Ashbloemstraat

Daily bread.

Yesterday I housewifed it in the kitchen for the day. I started out just wanting to scrub it down and it get it ready for painting, but then as I started putting dishes away I said, "Hey, while I am doing this I should whip up a couple batches of pizza dough to have on hand". Two batches of pizza dough, a loaf of wheat bread, and four quinoa/mushroom/black bean stuffed bell peppers later, the kitchen was no cleaner than it was when I started, and quite a bit more flour everywhere. Mind you, I cleaned everything that was there before I started, but left the kitchen with all the things I got filthy. Then David came home and we decided to eat said peppers and warm bread whilst watching Eagle vs Shark, and then, well, I was just too sleepy to deal with it. So much for cleaning the kitchen.

It is only about two weeks before my tour starts. I have not been good about studying. Today I bought the books I need and will be cramming as though an exam looms. Which one does, in a way, I suppose. But I did drop the two east coast tours I had agreed to for March. I feel enormously better because of it, though considering that's the only bit of income I have lined up right now I wonder if I was being foolish. I just don't feel much like touring this year. And I can't help but think if I'm really applying myself to finding a job here if it makes sense to be away half of March. I can't see that it does.

The weather here has been remarkably warm for February. Or maybe it is not remarkably warm in February for TEXAS, but remarkably warm for ME. I continue to have the windows open during the day when I am here, much to the delight of the cats. Spike, the dog next door who has no respect for his fencing, wanders to the open front window and looks in, bemused by the cats. This riles them greatly; Ronnie the Bear keeping every hair on his body on end while Spike is around so that he appears twice as big. Once Spike trots away it is all lounging in the sun, however.

Morning mayhem.

Having the kittens has dramatically changed the dynamic of our household. When Marley was here, he was the undeniable alpha cat, growling his way around the place; staring down Gus, and swatting others with his monster claws when necessary. It was a quiet house, with the exception of Marley's method of waking us up, which involved finding a piece of paper and ripping it into long strips and bites next to the bed.

When Ronnie the Bear wandered into our lives, we were taken by the little guy's sense of entitlement - he not only believed he BELONGED in our house, but he immediately and in no uncertain terms insisted on the role of alpha cat. Tugboat and Gus were clearly confused by what had happened - one of the reasons I thought a new cat would be a good idea is because Gus was clearly pining for something. He cried more than usual and just seemed confused. However, Ronnie seemed to confuse him even more, as he would try to interact, but the kitten would swat at him Marley-style and set up camp in my lap as though to further prove his point. Tugboat and Gus both learned that if Ronnie the Bear was on the sofa or chair they weren't welcome. This despite David and me yelling at them to get some balls and assume their rightful status as Cat in Charge. Since then, Gus and Tugboat seem to have decided to make a stand, and they will at least try to assert themselves, even if Ronnie still wins out most of the time.

A few days later Ernie was thrust upon us - and all of his toes.

He was a little sweet tiny thing, all mask and fingers. I always wanted a little polydactyl cat and here he was, so there was no getting rid of him, though all logic swore that four cats was one cat too many. Unlike Ronnie the Bear, Ernie gently eased into life here, his sweet nature endearing him to everyone. But, it has to be said, particularly Tugboat. As the only girl kitty and having never had kittens, Ernie clearly is fulfilling some maternal instinct with his presence. She bathes him constantly, and he never seems as happy as he is when Tugboat is licking him thoroughly. They play as though she is teaching him to hunt. Gus likes him too, and lets him sleep on him, and even sits quietly when Ernie decides to be the bather and practice his skills on Gus's fur.

But no one loves each other as much as Ronnie the Bear and Ernie do each other.

They play and play. They prefer sleeping together than apart. They cuddle and hug; wrestle and bathe. They are cuter than just about anything I have ever seen.

We have a hard time shutting them out of the bedroom at night when they are so tired. Their little bodies just want to curl into our duvet and we cannot resist the pile of us and four cats falling asleep in our king-sized bed. But our mornings are forever changed.

Around seven or so the matutinal instincts kick in and the kittens get very active indeed. They wrestle with the blinds so they can look outside and watch the birds and squirrels. I usually have to get up once to raise the blinds so they don't keep messing with them. After a while they ignore the outside and start chasing each other, and usually our bed is part of the circular course they follow around the house. And despite being so small, those little kitten feet sound like a herd of elephants on our hardwood floors. Actually, I'm not sure rugs would make a difference, they chase each other so earnestly and intently.

