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| Michelle Williams in her Oscar nominated role in "Brokeback Mountain" |
I had promised myself no more blog postings until the estate accounting was done (which it now very nearly is; my last post was in June and I've been doing very little other than accounting since) but I am making an exception now due to unusual developments over the weekend. As I’m sure I’ve written on a number of occasions, I very much admire the 32 year old film actress Michelle Williams who had already achieved stardom by age 15 and has gone on to such luminary roles as her Oscar-nominated performance in "Brokeback Mountain" and "Blue Valentine" among others. My very favorite film of her’s was 2011’s "My Week With Marilyn" in which she did a spot-on reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe (also Oscar nominated) in the "true" story of her "romance" with Laurence Olivier’s production assistant Colin Clark (and on whose memoirs the film is based) during the 1956 production of "The Prince and the Showgirl."
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| Michelle Williams in Oscar nominated role as Marilyn Monroe "My Week With Marilyn" |
Michelle Williams has an extraordinary background. A pathologically shy child who had also been the victim of brutal bullying, she found her only solace in her studies and acting, excelling academically and starring in school plays in elementary and middle school. But she had one other hobby that could only be described as most unusual for any child. Her father was a professional commodities trader and had been teaching her the craft since she was only 8 or 9, even letting her do her own trades from money she made from her acting jobs. By the time she was 14, she was making more money trading on Wall Street than her parents. Senior year of high school she won first place in a nationwide commodities competition for high school students when, in the space of the academic year, she turned $10,000 into $100,000 dollars.
She had long expressed an interest in pursuing acting professionally, but due to her extraordinary IQ and academic accomplishments, her parents very much opposed this, wishing her to go to college instead. So after graduating high school at just 15, she sued for emancipation and, as soon as the judge saw that she was already making a better living than most adults, she won easily. With her court victory she immediately moved to Los Angeles to pursue her dream and, with her victory, her parents finally accepted that she was serious and moved there to be near her. The rest is history. She began getting plumb roles almost immediately and it was not too long before she was a regular on the hit series "Dawson’s Creek" and followed by a long list of prestigious films of which the two most recent were her dazzling performances in 2011’s "My Week With Marilyn" and last year’s all Michigan made "Oz: The Great and Powerful" in which she had a ball playing Glinda, the Good Witch of the North.
In order words, to make a very long story short, she had already accomplished by the age of 17 what I’ve been trying to accomplish all my life – being a skilled professional investor on Wall Street as well as a recognized and prestigious artist in the film industry.
Which brings me to this Labor Day weekend, which turned out to be quite a labor indeed. I really am all tired out from the events of the last several days.
My 72 year old neighbor Val Green (who loves my piano playing and listens to it every day) is the Cat Lady Of Keego Harbor, having turned her property into a mini-Humane Society. There are feral cats all over the neighborhood and she puts food out for them every night. One pair in particular has been having litters on a fairly regular basis and Val has made it an avocation to gather up the kittens and find homes for them.
A month ago, she thought she had found the perfect companion for me. And it was a beautiful kitty but, at four months of age, it was already becoming feral itself and I was not going to take on a feral cat and all the problems they bring with them. So she found other homes for that litter.
But then another litter came along and she called me last Thurday evening to take a look at it. Most of the kitties skittered away at the first sight of us, cowering in a corner and hoping not to be seen. But there was this one little strawberry-blond cutie that boldly came up to me and without any shyness introduced himself or herself to me. This kitten was extraordinarily young, Val estimated about 5 weeks old, still too young to be removed from the mother, needed another week at least. But when I saw how the little critter took to me, I immediately knew that this one was at the right age to be trainable and be a good companion. I emailed Kris, the owner of my house, and she gave me the greenlight. It turns out she’s a big cat lover herself. I didn’t think it would be a problem since the previous renters had also had a cat. So I gave Val the okay, much to her pleasure, that as soon as the kitten was weaned, I would take it. That was Thursday evening. On Friday, she had the cats captured and would keep them with the mom for another week.
