Scarlett Letters

The felines in your life will teach you about ritual. Now is when we eat. Now is when we sleep. Now, now, NOW is when we play. They will cry plaintively if this schedule is deviated from for even a moment. Cats are creatures of habit. Woe betide those who break their rhythms.

Ezekiel is both the brainiest and neediest cat I've ever had. So smart he gets bored without constant stimulation, he also requires a proper shape to his day. The human must be up and out of bed sometime around 5 AM. This is the first battle of the day, because the human prefers to stay in bed--not unreasonably--at least until 6. Then it's love-love-love all the way from the bedroom to the kitchen, where more love ensues while I prepare breakfast for the four-legged set. Once breakfast is completed, it's time for attention. Now, I prefer to eat my breakfast and do my LJ/Facebook/NY Times run. But as far as the cats, specifically Zeke, are concerned, now is the time on Sprockets when we play. So he cries and he does gravity experiments. He has broken more than one precious thing in the practice of this ritual abuse.

The answer I've developed is to let him get just worked up enough so that when I finally do get up to pay attention to him, he actually waits for me before running off--which he will invariably do because cats make little sense. Sometimes he runs off to sit next to the very specific toy with which he wishes to play. Sometimes he just runs off. On those days when he does the latter, I grab him up, take him back with me to my chair, settle him in my lap and give him the Morning Scritch. This involves stretching the length of him across my lap, with his head toward my right arm, and then using both hands to scritch his head and neck, whence cometh the motorized purr. Then it's scritches up and down his body, which makes him so happy that he purrs louder, kneads my arm, and drools. And this goes on for quite a while. It amazing how quickly one can get used to drool. I suppose new parents learn this pretty quickly.

The thing is, once we've had the Morning Scritch, I'm pretty much free for a good portion of the rest of the day. Attention Has Been Paid. And once Zeke goes upstairs to sit in the cat tree by the window, woe unto me if I disturb him. Hiss. Growl. But if I work at home or if it's a weekend, there must be play late in the day, around 3:30-4ish. I can't be home unless play is on the schedule. Meowing for play often lasts well into the evening. Sometimes I'll get into bed and Zeke will bring me a toy because the play must continue. But by then he's figured out that it's dark and the human is going to take her long nap.

And Sophie? Sophie is all about the love. But apparently I've loved her enough that she's not quite so needy. We cuddle up when I read. She sits behind my left shoulder on the top edge of the couch when I watch TV; either that, or she crawls under the afghan I'll wrap around myself at those times. She always sleeps with me. I think it's easier being Sophie than it is being Ezekiel. Less work. More relaxing. Not so regimented. I did something right with her. With Zeke, well, if the price I must pay for finding him inscrutable as a kitten is paying attention to him as a full-grown tom, I can live with that. I'll get less sleep, and there will be more slime, but I'll live. In a very structured, ritualized way.

I had a perfectly lovely evening last night, attending the Paramount Theater's Silent Movie Monday with SA to see the first-ever cinematic adaptation of "Peter Pan" with live accompaniment. The music was provided by Jim Riggs playing the theater's Mighty Wurlitzer, a magnificent machine that produces remarkable, orchestral music, along with harpist Leslie McMichael, providing additional music. The score was composed by both Riggs and McMichael--separate scores that they interleaved for the performance. The movie was charming and the music quite lovely.

Came home and went to bed early, completely wiped out but very happy.

My plan was to get up, shower, have breakfast, write a check for my neighbor who did some electrical work for me last weekend, and then head to the bus.

Th best laid plans of Zeke's human owner seldom go well . . . because I discovered that Zeke had overturned a plant pot. So now, instead of getting to work nice and early, I'll be late because I have to clean up his damn mess and try to save the African violet that he overturned.

Dammit.

Just call him Danger Cat.

Yesterday, for some reason, Zeke decided that it was time to make his break for it any way he could. In the morning, he zipped out the front door while I was juggling bags of recycling for disposal. He got all the way to the front of the building, and I had to navigate a path under the shrubs and trees to grab him and bring him in. He didn't protest my retrieval, but I think he knew he'd done something he shouldn't do.

