Life with a deaf cat

One of my cats is deaf, the white one, Olivia. I realized this the day she showed up at our house as we were packing boxes to move out. She sat in front of nine barking dogs and didn't move a muscle. Then she saw me, and came over to get some pets. Then she walked into our house as if she owned the place and found a nice, comfy box to sleep in. When I saw that the movers' loud noises didn't bother her, I realized she couldn't hear (not uncommon in white cats, so I've heard). We decided to keep this little kitten when we couldn't quite figure out where she lived (and we were in a hurry, and one of the movers wanted to take her home with him), and I thought a deaf cat was not going to last very long being allowed to run the streets of Costa Rica anyway. So we packed one extra thing and took her to the new house with us.

Despite what you may have heard, cats actually do hear you when you call their names. Whether they choose to respond or not is up to them. Most of my cats will come when I call them, except, of course, Olivia. There have been times when I've freaked out looking all over for her, looking in the backyard, looking around the neighboorhood in the pouring rain, when all along she was asleep in some closet somewhere, and after all of this looking around the neighborhood in pouring rain, coming back into the house very upset that I can't find her, she comes strolling out of wherever she's been hiding, yawning, as if to say, oh hey what's up?

She likes to knock glasses (full or otherwise) from the kitchen counter onto the floor in the middle of the night. "Oh hey does this one make noise? Hm, nope. Ok, how about this one? No, not that one either..." More than one morning I have had to get up at the crack of dawn to clean up broken glass.

She does meow, or rather growl-meow, at Phoebe not-quite-a-kitten-anymore. Since Olivia was the only one who would give Phoebe the time of day, Phoebe sort of adopted Olivia as her mama-cat. They still play together, or rather Phoebe pounces on Olivia whenever she has the chance. To this Olivia will sometimes growl, if she's irritated enough. Otherwise, you could hear a pin drop when they play together, they are so quiet. It's as though Phoebe picked up Olivia's habit of quietness when the two of them are together. She (Phoebe, that is) does meow at me, though.

Olivia lately has been tapping me on the leg when I'm sitting here at the computer and she wants some lovin'. The other cats meow, but I suppose by now she's figured out that since she can't hear anything, maybe I can't either, so she'd better tap me just to make sure I know she's there. It's so cute.

She is the only one who doesn't run and hide during a thunderstorm (for obvious reasons). Actually, she seems fascinated by rain, and sits by the back door or the sliding doors for a very long time, just watching the rain fall.

Phoebe and Olivia

Anyway. I don't know why I wanted to tell you about my cat today. I suppose because it's a funky, overcast, rainy crappy day and cats are always good at snuggling up to you while you watch movies all day long. Or maybe it's just me who does that? I bet the rest of you out there are far too motivated to sit and watch the telly all day with your cats.

In other news, I have finally got some freelance work that will keep me busy until October-November. Hooray! I haven't done much of anything since January. Well, except be a stay-at-home mom to a three-year-old, and quite frankly, that's a job in and of itself. But I still need to do that other kind of work that actually pays you with money.

And, along with starting my new work stuff yesterday, I got in the mail an ARC (advance reader copy) of a book that I signed up for though LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. How fun to get free books! You can choose the books that look interesting to you each month, and then they select people based on various criteria (not that I know what those are, necessarily, as this is the first time I've ever gotten an ARC). So far the book is great! (Just for fun, if you go to this list and correctly guess which book I received, I'll send it to you when I'm finished.) So I should mention that I don't just watch the telly on boring, rainy days, I also read. There you go. My (not so) exciting life in Costa Rica these days!

WVW: Veggie-Q recipes

In honor of World Vegetarian Week and because it's the end of our summer, we had a veggie-q yesterday. Two of my fave things to stick on the grill are onion blossoms and chili corn on the cob. Surprisingly, perhaps, both of these recipes actually come from an old Betty Crocker cookbook titled On The Grill.