This morning, under heavy attack, we almost missed the days of tearing paper. But we decided this, while louder, is far cuter. We just may have to start shutting them out of the bedroom at night.

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Personal blogging month: I'm writing every day from December 2 to January 2.

And someday you will find me cleaning them on a washboard at the banks of Lake Springfield.

The thing is, I used to be a dog person. Or, I thought I was. I mean, I like all animals, but thought I preferred dogs to cats, so didn't think much of getting a cat until, as I said not long ago, my lifestyle got all crazy and it made more sense to have one if I was going to have a pet. It all started so innocently, with Marley. He and I, on the rooftops of Amsterdam together. Marley with his catgrass and me with my chilled rosé. We didn't need anyone else. We were living a life of freedom .

And then my sister found Gus and his two brothers on the street, and asked if I would like to take Gus. She was going to keep his two brothers, but she thought three cats was too many, and I AGREED, and said sure, I'll take the little guy (and he was, back then, little). I flew him to Switzerland and there we lived, the three of us (um, not counting Mr. NonCommittal) spending mornings out on the balcony overlooking Mt. Pilatus. Me with my coffee and they with the dusting of snow on the ledge. And lo, I thought, this cat thing is not so bad, and two seems to be a pretty good number.

We all moved to Boston and the two of them saw me through that bad breakup and I kind of think that after Annie, Dab, and Terra, they were the best friends I had that year.

Well, and then we all know what happened that magical and strange Christmas not so long ago, when David and I met for a drink after many years and our knees touched at the bar and on some cellular level we knew our lives were from that moment on to be together, or else we'd at least give it our best shot. When I told him he had to move to Boston for it to work, he agreed and then told me about his cat Tugboat. I had only a moment of hesitation, imagining the two of us and three cats in my one bedroom apartment - but there was no way to say no; we had come this far. And so Tugboat made three. Which was perhaps a bit uneasy for the first few months but then Gus fell in love with her and Marley ruled them both with an iron paw and lo, we were a family.

I knew when Marley was put down that if we were going to get a replacement cat, I'd rather it be sooner than later, and David agreed. We searched for polydactyl kittens and found one on line and made an appointment to meet him.

But this little dude wandered up.

He just adopted us from the very beginning. He loves, he cuddles. He pranced into the house and assumed alpha cat status. I think he might partially be Marley come back to me. Gus and Tugboat are terrified of him.

And then we had our appointment with my long desired toe kitty. The woman ended up just kind of dropping him off. I sort of thought we only had an appointment to meet him, and we'd decide, but she was sort of out there, and I didn't argue.

So now we have four cats. Even I feel it is too many, but I'm not sure what to do about it. I love the new one too. He has opposable thumbs! And he and the orange one are hilarious playing together. But the orange one is just too funny to give up either.

Sigh. I do not know how this happened. David just gives me a bemused look and says it is ok; four is fine. I supposed he is right. Four it is.

Menagerie.

Ronnie the Bear is settling into the house well and in fact is quite sure he is the cat in charge. He struts about and terrorizes Gus, who seems so curious and wants to be friends. Everytime he gets close though, Ronnie the Bear hisses and gives him a swipe, then jumps into my lap. Gus will then flop on the floor and look at me forlornly. Tugboat just seems scared of him, though she is twice his size.

I think RtB has taken a liking to Davey especially. He likes to curl next to him and, like above, sleep on his shoulder. Generally he is pretty affectionate to everyone though. We still shut him in a separate room at night so Gus and Tugboat feel comfortable and can sleep on the bed with us without RtB around swatting at them.

He is gassy though. PEEE YEW.

So the thing is, though, we are still a little unsure about whether to be attached to him. He just seems like he was someone's pet. We are going to take him to the vet tomorrow - if he is not microchipped, he is ours. But if he is, I will feel compelled to return him.

Um, and also we have an appointment to meet a polydactyl kitten tomorrow. I just can not resist.

See what that means? That means that tomorrow we might feasibly go from having two cats to four. Because, you know, the ratio of cats to people in the house just wasn't high enough.

In addition, I got a call last night that I was not expecting at all. A friend called from San Francisco and asked if I would be open to readopting my old dog.

As you know, I had this dog many years ago with my ex-girlfriend. When we broke up she kept the dog. Then she got together with someone new, and that woman took possession of Kaeli when THEY broke up. This woman is friends with a college friend I am still close with, and asked if I might be able to take her. Apparently her work schedule has changed and she can no longer give Kaeli the time, attention, and love she needs. And huskies need a LOT of all of these things.