Later in the afternoon, I was here with MD. We were geeking out over things genealogical when we heard a scrabble-scrabble-thump from the balcony. Zeke had gone over the edge. I ran down to the backyard, but didn't see him anywhere. Then I heard a meow from above. Somehow, he had caught himself on the balcony below mine. He looked fine, but I had to get him--and my neighbor was to be out of town the whole weekend. In the end, we got the emergency key for that apartment from the condo association secretary and, with permission from the neighbor, got in and retrieved my little daredevil.

Inspection revealed that he'd shattered and torn a couple of claws. He was a little bloody but the claws were all still there. His paws were a little tender but he was otherwise just a fine. One phone call to the vet later and I knew what I had to do to care for him. He spent the rest of the day being remarkably quiet (for him), curled up on a towel on the big easy chair in my living room. Guess he'd had enough excitement for one day.

This cat has been more destructive and has tested his boundaries more than any other cat I've ever had. There's never a dull moment with Ezekiel.

Taken yesterday morning, this picture shows a bad cat where he's not supposed to be (on the balcony railing three storeys up). It also shows the expression he wears when he's doing that which he shouldn't. He is a bad, bad cat, and he acts like he doesn't even care.

Ain't he handsome? ::squee!::

1) The Bus and Books: With the new commute--a bus and the streetcar into downtown Seattle, and then a bus home--I'm getting a lot of reading done. And my reading pattern is becoming more what it was like back in New York, which is to say that I have a commuting book and a bedtime book--back to reading two at a time. I feel more like myself. My last two books were Redshirts by John Scalzi and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. My current two books are Murder in the Marais by Cara Black and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. (Yes, I'm preparing for the release of "Catching Fire" in the theaters this summer. We're all allowed our lighter fare.) In the background, I'm still reading, a couple of pages at a time, Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It's so dense and delicious that I need to parse it out, which means it's going to take forever to read. I don't care. John Adams took forever to read (except when I'd devote entire Saturdays to making substantial headway) and I enjoyed every moment of it. Same thing with the Goodwin. I read slower than I used to, probably because I'm using bifocals now, so there's no insanely impressive reading list as I've seen on some of my friends' LJs--but a bit at a time is still progress and pleasure. Good enough for me.

2) The New Job: The new job is going pretty well. I'm getting along well with my coworkers and I'm beginning to receive more challenging assignments and more responsibility. I'm having to learn more quickly and, also, having to be patient when someone assumes I don't know something that I know very well. It's a balancing act. But it's good. I wish I enjoyed the commute more. Even with the reading, I'm not entirely happy with walking to the bus in the pouring-down rain. Must take advantage of telecommuting a little more.

3) Zeke: Getting bigger; almost as big as Sophie, but still lean and rangy in an adolescent-cat sort of way. Plays fetch at his own instigation. Hasn't broken anything lately. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

4) Good company on Pi Day: Had a wonderful sushi dinner last night with markferrari and calendula_witch at Chiso in downtown Fremont. Lovely atmosphere, and with only one exception, everything was superior, from drinks to dessert. (And the exception wasn't dramatic; it was still delicious, just not up to the standards of the rest of the meal.) Highly recommended. Of course, it was Pi Day, and so we walked across the street to a tiny bakery called "Pie" where we hoped to observe the day's required ritual. Alas, a sign in the window said, "Due to the craziness of Pi Day, Pie will be closing early, at 8 PM." And sure enough, the doors were locked. We went away heartsore and yearning for sweetness. Mark consoled himself with ice cream. Shannon and I suffered in silence. ::sigh:: But dinner itself? Delicious. And the company was quite, quite fine.

5) Another carless weekend: And so begins a second carless weekend. I'm actually looking forward to it. Learning to be resourceful about my transportation is good for me, I think, and I'm getting a lot of walking done. I'm still waiting for my ZipCar card to arrive, and now more so than ever since I need to take Sophie to the vet. But like all things in life, it will come with time. One way or another.

1) twilight2000 held her annual white elephant gift exchange last night. The company, as usual, was quite fine. The gift exchange was, as usual, entertaining. I came home with the lemon of the evening, a doll so ugly that it will not pass "Go" or collect $200; it will go directly to Goodwill. But I'm the only person I know who can go to a White Elephant party with a $5 salsa bowl and come home with a Wilton Armetale serving platter, as I also did last night. One year I came home with a Lenox dish. Another year, a collectible teddy bear. And another a pair of gloves that I wear to this day. One person's white elephant is another person's gold.