Onion Blossoms:
For each onion, you need:
1 tsp. each olive oil, balsamic vinegar, brown or raw sugar, panko or regular breadcrumbs
salt and pepper to taste

Take the onion and cut off the top (stem end). Peel off the outer layer, leaving the root end intact. Cut into the top of the onion so it looks like a pizza with 6 slices; make sure not to go all the way through the onion (make it so the onion is held together at the root end). Stick the onion in a piece of tinfoil; top with olive oil, vinegar, brown sugar, and breadcrumbs. Salt and pepper to taste. Twist up the tinfoil and throw it on the grill. It is ready to eat when soft and almost translucent. Tastes great with veggie dogs! Though personally I can just eat it by itself.

Chili-Lime Corn-on-the-Cob:
If you can get sweet corn in the husks, use that, peeling back the husk but not removing it. If you get sweet corn like we do in Costa Rica, stick it in a square of tinfoil. Add to each ear a pat of margarine, the juice from half a lime, and a good sprinkle of your favorite chili (I like cayenne; powdered chipotle is also really good). Put the husk back on or wrap up in tinfoil, and throw it on the grill. Make sure when you unwrap it to smear the marg-chili mix, otherwise you might get a mouth full of chili flames!

Happy World Vegetarian Week!

May 19-25 is World Vegetarian Week. In support of that, I'm going to try to write at least one post about vegetarianism every day for the week. And yes, I'm a day behind, so today you get two posts. Here's the first.

From CommonDreams.org:

Top Ten Reasons to Go Vegetarian During World Vegetarian Week (May 19-25)

by Bruce Friedrich

Gone are the days when vegetarians were served up a plate of iceberg lettuce and a dull-as-dishwater baked potato. With the growing variety of vegetarian faux meats like bacon and sausages — along with an ever-expanding variety of vegetarian cookbooks and restaurants — vegetarianism has taken the world by storm.

With World Vegetarian Week beginning on Monday, here without further ado are PETA’s picks for the top 10 reasons to give vegetarian eating a try.

1. Helping Animals Also Helps the Global Poor

While there is ample and justified moral indignation about the diversion of 100 million tons of grain for biofuels, more than seven times as much (760 million tons) is fed to farmed animals so that people can eat meat. Is the diversion of crops to our cars a moral issue? Yes, but it’s about one-eighth the issue that meat-eating is. Care about global poverty? Try vegetarianism.

2. Eating Meat Supports Cruelty to Animals

The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes of years past are now distant memories. On today’s factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy windowless sheds, wire cages, gestation crates, and other confinement systems. These animals will never raise families, root in the soil, build nests, or do anything else that is natural and important to them. They won’t even get to feel the warmth of the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter.

3. Eating Meat Is Bad for the Environment

A recent United Nations report entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow concludes that eating meat is “one of the … most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” In just one example, eating meat causes almost 40 percent more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, and planes in the world combined. The report concludes that the meat industry “should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.”

4. Avoid Bird Flu

The World Health Organization says that if the avian flu virus mutates, it could be caught simply by eating undercooked chicken flesh or eggs, eating food prepared on the same cutting board as infected meat or eggs, or even touching eggshells contaminated with the disease. Other problems with factory farming — from foot-and-mouth to SARS — can be avoided with a general shift to a vegetarian diet.

5. If You Wouldn’t Eat a Dog, You Shouldn’t Eat a Chicken

Several recent studies have shown that chickens are bright animals who are able to solve complex problems, demonstrate self-control, and worry about the future. Chickens are smarter than cats and dogs and even do some things that have not yet been seen in mammals other than primates. Dr. Chris Evans, who studies animal behavior and communication at Macquarie University in Australia, says, “As a trick at conferences, I sometimes list these attributes, without mentioning chickens and people think I’m talking about monkeys.”

6. Heart Disease: Our Number One Killer

Healthy vegetarian diets support a lifetime of good health and provide protection against numerous diseases, including the United States’ three biggest killers: heart disease, cancer, and strokes. Drs. Dean Ornish and Caldwell Esselstyn — two doctors with 100 percent success in preventing and reversing heart disease — have used a vegan diet to accomplish it, as chronicled most recently in Dr. Esselstyn’s Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, which documents his 100 percent success rate for unclogging people’s arteries and reversing heart disease.

