What's he got that I don't got?!

This morning Meera let me snuggle her! She didn't purr for me, but she didn't struggle either! I just picked her up, and scratched her around her cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut...

Then later, she and Kai were lying on the big blue chair, grooming each other for long minutes, and snuggling to beat the band.

G-R-O-S-S

Note to self: run the disposal after throwing the ends of pickles into the sink drain. It took me a good ten minutes of crouched staring, and poking with paper towel, before I could identify the rubbery pale green thing left outside my bedroom door.

Kai must have reached into the drain and snagged it with his claws. How did he know it was down there??

Visitor

Last night, returning from a visit to my sister's place (oh, to be a real adult with a fireplace!), I climbed the porch and walked toward my back door. A streak of fuzzy black lightning flew past my feet, down the steps, and vanished into the alley behind the old carriage house.

Meerakai are always terribly interested in sniffing my shoes when I come home. I guess it's their window to the outside world. What do they smell? Maybe where I work, the sidewalks outside the house, the gas pedal of my car...the scent of neighborhood kitties??

The blue light

Singing a song of Saturday morning

This morning has been a steady string of quiet, simple joys. I woke early, made the bed and took care of the kitties. Put away the breakfast dishes and started a pot of coffee. Kicked the thermostat up a degree or two. Last night I'd cleaned the flat...giving the bathroom a thorough going-over, washing three days' worth of dishes, and sweeping the kitchen floor. It was so pleasant to wake up to a clean house. Time was, I resented the connection between my sense of well-being and the cleanliness of my surroundings, but now I accept it and do what I must.

With fresh coffee perking and two cats twisting themselves around my ankles, I made and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast...toast, coffee, water, and some vegetable soup. Vegetable soup?! Not the most orthodox of early morning meals, but that's what happens when Mother Hubbard's cupboards go bare!

So then I brought a second cup of coffee over to the armchair in the living room, where I alternated reading with gazing through the window just to my left. Lately it seems as though the sky over Hamtramck is always grey and overcast, though not oppressively so. I don't mind it. I find something very appealing in the combination of old crooked houses, black bare-branched trees, and low sky. It makes me feel like I'm a character inside one of the wonderfully-illustrated books I read as a girl (Edward Gorey? Royal Tenenbaums? Madeleine?).

Just now Kai and Meera, perched atop the low bookcase in front of the window, began making 'yik yikking' sounds. I stood up to see what might be causing the fuss. Both their tails were swishing wildly back and forth; their bodies were tense, and their ears pointed forward. Just outside the window grows a tree, bare of course, bare except for the extremely fat squirrel running back and forth on a branch at about our eye level. Kai stood on his hind legs to paw at the window. The squirrel must have heard the scritching because all of a sudden he stopped mid-stride, and stared for a good three seconds at our window (what a sight that must have been! two eager-eyed kittens and their lady, scrunched together on the other side of the glass!). Kai pawed again at the window, and the squirrel ran up and over to a higher, safer part of the tree. He stared again for a few seconds, and then decided the kittens were no threat, trapped as they were in their domestic prison. He leaped to the branch closest to our window, balanced his substantial weight on his back legs, and proceeded to take a leisurely bath. First he licked his front paws, then washed his nose, his ears, groomed his belly (not unlike a cat, I'd like to point out). He went over his entire bushy tail, and finally gave a good scratch to each ear before bounding off in search of nuts. I thought the kittens were going to go insane...

I feel content and relaxed right now, fully caffeinated, kittenated, and ready for the day. If only every day began with such simple satisfaction, with such little rush. Before I leave for my last Saturday class, I'll finish a load of laundry, pack an overnight bag to take to my grandmother's, and find my waitressing outfit for work tonight.

Artsy bed-shot

Sit like a lady! (my mother would say)

Ah, but this wee one has just woken up and didn't know there was a camera about...give her a moment to adjust herself...

Meera breaks her own personal-space rule

This paper is NOT being co-authored

I finished my dinner a few minutes ago and just sat back down at my laptop. My goal is to finish this research proposal by 2 am. It's 8 pm now. This is the very last ever-ever project I'll have to do before they hand me my degree, and I'm so sick of it I could cry. Luckily the bulk of it is done. I need to make a few revisions, rearrange some sections, and then make it all flow.

