Day 20/365: It Snowed Again, DIDJA HEAR?

20jan8

Oh, man. It’s weird having so many weather events lately. I feel like I have to make a funny face when I say that: weather events.

The snow was so pretty and peaceful coming down today and then I had to leave the house. That’ll make a person real grumpy real fast.

Snow days are okay though, because we try to get done with work early and get the heck outta dodge before midnight, when the water on the roads INSTANTLY turns to ice. Not one second before. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. That way it makes it okay to leave my comfortably (most of the time) heated office and come to my frigid-ass house, where the hundreds of dollars of natural gas I pump into this place every month say “poof” unceremoniously and escape out every possible crevice. Yes, even that one. All of them.

Anyway, that was the worst segue ever to what I really wanted to talk about (and what I always want to talk about): CATS. A cat, technically. Singular.

Mr. Kitty.

Er, Sir Kitty of Litterpaw, just went on an epic quest from the back of the house to the front, and then up a barnacle-caked cliff (the door jamb) to try and rescue the Scroll of the Ancient Catgrassians (something invisible that only he can see), after which he triumphantly leapt over The Hills of Ottoman (the ottoman) and stuck a pretty bitchin’ sliding landing on Her Majesty’s Golden Throne (a gold-colored chair; do I really need to annotate this story?). Then he sat quietly for ten minutes near Mt. Entertainment Center, blinking slowly and methodically and — if I may say — hypnotically. Then, when Her Majesty the Sallybug had pranced her way over to the gold chair and perched at its peak to survey her kingdom, Sir Kitty sneaked up on her and tried to wrestle her down off the throne. That’s right, that knight had the audacity to overthrow the Queen! And it worked, and now there is serious political upheaval in the hallway.

Okay, so, all of that was just to say that my cats are LARPers and I’m okay with that.

Also, this post did not start out as a cat post and I had no intention of it being a cat post. I solemnly swear.

[Project 365]

Day 12/365: Miss Kitty Plots Your Inevitable Demise

12jan9

Sally decorates her room in patriotic colors but she is secretly planning a world takeover. Consider yourself warned.

[Project 365]

Evolution of a man-cat relationship

Once upon a time, Jack and the manfriend had a tense relationship. They seemed to be developing a friendship until one night that Jack did not take kindly to something the manfriend said, and dispensed with a hiss and a face smack. After that, Ray did not care to have much contact with either kitty.

For a while.

Seems like during the winter break, while I have been slaving away over a hot computer monitor at work, Ray has become fast friends with the kitties, especially Jack. Now Jack gets more loving than I do. I can nuzzle and purr and Ray will reach past me to retrieve a feline to pet. It’s gross. Just now, over on the couch, he said, “Go back to sleep, my love,” to Jack. Sally came around and he exclaimed, “Oh no, two kitties! I’m not going to be able to contain myself!” And now he is hitting on Miss Kitty like tomorrow the Mayan aliens are coming to make good on their crazed end-of-the-world promises.

Anyway, despite my raging jealousy, I’m glad to see the three of them getting along. The house is much more at peace when he’s chasing them around for hugs instead of chasing them around to terrorize them.

You can tell how things have shifted by considering the evolution of Ray’s nicknames for Jack over the months:

The Fat One
The Orange One
Orange Kitty
Mr. Fatty
Mr. Kitty
Mr. Kits
Mr. Cutie
Mr. QT

Day 1/365: We Open With an Orange Cat and a Cluttered Table

1jan4

Both of which surely portend a year much like the others that have come before it.

[Project 365]

What happens to green things that come inside my house

sniff sniff thwack, yum! more please

In three words: Sniff, chomp, MORE?

This inevitable chain of events poses an obvious challenge to my desire to overwinter some of my annuals. Le sigh.

It’s because she has better eyelashes than I do

miss kitty

A play

[The Boyfriend Formerly Known as Manfred* enters room]

Me, to BFKM while stroking Jack, who had come to sit next to me while BFKM was out of the room: We’re in love.

BFKM: [Shocked face]

Me: Mmm hmm. We’re getting married. Show him the ring you got me, kitty. [Whispers] It’s a milk top ring!

BFKM: Well, fine. That’s okay because I have been having a torrid affair with Miss Kitty.

Me: [Shocked face]

* BFKM does not care for the moniker “Manfred,” proving that he is a Communist.

At war

jack

“Orange kitty is using biological warfare against me!”

This is the sentence that comes out of the manfriend’s mouth as we are lying in bed being stalked by Jack, who is pacing warily around the bedroom, stopping occasionally to peer at us from the floor and then perch on the nightstand to watch us from above.

Biological weaponry, in the manfriend’s estimation, is the dander floating like fallout everywhere in my house — dander that makes his eyes tear up and his skin itch and his lungs push out sneeze after sneeze. My house, in my estimation, has for many weeks now been ground zero in a good old-fashioned battle for alpha male dominance. In this corner, you’ve got veteran Jack, with his marble orange eyes and his handsome gingery Tiger coat and a purr that sometimes gets so excited it sounds like he’s squealing. In this other corner, you’ve got sexy newcomer Manfred, with his ridiculously blue eyes and his sweet grin and his easy laugh, who’s no fan of cats due to how itchy/snotty they make him. They’ve been going rounds and rounds and rounds in psychological battle with one another and I have had to step in to referee them more than once.

When we are on the couch, Jack will saunter by — either on the floor or behind us on the back of the couch — and thwack the manfriend with his tail, always aiming for exposed flesh. Bonus points if he can aim for the face. The manfriend hisses and growls to mark his boundaries, and he retaliates sometimes by taunting Jack when he has successfully put the moves on me. “You see that? You see what I did to your girl?” Jack stares, eyes squinted, and blinks silently, more than likely imagining the earth scorching around us.

Sally, though, he likes. “Dark kitty does her own thing,” he tells me. “I respect that.” And for the most part, he’s right. She’s far more content to perch and watch from a distance than to mewl pathetically and then try to find a comfortable spot between or on us, like Jack does. But then one night he was in the house alone with her and she showed him just how persistent she can be when she’s in the mood for loving (I taught her well), and he decided she would be better served with “demon kitty” as a nickname. Sometimes I catch him hissing threats at them in Spanish. Sometimes when I’m at work and he’s alone with them, he will text me that he’s busy taunting them. I play referee as best I can, but the rivalries have to come to a head some day. Will I have to choose sides?

Tonight, when I got home, the manfriend was on the couch in a Benadryl haze. “Orange kitty was talking serious smack about you while you were away,” he said, to my incredulity. “Who are you going to believe, me or orange kitty?” I eyed him closely. “I would hook both of you up to a lie-detector,” I said.

What the manfriend does not know, perhaps, is that when he is sleeping or not here, I sneak moments with the cats. Big, indulgent cuddles where I rub my face in their fur and listen close for their purrs. Grand, dramatic moments when I speak to them in full sentences at a pitch I never invoke when others are observing. Loving, long belly rubs topped by nitpicky grooming. When he leaves in the morning, the bedroom door is cracked and it takes mere seconds for the front door to close and lock before I will see through sleepy half-eyes Jack’s head peeking over the edge of the bed, making sure the coast is clear so he can come snuggle with me like old times. Kind of like we’re fugitive lovers stealing embraces when the authorities look away.

But don’t feel bad for the kitties.

They now have two people to sucker into giving them sips of water from the kitchen faucet.