We’ve done our now-traditional torturing of the fur persons.
I have to say, the cats are incredibly patient with this indignity.
The first victim.
Get.it.off.me.
I can’t move, ma!
Is this your fault!?!?
We only took three ‘official pics.’ They are all terrible! Can’t even see kitty faces in the first one, and I’m a giant white marshmallow cow. Moo.
A little better!
But of course, the one I like best is the one where none of us were ready and the smiles are real.
Happy Holidays, everyone!
I’ve finally gotten off my arse (figuratively) and figured out how to upload a video to YouTube, so I can post it here. Since I’m poor and I can’t pay for the fancyschmancy WordPress add-in.
So here’s a link to a few hilarious moments of Neko trying to stomp-nip Spot, Spot running off to chase a laser, and Lokii bitching about it all.
Okay, since we all seem to share a wonderfully childish love of talking about cats’ heineys, I decided to search the Internet for ‘cat butt’ and see what it crapped out.
I present your future Christmas wish list: (OMG did I just use the C-word?!?)
For the brave: Cat-Butt Chewing Gum!
Cat-butt magnets! Something lovely to look at on your fridge.
The classic: cat butt tea-towel/dish-towel holder! Butt, it looks way funnier when not holding a towel, I think.
Catbutt air fresheners! Yeah, I know. Supposedly it smells of gardenias. I don’t know what the manufacturer’s cat eats, but I surely don’t smell flowers when gifted with a cat-arse in my face.
Cat-ass salt and pepper shakers! I think this one is particularly funny, because Salt looks like she needs a vet. Even more than Pepper does, with his five arseholes.
Zazzle has a ton of things, as does Cafepress (I particularly like the ‘cats are nothing to scream about’ coaster.)
Well! The one thing I expected to find, besides the towel-holder, is a shirt that my mother owned and giggled incessantly over. Google has let me down, so I think I will have to dig it out and model it for you!
Um no. Days later… I have finally gotten the step ladder, dug through the vacuum packed clothes I never wear but can’t throw out, found the sweatshirt, put it on…and it looks terrible on me! So I held it as flat as possible to hide the wrinkles and asked iDJ to take pictures.
The front:
The back!!!
It seems a shame this isn’t on the market anymore. The copyright is 1986, by A.M. Grupke, and titled ‘Hep Cat, Nashville, TN’
My Safari didn’t like the only link to Hep Cat, and googling the artist only brings one link with an interview of the artist. It’s called ‘Cats Coming and Going.’
I think we need to bring this design back, I’d love the one in colour!
Because I haven’t drawn a thing in months and months, I did a fast one tonight.
Lokii after dark.
Right, so, I’ve been sitting on these pics for a little while. I didn’t feel much like doing much, and I still don’t, but I had three days off and got some schtuff done around the house and I’m trying to force myself to be interactive. Sort of the idea behind forcing yourself to smile so you’ll feel better. Endolphins or endorkings or sommat like that.
Yes, I know the right word. I just like the idea of the chemicals in my brain being either dolphins or dorks; either splashing about happily in my brain juice or sitting in the corner like a classic eejit in a dunce hat.
I suspect I have more endorkings.
Oh lawd. I’ve now taught my iPad that endorkings is a real word that it can finish spelling for me.
Anyhoo, the forcing effort freaked me out a bit today when I decided to visit all the blog posts I’ve been skipping. My inbox said I had no unread messages, but when I went to the next page I found 19 of them from mid-September. Gmail lied to me. Unread means unread – not ‘you haven’t read any of the three dozen you can see at one time.’ I hate hate hate having unread mail! I might choose to ignore it until later: but not even glanced at? uh-uh. Makes me feel like such a lazy slug. And I hate hate hate slugs.
In any case I promised a kitty-battle. And I was reminded again when I saw all the emails to myself from my iPhone. There should be a better way, and I’m sure there is, but that’s what I do.
They aren’t that old, only from the 4th. Terrible quality, the boys were fast and um, well, furious. Damn Vin Diesel and his crappy petrol-laden series of movies.
Here’s how it got started.
You can understand perhaps why this caused affront to Spot. But he had been trying to mount his brother for about two weeks prior to the Battle Royale, so I think patient Lokii had some payback coming.
Spot didn’t think so.
Yes, I just sat there and clicked away. I’m a bad mom.