2) An essay about The Big Bang Theory is making the rounds on social media, specifically about what the show is and isn't when it comes to nerds and nerd culture. I have a lot of thoughts about this, which will comprise another post, possibly later today, but I wanted to post the link here now so that if people are curious, they'll have context for when I go off about it. :-)

3) Zeke is growing like crazy. He is now, to use davidlevine's description, a small cat rather than a large kitten, and he definitely has a mind of his own. I've resorted to using a squirt bottle to keep him off of counters and the craft table. I kind of hate doing it, but it's apparently the only effective deterrent. The nearly imperceptible stripes I noticed on him as a kitten are showing a teeny bit more as he grows, but he still looks like a completely dark-gray cat. Must post more recent pics of him.

4) I have an enormous To-Do list and, as I look around the house, I find myself despairing a bit. While I know that creativity, whether it's writing, jewelry-making or photography, is more important than housekeeping, sometimes housekeeping helps keep one sane and provides comfortable space for the creativity. I get myself into such a prioritizing spiral about this that often nothing gets done. I need to fix that, most probably with incremental, alternating task completion; I suspect it's the only way to make any progress toward any goal right now.

5) I spend far too much time on social media. I need to unplug for a couple of days and just get stuff done. Must schedule this. Hm.....

(This qualifies as my promised post about Zeke although it may not be as affectionate as originally intended. It's the circumstances.)

I love my kitten; I do, really. At the same time, my current morning feeling is exactly the reason I wanted to get a relatively mature cat rather than a kitten when I went looking for a companion for Sophie: the need to constantly entertain and to constantly discipline is just getting old. And Zeke is a particularly tenacious character. He's learning the meaning of "no," but I'm really getting tired of teaching it. Apparently, regardless of my instruction, there is no surface too boring to investigate, no gravity experiment that must go undone, and no moment when entertainment isn't required. Despite initial attempts at co-grooming and co-sleeping, he and Sophie mostly wrestle, chase, and then otherwise ignore each other. I'm keeping hope that this will change as he gets older. After all, born on August 10, he's only 4 months old and kittens are rambunctious by nature.

All that said, he's still as handsome as ever. His coat is beautiful, a shimmery dark gray that is downy soft. He's getting a little rangy, his limbs and tail longer than they were, his torso lengthening bit by bit. He's actually remarkably well-proportioned for a kitten adolescent, everything the right size for his size. He is affectionate (sometimes a little too affectionate: the waking-me-at-3-AM-to-nurse-on-my-lip thing is exhausting, but continues despite my best attempts to discourage it), athletic, cuddly, and curious.

Raising a kitten does have its rewards but it's a lot of work.

Of Ezekiel, I've had a couple of people say to me, "Oooh! You got a Russian Blue!" Feeling that this was not really realistic, as Russkies are purebreds and unlikely to be shelter kittens, I decided to do some research just to be sure. Just to remind you of what my little boy looks like, you can see his picture in the first post I made about him.

Superficially, he sure does look like a Russian Blue, but the breed standard is pretty stringent, to wit:

· Green eyes (not yellow, blue, or orange but a dark bottle green) Zeke's eyes are most definitely yellow.

· Solid blue all over with just the tips of the guard hairs being silver and producing a shimmering effect. Domestic blue cats will lack this tipping and be a flat blue. Zeke's a flat blue.

· A thick double coat. The first coat consists of the longer guard hairs. The second is the undercoat, which is very soft and gives the Russian Blue coat its unique feel. Looked at closely, these fine hairs appear wavy. Zeke does have this characteristic. I suspect that he's going to be magnificent as a mature tom.

· Mauve footpads. Most domestic blue cats have slate gray pads. Zeke's footpads are pinkie gray.

So, no, he's not a Russian Blue. I will think of him as a domestic blue, which is purrrfectly fine by me. We don't need none o' them furriner cats! Amurrican cats is what we likes! :-)

PS--Had to take my little boy to the vet today because his right eye has been weeping a bit. He got antibiotic eyedrops (shades of Spanky). He's also gained a pound in just a week!

On Sunday nights: I guess I don't like Sunday nights very much. I mean, they're just as good as other evenings for getting together with friends--and I did have a lovely afternoon and evening with EB--but I always get a little blue past about 8 PM on Sundays. The weekend is over, and once the sun rises on Monday, my time stops being my own in 8 hour chunks over the next week.

