Anti-Hu

Anti-hu refers to lung cancer. It's an antibody. The songwriter is visiting someone who is in the hospital to say goodbye before they die. The person in the hospital is saying I'm so dead, why is is so cold.

Cedars-Sinai is a research hospital in LA. (Dove in the cedar).

And Rob Crow is known for really liking kitties.

This is a really great mellow song. The meaning is most likely about a guy who got separated from his girl and now feels like he is nothing. I love the groove.

actually its about Penelope zachs' dead gold fish. even though the song was released in 2003 it was wrote just a few months after penelope

Unfortunately the members of Pinback are the kinds of who don't refer to their female counterparts as "my girl" or "my lady" like those fools Crazy Town. Subsequently I think you will be hard pressed to find many Pinback songs that are as superficial as "a dude all bummed out because his girl went up and left him or moved to Santa Monica to wash cars with Sheryl Crow on the boulevard."

The demo version of this song on Arrive Having Eaten is a little faster and, in my opinion, better than the album version on Nautical Antiques. Although I do like the harmonies on the last four lines of the song I really wish they had kept some of the hipish tempo from the Demo version.

any clues as to why you can hear a cat in the background at about 1:59?

I think it may have to do with "tail-we chase our own tail-we chase our own" since that is a thing some cats (and dogs) tend to do. Then again, like many things Pinback does, it could be completely irrelevant to the song.

Maybe "tail we chase our own" is the self loathing that can occur after loss.