we had joy...

...we had fun, we had seasons in the sun

(wicket sez: spring sunshine and feathers and sis/bro locked up in separate room are niiiiiiice)

claws!

wicket's, to be exact

synesthesia

each time i visit lizzie's 922cats, it feels like walking into a clean, white room. there's a window open somewhere and minimal furniture- lots of space to walk freely, swinging your arms.

she's using a beautiful, simple template with so much restful white space that text and pics just pop. as i'm mentally swinging my arms, feeling the breeze through the imaginary open window, and poring over pics of ppeettunniiaa, i remember a story i just read in my new cookbook.

the story is about a man who experiences combinations of sensations. it's called synesthesia. so while eating chocolate mousse, for example, he feels the smooth contours of tall cool marble pillars. after serving a friend the fried chicken he had just baked, he tasted a bite and said, 'it's not pointed enough!'

nabokov was a famous synesthete. letters of the alphabet, when he imagined them, were each tinged with a different color. duke ellington saw timbre in color.

kind of related to this is the bouba/kiki effect. take a look at the two images here. assign one image the word "bouba" (regardless of this word's meaning (it has none)), and assign the other image the word "kiki."

when many, many people are asked this question, 90-something percent answer the same way. how do you answer?

go back to bed!

I was woken up at 3 a.m. this morning. For one horrible moment I believed I'd aged ten years, birthed three half-grown kids, and that somehow Christmas had been moved to late May. It was horrible! I was groggy! Had trouble getting to sleep in the first place!

All three fuzzers rampaged from room to room, yowling and crying piteously and running into walls, crashing over furniture. Then one of them discovered me on the bed, snuffled my hairline, rrroowled, and before I knew it, all three were on the bed. Nudging my elbows, patting my toes, biting my toes, walking across my belly.

For crying out loud, kids, go back to bed! No one's opening any presents until 6!

Maybe Wicket was hungry and extra-ornery? He's the only one with enough bulk to knock a giant bean bag from teh couch onto the floor. sheesh

lust

reclamation

All my mental associations of the word 'gimp' are derived from the movie Pulp Fiction. And they're not good. So I set about reclaiming the word for my own peace of mind, and found these alternate meanings:

"...a special type of black lace used to trim certain gowns at Oxford University."

"...ornamental braid used to cover tack heads that hold fabric's edge against exposed wood."

"...a small punk band that originated from East Brunswick, New Jersey...fronted by Tomas Kalnoky who later went on to write, sing and play guitar for famed third-wave ska bands Catch-22 and Streetlight Manifesto."

So there, QTarantino.

But my real reason for this post is to celebrate my recent discovery of a fantabulous free open-source image editor. It's called GNU Image Manipulation Program (or, surprise surprise, GIMP), and so far I love it.

So do the guys and gals at CNET, who made it their featured download earlier this month: "Extremely powerful and easy to work with, GIMP is ideal for both amateur and pro photographers, Web designers, or anyone who wants to create and edit professional-quality digital images on a budget."

On their FAQ page, the people at GIMP respond to the comment that GIMP is a stupid name: "GIMP is comfortable with its name and thinks that you should apologise for your rudeness."

exercise & Wicket- the blue series

exercise & Wicket (or "eW!") - the red series

Cardinals fans

and now you know where new cell phones come from

Lecanomancy

I have finally figured out why mine (and maybe yours) are so in love with water. They're splashers, drowners, dabblers, dippers, waders, tricklers, and sodden-paws, and I've wiped, mopped, dried, toweled, sopped, absorbed, and Bountied in an effort to keep up with them (esp. Kai, my Hawaiian sea).

They're not killing their food or washing their paws, they are lecanomancers!

Love-a-Geek day

holy crapola! it's been a month already since the first time i officially weighed wicket with intent. he weighed 16.5 pounds on april 21, and four weeks later, he weighs 16.6.

this in no way concerns me! first, as jen points out, we loves him just the way he is, yes we do. second, in the transition from dry to canned food (or morning-dry, evening-canned, i haven't decided yet) his portions haven't been as tightly controlled as they would have been otherwise.

and third, my goal has been to give him 450 calories a day, as vet-lady recommended to bring him down to 14 pounds. but he apparently needs fewer than that.

so my revised plan is to finish the switch to canned (or dry in the morning, canned at night), maintain that for two weeks or so to find out what happens to meerakai 'n' wickets' weights, and then reduce portions if i need to.

geek that i am, i've been charting this stuff. here's a pic of wickers' weight (in red) and his target weight (in blue). our target weight has been based on a healthy loss of 1-2% total body weight per week. you can see that at week 4, he was so far off target that i had to recalculate our goal from that point on. does that make sense?

