really trying to follow the science as we go.
As of yesterday, only 10 states, 20% of the nation, were seeing a downward trend in their numbers. In 22 states, numbers have plateaued and seem to be holding steady.
In 18 states, case numbers are actually rising.
Some states are relaxing their safety measures even as new cases, new hospitalizations and deaths go up.
Health professionals are all warning about a second wave.
In 1918, the first wave of the Spanish flu happened in June and July. Cases then flattened out for August and September and then by late September started climbing again.
By November the second wave had fully arrived, and it was three to four times worse than the first wave.
That wave subsided by January of 1919.
A month later, in February, there was a third resurgence and when that one peaked in March of 1919, that third wave was, itself, more than twice as bad as the first wave.
The Spanish flu is not the same as COVID-19 but it is similar enough, that there are things we can learn from it.
We are not definitely going to get a second wave of COVID-19, but we are very LIKELY to get a second wave of it.
It’s a bit like a sneeze.
You sneeze once and you think it’s over and then you think you are going to sneeze again.
Your nose tickles.
You inhale and wait for it - squinting.
Sometimes, after the wait, the feeling goes away and you relax.
Sometimes the sneeze comes and it’s bigger than the first one.
Everybody looks at you.
Sometimes the feeling goes away and then a few seconds later a second sneeze comes with no warning at all.
Some people spent their Memorial Day yesterday being careful and some people didn’t at all.
In New York City we’ve had our first sneeze and it is feeling like we are done.
In many other places, people are still in the middle of their sneezes.
The virus is still here.
It hasn’t gone anywhere.
We slowed down its ability to spread somewhat for a moment, but we didn’t get rid of it.
Church services on Sunday and Memorial Day celebrations yesterday gave it a great chance to spread some more.
The first wave of the virus grew out of international arrivals mostly in New York and in Seattle.
The virus then spread from there throughout the country.
If (or when) we get a second wave, those new cases will grow out of all the clusters that have been created during the first wave, nationwide.
It makes sense that the second wave will be worse because it will be growing out of far more sources than the first one did.
We’ve sneezed once.
Some of us are still sneezing and some of us are now wiping our noses.
It’s worth taking a moment to gather ourselves before we launch right back into what we were doing.
A new day is going to follow The Day we Clipped the Cat’s Claws and one after that and one after that.
We have to start getting back, but we can’t do it all at once.
Sheer common sense tells us that we need to slow it down.
There’s still a tickle in our noses.
Will it go away or will we sneeze again?
Ah…ah… ah….