A Rose for Valentine’s Day and a Beautiful Poem

OMC, Gentleman Jack gave me a rose for Valentine’s Day! I don’t know what to say!

We tried to see if the writings of my namesake, Colette, would help. Geeze she really was feisty. We didn’t readily find anything Colette wrote that would show how much I loved getting that rose. What we found, though, is this really beautiful poem by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus that Colette quoted in her short novel, “Claudine and Annie”. Thank you Gentleman Jack for the wonderful rose and for inspiring me to look for a way to thank you properly.

“For A Cat”
by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus (born in Honfleur, France 3 November 1874 - died, 26 April 1945 )

Majestic cat, mysterious and wise,
Through whose black velvet mask gleam jewelled eyes,
Do my ring-laden fingers not presume too much,
When they caress you, monarch in disguise?

Lithe, furry serpent, coiled up in repose,
Warmer than living feathers to my touch
Save for the coolness where your small bare nose
Buds though the black and white, a glistening rose.

Jungle-fierce still for all your ribbon bows
And feigned docility. Let some hapless toy
Catch your disdainful eye, at once peremptory paws
Pounce on the prey with grappling-irons of claws.

Tonight, here in the dusk, no wile of mine
Can lure your still remoteness, make you glance from where
You sit, a Buddha-cat of stone, gold eyes astare:
You are remembering you were once divine.”

Supper Will Be Delayed Due to Technical Difficulty

The kitchen swallowed a small item again. That meant that supper wasn’t going to happen any time in the near future—drats!

For a tiny little box, the kitchen is rather good at that. Marrakech’s Tagament pill, the sterling silver backing to Mom’s earring, the nail tacking the calendar to the wall…all teleported to another dimension.

The show and the sound effects were rather amusing, though. Our kitchen seemed to have acquired a menagerie. “Squeeeal!” Pig? Mouse? “Oh, nooooo!”

“Acccck!“ Duck?

“Grrrr….” Oh dear, this does not sound good. Ferocious dog? Bear?

Good thing Misha wasn’t around, or it might have taken all night—he used to help Mom look for things by sticking his face in hers while she crawled around the floor, face to the ground, butt up in the air.

Ohhh, this was gonna’ be good. The little thingy stick that holds the rubber thingy that controls the flow of the water to our fountain and its spring just shot across the kitchen. She had the damp paper towels in hand, crawling all over the floor. Ever seen a kitchen floor get washed with a paper towels?

Man, do we leave that much kibble and that much floof all over the place? You should see what’s coming up! Still nothing? Wow! Pay dirt. You could fill up another bowl with the kibble she just dug out from under the stove using the chop stick. Eeech! Look at those wads of floof that were under the fridge!

Man! The floor between the stove and the wall was really black. Sweep, sweep, sweep. Still nothing? “Yaaay! The thingy stick! Now where’s the spring?” That’s my water, Mom! You’ve got to find it.

“Grrrr”…. Still nothing? I’m starving. I’m thirsty. Nyeh, nyeh.

You’re washing the kitchen a second time? Nyeh. Where’s my water!

“Halleluyah!” A choir of angels? Since when did that belong to a zoo?

“It doesn’t. I found it! Yaaaaay!”

Where was it? “On the dish rack tray.” Meooow!

“Acccck!” Now what? “Samsara’s terbutaline pill just flew out of the pill cutter!” =^..^=

Let’s Monkey Around…

OMC, I get Valentine’s pics and DDP all on the same day! I’m basking in the glory.

Am I not a hot, spicy Mama? Bring on the glam and the recognition….

Thanks diary Gal, thanks Mom, and thanks effuryone--especially, Pipo and Minko. Did you see the beautifurr picture they made of me honoring my DDP?

About those Valentine’s pics: since Halloween I’ve been surprising Mom with just how laid back I am about doing the photo shoots. Bring on the lace, the feathers, the glitter balls—I just love them. Unlike some furs I live with, as long as Mom wants to keep snapping pictures I’m a willing subject—just don’t use flash or infra-red and I’m yours.

Marrakech surprised Mom with just how cute (blech) she looked in her pictures. If making unhappy faces makes you cute then…

There aren’t too many pics of Samsara. The minute that monkey started getting saucy, she bit him and ended her photo op.

Saucy? Yeah. Messrs. Big Lips & Co. talk. Their tags say that they’re motion-activated, but in reality, changes in light set them off. They started talking up a storm during that shoot. They make monkey screeching sounds and sound like a woman’s worst nightmare (or daydream, take your pick) when she’s walking past a construction site.

Not for nothing, pink lips asked Samsara if she wanted to “touch his monkey” just before she bit him in the big toe.

Okay, picture this one. You’re alone. You’re in bed; it’s late at night, all the lights are out and it’s really quiet. You’re just about to go to sleep and all of a sudden: “Oooo Oooo Ahhh Aahhh Aahhh Eeeee Eeee Eeee Eeee, You’re A Monkey, Baby!…… Oooh, Cheeky Monkeeeee, Oooo Oooo Ahhh Aahhh Aahhh Eeeee Eeee Eeee Eeee!” comes screeching at you from the living room.

You should have seen the four of us sitting up straight with the biggest floofs you ever saw (Mom included). For a second, we thought we had a very noisy burgler! A car had driven past the window and caught those guys in its headlights. Ooooo, Ooooo Aaaah!

Headbonks…

It’s About Time

It’s about time, as grandmaw would have said, that Mom finally cleaned those pretty chairs in the nook that we girls (are not supposed to) don’t sit on.

They were getting furry uncomfortable!

