Scarlett Letters

1) The busiest, most stressful week of my business year has just concluded. You see, for my day job, I work as a content producer in health insurance and open enrollment has just begun. All eyes at the company, right up to the director and VP level, are on my work. I have been exhausted with the stress and minutia. My manager and her manager both insisted I take today off so that's what I'm doing.

2) The house reorganization/redecoration continues. Today the futon, its frame and mattress pad are all leaving the household to help out someone escaping from an abusive-boyfriend situation. I feel good that this is its fate, rather than going to some college kid who will ditch it at the end of the semester. Feels weird to let it go; it was one of the first purchases I made when I moved to Seattle, and I made it in the company of someone I adored, but it doesn't get used much at all as a thing to sit upon, and I so rarely have house guests that its presence just isn't really justified. I could use that space in a more productive way. And so out it goes.

3) I've been dreaming very vividly lately and the dreams have been specific and pointed. It's clear my subconscious is working overtime to process certain issues. They're hard issues and yet the dreams feel okay, like I've reached a point where I'm strong enough to deal with the issues in question. That isn't a bad thing by any means. I'm just surprised by it.

4) I have contributed to this year's Cats of Microsoft calendar, which is an option for me as a Microsoft alum. I loved contributing to the 2013 calendar, and Sophie ended up as Miss February that year. I have high hopes for my contribution this year, pinned on one of my favorite photographs of Zeke; we shall see.

5) Apparently it snowed in Seattle this morning, everywhere but in Queen Anne. I cannot feel bad about this. It is, however, stupid-cold here. I will light a fire in the fireplace, have a nice, hot breakfast and enjoy my day off which, I suspect, will consist mostly of napping and reading.

A while back, I posted a picture of Sophie sitting on top of the cabinet where I display a number of my porcelain cat figurines. The seed of the collection was my mother's Royal Doulton Siamese cat figurine. I suspect the collection began to grow during a period of unemployment when I had far too much time on my hands and very little brain for being thrifty. The collection is now larger than it appears in the above-linked photograph, the number of figures totaling 37 grouped artfully about the house, a little less than a third of which are not much bigger than my thumb.

This morning I got distracted online and found myself back at The Source of All Collectible Cats (also known as eBay), where I perused something like 15 pages of figures up for auction. I tagged a number for watching but didn't bid (an act of pure self control of which I'm enormously proud). And I realized at that point that my standards for my collection are in some ways pretty rigid, pretty exacting though I've never specifically articulated them. These standards include the following points:

-- The figure must be porcelain or some form of ceramic.
-- The figure must depict a cat in a realistic way, not cutesy* or exaggerated. For example, the cat should not have flirty little eye lashes**, an overly large head, or overly large eyes.
-- The figure should be just the cat: no toys, boxes, baskets, or ribbons and bows tied around their necks. (This rule may be construed as a corollary to the "not cutesy" rule.)
-- The figure should be no more than 5 or 6 inches tall.
-- In an ideal world, the figure should have some sort of maker's mark on the bottom.***

Another element that often determines the desirability of a cat for my collection is the manufacturer. I will often look for cats from fine figurine makers that are not already represented in the collection. For example, the collection currently includes cats from Royal Doulton, Lenox, Lomonosov, and Graelenthal. I have yet to acquire -- and continue to pursue -- figures from Herend, Bing & Grondahl (now part of Royal Copenhagen and so becoming a little more scarce), Royal Beswick (which are actually a little cutesy for my taste), and Lladro among others. All of these are higher-end manufacturers and their products, even second-hand, ain't cheap. So I watch eBay and I wait. (I'm actually watching a Lladro cat on eBay right now that's at a ridiculously good price, given that the figure is listed and shown to be in excellent condition.)

And, of course, some cats are products of the situations in which I discover them. For example, I bought a beautiful little maneki nekko in Narita, and my lovely white Graelenthal in Germany. I brought home a malachite lion from Kenya. I will, naturally, be looking for cat figurines as I travel in Europe this fall. I will make key exceptions to my rules when I travel because it's likely that if I don't purchase a figure I really like while I'm away, I'll never see it again.

Why a collection? My life is filled with collections: elongated coins, regular coins, porcelain ladies, porcelain hands, signed and limited edition art prints, plants, friends. It's a Thing. But I don't think any of my collections has quite such exacting standards as the cats. And I think the reason that's the case is that I'm not generally a cutesy sort of person -- you don't see Precious Moments figurines in my house, for example, and probably never will. I cringe at that sort of preciousness, and cats are all too susceptible to such treatment. Cats are graceful creatures who have enriched my life, so my collection tries to respect their gifts. The result is a collection of figures that I never tire of admiring. They please me, and are an important part of what makes my house my home.


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* I made an exception to this rule when I purchased a beautiful little maneki nekko in Japan. It's a cultural thing and it's a lovely little souvenir.
** I made an exception for a vintage figurine that in every other way meets my requirements. And the lashes aren't big. :-)
*** I have broken this standard regularly because there are simply too many lovely little figurines to choose from. That said, about half my collection meets this standard.