Heheheheh. You gotta see this! As I write and hit publish, I promise he’s still in the same place: cuddled up in the crook of my knee with his face jammed right up next to his brother’s.
It just makes me smile in return!
Apr20
Tag Archives: cats
Mar12
iCat?
I’m sitting here on my arse in front of the fire, as I do. Goofing off online, as we all do. My Siamese Lokii always hangs out with me when the fire is lit, because it’s a fire and he’s a Siamese. Wee sleekit heatseeking missiles, them Siameses.
Anyhoo, I was checking my email. And there was a comment from my blog-friend Minlit! Well, for some reason Lokii was fascinated with her simple, black circle Gravitar image. So he stuck his nose on it. Apparently kitty-noses work like people-fingers, as Minlit’s Gravitar page opened right up in Safari. How cute! Of course then the black circle was a lot larger, so he tried to touch it with his paw a few times, hoping it would move.
He got bored, and I went back to my mailbox. Instantly he touched the circle and we were back to Safari again. Left paw on the screen, pat pat pat. Ha! So I opened up my one and only ‘cat game’ for iPad (it was free, and it kinda sucks). He proceeded to ignore it entirely. Sigh.
I got off my arse and got my phone, so I could take a pic of him in case he went after the Gravitar again. Sat back down, opened my mail… Nothing. Little bastard!
I’m stubborn, however. And I found out that if I wobbled the iPad on my leg, he thought what was on the screen was moving. Hehehe:
Lokes managed to open the page in Safari a third time, good boy!
And that’s my excitement for the night.
Feb15
Lokii-Mon(ster)
I’ve not devoted a post to my little Siamese boy Lokii in a while. Actually, it’s been over a year since “Let’s Meet Lokii” and “Let’s Meet Lokii’s Dark Side”. However, he’s been disgustingly adorable the last few days, (and it’s not even that cold in here!) so I got the chance was forced by cuteness to take a few pics.
First, a shot from Monday, when he was helping me watch a David Attenborough documentary on predators and prey. I’ve never caught him really watching TV like this before (but he is fascinated with iPad games, not even the ones made for cats). Not sure if it’s the size of the new screen, or the lions on it that got him so interested.
Wednesday night, Lokii came to bed with me. I always curl up on my left, with my iPad open to an e-book propped against hubby’s pillow. He Lokii-poked to get under the covers, and curled against my chest with his head under my chin and, as it happened, his whole head in my right hand. He fell asleep, purring, and after a while the purring dropped into silence. Then…a while later…a faint rumble started again. Neither he nor I had moved or made a sound – it was just him waking up a tiny bit and realising where he was and who he was with. That’s cat love for sure, and it gave me a much needed happy feeling after a hard day. (Apologies to Cats n Co for pretty much reposting my comment on her blog on ‘Do Cats Love?‘)
Thursday we had a really, really hot fire going. Too hot for me, but just about right for the heat-seeking Si-missile that is Lokii-mon. He was so happy sprawling in different directions on my legs that I couldn’t conceive of getting up to get a better camera. Sadly, these pics are all from my ever-present iPad and they are accordingly terrible. Sorry. Hope the cuteness shines thru all the static caused by taking close-ups by firelight!
Ahh, laps. And fire. Ahhh. That’s a yawn, he’s not about to eat me. Promise.
See? Chin-scratches. Nothing could be better, for him. Me? I had to take this, and the next few pics, with my nose. Yep. One hand is holding the iPad, one is scratching precious kitteh – my nose was my only option!
Ooh, that’s nice, we loves a finger in our ear.
And ear-scrunches from the outside are nice, too!
More ears? Heaven, I’m in heaven…
Who gave you permission to stop with the ear-love?
Okay, no more petting…guess I’ll just enjoy this fire instead.
Ahhh. *yawn*
But things are back to normal now. I’ve spent a good part of my Friday evening sewing up the holes he’s chewed in the new dog bed. Sigh.
That’s the biggest of dozens of holes I had to sew shut. I need advice! I’m really worried he’s going to get horribly sick from eating fabric. We can’t stop him. Take away one thing, he finds something else. He’s really great at listening, remembering, and not returning to the scene of the crime again when we say NO! (ok, I say, as I’m the observant one) but he is also good at making sure he never hears ‘no’ in the first place. There’s no blockage in his guts – yet – but I don’t want there to be one.
How can such a smart kitty be so damn dumb?
Jan7
Cat-annoying fail
Total fail. Me trying to irritate Spottie to the point where he’ll wake up. This, in the hopes that he won’t annoy me to the point where I wake up tonight.
Yes, my voice really is that nasal and whiny.
Nov11
Lokii has been Brushed, again
Because I haven’t drawn a thing in months and months, I did a fast one tonight.
Lokii after dark.
Sep9
Harvesting garden goodies and some brotherly lurve
Good morning! How’s this for a change – me doing a post before noon and I’m totally sober! Usually two of the three things go together: morning and sober. I think attempting to blog before noon might be a first.
