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Gracie's Bulletin

No more trips outside

Hey cats. Mom was all for letting me have the occasional stroll out the door, but then I started doing it when dad was around, and dad is extremely worried that I'll figure out how to get on the elevator, but then will be too scared to come out of it. He's been very vigilant at the door, and has begged and pleaded with mom to make sure I don't get into the habit of strolling out the front door.

"She could do it to a pet sitter someday, and that wouldn't be very wise to encourage", he said.

Well, mom can't say no to anyone (Boris and I know that, that's why he keeps pestering her for treats lately MOL), even to dad. So now I am being watched like a hawk. Also, the other day I saw the super on the other side of the door. With a vacuum cleaner!!!!! GASP. Mom says he doesn't wield a vacuum cleaner all the time, but just the same, I think I am going to stop taking chances, and will wait for mom to say it's okay (though she hasn't been doing that lately :-/).

Besides, I'm not sure the seagulls are still around. I don't hear them as much. It's also starting to rain a lot in the afternoons, which is sort of like watching mom shower, only with bigger droplets.

My trip outside the front door

I've always wondered how you get to the outside. I've never been, aside for that one time when I went out the door and mommy yelled at me to get back in, and I never even got to see any birds, just a stupid car parked in front of our door. :(

Today I snuck out the door while momma was getting ready to leave to go buy cat food, or whatever it is that she does when she goes out [typist's note: I really was on my way to buy cat food, this time around]. Mom just stood there and let me explore it. I sniffed around, and went near the elevator. It didn't open or anything, and it didn't sound scary (Boris told me that the elevator is this strange thing that makes scary sounds. I say he's a big fat liar).

I saw our corridor, such as it is. It's not like the one we were staying in last summer, with the open window and all that. It's just a foyer-like thing with 4 doors on opposite sides, then there's another door that must lead somewhere (next time I will try to see if I can open that door). I hope it's the one that leads to the seagulls. I keep hearing them from the front window, and while I haven't actually seen them, they sound big, and possibly juicy. :P

Then at the other end there's an elevator. No windows. No birds. What the heck? What does a cat have to do to get some quality time hunting real birds?

Anyway, I was about to redress the situation, when I suddenly heard a voice near one of the other doors. I don't know about you cats, but I really don't like strange voices, especially when I can't see the persons the voices are coming from [it was probably another neighbor talking near their front door]. As they say, discretion is the better part of valor, and I decided that the discreet thing to do was to pretend like I wanted to go back inside.

Someday. Someday I'ma gonna go find me one of them juicy seagull birds. But right now, I think I'm okay with staying in and hunting the fake ones.

How humans and cats became friends - Part 1

Cats and humans did not always live together. Once upon a time, the Great Cat who rules all cats from its realm to the next would never dream of allowing its children to dwell among humans.

True enough, the Great Cat would send its children to observe the world of men closely. The Great Cat believed that its children, through their shortish lives on Earth, learned a lot. Once they returned to the bridge, back to it, they had fabulous stories to tell the others. Being that telling tales on the bridge had always been the best way to pass the time, those journeys had a lot of value.

Many were the cats who told wonderful tales of animals that were covered in feathers, and of others who had long necks or tusks. They told stories of the fish that was always plentiful if hard to catch, and of seeing rainbows down on Earth and missing their home, just for a little bit. They told of the warmth of the sand in the desert, and of the pleasure of drinking the cool water from the river on a hot night, especially when the moon was full in the sky. Sometimes they even had curious stories of the humans who they spied on, and how those humans kept other animals. Some of them looked like birds, and some of them looked like cows. But most of them honestly looked like wolves.

But those stories perturbed the Great Cat, who saw nothing good in an animal that liked to keep other animals prisoners. The Great Cat believed that humans must toy with the pets as a cat would toy with a mouse. Moreover, if the humans had allied with the wolves, nothing good would come from any cat choosing to ally him or herself with one of them.

And yet, the more the Great Cat forbid any talk about the humans and their so called "pets", the more the cats on the rainbow became fascinated about them. The more the Great Cat forbid its children to even come close to human settlements, the more daring the children got. Once upon a time the children were content to spy on them. These days, however, the children would go so far as to go inside the humans' homes even if they were not invited to do so (and even if they were, why should they ever want to accept?). The Great Cat understood that a lot of it was simple intellectual curiosity on its children's part, but even so, it was greatly upset.

At some point, the Great Cat decided to see for itself what the attraction was, so the Great Cat came up with a plan to pretend to be one of its children just for one day to see what all the fuss was all about. So it was that the Great Cat took its most elegant form, and descended on Earth... and everything changed after that.