Sunday 25th February, 2018 - Will They Ever Be Love Cats?, Straight Down The Line, Walter & This Week's Wristwatches

Well, it's now a week later and I never quite got around to cleaning that camera lens this morning. Got a few other things done, though. 

Our younger cat Bowie managed to scratch himself across his right whisker earlier this week. We thought that perhaps he'd gotten too close (again) to our older cat Dussy and she'd given him what for.
(It turns out that he probably scratched himself by getting too close to some wire mesh that we had draped over the top of a fish pond that we recently set up. Some ends of the mesh are roughly cut. I'll need to attend to that soon. He's been showing a lot of interest in those two goldfish, if you know what I mean.)

My wife took him to the vet. Looking at the placement of the scratch, the vet didn't think it was done by our other cat. While there, my wife spoke to the vet about the tension between the two cats. The vet gave her some options regarding possible outcomes over the long term. 

Best-case scenario, the older cat learns to tolerate the younger one. Worst-case scenario, the younger cat would need to be re-homed somewhere else. 

As the vet put it, neither cat is truly happy at the moment. And that just isn't fair to either one of them.

Needless to say, we were all a little down by the time they got back from the vet and my wife outlined all of this for us. 

So, we'll be implementing a strategy whereby the older one will get a course of sedatives for a few months, in an effort to get her feeling a little calmer in the house. Meanwhile, we'll set up a couple of Feliway diffusers which emit cat pheromones. This is designed to help the both of them calm down. Then, the older cat is slowly weaned off the sedatives as she (hopefully) calms down to the point where she will tolerate (hated word) the younger cat. 

When we first got Bowie back in June last year, I think we were all so concerned with settling him into the household that we dropped the ball with regard to Dussy. Sure, she was still getting attention from us all, but I think we probably should have kept a closer eye on her during this period. Being an older cat, she's a lot more independent and she comes and goes as she pleases. What I didn't notice was that she was spending longer hours outdoors than she used to. 

It dawned on me after the vet visit just how similar this situation is to having small children. Spend too much time and attention with one, and the other one gets upset. 

Dussy still snarls and hisses when she walks into some rooms of the house and she then makes a beeline for the front door. We've told the kids that we'll all have to devote a little more time and attention to her for a while and make a little more of a fuss of her. 

This should all take around six to eight months or so. Meanwhile, the house operates a little like a game of Tetris, where we have to make certain that rooms are closed off at various times to ensure that the two cats are a little more separated than they have been up to this point. 

We'll be taking Dussy to the vet soon so that their cat expert can have a look at her. Meanwhile, there's a questionnaire to fill out. 

There's a long road ahead, but I'm hoping it leads to calmer waters where these two felines are concerned.

Okay, enough of that. Onto other matters. My son has been interested in watching a few film noir. 

So far, we had watched Crossfire (Dir: Edward Dmytryk, RKO Pictures, 1947) and This Gun For Hire (Dir: Frank Tuttle, Paramount, 1942). This is one of the best movie posters ever made, by the way, and it was this film that marked Alan Ladd's arrival in the Hollywood big leagues, after a string of B Grade movies and bit parts. He continued making films throughout the '40s and '50s, most notable of which was the classic western, Shane (Dir: George Stevens, Paramount, 1953) before appearing in a string of forgettable films for the remainder of that decade. 

Alcoholism and career lows took their toll on Ladd and he was found dead at the age of 50 in January 1964, from an apparent overdose of alcohol and sedatives. 

So, we had already watched these two classic noir dramas. There's no shortage of noir films out there. Hollywood turned out a bunch of them from around 1941 (The Maltese Falcon, directed by John Huston) until probably 1959 when Orson Welles directed and co-starred in Touch of Evil. There was much to choose from, and I had a healthy stable of DVDs at my disposal for us to work through. 

Then I had an idea.  Seemed like it was time to crank up...

I figured the kid was now ready to tackle the big guns. It was time for him to see that film directed by that little Austrian fella, co-written by that Chandler guy, starring the guy from My Three Sons and that old dame from The Thorn Birds, but when she was a lot younger and a real dish, with Little Caesar co-starring as well, see?

It was time for him to see Double Indemnity. 