Headbonks…

My Turn to Make Mom Laugh

Mom surprised me tonight by bringing the ladder into the kitchen just as I was walking out of the room. Samsara was standing where the ladder should have been on the dining platform. I leaped a few feet into the air. I couldn’t land on the platform because Samsara was right there, so I shot straight up over her and landed—oops—right in the middle of the living room. (Don’t tell anyone, I’m practicing my hurdles for the Summer Olympics. At this rate, my chances are getting awfully good!)

Headbonks…

Anonymous Hearts

It slipped our human's mind (what doesn't?) that we forgot to thank the kind fur who thought that Marrakech and I weren't feeling well on Christmas day and gave us each a heart.

We still wonder...who... and we find it uncanny that those hearts came at a time when we were feeling okay but Mommy's heart was hurting over some purrsonal family issues.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Style and Grace

Neither of which has Samsara been endowed with. I swear she inhales her food (and sometimes, mine too).

I’m still giving Mom a hard time with my wet food and Mom was crumbling Stella & Chewy’s raw chicken patties into it to try to get me to eat. They really tasted as good as the WholeLife chicky treats we ran out of. (Mom just never manages to get to the store that sells the treats.) I loved the chicken patties, but their cranberry additive and I apparently don’t agree with each other. I had blood in my poops again so Mom stopped giving them to me.

She went back to the store around her coach’s neighborhood to try to persuade them to get the WholeLife treats and they put something new in her hands: Stella & Chewy’s Chicken Doggie treats which don’t have cranberry in them. I love them! So does Samsara. :~(

Mom gave them to us yesterday evening. They’re soft freeze-dried meat and start out about dime-size. I ate mine like a lady. Samsara inhaled hers. About 2 minutes later, Samsara started making all these retching sounds. What goes down whole must come up whole too. She yarked up something round that was now about the size of a quarter only it looked like a soggy marble!

Yuck!

Day After Christmas Snow Storm

Wow, does New York get weather. Mom says that the newspaper reported that the snow storm we had was the 6th largest in the history of the city and that the snow drifts hit 4 feet in some places. Our city just isn’t equipped to deal with that much snow.

Well, things sort of come to a standstill, but it gets really interesting watching from the window—that is when you can see. During the storm which lasted over 18 hours the world kind of disappeared into a wall of white on our window. All the snow that was blowing around in the high winds attached itself to our bug screens. There was nothing but white left to see.

The sun came out yesterday, but you still couldn’t see up the street because of all the clouds of snow blowing around.

Today the wind died down and things got really interesting. What sight out of our windows! People were trying to drive down our street and the plows haven’t come through. They were getting stuck all over the place. The sidewalks have been shoveled but there’s about 2 feet or more of snow in the road all the way down our street. In some places the drifts are even higher.

Mom went out today and when she left the house around 5:00 this afternoon she says that there was a Fresh Direct delivery truck and a van stuck on the next block. She says that the driver of that delivery truck was trying so hard to get out that he wasn’t noticing that the truck was tilted at such an angle that it almost tipped over. At first, Mom was afraid it was going to fall on her; then she noticed that it would have fallen against a lamp post before it could fall over. She came home around 9:30 this evening and both the van and the delivery truck were still there. In all those hours, the Fresh Direct truck managed to get across the street from one curb to the next. The Fresh Direct truck had sent out a crew of 3 men to try to dig that guy out, but the van had only his family helping.

At the same time (9:30), there was also a big moving truck stuck right outside our bedroom window. Around 11:30 it finally managed to make it to the end of our block and got stuck in the intersection. The moving truck got a much bigger tow truck to get it out. That finally happened around 2:30 AM. It’s now 2:50 AM. I heard the whirring sound of another car being stuck and raced to the window. It’s stuck in the same intersection! It’s going to be a fun night.

Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This…

I think I’m getting the blame but I’m not in the dog-house either. See the remains of the plant on my page? Can you imagine, Mom said that it’s probably her fault! Mom slept in this morning since she had subway problems getting home from a Christmas party last night and, by the time she got in bed it was after 3:30 this morning. When she staggered out of bed that’s what she found. (Incidentally, that plant is older than all of us--even Mom. It was our great-grandpaw’s plant. It lived with our grandpawrents after 1968 when great-grandpaw died.)

So why is it her fault and not ours? The window sill isn’t quite wide enough for the plant but there’s a slight ledge formed by the radiator under the window-sill and she usually has a brick there that makes up for what’s missing from the sill. She forgot to take the brick out of the oven the last time she needed it to bake bread.

Marrakech is off the hook—she’s way too light to have done that, so that leaves me or Samsara. We’ll never tell. (I’m the one who’s always bothering that plant.)

Okay, plan: clean up plant, get coffee. Plant clean up/repotting time—about one half hour. She comes plodding into the kitchen, looks for coffee cup and nyeh, nyeh, mrrow! We’re hungry. Plan: fill dishes with kibble, get Marrakech her bowl of wet food, get coffee.

Feed cats, done. Wander out of kitchen in bare feet right into yark! Plan: clean feet, clean yark, put shoes on, get coffee.

Okay, done. Wander back into kitchen with shoes on and crunch! Aaaah!! We left kibble in the middle of the kitchen floor.

Plan: clean crumbs, get coffee.

6:30 PM. This is Mom—WHERE’S MY COFFEE! (Okay, so I’m exaggerating a bit.)

Oooh. Holiday Pictures!

Look how many balls Mom put there! The balls are definitely for stalking and chasing around. And a curtain! Boy do I love curtains!

Sorry about the strange angle for the video. Mom had the camera turned the wrong way. We hope the crick we put your neck straightens out soon. We had a lot of fun with these pictures.

Happy Holidays.

Headbonks…