7. Cancer: Our Number Two Killer

Dr. T. Colin Campbell is one of the world’s foremost epidemiological scientists and the director of what The New York Times called “the most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease.” Dr. Campbell’s best-selling book, The China Study, is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about cancer. To summarize it, Dr. Campbell states, “No chemical carcinogen is nearly so important in causing human cancer as animal protein.”

8. Fitting Into That Itty-Bitty Bikini

Vegetarianism is also the ultimate weight-loss diet, since vegetarians are one-third as likely to be obese as meat-eaters are, and vegans are about one-tenth as likely to be obese. Of course, there are overweight vegans, just as there are skinny meat-eaters. But on average, vegans are 10 to 20 percent lighter than meat-eaters. A vegetarian diet is the only diet that has passed peer review and taken weight off and kept it off.

9. Global Peace

Leo Tolstoy claimed that “vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.” His point? For people who wish to sow the seeds of peace, we should be eating as peaceful a diet as possible. Eating meat supports killing animals, for no reason other than humans’ acquired taste for animals’ flesh. Great humanitarians from Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi to Thich Nhat Hanh have argued that a vegetarian diet is the only diet for people who want to make the world a kinder place.

10. The Joy of Veggies

As the growing range of vegetarian cookbooks and restaurants shows, vegetarian foods rock. People report that when they adopt a vegetarian diet, their range of foods explodes from a center-of-the-plate meat item to a range of grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables that they didn’t even know existed.

Sir Paul McCartney sums it all up, “If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty.”

So are you ready to give it a try? Check out VegCooking.com for recipes and meal plans and to take the World Vegetarian Week 7-Day Pledge.

Bruce Friedrich is vice president for campaigns at PETA. Before joining PETA in 1996, Bruce spent six years running a shelter for homeless families and the largest soup kitchen in Washington, D.C. He has been a progressive and animal activist for more than 20 years.

My personal note: Reason #11 is that meat-eaters are complicit in the murder of gray wolves, wild horses and burros, bison and other wildlife that roam on public lands and are considered a "threat" to livestock. So next time you eat that burger, say a prayer for all of the other animals that were killed to make it along with the cow itself.

On healthcare in Costa Rica

On one of the forums I usually read, there was a big discussion about whether health care is a right or not, and whether or not the U.S. should have universal health care. Before I answer that, I want to tell you a little about my perspective on what health care is like in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica is ranked #36 on the WHO's ranking of world health systems. The U.S. is #37.

Here in Costa Rica, everyone has access to emergency medicine. Yes, they want you to pay for it and will ask you for either your social security information or your relatives, but failing to provide either will not get you ejected from a public emergency room. For other, non-life-threatening procedures, you will have to pay into the social security system and probably have to wait quite some time to either see a doctor or have the procedure done at a public hospital. Paying into social security is not difficult and is dependent on one's income. For example, esposo has social security insurance at work that also covers me and our son, but he pays into it from his paycheck each month. This allows us to go to any public hospital or clinic for anything, but like I said, I have not heard of anyone being turned away for an inability to pay.

Some anecdotal observations:

