We’ve seen worse, but recent days have seen the thermometer dip to about 40 at night and it takes longer for the sun to warm everything up in the morning.
I took this picture a few weeks ago at about 7 a.m.
That means more cuddling time for Miss Jenny, Marshal Tito and the f****g fascist depicted in the banner, pardon my French…. It also means more noms for calories and Maz has now taught Jenny to wake mommy up for them. Lots of pawing, standing on hips, face-licks with hellish breath, etc…
Tito is the only one not begging for food anymore…
Every so often, I do forget and leave food unattended. Maz never forgets.
Wonder what they dream of… The cat version of “the King and I”? Complete with coo’s and chirrups?
Or maybe they dream of centipede bunnies crapping skittles. Who knows?
Naturally in the real world, cats would devour the bunnies, resulting in… Well, just watch.
I have a thing for feral cats, and Rudha-an has one for kittens. Feral kittens, therefore, are our favorites. We’ll never know exactly where they came from, what they went through, why they are so scared of shoes, think of nothing but murder, and yet are so hungry for affection.
Each one has a story but they’ll never tell even if they could, we just wonder as they teach us to live in the moment.
This week, here are some of my favorite photos of our pointy eared people, followed by a clip of very funny story telling. About a sloth. Enjoy.
And now, enjoy this very funny sloth story from Kristen Bell on the “Ellen” show.
Tito likes:
The space between drape and window
The magic fluffy blanket sent by Flumptytail
Playing fetch
Bach at low volume
Light playing on the ceiling
People’s feets
Being carried around
Dislikes:
Wind
Shoes with feets in ’em
Mazuzu likes:
Food. Preferably stolen
Heat
Wearing light fabric shirts loose at the pits
Laying turds astride the edge of the box
Chasing red dots
Roughhousing
Gut rubs
Being clean
Hamming it up for pics
Soaking up photons
Dislikes:
Wind
Being Cold
Baths
Hiss of the soda bottle when the cap is popped
Miss Jenny likes:
The boyz!
Farting on Daddy
Chasing the boyz
Grooming the boyz
Chin rubs from Daddy
Chewing on shoes
Shredding paper
Daddy talking gibberish
Snuggling with Daddy
Dislikes:
Wind
Shoes with feets in ’em
Being picked up
Litterbox “accidents”
Daddy going to work
It’s not that Maz Whang is selfish, exactly… Or even that Tito is an enabler, but… Let’s again face the fact that Maz, a bit like Bad Santa, is an eating, drinking, sh*tting machine, who zeroes in on food with purpose and violence.
He does burn through calories like a three alarm fire and prefers 80 degrees weather.
Tito would even sit on a kitchen chair, looking at us with eyes half-closed, a signal that he wants canned food, only to leave it to Maz once he showed up: in other words tricking us into feeding Maz even more.
But that’s just Tito being the Big Brother, the Paraclete. Three in the morning, Maz digs at my wife, standing on her for effect. Claws are always out, by the way: he always has that sense of urgency about him, like Indiana Jones pressing his face in the wall as he is about to get crushed: “we-are-going-to-die!”
The rule is, though: no canned food until six a.m.
Which means that for Rudha-an, the window from 3 to 6 a.m. is a preview of purgatory, pummeled by this mace wrapped in leather while I (mostly) sleep soundly and justly. The way of the world is the way of the cat, perhaps especially one that looks like David Bowie in “the man who fell to Earth”.
Okay, in truth, Maz is more Richard Widmark than Bowie, but he is a star.
Good thing, then, that Maz’ naked ambitions are checked by the crème brulee that is Miss Jenny. We used to joke that Maz was nuclear powered, watching him streak through the apartment, up and down the furniture and hanging from the cat tower like a monkey. But she matches him step by step and then some. And that’s no small feat.
So while the Whang does his thang, the blue-eyed she-devil chases after him to steal… Well, kisses, actually.
That’s right, she nuzzles both boys and grooms them to the point that we thankfully no longer need to use Q-tips on Maz’ flappers.
Maybe she can be enticed in tackling Maz when he starts his food dance at three in the morning…? No.
Nope, she’ll stand right next to him waiting for noms, maybe even egging him on. She dances to her own tune, that one: if noms aren’t forthcoming, she’ll just force Maz into a high-speed chase or chew on his leg while Tito watches from the shadows in the hallway, always waiting.
So… “Jules and Jim“, or might a “Pact of Steel” be in the works? All I know is even I often wake up from being hit by a high-speed feline cannonball, making me yell “F****G FASCIST!!!” like Jeff Lebowski…
After 40 days and nights of Jenny and Maz farting through the wilderness, which is still ongoing, and being relentlessly tempted to misbehave, Tito finally gives in…
Sure, sure, the other two are so much fun to romp and wrestle with, and so… Nommable.
Sure, Maz steals food and likes to plant his arse and naughty bits in our faces when we sleep (I found an egg roll on the kitchen floor this very morning), while Jenny attacks anything that moves or she thinks is moving, farting up a storm as I lean to pet her.
Tito started by playing alone behind the drapes, as he likes to do. once in a while stopping to see if the others were enticed to come and check him out. This took some time, as Maz was busy looking for something to steal, or “liberate” as he calls it, in the kitchen and Jenny herself was stalking him, fascinated as she is by his spectacular nakedness ( she often looks back at us with a WTF is that look on her face).
Suddenly the noises from the window became a racket and we both turned to see that Tito had climbed up the drapes all the way to the ceiling, his head rotating almost 180 degrees, “exorcist” like. This was a first… The climbing, I mean. I’ve seen him do the head thing before when he’s tripping on catnip.
… Los Bastardos, those high priests of malevolence, Maz “the mace” Whang and Miss Pirate Jenny, continue their re-enactment of “children of Dune” on an 18 by 24 inch stage…
No spice and no worms (thank Ceiling Cat), only disastrous leavings draped or laid in odd places like the edge of the litter box or the floor. I’ve actually watched Maz back up in the box and drop a load on the floor…
I wonder whether Salvador Dali had cats… That could explain this:
Cleaning up these messes is no fun and brings Rudha-an close to horking. Sigh… So I’ll do my best to try and keep my cookies down as I pick up the horrid turds.
Another Friday night rolls around and it’s time for our kitties to shine. Miss jenny continues to make changes in the household. The morning and evening rampages are a sight to behold. They also sound like a herd of elephants. When they aren’t rampaging, they like to hang out in the kitchen and soak up the sun.
Another Friday night has rolled around and it’s time for our pointy eared people to have the spotlight. Ok, it’s only Friday afternoon, but what the heck. Here they are enjoying their favorite pastimes. We have always had happy kitty cats. I think they are even more happy since Jenny’s arrival.
Now we would like to share this happy dog video. I think happy is an understatement.
Paraskevidekatriaphobia, the irrational and morbid fear that something really, really, but really bad is going to happen when the calendar turns to Friday the 13th.
Irrational? But there is a greater fear about a more definite and immediate threat of getting your head ‘sploded by cats. And there’s no name for that yet.
Even Miss Jenny was excluded from their conversation… Whatever, man… ‘Spect the ‘stache…
Eventually, Maz ambled back into the living room and “parked” himself in front of the television until…
Maz being nothing if not excessive, he ‘sploded another head, lifting his paw under the strain. Either that or he was passing gas.
For those who haven’t mastered their powers yet, and I pray they don’t, Tito recommends starting with something easy like the photobomb…