Posts tagged with "cats"

stability or stagnancy

I’m liv­ing a dra­ma-free life.

____ used to tease me about my dra­ma, con­vinced that I loved it because I always seemed to be cre­at­ing it. But dra­ma is just a by-prod­uct of the strug­gle when you’re dis­cov­er­ing your­self and try­ing to become the per­son you’re meant to be. It’s nev­er an easy path; oth­er­wise, you’d already be that per­son.

I don’t have bad days any­more either, but I can’t tell if it’s because I’m han­dling things bet­ter or if I’m not chal­leng­ing myself enough.

And now that there’s no more dra­ma, it feels like I’m fin­ished. Like there’s no next step for me to take and nowhere else to go, because I’m here. All that’s left is to enjoy this exis­tence.

That’s not to say my life is with­out a touch of inner insta­bil­i­ty. I still have mem­o­ries, thoughts, lust, and love, and they’re enough to fill the mind for an entire day. But now I know every­thing’s gonna be okay.

cats in sunbeam

 

Now that I’m work­ing from home full-time, I bare­ly step out­side. Living like Foul Bachelor Frog, cause yes­ter­day’s pants are today’s pants if they have the belt in them. There’s noth­ing for me out there. It’s nev­er worth the trou­ble any­more. I’d go out if I was­n’t so con­tent in my com­fort­able home with two cats and every­thing I need to sing or write or cre­ate.

I’m just won­der­ing if I’ll ever get tired of this.

new kitten

Leonard has died. :( I made a short film about his life.

Adopted anoth­er kit­ten from the Humane Society (and I was­n’t able to wait until the new year). When I went to go see him at the shel­ter, he jumped into my arms, start­ed purring, and would­n’t stop nuz­zling my face. Even if he was any less cute, there’s no way I could have left him there.

He’s exact­ly what I was look­ing for: four months old, neutered, male, with a stub­by tail. Cats with stub tails from shel­ters usu­al­ly have their tails cut short because they’ve been run over by a bike, or caught frost­bite, but on him there’s no sign of scar­ring so he was prob­a­bly born with it.

I’ve yet to name him cause I want to see what kind of per­son­al­i­ty he devel­ops first.

new kitten

At this point, his res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion led to sores and he was bleed­ing from him nose. That’s why he looks sort of sad and grog­gy.

When I got him, he had an upper res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion and was infest­ed with fleas. I kept him sep­a­rat­ed from Dolly for more than a week, but she still man­aged to catch both. Now she’s real­ly grumpy and sick, and he’s com­plete­ly over it. She also feels huge, because the lit­tle guy is so small right now.

He likes to sleep by rest­ing his chin on my cheek, or lying right across my neck. I’m cur­rent­ly try­ing to change his sleep­ing pat­terns because he’s still a noc­tur­nal cat and gets up in the mid­dle of the night to lick my face. And because he’s a kit­ten who does­n’t know any bet­ter, he thinks Dolly is play­ing with him when she gives him a swipe in annoy­ance. There haven’t been any real scraps between them yet. More of a play­ful fight­ing, where Dolly gives as good as she gets.

new kitten

He tries to sleep with her all the time, and Dolly is usu­al­ly just too lazy to move away. I’m pret­ty sure this has helped her get used to hav­ing him around.

His tail isn’t buried under Dolly’s fat — that’s how long it is.

I won­der if I can be as good as Tiana and only write about him once a month the way she does with her son. But cats grow up so fast; they reach adult­hood in one year instead of 18, so I’m more tempt­ed to record him as much as pos­si­ble when he’s so small and cute. I just don’t want to be a mom­my blog­ger.

UK Detour: Day 16, Ullapool

We suc­cess­ful­ly wrapped up prin­ci­ple pho­tog­ra­phy the pre­vi­ous day, which freed up the next for get­ting b‑roll footage. This was also the day we had to make the 12 hour dri­ve back to London, and after all was said and done, this jour­ney began at 4pm.

It was just me and Mike on the way back, shar­ing more and more our­selves, as we dis­cov­ered that exhaus­tion makes the best inter­ro­ga­tion tool. We kept each oth­er awake for the entire dri­ve, though I start­ed hal­lu­ci­nat­ing by the last hour. By the end, I think we knew each oth­er bet­ter than some of our own friends.

baby crab

Found this baby crab on the beach, hid­ing in an oys­ter shell, and small enough to fit on the tip of my fin­ger.

Continue read­ing “UK Detour: Day 16, Ullapool”…

Baby talk

One sum­mer in my teenage years, I vol­un­teered at a kinder camp1, and that filled a gap in my knowl­edge about any­one under 10. Unfortunately, that gap only spanned chil­dren between 3 and 5, and aside from that range, I knew noth­ing about kids.

So inter­act­ing with chil­dren who’ve yet learned to speak I found espe­cial­ly awk­ward. I nev­er under­stood how to talk to some­one who did­n’t seem to under­stand what I was say­ing. It was like talk­ing to a stuffed ani­mal, which I’m pret­ty sure can’t be done by any sane per­son with­out feel­ing creepy.

Rosella in the car

 

Not to men­tion how pho­ny it sounds. Why do peo­ple raise their voic­es, as if a child trusts them more if they sound like them2? They don’t nor­mal­ly talk like that.

Then I real­ized that I do kit­ty talk, with the boospy, and the schmoop­sy, and the pokey of the bel­ly. I talk to my cat all the time, a habit I’ve prob­a­bly picked up from liv­ing by myself for the last three years, com­bined with the fact that I’m an extreme intro­vert and stay in my house for the major­i­ty of my time.

Which is strange because Dolly does­n’t under­stand any­thing I’m say­ing (though I’m sure cats are intel­li­gent enough to evolve to talk if they believed any­thing a human had to say could be impor­tant). And this is after I wrote an entry sev­en years ago, specif­i­cal­ly about how awk­ward I found it to talk­ing to cats.

Maybe I’m com­fort­able enough with cats now to hold a con­ver­sa­tion with one. Or maybe I’m going crazy.

Rosella with tongue out

 

I’m get­ting more com­fort­able with kids too. Not just talk­ing to them, but the idea of hav­ing them myself, maybe because my friends are get­ting mar­ried and giv­ing birth and I’m spend­ing more time with a few adorable boys and girls. I can talk to them even though they only respond in mono­syl­la­bles.

Jodie Foster once described hav­ing chil­dren as the most cre­ative thing she’s ever done, and I com­plete­ly under­stand that now. I can’t think of any­thing more cre­ative than nur­tur­ing growth, curios­i­ty, imag­i­na­tion, and ideas in anoth­er human being. One day, I’d like to expe­ri­ence it for myself.

  1. Cause I had noth­ing bet­ter to do. Seriously. [↩]
  2. Though it worked for Owen Meany. [↩]

Meat slap

I’ve dis­cov­ered that bonk­ing my cat on the head with a pep­perette will not dis­suade her from eat­ing it.

Then again, I prob­a­bly would­n’t give up bacon if some­one slapped me with a pound.