Lokii tried to escape, as Spot was being really, really mean. He came toward me, as a supposed safe haven. Ha.
There is no attempted rape going on here. Nothing to see.
Um, I think I will retract that last statement.
Spot had a wee lie-down on the couch in between skirmishes three and four. Lokii hunched down below his eye level, but my phone or finger wasn’t quite fast enough to get the entire pounce!
And then back to normal, disgustingly cute, ear-cleaning, kitty-brotherly-lurve in front of the fire when they got tired.
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.
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.’
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.
Argh. I have nothing going on, yet a ton of things going on, and I don’t even know where to begin. So I haven’t begun, until now… this is feeling like one of those times I need to ramble and write, just because I need to write.
That said, I caught myself cleaning the fridge this evening in what I knew damn well was an avoidance ploy. What’s up with that? Who the hell would rather wash the beer vegetable drawers instead of write? Especially when the call is so clearly upon oneself? Like that third person stuff? Yeah, me neither.
Maybe it really is that I have too much in my head and couldn’t figure out where to start. I’m just free-writing here, a big ol’ brain-dump. I guess I’ll see how big it really is. Good thing I don’t actually use paper, I’d be clogging the jacks…
I still need to post about my garden, and about a dozen kinds of beer I’ve tried recently, and an ‘invasion of the flour-mites’ update (I’ve gotten so many Google hits about it I feel I should do a proper post with advice on getting rid of them – they are gone). I have a ton of photos I’d like to share… I’m worried about my job security, and about Socks (who still is waiting, and since she has her mum with her we aren’t having our weekly phone call tonight). I owe an old friend a serious response to a difficult email, I’m worried about an ex who I’ve only just realised might be having a hard time and I don’t know why, and I just realised that it’s friggin’ Thursday and I have no hope of even getting a card to my dad in time for Father’s Day. Sorry dad, I really have been meaning to send something. I’m a terrible kid. Love me anyway? (that’s an old family joke)
We are also meant to have 36 – yes, thirty-bleedin-six, hours of rain, which started today at about 11 am. Yay. 36 hours of wet dog and no garden and no sitting outside all weekend. And I just know it will clear and be beautiful just in time for me to be stuck behind a desk on Monday. I can’t even get close to explaining how very much a sunny day that I cannot enjoy distracts me. My brain just does not appreciate being confined indoors, and my body is screaming for sunshine and fresh air.
I’m worried about my sister being lonely and having a tough time while her husband is away.
I started having graphic nightmares again, which try but fail to get my heart rate up, but still wake me and set my mind going. I can’t read myself to sleep on the iPad at those times: it will fall over and hit either me or iDJ in the face. I did, in one of those middle-of-the-night sessions, have an idea for a new blog; something I’d like to do that actually has a ‘theme’ but I can’t make the time for it unless I can think of a way it will make me some money. Which annoys me, because I’d much rather do it for the love of it, but ohmydog we are broke. Another worry…
And, suddenly, it’s 10pm and I have only an hour of me-time left before I have to sleep or be useless tomorrow. Hard as hell this time of year – even with the rain it is bright enough outside to read. It feels like 8, or even 7, but I have to finish making dinner, eat it, and go to sleep soon. Yes yes I know, we eat at crazy hours. iDJ has been on the air the last two hours and he has to wrap up some things still, and there’s no way we’d be able to make and eat a big meal in the hour of ‘free time’ we have between coming home from work and his show starting. Maybe if we didn’t cook from scratch and had something out of a bag or box it would be possible… Blecch.
I guess the last thing on my mind is my spine – I have to wait until July 4 for a consult to go over the results of my MRI. I have no idea what they are going to say. My physiotherapist says that pretty much only shots or surgery are going to be offered to me as options. I’m not keen on either, but will take the shots just to feel like a normal person again. Heh. Like that is possible…
Right, let me find a picture to cheer myself up… Oh yes, here we go.
Okay maybe it’s too big. But I didn’t want you to miss the flailing kitty-arm! Neko and Spotty were having a big game that day, and I took a ton of photos I wanted to upload, and hubby took a video. I’ve just not gotten a round tuit yet for a real post, so I might put this shot up again later.
Right, need to go make a salad – one of these days I’ll share my dad’s dressing with you, it’s amazingly good and so easy!
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.
heretherebespiders 