click to enlarge, my friends:

bella and bro 1

bellabro2

wellness

oooh, they love the wet food, yes they do.

guest tonight

i spent the morning and early afternoon cleaning the apartment to prep for niece em's visit tonight. she'll be spending the night...one guess as to which of the three won't come our from under the bed or use the litter box until two in the morning, when all is quiet and dark?

i swept, i dusted, i did dishes, i rearranged the living room furniture (again)...i got rid of the lovely red carpet, bought a year ago, which was shredded into unrecognizable tissue paper within two days. i hung onto it because they love it so, but today i just didn't have the heart to vacuum it.

to vacuum it would have meant moving the very heavy table, going over every square foot five times to pick up the cat hair embedded in the torn peaks and valleys, changing the vacuum bag at least once, maybe twice, to avoid bag-explosion, and then, then! with the carpet as clean as it can be, i'd have to place the vacuum head on its side and with pincer fingers, pull out all the long strands of red used-to-be-part-of-a-carpet from the roller brush.

so my pretties, i'm sorry, but not really. i think i'll buy you a nice scratching post, with levels and hanging bits. will that do?

changes afoot

eat your dry kibble, boys and girl! only a week or so before we begin the switch to canned...

Arrrrr!

meera gets thingies in her eyes consistently, but luckily not that often. this morning she's walking around like a pirate, poor kid.

while i'm talking to you

Wicket, why do i get the feeling you're not listening to me while I'm talking to you?

cat mottos...what are yours?

"Nothing good ever came out of a squirt bottle." (Jen's 'Bastian)

"If I can reach it, it's a toy." (J's Dunc')

squishable girl

very, very relaxed, and yet...ready to kill. cats are a wonder!

bella's spotted belly

don't think about it so much

this is day 2 of the baby scale saga. my mom lent me her baby scale so i could get more sensitive weight measurements of ze cats (ahem, wicket). but listen to this. first the scale was measuring 8 ounces with nothing on it. second, it's not digital; it's got a little swinging arrow and tickmarks. third, it's cold and it smells funny (to the cats). so needless to say they were not impressed. this morning i thought to put a towel down before luring them up with treats (which wicket shouldn't even have been given!). i don't know if this is going to work. it may be easier to stick with my digital hooman scale, even if it is less sensitive. oh- this morning i weighed each of the cats two times on each scale. kai and wicket weighed about the same on both the digital hooman and the baby scales. meera weighed MUCH more on the hooman scale. What is UP with THAT?

origin stories

'splain! 'splain!

the how and the why of Meerakai and Wicket! ok, but first, a memorial blogbit for my first three- Mittens, Rajah and Brat.

Enter Mittens-

My first foray into the weird and wonderful world of Catdom- I was small, maybe 9 or 10, and it was raining buckets outside. Something drew me to the back door, where I could juuust peer over the bottom half of the screen door. And there, so pathetic that my heart writhed in my chest, was a little black and white baby looking up at me and wanting to get in.

What this did to me! I begged my mom to let me bring Mittens into the house but she refused. Worried about infestations or cleaning cat poop? I cried myself to sleep that night, worried sick about that little guy (girl?) in the rain.

The sun woke me the next morning. Would Mittens still be there? But I never made it to the back door. A card table had been placed on its side at the top of the steps leading to the basement. and there, at the bottom of the steps, was Mittens, warm and dry.

That's where my memory ends. We must have sent Mittens on his way later that day, and that is a sad thing. But mostly what this memory evokes is gratefulness and affection for my mom, who always tries to do the right thing.

Enter Rajah-

Rajah was another too quick blip in the life of me. He entered our lives, he got ear mites, he left our lives. This memory is frustration, anger, powerlessness. I don't know what happened to Rajah, but I can still smell the ear medication we gave him for a few days, and ten years later his litter box is still in my mom's garage. Sad.

Enter Brat-

Brat arrived in time for my 16th birthday. He was pure black, my first familiar, two years old, sheltered by a priest along with his good buddy, a black long-haired girl named Broccoli.

When he was younger, Brat was in an accident (with a car?) and then in a full-body cast. Forever after he walked with a limp in his front left paw. He was declawed when he came to us.

I have never known a more sweet-natured or people-loving cat. He just wanted to be in my presence. He'd follow me from room to room, like Kai does now. if I was lying on the couch reading, he'd climb onto my chest and lick my earlobe. Maybe he was flashing back to being a baby nursing kitteh.

He would greet me at the back door when I came home from high school, and we'd touch noses in greeting. He'd cuddle under my blankets at night. I'd wake up in the morning on my back, my face turned to the wall and my chin to my chest, Brat curled into the warm space between my ear and shoulder. He had the sweetest smell.