Today I’m not even hung over, not a little. I am, however, juiced up on coffee and stuck indoors as the weather is absolute shite. It was bearable outside yesterday so despite a pretty good case of ‘one too many the night before,’ I got a lot of tidying-up done in the garden. Empty pots put away, icky soil and mint that can’t ever, ever, go into my compost bin thrown out, carrots, beets and garlic pulled, monster tomato plants trimmed of dead bits. I’m pleased with the garlic. It’s “oops garlic.” Oops garlic is garlic that you bought in the store and forgot about/didn’t use fast enough, and the next time you look at it, it’s all shrivelled with a massive green spike coming out of it. Oops! I plant it. This year it grew really well for me:
I might give up on beets next year. Or try another variety. Or actually look up what I’m doing wrong. The beet roots on mine are all too tiny. Easy to grow but… meh. Not worth the effort to peel the little things.
I also think they mixed up my carrot seed with something out of a grimoire:
These aren’t carrots, they’re Mandrake Root. Oh well, the dog will eat them anyhow. I hope she doesn’t turn into a zombie-dog or werewolf. Hmm, maybe I do – things have been a bit boring around here lately.
So, I promised I’d mention the boys in my next post! Which is now this post. And it is now after noon, by the way. Oops!
I caught the guys in a big cuddle-fest Thursday morning, and for once Lokii’s little black face is clearly visible. So hard to get a shot of him that isn’t anything but big blue eyes in a flat-black wedge.
Lokii looks happy and interested, Spot looks like he’s got murder on his mind. Let’s try to reverse that, shall we?
Not so much. Lokii just isn’t capable of looking grumpy. Glad to be able to share his giant schnozz with you this morning afternoon.
Jul24
Kitty lasers!
I’m yet again a bit at loose ends mentally, I can’t seem to focus for long. So here’s the boys playing in their newest toy – a giant box. I don’t know what magical properties this box has that makes the guy’s eyes light up so – unless pure kitty joy is now somehow able to be caught on ‘film.’
Jul21
An attempt at artsy photography.
The other day, I picked up two pair of my shoes from where I had randomly left them after removing them from my feet. I put them on the stairs so I could take them up and put them away the next time I needed to go up. Cuz I’m lazy like that.
One fell and landed rather appealingly inside another. I was a little drunk, probably, and thought the scene looked sorta cool, so I went and got my iPhone to try some Hipstamatic pics.
Actually I know I was a little drunk because I couldn’t remember my favourite settings of lens, film, flash – and I’ve never bothered to save the groupings like best. Because I’m also lazy like that. So I tried this:
And that wasn’t right because I hate the stupid date-stamp. Maybe it’s cute if you were born in 1990, but 1982 is a year that I remember and it didn’t look like that.
So I tried this:
This is the one iDJ likes. But no, it wasn’t exactly what I was going for. So I tried again with a third group of settings…
…and apparently I had been standing there playing with camera settings too long, because I got photobomed by Lokii.
Jun2
We met a crazy cat-hater!
Right! I nearly forgot about this one. It’s so messed up though that it needs to be shared!
Recently, I had to meet with someone that isn’t part of the government, but is a third party neutral adjudicator. Pretty important, right? So I took the whole day off work, not knowing how long it would take. And I asked iDJ to also take the day off and come along, because the reason we needed this meeting had a lot to do with him and I wouldn’t be able to explain things properly.
Sorry for being mysterious about what we were doing – but I really don’t need this getting back to anyone important!
First, he said we were early and had to wait as the witness hadn’t arrived yet. Then, he popped right back out and said the witness was not coming…
So, we sat down, Mr Incompetent on one side of the desk, us on the other. And he proceeded to explain the rules of the matter in dispute, when we didn’t need the rules explained. Eventually I interrupted and told him why we were there. Apparently the huge-ass file folder with my name on it and the entire paper trail history was just something for him to flip through idly while telling us the rules. Not, say, something he might have actually read beforehand to see why the hell we were bothering him on a sunny day.
Once he heard our explanation and realised that we actually had an issue to dispute, he stopped repeating numbers and trying to explain them to my clearly confused face – confused not because I can’t do simple math, but because he wasn’t saying anything that related to our issue at all – and immediately switched gears. Now we got to hear how this clearly wasn’t right, and we deserved an answer. Clearly there was a problem and it needed a deeper investigation, another meeting at a later date. It probably wouldn’t be him we met with the next time, but it would happen.
Well, duh, that’s why we were there, sorta figured that’s your job?
Then he went off on a bizarre tangent. He asked if another review would, ‘…make you happy? Not that there really is such a thing as true happiness, it’s a construction of the mind and not anything that I or anyone else can make you feel, or have. In fact, some people think happy is an complete fabrication and actual happiness, as everyone suggests the word means, does not exist at all.’
Gobsmacked, I gave a nervous laugh and came up with the only reply I could come up with, off the top of my head, after being hit with philosophy right after incompetence by someone I could not piss off…. ‘Oh, I don’t know, a nice cuddle with my cats on the couch makes me happy!’