1. Several years ago, when we were struggling to make ends meet, esposo fell and tore the meniscus in his knee. This required surgery, so he went to the hospital to which we were assigned (San Juan de Dios in San Jose), saw a doctor during regular hours at his practice outside of the hospital, and set up an appointment to have the surgery done. Admittedly, the surgery could not be done for quite a few months (six if I remember correctly), but when you have no other real option, what do you do. After the surgery, they put a cast on his entire leg (which I thought was not good medical practice, considering most doctors in the U.S. would put a removable brace on it, thus encouraging some movement and rehabilitation of the knee), and he could not get an appointment to have it removed until a month after it was supposed to actually be removed (I think it was supposed to be taken off at 8 weeks and the appointment was for 3 months later). We ended up taking a hacksaw to it and removing it at home.
2. When son was about two years old, he fell off one of the bridges at the University for Peace park and into a dry (thankfully) creek bed, injuring his back and hitting his head. I was freaked out; he was screaming all the way from U Peace back to Ciudad Colon (which is a good 20 minute drive at the least). When I got there, I took him to the nearest public clinic, where they asked me for his information (was he Tico, did I have his i.d. number [no of course not because I'm never prepared!], etc.). Even though I couldn't give them all of the information they needed, and didn't have any money with me to pay, they took all the info they could and asked us to wait to see a doctor. After about half an hour (though it seemed longer), we were seen by a clinic physician, who checked our son over thoroughly and said that he looked fine, just to keep an eye on him and watch out for signs of concussion (he didn't have one, by the way). Cost: $0.
3. When you have a kid, something is bound to happen. Like shutting your child's hand in a door. I was worried that his hand was broken, so we looked for a doctor in town (couldn't find one open after 5), called our own doc on his emergency line (who said he was probably ok but we might get an x-ray to be sure), and finally went to the private hospital CIMA in Escazu. Went to the ER, where he was seen by a doctor about 10 minutes after we arrived (do you think that would happen in the U.S.? I daresay probably not.). The doctor looked at his hand, felt the bones, and was pretty sure there were no broken bones, but suggested we have an x-ray done anyway. So we waited about another half hour to be taken up to the x-ray room, where son's hand was x-rayed, back down to the ER room to wait for the doctor to read the x-ray, and after being pronounced whole and healthy, out for ice cream. The total cost for this emergency room visit, including x-rays, at a private hospital was about $75. Yes, we could have gone to the public hospital for free, but the wait would have been much longer, and with a screaming toddler I just would rather go to CIMA.
4. In fact, I'd rather go to CIMA any time I have a choice. It is a top-notch facility, and we've always been treated there much better than at any hospital I've been to in the U.S., and I've gotten better service and better care. CIMA is associated with Baylor University in Texas, and is considered one of the top hospitals in Latin America. So when I went to have a growth removed from my leg, CIMA was the only place I considered. My doctor is also at CIMA; she charged me $60 for the office visit (which was actually her charge for a whole OB-GYN workup, including a PAP and ultrasound). And it wasn't a five-minute, in-out visit; she took a good 15 minutes talking to me about my history, my family, my future plans for more children or not, etc. The exam itself took another 25 or so minutes; she was very careful and thorough, unlike my previous OB-GYN in the U.S. (as has been my experience with other doctors here in Costa Rica; I've never had an office visit under half an hour here). Anyway, she noticed a growth on my leg and asked me if I wanted to have it removed; I definitely did, so we set up an appointment to have me come into CIMA for the outpatient procedure the following week. I arrived, checked in, got wheeled up to the surgery room, and the whole thing was over in a couple of hours. Then I went back downstairs to recovery, where I have to say, the nicest nurse I've ever had put on the cable for me, brought me some pillows and blankets, brought me a cup of tea (tea! he brought me tea!), besides taking my vitals and pronouncing me ready to go (but only after he was sure I rested for at least half an hour). I spent all together most of a morning there, and afterwards felt pretty great and was never pressured to hurry up and leave. Total cost: less than $200, including my doctor's fees, anesthesiologist, and rental fees for the surgical room. The biopsy was another $50 (negative, thank you very much!). I think you can see why I would choose to pay the miniscule amount to have a procedure done at CIMA by a doctor I know rather than go through the public system for free and have to wait for a spot to open up at the hospital. Plus, I sort of feel like even though we pay for the public system, I'd rather not burden it any more than it already is when we have the ability to pay for private care.

You might be asking yourself why the relatively low cost of health care here as opposed to the U.S. I would think one of the reasons is that malpractice is quite limited here; you just are not going to get very much money (relatively speaking) from suing a doctor for malpractice, even if a suit is found in your favor. Maybe it's also a matter of economics; in order for doctors to stay in business, they have to charge what people can afford. So even though CIMA is the best in the country, and I would think charges the most, it still isn't much compared to the U.S. I would think it's quite underused, actually, as every time I've gone in the waiting room is half empty, unlike public hospitals where people are often crowded out of the doors and there are no available chairs in the waiting rooms. When we did the baby tour (before son was born and we decided on a home birth), I think there were maybe two patients in the entire patient ward that day.