We'd let him out in the backyard, shut the gate, and let him wander in the wild green leafiness for an hour or two. When I went to bring him back inside, I'd scan the backyard, and more likely than not, I'd see nothing. I'd make a kiss-kiss sound, and a shadow would detach itself from beneath the lilac bush. He'd come running to me. I miss him- he passed away more than a year ago.

Enter Jen:

And now we have caught up to my present bebbies. In the late fall of 2005, Jen espied a mama cat, her grown daughter Miranda, and a litter of at least three kittens near her apartment complex. First she gathered in nameless boy-kitten #1, had him spayed, and took him to the Amazing Toledo Animal Shelter where he was found a home within a few days (yay!).

Then she went back and gathered in boy-kitten #2, christened "Little Boy" and girl-kitten, christened "Little Girl". Little Girl lived under Jen's bed; Little Boy (now Seven) lived at Lizzie's and then 922cats' grandhooman's place until a permanent home could be found (with moi!).

Enter Moi:

It was a cold day when I drove to Jen's to pick them up. I brought two little plastic carriers and blankets to cover them. Seven was easy to capture and slide in. Little Girl though- no. Sweet talk, treats, friendly faces, cooing- no. Dire threats- of course not. Eventually Jen donned her heavy duty winter gloves and dragged Little Girl out, tucked her away in the carrier, and that was the beginning of us.

It took awhile for names to make themselves known. Seven was a water baby right from the start. We cycled through (with varying degrees of seriousness) Lyndon, Narcissus, Energizer Bunny, Caspian, Jojen, Sugar, Jackie, Joe, Muhammad, and then finally, finally, for no good reason except that it fit, we settled on Kai.

Later i discovered "Kai" means the sea in Hawaiian, how fitting. It also means (do you trust the internets?) the earth in Japanese. In Latin 'Kai' is rooted in the word 'gaius,' which also means earth. In Welsh and Scottish it means 'keeper of the keys.' Kai means food or to gather food in Maori, and plentiful in Chinese. It can also mean spirit or dragon, or love in Swahili. In Dutch it means king, in Creole it means house. I love the flexibility and strength of the name.

Meera's name means Meera. [Update: it's also the name of an Iranian rock band based in Tehran.] Her name came right out of George R.R. Martin's series, 'A Song of Ice and Fire.' Meera Reed is one of my favorite characters- steady, practical, a green-eyed huntress. My Meera is also a green-eyed huntress, but she's UNstable and how many indie film star wannabees do you know who are practical, and she's drifted more towards Bella the beautiful than Meera these days, but as Lizzie says, every cat has at least three names. Probably more.

Enter Jen again:

But let us go back to Jen. After finding homes for the litter of three, she went back for the grown daughter Miranda. A neighbor had been feeding these strays and managed to lure Miranda into her apartment in March 2006.

In Jen's words:

"I got her and took her to the vet to get spayed. They called me at work and told me she was FIV positive. I had no idea what to do; I pretty much freaked out. I told them to go ahead with the surgery and asked if they could keep her there until I could figure something out.

Of all people, it was the vet's attorney who reached out to me and convinced me that there was somebody somewhere who would take her, and that my cats were at almost zero risk. So I took her home. She stayed in my bedroom for a month, and I blocked every little opening around the door so she had no contact with my other two. Probably unnecesary, but I was paranoid, especially since mine weren't up on their vaccinations.

Anyway, I finally found Crash's Landing in Grand Rapids at the end of April, and they agreed to give her a home in their sanctuary, and post her on their Petfinder page indefinitely. I was really impressed with how clean and comfy the place is (it's really just a converted 2-story house). The cats I met were very sweet and friendly, and each one wears a collar and a name tag. They are all FIV-positive, and most are available for adoption. It was both heartwarming and heartbreaking. But even if Miranda lives out the rest of her life there, I'll know she's cared for and among friends."

Did Jen stop there? No! She went back for MAMA cat:

"The mama kitty was really tough to get. Even the woman who had been feeding her for over a year couldn't get close to her. But I was really concerned that she would get pregnant yet again, and I couldn't be sure if Miranda got the FIV from her or a bite wound.

Long story short, I borrowed a live trap and put smelly food in it for 5 straight days. She didn't fall for it once--STINKER! But this also meant she wasn't eating, at least not from us. So one day the neighbor propped open the building door and lured Mama in with grilled chicken breast (srsly). She closed the door behind her and I came in the other way and threw a big towel on top of her. She was not happy, to say the least.

Through all my emails and phone calls about a home for Miranda, I had made a contact who dealt with feral cats, and I figured Mama was as close as you could get. I never did touch her. Mama stayed in the carrier in my car for a few hours while I made the arrangements. I dropped her off at a vet's office near the Oakland Mall.