Then on Saturday, a near disaster. The people across the street who had trapped them Friday had just put them in a box and left it outside over night. Guess what? We had this really violent storm starting about 9 pm Friday and lasting until about 6 a.m. It was a monsoon. Naturally, I assumed that the box would have been taken inside. At least when they were feral, they could hide under something until the storm passed and the mother would cover them up. But now they were just exposed to all this violent weather with no escape. If I had known they were outside, I would have rescued them myself as soon as the rain started. But you just don’t assume that people who pride themselves as being cat experts could possibly be that stupid.
So I was more than shocked when Val called me at noon on Saturday to inform me that she was just sick to death to find out the kittens had been left outside in that storm all night. Val was on her way back from the grocery store and told me to meet her out back in 20 minutes and we would rescue the kittens. They were soaked to the bone and shivering. I tried to tell her to forget the 20 minutes and just tell me where they were. I’d go get them myself right now. But Val is the kind of person who can only focus on one thing at a time and, at that time, her focus was on getting her groceries home.
20 minutes turned into an hour before she drove in. At this juncture, I could not even be sure that she had not already rescued them. She had told me that she had gone out to check on them at 2 am. but was unable to see inside the box to see if they were there. I said, "You know I’m up. Why didn’t you call me?" "Oh I didn’t want to bother you. I’m not that kind of neighbor." "Val, this was an emergency. The cats were in danger. It’s okay to call in an emergency." And she would not answer the question as to whether the cats were still out there or not, only that we had to take things one step at a time, and the next step was putting away her frozen groceries.
I said, "Forget about your frozen concentrated orange juice! Are the kitties okay? Or are they still out there? And where are they? Val, where - are - the - kittens?" Well, that was four questions and she can only process one question at a time so she shut me down and said, "First things first. Let’s put away the groceries. Then I’ll answer your questions."
After another 20 minutes, she was finally ready to deal with the cats and, as you might guess, they were still sitting across the street in the box soaking wet. These people hadn’t even bothered to put them in the sun so they were in the shade shivering. I immediately grabbed all five of them, put them in a dry plastic wash basin and put it out in the warm sun. Within a few minutes, they were already starting to warm up and stopped shivering. The next unpleasant surprise was that the guy who had trapped them for us now had it in his head that they had to go to the Humane Society immediately. He was already late for work so he had to take them and drop them off NOW! So much for the plan to keep them with the mom for one more week. One of the other neighbors had already claimed the calico as an adoptee. I grabbed my little strawberry-blond beauty, now caked in mud and looking more like a war refugee than a princess, and the other three gray kittens were whisked off to uncertain futures at a shelter.
Now that Val was focused on the kitten, I had her undivided attention for the rest of the afternoon as she helped me set up a kitty nursery and gave me precise instructions for how to litter-train the critter. If we could have waited two more weeks, none of this would have been necessary. Every kitten I’ve ever had has gone directly from the litter to the house without any transition. Every kitten has instinctively used the litter box without any training, and has started out on solid food without any transition. But this kitten was being removed from mother too early and so now we were the ones who had to do the weaning. And, step by step, Val knew exactly how to do it. We went to Pets Plus and picked up a can of special kitty milk along with a special canned food that serves as a transition from mother’s milk to solid food. For fluids I was to stick a wet paper towel into its mouth every hour or so, and give it a few teaspoons of the special milk mixed with just a few chunks of the canned food every three to four hours. Then, as the instructions went, immediately after each feeding, put the kitty in the litter box and rub his paws in the litter to put the idea in his head.
Val also put in a call to the Keego Vet Clinic and much to my surprise (not hers), the vet phoned back about an hour later and spent a good 20 minutes giving me (and her) detailed instructions for how to get the kitty through the holiday weekend. At the time, the little guy was completely exhausted after the trauma of 18 hours in a storm. We frankly were not sure it would survive the weekend. It was too fragile even to bathe right away and put it in a rubber wash basin wrapped in towel, and then the whole nursery in the bathtub for safekeeping. The vet said just to keep it comfortable and give it as much milk as it would take until Tuesday and that it would be okay to give it a bath on Sunday, not just to get the mud off but any fleas that might have come in with it as well. He gave me an appt for 3 p.m. today.
