memo
June 23, 2007 l 2 Comments
To: Stephanie
From: the Zookeeper
Your back claws are sharp. My shoulders are not a launching pad.
I would appreciate your future consideration in this matter.
he’s handsome, and he knows it
June 22, 2007 l 3 Comments
remembering
June 18, 2007 l 1 Comment
Inga was our first dog, and God couldn’t have given us a better fit for our family.
She was sweet and loyal, gentle and loving, patient and understanding.
She was a dog any little girl would have wanted. And I’m missing her a lot tonight.
My dad’s best friend lives in Florida and calls on a fairly regular basis. When we’re not home he has a tendency to leave long, and rather amusing, messages on our answering machine. And when playing them back we noticed an interesting phenomena: the cats love his voice. Scully in particular.
He came up to visit last month, and (as Scully purred away on his lap) we told him about the cats affection for his messages. Now when he calls and gets our machine, over half the messages are for the cats. I’m sure that’s one of many the warning signs for having a cat-run household, but who’s counting? This was his message this morning:
Good morning P***** family, this is your crazy friend down in Florida calling. How’s Scully-kitty this morning? Get all the other kitties around, we’re gonna have a Bible Study this morning. Uh, let’s see, open up your Bibles to 2nd Hezekiah 3:12*. We’re going to be studying about the purrrrr-fect verse. Okay, well, say ‘Hi’ to your father. Pray for him, and your mother, and all the rest of your people there. And be good kitties, okay? And we’ll talk with you later. God bless, bye-bye.
* not an actual verse
and this is why I have gray hairs
June 17, 2007 l 3 Comments
When you have a multiple cat household, it’s just not possible to know where everyone is all the time. Generally, I know they’re in the kitchen at mealtimes, running around like crazy in the early morning and late evening, and at all other times snoozing somewhere cozy. There are times when we’ll do a headcount, just to be sure. For instance, in our small home going longer than ten minutes without seeing a single feline is considered highly unusual and worthy of inspection.
However, it can take longer to notice when just one cat is MIA. Which is exactly what happened this morning when I happened to notice that the cat food wasn’t disappearing as quickly as usual. I then realized that I hadn’t seen Miko when I was serving the cats their breakfast, and backtracking further, I didn’t remember seeing her anytime in the half hour since I’d been home from work.
Pet mommy panic settles in quickly. I scoured the house. Once. Twice. No sign of a fluffy tortie. Part of me was recalling that Miko is the queen of the disappearing kitties and if anycat could manage to hide somewhere completely obscure, it would be her. The other part of me was terrified that she had gotten outside. She has never spent more than ten minutes outdoors in her nearly three years. To say she’d be poorly equipped would be an understatement.
Beeper was crying for her breakfast, so I went out into the addition to feed her while glancing around for any sign of Miko. Nothing. My next course of action would be to go over our house with a finetoothed comb. It’s a small, open-concept home with very few places for a cat to totally disappear.
Any cat that isn’t Miko.
Because when I went back into the house, she was sitting in the middle of the living room carpet as though she had been there all along. With a slow blink she said, I’m fine, mum.
Tell that to my racing heart, you lil’ twerp.