But I've just glanced at the laptop screen, and my stomach dropped. Nothing I saw looked familiar. There was an entire paragraph containing a single letter: 's'. There were dots and dashes, there were nonsensical words.

Oh, shit, I though. I forgot the first rule of working on a laptop: never leave it unattended and unprotected while there are catses around. The blinking cursor must have caught Kai's eye, so he stepped on the keyboard to do a little investigative sniffing. And that explains the scratch marks on the display, too.

I started clicking the Undo button repeatedly. 125 Undo's later, as my finger was starting to tire, I discovered a handy-dandy Word feature that lets me Undo several things at once (about 500 things at once, to be exact).

I was able to delete all of Kai's editorial comments, and retrieved entire paragraphs that he'd erased. Then I saved the proposal three times.

Haven't seen the little bugger in awhile. Meera is in the room with me now, jumping straight up the wall at absolutely nothing. Looks like she can clear about two feet of air...

Squirt, squirt

I went and bought a squirt bottle from the supermarket just down the street. It was definitely a premeditated decision, and they know it. I wrote it on my shopping list. I remembered to go down the cleaning/storage aisle. I found one that lets me spray a soft befuddling mist and a long-range hard-hitting kerpow.

So yes, I can eat my breakfast without having to push Bella (aka "Greedy") away from my plate twenty million times, and now Kai (aka "Slurpy") actually jumps out of the kitchen sink when I say "get down!"

But is it worth the guilt??

I'm going to be one of those parents whose kids are miserable brats because I don't have the heart to discipline them...sigh...

Tempting fate

Meerakai were both sitting peaceful and sedate in the living room window as I locked up this morning. But I bet Kai found the pan soaking in the kitchen sink within seconds of my shutting the door.

Bobblehead

This morning, I walked from the fluorescent brightness of the kitchen into the barely lamp-lit darkness of the living room. Meera, sitting on the long end table and craning her neck to see out the window, suddenly stood stock-still and got ready to run--normal procedure for her when I enter the room.

So, obligingly, I slowed way down, and channeled soft, non-threatening, fluid thoughts towards this tiny wildchild. She remained on the coffee table. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her do something strange as I passed through to the bedroom. She kept her body stiff and her eyes on my face, but her head bobbed up and down and all around as I went by, tiny little bird-like movements.

I've noticed her doing this before, but never really consciously until this morning. Why the bobblehead?

Leap to balance

Prey! (near-headless, ratty, germed-up prey)

Hungry for the sea

Why were they crying so loudly? Neither are especially vocal, but this afternoon they cried and cried and swam among my legs, and beseeched me for...something!

I gave each a rub on the head, and went back to stirring my New England Clam Chowder.

What's so cool about sheets?

My bedroom door doesn't latch properly; the pokey-outey thing is permanently stuck inside the door, so it won't grab the hole-thing on the jamb. ("Jamb"? Is that a word??). Thus at night when I want to sleep a sleep free of stealth toe attacks, I prop the door shut with a shoebox full of books.

Normally I use the shoebox during morning bed-make as well. But this morning I could hear both kittens munching loudly on kitten chow, waaay on the other side of the flat, and thought to myself, "It takes, what? less than a minute to make the bed? I'll just rearrange the sheets and blankets real quick."

I threw back the top blanket. I threw back the comforter. I picked up the sheet. I tossed it high into the air and let it billow slowly, slowly, slowly down. In its settling, two cat-shaped humps revealed themselves. How in the...?!?! Weren't they just...?!?! But...?!?!

I gave up on the bed-make, and instead Kai and Bella and I had crazy insane playtime. Pupils black and dilated, they stalked each other among the mountains and valleys of the Sheet Monster.

My Bella knows she's bella

One of the many, many wonderful features of my new flat is that both of the walk-in closets have full-length mirrors for doors. At the old place, I had to crane my neck to see my whole ensemble in the tiny bathroom mirror, or I'd try to catch my reflection in the glass of the back door as I locked up for the day.

This morning before I left the flat I called for the kitties. Only soft Kai came running, so after giving him a little belly rub I went in search of Meera. Not in the kitchen, not in the office/library/yet-to-be-unpacked room, not in the living room or in any of the windows. Finally I found her parked in front of the closet mirror in my bedroom. Sitting on her hind legs, front paws positioned daintily just-so, admiring her own reflection. And what a beautiful reflection it is...