Based on the novel by James M. Cain, the story concerns an insurance salesman named Walter Neff (played by Fred MacMurray), who becomes involved with a married woman named Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck).
The two of them soon hatch a plot to kill her husband and make it look like an accident. That way, she will collect a $100,000 payout on the life insurance policy which has a double indemnity clause, whereby the policy will pay double the normal $50,000 amount if the death is deemed to have occurred by accident.

Edward G. Robinson plays the insurance company's claims adjuster, Barton Keyes, a pug-faced, cigar-chomping fella who doesn't think the accidental nature of the husband's death adds up.
This 1944 film has many tropes of the film noir genre, from the lead character who thinks he's smarter than he really is, to the treacherous woman with her own hidden agenda, to the dogged investigator who's slowly putting the pieces of the story together.

Classic noir cinematography and lighting is made good use of throughout the film (man, I miss having Venetian blinds!);

 (picture taken from telegraph.co.uk | Film Reviews | Double Indemnity) 

Highballs filled with scotch, plumes of cigarette smoke, flashbacks, and Neff's world-weary voice-over permeate throughout the film. The screenplay was co-written by author Raymond Chandler and director Billy Wilder and the two of them didn't get along throughout the writing process. A shame, because I've sometimes wondered what other movies these two could have written together. Between Chandler's romanticism and Wilder's cynicism, they would have come up with some wonderful scripts, I'm sure. Ahh well...

Wristwatch-wise, I've been wearing something new. Oris had a runaway success with their Diver Sixty-Five model, which was released in 2015. I won't say too much about this range of watches because I'm currently writing a review of my own Diver Sixty-Five and I do enough doubling-up of information on this blog as it is.

Late last year, the brand unveiled their Diver Sixty-Five Movember Edition, in conjunction with the Movember Foundation. 
The Movember Foundation was set up in 2003 by two guys from my home town of Melbourne, in an effort to raise awareness of health issues affecting men.

The Movember Foundation - Australia

Basically, it began as a yearly event (in November) where men were encouraged to simply grow a mustache throughout the month. They would do this and ask for sponsorship or donations from their work colleagues and set up a collection tin for donations for the month, so as to raise funds for men's health issues such as prostate and testicular cancer, as well as suicide prevention among males. 

From these humble beginnings, Movember has become a global cause over the years, with many companies coming on board to sponsor events. Now, it takes me ages to grow anything resembling a mustache, so I actually began to grown one back in the second or third week of October. By the end of November, it didn't look half bad. I toyed with the idea of making it a Clark Gable/Ronald Colman style pencil-thin type, but that would have involved a steady hand and more time than I was willing to devote to it. Maybe next time. Besides, I wasn't being sponsored by my workplace or anything. I just thought I'd try growing a mo'.

Anyway, Oris produced a limited production model of the Diver Sixty-Five and it sold out in no time. When I first saw pictures of it, I thought it a very slick wristwatch, but demand was very high for this one, so I missed out on one.

I got lucky a few months later when I saw one available. I didn't waste any time. I snapped it up and then began putting stuff on eBay to pay off my credit card. 

This watch bears the same crown, bezel insert and 40mm case size as my blue/black Diver Sixty-Five, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. 
Whereas the bezel ring of my other watch is coated in black PVD, the Movember model has been left in steel. The dial markers and hands are rose gold plated and the luminova compound is white, as opposed to the cream coloured lume of my other D-65. 
This Movember edition is on a thick brown leather strap, with the Movember logo branded on each end where the strap joins the case lugs, and it also comes with a striped NATO strap as an optional extra, along with a tool for removing the straps. 

I have worn it solid for the last two weeks;

I've always liked the mix of rose gold and black on a watch dial. Not many brands use this colour combination, but the contrast is always appealing in my eyes;

I'm out of these little bottles of San Pellegrino SanBitter. Basically, it's a soft drink, designed to be had with ice and a slice of lemon or lime. At 100ml per bottle, you really only get a couple of mouthfuls, but they do quench a thirst.
Looks like a trip to the local market is due.

Okay, it's somehow gotten to 3:15 pm Sunday afternoon and I haven't had lunch yet.
I hate it when the day slips through my fingers.


So, I'll bid you farewell for another week (or two or three).

Thanks for reading and have a great week ahead, all!

And wish us luck with the cats!