All I know is that she got her basic vet care and went to live in a rural area where she would have food, shelter, and a chance to get socialized, if she was so inclined. It was an act of faith on my part, but I just had to trust my instincts, and these people struck me as OK.

I found out later that Mama wasn't FIV-positive, so either Miranda got it from a wound or she wasn't actually related to the rest."

Enter twice-rescued Wicket:

Twice-rescued Wicket- does this remind anyone else of twice-baked potatoes?

Around about the time Jen gathered in Miranda but before mama cat was caught, mama cat had another litter of six boys: Tink, Angel, Spitfire, Mr. Mitten, Xena and Mini. They came to be known as the Library Kitten Sanctuary and Finishing School.

Jen (who else?) gathered them in, in May 2007, and for a few lovely days the six boys resided in an unused office in the library and were visited several times a day by their doting hoomans, who dreamed of cats in the stacks, cat mascots, cats at the reference desk, etc.

But one day evil management cited OSHA regulations or something like that and three had to go home with Lizzie, three with Jen. Fun and games and fevers and vet visits and deep attachment ensued.

Mr. Mitten, Angel and Spitfire all tested FIV-positive, like their big sis Miranda. But (and this is not uncommon, sez Jen) these were false positives ("But we all had to wait about a month to find that out!"). Five bebbies, probably six, do have cerebellar hypoplasia (watch "This is Charley"). They're wobblers. Their mama was probably malnourished during her pregnancy or suffered an infection or some other kind of trauma.

What happened to the Library 6? Well, Lizzie never let go of Angel and Spitfire (now Aretoo), bringing her count to nine hundred twenty-hzmmr. Mr. Mitten (now Trouble) found a home with Kathy. Xena (now Tigger- oops! those are boy bits!) found a home with a family from beyond. Mini (now called...?) starred in a TV commercial and was adopted within days from the Amazing Toledo Animal Shelter. Jen still entertains thoughts of tracking that adopting fam down to compare notes, exchange pictures, and find out if Mini wobbles like his brothers. And Tink (now Dunc) lives with Jen.

All good, all safe, all loved...

...UNTIL, months later, Jen got a call from Tigger's hooman, who said "my fam is moving to an apartment that doesn't accept cats, I've abandoned Tigger and his friend Midnight in the middle of the city. K thx bai."

Jen hung up and said, "@#%$*&@!" hopped in her car, drove to where these people used to live, parked, opened a can of tuna, and who does she see but Tigger and Midnight strolling down teh street. Pop! Into the car they go. much consternation and time and phone calls later, Midnight went to live with Pat (Mama to Lizzie's Petunnia's brother Joshua), and Tigger (now Wicket) came home with me.

Two or three things i know for sure:

1. People like Jen and Lizzie have hearts that humble me, and inspire me to participate;
2. Bob Barker (now Drew Carey) got it right when he sez, "Help control the pet population. have your pet spayed or neutered;" and
3. Three cats are so much more fun than two.

Wicket's the dash of cayenne in our household...

But wherefore his name, i hear TPC ask? Thx to Mike for his deep abiding interest in all things Star Wars, and his knowledge of the arcane. Wicket W. Warrick is the loyal, curious and adventurous young Ewok scout who finds and helps Princess Leia after her speeder bike accident. Their friendship led to the alliance that helped overthrow the Empire.

(Wickers, auntie Jen wants to know which empire you're seeking to overthrow now?)

And so it is.

dunc's stash

[from auntie Jen:]

"I was sitting at the computer in my apartment earlier tonight when I noticed Duncan had his entire arm under the dishwasher. I didn't know there was an "under" to my dishwasher! It turns out there is a small gap between the wall and the metal panel under the dishwasher door. Small, but big enough for nearly every cattoy known to man!

I had to use a screwdriver to remove the panel. The stash underneath included bottle caps, hair clips, paper wads, a little bottle of "wedding" bubbles, a few actual cat toys, and- oh yeah- my orange sapphire ring!! It's been missing for about a year, so needless to say I was pretty pleased to have it back. Duncan got appropriate thanks for finding it (I didn't overdo it since he's likely the one who put it under there in the first place!).

So, I'd say it's been a pretty productive vacation so far..."

four of the five things i can't live without

my kai, my wicket, my phone, my bed. bella's off-screen.

Kai de-Lovely

Kai de-Crosseyed

spoils from the D.I.A.

at the d.i.a. the other day, julie and i dropped in on a jewelry-making workshop, where i unwittingly made the toy the cats have been waiting for all their lives. nom nom NOM