On the King Tut exhibit at Pacific Science Center: Nice exhibit, well put together. Some beautiful stuff is included and I'm glad EB and I went. It's not the really spectacular, big stuff from the excavation; it's beautiful smaller things that one doesn't often get to see. I spent quite a bit of time studying the inlaid canopic coffinnette and the beaded collars, reverse engineering the things and thinking about how I could recreate them with the bead-weaving techniques I've learned in the last couple of years. It can be done. It will be time-consuming, but it is certainly doable. The captions throughout the exhibit are quite fine. The hour we went--late in the day--meant that the exhibit wasn't dizzyingly crowded, which was a blessing. Overall it was a small exhibit but pretty satisfying, a nice way to spent a late afternoon. EB and I had Indian food together afterward, excellent time and I'm happy to have had it.

On Sophie and Ezekiel: Woke with them both on the bed this morning. Caught them sleeping under the ottoman together this afternoon. And lots of wrastlin' with each other. Ezekiel mews piteously when Sophie has him pinned, but then he extracts himself and provokes her again. It's classic little-brother-big-sister dynamics in action. YAY!

On the Europe trip pictures: I took 800+ pictures on the trip, only to discover that my lens was dirty. Every picture with a clear blue sky shows spots here and there, so I'm going through, one by one, and cleaning them up in Photoshop. It's taking more time than I would prefer, but I'm the kind of perfectionist that needs to do it . . . so I'm doing it. ::sigh::. It means the pix won't be showing up for a while. I'll post as they're up on Flickr and ready to go.

On the election: I voted within a week or so of receiving my ballot, so my part in the election is pretty much done. I'm worried for this country. The partisanship that has infected our way of doing government has gotten so vile that it's hard to be confident about our future no matter who is elected. I don't understand how the Republican party can do business the way it does; I don't understand how they can ascribe to the positions they espouse. I don't understand how a party can make, as its first order of business, a plan to prioritize the president's defeat over actually governing the country. It's a fundamental difference of philosophy and perspective, and it baffles me. I love my country, but I don't like it very much right now. I hope that the election brings about some positive change. We've got to get this nation moving in a positive direction with a little more velocity.

On books: I mentioned recently finishing reading "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl." I also recently finished the absolutely brilliant "John Adams," the biography by David McCullough, which I keep meaning to thoroughly review and failing to do so. It's wonderful; everyone with an interest in biographies, in history, or just in good nonfiction should read it. It's remarkable, every single page. I keep trying to start other books and just not having the concentration to do it, even though my "to read" pile by the bed continues to get taller with both fiction and nonfiction. Nothing is charming me right now. I don't know if it's that McCullough has spoiled me or if I'm just tired or what. I may need to take a little reading hiatus and try some other book in a couple of days--but only a couple. I need my reading time.

1) I'm glad to hear that my friends and family back east are safe as Big Mother-F*cking Storm Sandy moves on.

2) Weather in Seattle has been mild and damp, not as cold as one would expect at the end of October for which I'm truly grateful.

3) I'm way behind in processing my Europe trip pictures. Maybe I'll get more done tonight. ::fingers crossed:: Trouble is that I discovered spots on a lot of the pictures, which suggests that my lens was dirty and I didn't notice. I'm just glad that I have enough facility with Photoshop to attend to it, but it's slowing down my preferred posting speed.

4) This house desperately needs to be decluttered and vacuumed. I have no idea when this is going to happen.

5) Ezekiel Report, Day 4: Zeke has settled in nicely. He's playful, affectionate, and curious. He and Sophie seem to have achieved detente--no more hissing, but lots of sniffing each other nose-to-nose and a great deal of chasing each other about the house. Sophie has been unwilling to cuddle or sleep with me since Zeke's arrival which, while expected, has been genuinely upsetting to me. Last night for the first time, both Sophie and Zeke got up on the bed at the same time. This morning, when I woke up to Zeke kneeding my cheek, I discovered a big lump at my feet--Sophie, curled up between the top sheet and the quilt. It's not the kind of cuddling with her that I'm used to, but as far as I'm concerned it's progress.

BONUS! 6) This evening on KUOW-FM (94.9 FM, also streaming online and available as a podcast), Selected Shorts is offering Tales of Terror by Edgar Allan Poe, featuring "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Raven," hosted by Neil Gaiman. What a lovely, seasonally appropriate program!