Kukla, the ring leader of the four one-month-old kittens left on my doorstep 15 months ago and the first to drive my 16-year-old cat Annie away from her food dish to claim it as her own, has not shown up for meals for the third day in a row. I think it is significant that for the past five meals, her siblings have left 1/4 of the food in their communal food dish for her. I share their hopes that she will return.
Leftovers—a rarity with this bunch.
Don’t miss the video below! It is priceless. The kitten in the headset bag above is Annie, 16 years ago.
https://www.facebook.com/video/embed?video_id=10200387320826253
Click on first photo to enlarge all and see slide series.
3:30-5:10 A.M.
The calicos are crazy,
my bed a high hill in their racetrack
that seems to extend down the long hall
from the living room to here and back.
They barrel over the bedclothes, over me,
leap to the desktop, rattling the glass case of a
pre-Columbian clay jug.
The white cat lies serenely licking against my side,
then rises to knead my breast with sharp claws,
nibble fingers as I type.le,∑ß`099w≥. (Her added comment.)
The grey cat has brought something to my bed––a masticated mouse, perhaps.
Quickly, I cover it with the comforter to save it from the cat,
who careens on into another adventure.
I pull back its shroud, dreading what I will reveal,
to find half of the cover of my Xtech Card reader.
From the computer beside me, its guts still hang connected,
the SD card from my new camera still inside.
This is the last time the young cats sleep inside!
For Cee’s Which Way challenge..Which Way? Down the hallway and across the bed:
And to help with the dishes.. especially those that have held ice cream
I haven’t perfected my feline vocabulary, but I think that when she took a short cut across the keys of the mac I was working on, that it was her attempt to sign her name.
(C)AT 66(6)? Is she signing herself in as devil cat with the first and last characters deleted? Rather sinister.
Acting nonchalant about the whole thing, she leaps on over to the closed lid of the Acer computer to wash up.
When Mom goes to brush her teeth, it’s a good time to go along and check out the comforts of the towel cupboard.
This is what Cee wanted to know this week:
If you were to pack a basket for picnic lunch, what would be in your basket?
In my picnic basket? Egg salad and ice cream
and one thousand ants, invading in a stream!
On a vacation what you would require in any place that you sleep?
When I lay me down to sleep,
I require a silence deep,
covers warm and soft and clean,
freshly washed in a machine.
But mostly, where I lay my head,
I pray, no bedbugs in my bed!
If you were to buy a new house/apartment what is the top three items on your wish list?
A bathroom for each bedroom, and bedrooms? At least two.
A kitchen with much storage, complete with maid would do,
A porch swing or two rocking chairs—a terrace with a view.
And interesting neighbors to enrich each day anew.
What did you appreciate or what made you smile this past week?
My friend sent me a devil duck, as you can plainly see.
I put it in the pool to keep me company.
This cafe dessert was so-so, but Terry made a flan
that was so delicious, I had to lick the pan!
The showing by my friends was great. I always like their art,
but this brand new baby also won my heart.
Two cats no longer kittens, now just barely fit
on cushions where all four once lay, but they do not know it!
Click on photos to enlarge.
For Cee’s Share Your World prompt.
Every so often, nosy Cee wants to know what we’ve been up to. I often forget to play, but here are my answers for this week along with some extra info:
Complete this sentence: This sandwich could really use some …teeth in it.
What is your least favorite candy? Licorice
What sign are you? Do you believe in astrology? Cancer. I have the same attitude toward astrology as I do toward religion. I would like to believe in it and at times behave as though I do but I am skeptical. I would still always read my horoscope if I subscribed to a paper, as I occasionally pray when in an extremely harrowing situation. I am a great believer in synchronicity and the interconnectedness of the universe. Perhaps they are all one and the same thing.
What did you appreciate or what made you smile this past week? So, my week has been a time of dinner out with friends complete with Mexican dancers, Mexican train, film nights at my house, swims in the pool between rainstorms, trees blooming all over town, smashed fingers, cut fingers, burned fingers, roof repairs, hurricane-strength winds, trees down, electrical outages, picking up after hurricane-strength winds, rainfall, towels and bowls under leaks, cats in every corner of the house escaping the rain, broken fingernails and removing the domed clear skylight (which is cracked in two places and leaking during rainstorms) in the middle of my 18 foot high dome. After they removed the frosted skylight, the sky shone bright blue through the opening and clouds drifted by. All too soon, however, they’d covered it with a clear piece of plastic and tarps which plunged the room into a gloomy darkness. It will be this way until they return with a new domed skylight custom-crafted to fit exactly as the old one did.