Saturday the kitten was so zonked and lay so still that there were a couple times I thought it had died until, after staring at it intently for several minutes, I noticed a very shallow breathing. I watched it closely and every time it stirred tried to get some milk into it. It seemed to like the milk and took a teaspoon or two each time.
Sunday it had more life and was taking about three teaspoons each time. I did put it in the litter after each feeding but it wasn’t necessary to show the little guy how to use it, just instinctively started pawing at the stuff as soon as it made contact. On Sunday it also finally used the litter for the first thing so that was very encouraging. Val assisted me in giving the little guy his bath and, once again a very encouraging sign, he took to it without any protest, seemed to actually enjoy it. And we had a lot of bonding time as I held him in my palms wrapped in a warm dish towel to dry from the bath and falling asleep in my hands as I dried him.
Monday he was much improved again, eagerly eating the canned food now and spending much time with me, either exploring the kitchen floor or lying in the crook of my arm as I watched TV. I couldn’t decide whether to keep him in the tub or in the cage that Val had given me. He seemed to go back and forth as to which he preferred. All day Monday, the preference seemed to be very much for the cage. Then Monday night, he would start crying everytime I put him in there. I thought perhaps we’d done too much bonding, that he was crying because he missed me. But I soon realized that he had soiled the bedding the cage and was not so much trying to get to me as to get out of that sewer. I put him back in the tub on dry clean bedding and he’s been fine ever since.
I’ve been calling it a "he" in this essay but I’ve actually been assuming it’s female all weekend. The vet told me today that it was 90% likely it’s male. At only 15 ounces and 5 weeks, it’s still too small to tell for sure. We’ll know for sure in three weeks. Meanwhile, the chief concern is whether the little guy picked up any diseases during the nearly 18 hours it was stuck in the rain. So far, except for the exhaustion and incapacitation on Saturday, it appears quite healthy. The vets says that if he did pick something up, he’ll be showing symptoms in no later than a week. That means if he is still symptom free next Tuesday, we’re in the clear. And that’s the story of my new friend Blink.
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| Michelle Williams Author, "Don't Blink" |
Which brings us now full circle back to Michelle Williams and how I came up with the name Blink from the actress who wowed herself to an Oscar nomination playing Marilyn Monroe. Needing a name and because of the critter’s coloring, I thought I should name him for my favorite strawberry-blonde actress. So Michelle Williams had been on my mind ever since I first saw him Thursday. I googled her and tried to find all the trivia I could, hoping that I’d find a favorite nickname she had and that’s what I’d use. But no such luck.
Then I found a rather surprising bit of trivia on her that just fit this situation like a glove. It seems Michelle Williams is also a screenwriter. At the tender age of 17, even though she was already a star, she wasn’t happy with the roles she was being offered and wanted to be taken more seriously. So she penned a script called "Don’t Blink." It sold almost immediately and, though 15 years later it still remains in what they call "development hell" at the studios, the intellect and depth of dramatic expression that she demonstrated with the script so impressed the power brokers in Hollywood that she has been repeatedly offered some of the most sought after roles in the industry ever since. It is no exaggeration to state that her career has been soaring ever since and that there is still no end in sight. And all this at the age of 33. (Actually 32; her birthday’s next week.)
Of course, since "Don’t Blink" has never been made, there is no way to get any information about it except possibly through Williams’ agent. But it doesn’t matter. When I read about this script, everything fell into place. Not only is she a wonderful performer and a genius market trader, but now a respected screenwriter as well. "Don’t Blink" sold but was never made; yet it still launched what was a good career into the stratosphere. (Perhaps if she had titled it "Blink," it would have been made as well.)
Now I see my new companion as my new good luck charm, a little furry wonder that will be the beginning of a new phase in my life – a phase that will lead to finishing and producing my scripts and achieving a lifelong goal of becoming a financial advisor. And maybe kitty Blink will prove to be more than just a good luck charm. Maybe, just maybe, if Ash Wednesday turns out as well as I hope it will, my agent might be able to persuade her agent to get her to read it. She would be perfect in the lead role. (There are also a couple of very talented Detroit-area actresses who would also be perfect.)
We can dream. After all, dreams do sometimes come true. Now I have a companion to dream with.
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| Blink on Saturday right after rescue |
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| Blink today |
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