‘You have cats?’
‘Yes, two!’ Thinking I had safely gotten him away from debating happiness…
‘Do you also have a microwave?’
What the fucketty-fuck?!?!? Oh, you are not going there are you? Nonono. This must have shown on my face – or he’d finally realised I wasn’t a stupid person and I knew exactly where he was about to go so he didn’t actually neeeeeed to go there: he already had.
I’m not sure what I said, if I said anything, but my fabulous husband spoke up. ‘You don’t want to say that, she’ll come across the desk at you!’
Ohshitohshitohshit – thanks, babe, but boy I hope that doesn’t mess things up!
Mr Incompetent, now Mr Disgusting, said that he was allergic to cats, and I said oh, that’s a shame, I can see how that might make you dislike them, and he said yes, they make the hair on the back of my neck stand up… and I started gathering my paperwork to make it clear we were done. And we were.
Except…I needed a smoke after that. I made sure to light up out of sight of the windows Mr Disgusting could see out of. I’d only just lit up when who comes down and out the front door to also have a smoke? Yep. I literally looked at him and went ‘HA!’ in my best ‘fuck me, this is awkward’ tone.
But…he seemed to want a new name, as now he turned into Mr Racist. Hubby said something light and inconsequential about the landscaping, and somehow this became an opportunity to discuss how we all need to learn Mandarin and dye our skin “yellow” and have eye surgery – and he actually pulled at the skin on his face to make his eyes ‘slanted!’
Hubby, having had more than enough, said, ‘Now…‘ as if taking to a rowdy schoolboy – because obviously Mr Racist was just about at that level.
It might have been a waste of time, but I’m soooo glad next time it won’t be him. It actually took us hours to talk about this – it wasn’t until after we’d had good adventures on the beach and around Mayo and we were on the way home that I said, ‘That guy was nuts!’ ‘Totally insane!’ Hubby agreed. ‘Who the hell does that? Who hears how much you like something and then says something so horrible? What is WRONG with people!?!?’
I wish I knew…
May29
What do your cats mean to you?
Cats n Co did a post a few days ago called ‘Why Do You Love Cats?’ that I’ve been saving so I could reply properly. I ended up gettng rather long-winded (no, me?) and so I’ve cheated a bit and saved my comment to repost here. But I’m going to get even longer-winded, if I have the time…
Oh where to start… there was a Siamese in the house before I was born, so I never had to live without a cat. My baby blanket was finally taken from me when she died and she was buried with it – my mother knew me so well even at the age of five/six. She knew I could never say no to giving my most precious possession to Samantha Jane. And how clever of her to think of such a thing when she was so upset herself!
I learned from all of the cats I’ve ever known – I even pick up physical habits from them. My cat Seymour used to nod his head upward from the chin several times when he was looking at something of interest in the distance, and I still do the same even though he’s been gone 20 years now. I catch myself trying to curl my tongue like a cat when I yawn. I can do an impression of an angry kitty that fools real cats, and have been attacked by a kitten for saying something truly offensive.
A Siamese we had named Bambi wasn’t very friendly to me as a kid – she liked my mom best – but Bambi would always come and comfort me when I was crying, which I did a lot. She would also be my companion on midnight raids of the kitchen for milk and cookies, and I’d share both with her. She liked to lick the middle out of a sandwich cookie, and it has never occurred to me that letting a cat drink out of my milk glass is unsanitary.
I’m never alone with a cat around. I always have someone to sit with, to talk to, to take care of, to play with, to cuddle.
I know what they are thinking – when they are bothering to do any thinking – and I know when they are just happy to exist in a sunbeam. That’s a lesson I’ve learned, and well! My hubby tells people that I follow the sun around the garden like a cat. I like that I can tell when Spot has an itchy ear and is about to have a scratch, and how I know Lokii wants to curl up just there.
They are never deliberately cruel, they are always ready to play, they look beautiful, their fur feels like the most luxurious material ever invented, and they even smell good! The smell thing came up for me a couple of times today, and I realised I’ve never mentioned that my cats smell great. Different from each other, too. Lokii smells like perfume, even though he has dandruff. Spot is less flowery but still smells…good. Clean, warm, cat-smell. My boys aren’t allowed outside, but I still remember from when I was a kid how the a cat smelled when she came in from outside, especially if she had been under a car – an interesting scent of hot cat and oil/gasoline.
Cats require work, and sacrifice, and dedication, and responsibility. None of these are bad things.
They give so much: beauty, tactile sensation, play, and the best naps ever. I always know that when I lie down with the intention of having a good nap, I’ll have both boys with me. They are the only reason I even can have a nap, I think…
Spotty’s little feet on my neck as we nap on the couch. He always makes an effort and stretches out to put his feet on my face when he’s happy, warm, comfortable and sleepy. How I love him so.
Never will I choose a life that is cat-less. My life would be smaller, diminished, without cats.