I had always known how responsible that skylight was for the light in the room, but I was surprised at the degree to which it served as a sun for my world. In spite of glass walls on 1 ½ sides, the otherwise cheerful room developed shadows and an all-over sort of gloominess that had me turning on every light available. Still, I feel the gloom of my shadowed world as I type this. Here are a few photos to illustrate:
Click on any photo to enlarge all, read captions and see slide series.
One question, though. Why do I keep hurting my fingers????
For: https://ceenphotography.com/2018/05/14/share-your-world-may-14-2018/
Bearcat, Bentley and Patti, 1987. The only way you could tell them apart was by their tails. Their mother’s tail bent to the left, Patti’s bent to the right, Bentley’s was zigzag and Bearcat’s was just straightly expressive. Sweet babies. Bearcat is the one to your left.
Presently, I live with five cats. If you follow my blog, you’ve been seeing them off and on over the past year. The kittens unceremoniously dropped off by my garage door are now about a year old. They mainly reside outside in a sheltered garage in a cushy bed big enough to hold them all or a little cathouse I bought which once held them all but now mainly holds them one-by-one in an equally cushy bed.
My oldest cat is Annie, now 16 years old and a bit cranky as she rules the roost as an inside cat. She will allow the other cats inside only if they maintain their distance. About 6 times a day, she yowls her insistence at being served a small meal. I comply. She always gets a chin and ear rub first, then she returns to her cushy bed in the large bath/ shower of the bathroom of my bedroom. Her litter tray and dishes are also there. I’ve pretty much been relegated to the guest bathroom.
This poem, however, is for Bearcat–upon his death, the only surviving sibling of 4 Blue Burmese kittens that I was foster mother to from the time of their birth. Their mother, a wild cat, moved in with us long enough to give birth and stuck around until the kittens were well beyond weaning before she vanished again into the Redwood Forests of the San Lorenzo Valley near Santa Cruz, CA.
Only Bearcat was still alive when I moved to Mexico in 2001. Sadly, he drowned in my pool a few months later. I was devastated. This was his epitaph, written as a string of kennings for a NaPoWriMo prompt in 2014.
back lofter
tail wafter
gray bearer
drape tearer
ball loser
lap chooser
bunny slayer
shoelace player
sofa climber
sleep mimer
shadow springer
dragonfly bringer
lizard de-tailer
spider nailer
basement searcher
window ledge percher
tree dweller
mouse smeller
dog chaser
bug caser
door crack peeper
sunbeam sleeper
woods walker
squirrel stalker
rail balancer
prey glancer
shadow catcher
love hatcher
body spinner
heart winner
For the dVerse Poets open prompt.
The NaPoWriMo prompt was to make a postcard. My cats love it when I leave my insulated bag on the ledge in the garage to remind me to put it in the trunk when I go to Costco. This time my frozen food all thawed out on the way home. To give a hint regarding why, this was the scene that greeted us upon our arrival!!!
You’ll want to see these movie stars of cats better. Just click on the first photo and the whole slide series will be larger. Click through series with right hand arrow.
How Many Cats?
How many cats would you say is enough?
With which added cat does the going get tough?
What number of cats is simply too many?
Some would say “Five,” while others say, “Any.”
My old cat thinks one is the ultimate number.
That’s her on the red cushion having a slumber.
But Kukla and Frannie and Ollie and Roo
think having five cats is the right thing to do.
Annie may hate them, but they are sanguine.
Their sibling act is a well-oiled machine.
With one cat on my stomach and one on each knee,
don’t expect an impartial opinion from me.
It’s clear that my thinking is slightly off-kilter.
I simply don’t have an intact kitty-filter.
I have enough stools and pillows and mats
to accommodate a few additional cats.
The problem is whether one human’s enough
to serve as a mattress for five balls of fluff!
(The two calicos are hard to tell apart. Look at the last two photos in the first collage. The one with the black dot by her eye is Frannie. The one without is Kukla. Bet you thought they were the same cat, huh? The first cat is Annie, the second one Ollie. They look a bit alike as well. Roo is the white cat about to fall off the chair. There will be a test over this tomorrow.)
Looks like the big bed I bought for the cats when I moved their bedroom out of the house and into the garage is a perfect size. This photo was sent to me by my house sitter, Catherine. Thanks, Catherine!
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 