Losing Control of the Keyboard

Hi. My name is Mocha Java, Mom and Dad’s new kitty. I came to my new forever home in mid July and am trying to learn to type. It’s not that easy when you have five toes with claws. I kepp hitting the rongg keys.

Did you see my spots? The vet says I’m a patches tabby, but I'm a fawn-colored Ocecat. That’s a cross between a tabby and an ocelot. Mom says I can be anything I want as long as I’m her kitty.

I thought I’d take over today, because Mom is recovering from a death threat one of her FB “fiends” sent her after her last post. That is not a typo. I meant fiends, not friends. The man wrote her a private message through FB, whatever that is, and called her a Satanist. He said if he didn’t kill her, he hoped someone else would.*

I read the post. I didn’t understood much of it since it wasn’t about mousies or chipmunks or head noogies. Why people would want to hurt my Mom just because of something she wrote?

Mom laughed about the threat, before she unfriended the fiend. She’s going to take a few days off from her blog, since she doesn’t want to upset too many more people.

She was silly and left the computer on last nite. It’s not eazy standing on a ball on my back leggs. I don’t know what else to write. Maybe I’ll crawl into my hooch and sleep. Or, stick my head out and keep an eye on Mom. I need to proteck her.

I hope you like my first post. I want to be a better riter, so I’ll try and come back.

* Mocha writes the truth about the death threat. I didn’t take it seriously, because my proselytizing post led to several amazing conversations – and one idiot who ruined my week.,/p>

Communicating

I'm old enough to remember sending out paper Christmas cards. I even wrote letters to go in each. Not a generic Christmas letter, but hand-written personal notes to friends and family. I'd start around November 1 in order to get 100 cards and letters done and mailed.

About a dozen years ago, I wussed out and wrote the generic Christmas letter. Around eight years ago, I turned that task over to my cat. I took more shortcuts: printed labels, return address labels, etc. I also reduced the number of cards sent. I decided if I didn't receive a card, the people to whom I was mailing cards weren't interested in what I was doing. I didn't want to annoy them. This year, I mailed fewer than 50 cards and letters.

What I'm seeing in return is a shift in the way we think about communicating. E-mail used to be a good way of sending notes to our friends. Individual notes with actual news in them. Health updates. Travel updates. A real message addressed to me. I noticed a subtle shift a few years back. More messages came in addressed to me but were clearly generic in nature. Many of my friends discovered the .bcc function in e-mail programs. Notes moved from personal to impersonal.

Time passed and people discovered Facebook and Twitter. Now, I get postings all day long from my friends. It's easy to send out a blast on FB and think you are communicating. You are, but you aren't reaching me on a personal level. Maybe you don't want to. (Think about Obama using the teleprompter instead of looking into the camera. I'm sitting in front of the TV, dammit. LOOK AT ME.)

I've been thinking about this a lot. We've lost the ability to reach people on a personal level. We mistake pokes, and jokes, and forwarded messages for communication. It's not helping us relate to our children. Oh, what's that you say? You just text your kids when you want to get their attention. At the dinner table. In the same room. In the same house. How silly is that?

Know that I'll read your messages with the attention they deserve. And then I will hit the delete key on e-mail to kill a FW: FW: FW: joke or ignore the message on FB.

I was looking through a desk drawer last weekend. It was like an archaeological dig. I discovered a fountain pen that belonged to my great-grandfather. It has a lever to draw ink into the barrel from a bottle that used to sit on his desk. I held it for a long time. What would it be like to sit with fine stationery and write a letter using a fountain pen again? Probably would make the recipient drop dead in shock. I don't want that responsibility.