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Cat's Logs - Week 32

Sunny days - Joy of felines!

Birds singing, blissfully unaware of raw merciless power sleeping under toasty waves of sunshine dancing with the joy of creation.

Dreams of endless plains leading to fresh green oases: hints of lively jungle. Powerful muscles draw together in a mighty leap to the highest hill. Sunshine unblocked high atop

the frig.

Ignorant humans say cats are sneaky.

Wise cats know humans are amazingly unaware of their surroundings.

Take GlennaJo. Prince may come and Prince may go, but her eyes are on the computer forever.

A human poet once compared cats to fog, apparently because we are both light on our feet and infuse our surroundings with a distinctive ambiance. Fog is also fearless--taking over the whole landscape, especially the valleys. This, too, is similar to cats who sit everywhere and do everything when they're alone.

And just like cats,

fog sneaks in where humans fear to tread.

Tuesday, August 17, 1999

I hate hail, especially in July!

You don't believe in hail in July? That's 'cause you're not a Minnesotan. In Minnesota, hail is a 12-month-a-year kind of phenomenon. No, of course we don't have hail every day, but the point is we could have hail any day.

Hail bursts on the scene like hundreds of impatient tapping fingers. Fortunately its attention span is equally brief.

Large hail apparently causes damage, though as I understand it, it's appearances rather than identifying scents that suffer.

I, of course, have snagged this cushy inside job with GlennaJo, so for me hail is just a hitifoni

(inconvenience).

Wednesday, August 18, 1999

GlennaJo insists on displaying the following alleged poem by the alleged Princess:

Sleep eludes me
Cool dark friend I call you
Ease myself into your gentle arms
And find myself
Mercilessly awake

Bedding rearrangement
Pillow one aside--a void
Pillow two removed--clarity
Pillow three kicked off--emptiness
Pillow four lifted--a grain
Of litter

Flick--it's gone
Blissful slumber
Dreams of castles
Drenched in sunshine
Bird in window

You don't like blank verse?

As if a cat would be bound by either rhythm or rhyme!

After yesterday's DOGgeral, you probably have a low view of feline literature.

Suffice it to say Mz. Veldt is in no danger of being declared a poet laureate.

Before the Internet I knew we felines had a long and proud literary tradition, but GlennaJo's library is made up exclusively of human works (there's no accounting for taste). Lately, however, I've been able to read some really good stuff online.

Like the story of Moby Tom, a huge white cat who consistently evaded a crazy man called Ahab and tricked him into his own traps.

Which just goes to prove:

Cats can fool most of the people most of the time.

One of my favorite books is the story of the Trojan Cat.

Seems this advanced group of humans worshipped cats, built monuments to them, and had elaborate religious rituals. One ceremony involved opening a huge cat idol causing hundreds of felines to run out into the congregation.

During a heated battle, this idol, fully populated, was brought out for a quick ceremony. The enemy, no doubt fearing the power of an army sponsored by cats, attacked immediately to prevent the ritual. The battle raged on around the cats, trapped in their conveyance, for hours and hours. Finally, the cowardly humans abandoned their idol and its precious cargo and ran away.

The enemy, admiring the natural grace and dignity of the idol, brought it within the city walls. The cats were getting hungry and more than a little thirsty. Then a small boy discovered the door latch and pressed it to see what would happen.

An explosion of cats!

The people abandoned their town in terror and the invaders, a few of whom had come back to rescue the cats, quickly took over the city.

But this story has a tragic ending: the cats were so angry about being abandoned and locked up, that they ran away and the town was deprived of their company.

Another feline classic is Tom and the Beanstalk.

A curious young fellow named Tom saw this really huge plant growing in his favorite garden. Since he couldn't see the top, curiosity dictated that he climb up and check it out.

The first day he did a lot of climbing--higher than the tree tops, which made the next leaf such a lovely sunny spot that he couldn't resist a little nap. Before he knew it, morning came and he drank dew from the cleft of the leaf, ate a few insects for energy, and climbed up to the next leaf ...

Here, the sunshine was warm and strong and danced as the leaves above moved in the wind. It looked so inviting that Tom lay down for a tiny little nap ... and awoke in the morning.

Thus he climbed from leaf to leaf, always getting higher and yet never reaching the top. As he grew older, his whiskers grew and the climb from leaf to leaf became harder and harder. Until one day he slipped and fell slowly all the way down to the ground, his fall gently broken by leaf after leaf.

Boy was his family surprised to see old Tom Van Winkle in the flesh!

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