So do I believe the U.S. should have universal health care? I believe everyone should have access to health care, regardless of their ability to pay. No child should die from an infected tooth, for example; no cancer patient should be denied treatment because of their lack of insurance. This is inhumane and simply wrong. Call me a socialist commie, I really don't care! Yes, so we do pay into Costa Rica's public health system even though I prefer not to use it if possible. Do I feel angry or bitter about this? Not at all. We've used the system in the past when we couldn't pay, and now that we can, one more low-income/no-income mom/child/husband/grandma can get treated for free when they need it. I'd rather have it this way, than the way the U.S. does it now, where you pay exorbitant rates for insurance that you may or may not get to keep if you loose your job, and which that doesn't necessarily cover every treatment or prescription you might need; where you're always one catastrophic event away from being bankrupt.

On grandmas

Let me preface this post by saying that I think my mother-in-law has never really liked me all that much. At most, she has tolerated my presence in esposo's life, though I did gain some points, I think, by having a son. (An heir! Passing on the family name! and all that nonsense.) Anyway, she never really came to visit esposo and I all that much before son was born (and thank God for that!), but after he came along, there was always some reason/excuse for her to come over. After a while, I didn't mind it so much, because she really and truly does love our son, and I always had a pretty good relationship with my grandmother, and I wanted my son to have the same thing. Plus he keeps her busy and I can kind of do my own thing without her being underfoot.

It was difficult for her for a long time, because she doesn't speak English and our son's first language is English, not Spanish. I recall one time, when our son was first babbling and learning to speak, that she said to esposo, "I have no idea what he's saying!" and esposo said, "Well, don't worry, neither do we!" It was pretty funny at the time. Then, as his language skills improved, he'd get very frustrated with her when she didn't understand him. We explained over and over that Grandma speaks Spanish and you speak English, so you have to try to help her learn some English, and you learn some Spanish from her. That way you can talk to each other. I'd say within the last six to eight months, his Spanish has improved by leaps and bounds. At first, he would only speak Spanish with his Grandma, refusing to speak Spanish with anyone else. Now, though, it's pretty cool to see that not only is his Spanish very good, but he will speak Spanish with other kids who don't speak English. For example, I was at my friend A.'s house a couple of weeks ago; she speaks French, Spanish and English, and her middle son (who is about my son's age) speaks French and Spanish. Her older son speaks French, English and Spanish (at five years old; and yes, I am impressed!). At first, my son tried English with A.'s middle son, and that didn't work, so he switched to Spanish. They played for a while, conversing in Spanish all the while, and then the older son came home from school, and my son started speaking with him in English. I find the whole language acquisition process completely fascinating. I wondered, before my son was born, if kids who grew up in a multi-lingual household ever got confused, or if they understood the concept of "this is English, this is Spanish." Now that I see how my son is going through the process, I can see that he does understand the concept of two separate languages. When he goes into "Spanglish," I see that it is an attempt to try to say something in one language or the other that he doesn't quite know, using language rules that he does know. For example, this morning, he said to me, "Can I have un esnacka?" which was pretty funny! (I don't even know the Spanish word for "snack." The sign at the grocery store says "Snacks," so maybe there isn't a direct translation.) A lot of the time he will say to his Grandma, "Give me eso," though I think the more he gains Spanish, the less Spanglish he'll use.

Back to Grandma. It has been so beneficial to our son to have her around, in many ways. As far as the Spanish is concerned, son just picks up more and more every time he's around her, because he has no choice but to learn and use Spanish. Plus, he adores his Grandma, and he likes spending time with her, so that in itself has been great, as I have no relatives here in Costa Rica, and very few relatives anywhere to begin with. Ok, she and I will probably never be close friends (certainly I will never really be accepted as part of the family, no matter how long esposo and I are married), but she accepts and loves my son unconditionally, and what mother could ask for more?

P.S. Can I just add here that the woman is a coffee-drinking machine? Jeez Louise, I've never seen anyone drink so much black coffee in my life! I do like one, two at most cups with Silk and sugar a day; she's making a pot in the morning, a pot in the afternoon, and it's usually down to drops by the time I smell it, so I end up having to make my own. It's kind of incredible! And she's in her 60s. And she falls asleep by 8. Me, I'd be bouncing off walls, floors, ceilings with that much caffeine in me.