She has not decided yet. But of course I said yes. I am not really sure we are ready for a dog right now, but in other ways this is probably the best situation to try it out. She will have a big yard. She will have a dog next door to play with. She is, sadly, old, so I suspect we would have no more than three or four years with her. She, hopefully, still knows me.

I cannot say I will be overly sad if the other ex changes her mind though - I would feel very bad about leaving her outdoors all the time, and she really would have to become an almost exclusively outside dog - she has never tolerated cats very well. She, by the sounds of it, has become grumpier in her old age and I would worry about her with other people and animals. However, I DO feel responsible for her and used to have a great relationship with her, so if it is decided she must come to Texas than I will take her happily.

For those of you keeping count, we now potentially may become a four cat, one dog household.

Oh my lord. I think I've changed my mind about having kids soon.

UNRELATED: Since I wrote the entry about flowers a couple days ago, I remembered another funny flower story. I had gone to visit a friend of mine in Malmo, Sweden. We decided to go down to the water and have a walk. We saw tons of lovely wildflowers. "Shall we pick some?" I said. "Absolutely!" said Mette. We gathered an armful each and took them to the car.

We got in and after about two minutes both of us started sneezing so hard that we had to pull the car over and throw out some of the flowers. I had never before nor have ever since had such a dramatic effect to pollen. Crazy Swedish pollen, being all efficient at making us miserable.

Ronnie the bear.

Last night this little orange kitten came to my sister's backyard and adopted us. Doesn't it seem like destiny? We haven't decided whether or not to keep him, but I have to admit it seems odd to lose my old orange cat just to have a new one show up on our door. Hmmm.

In the meantime, I'm calling him Ronnie the Bear. I also like calling him Captain Meowmers, but he's more a Ronnie the Bear type.

Progress.

This photo is for Jenny:

Thank you everyone for the kind words for Marley. I have been, to my surprise, so much more sad about it than I had anticipated - not that I thought it would be easy, but that I just thought about it logically for so long that I did not give much thought to how I would react emotionally. That is, I always imagined that the moment he got sick I would hug and love him, I would take him in and calmly say goodbye. Then I would go home and feel good about doing the kindest thing. That was the scene in my mind. But I never thought about how sad I would be or how hard it would be to not see his little face in the morning, so it came as a shock. I gave myself a couple days to cry and give into it, but now I feel good and am even thinking about getting another one. I've always ALWAYS wanted a little polydactyl cat, but felt four was too many. So maybe it is time. We shall see.

In other news, today was an asswhip. My mother stayed true to her word and came over to clean out the garage. It was 96 F out. I'd been out to Lee Harvey's last night for a friend of Davey's show and hung out with some nice people and Davey and I fooled around until dickety thirty in the morning, so I'd had no sleep and was a touch hungover. And the garage was chock-a-block with... junk. In my mind, junk. But one man's trash, as they say, and it certainly was her treasure. There was almost nothing in the garage that was mine, just our suitcases and my Kronan (<3), so I just had to sort of direct the proceedings.

My mother is a collector, a hoarder. She has a very hard time letting go of anything. The things she agrees to let go of still go into a pile for The Garage Sale. Now, my mother talks about having garage sales... well, she's talked about them forever. Yet I remember maybe five garage sales my entire life. So these things end up piling up somewhere. Her house. Her garage. This house. This garage. Two storage units. Seriously, it is a sickness - I would sign her up for that show where people come and force you to give things up (Clean Sweep?) if I thought she would actually agree to it. But she wouldn't. She is very stubborn.

(By the way, Dallas people - if she DOES actually have a garage sale, I'll tell you about it, because she has a lot of practically new stuff.)

 

Recently, the past year or so, she seems to be getting better. She has been more proactive about going through her things. She still is a chronic shuffler, however - piles for the office, piles for The Garage Sale, piles for home. Little actually goes away. I'm really trying to support her and encourage this new behavior, but it is hard because I TEND to throw a lot away and I have little patience with this particular trait (I'm sure it is also a common thing for daughters to have little patience with their mothers generally).

As I have gotten older, I am actually terrified of becoming like her (In this way - in most ways she's lovely). I throw away a lot. I'm not perfect, of course; I have a big box of clothing that desperately needs to be eBayed, as well as a lot of old photos and such, but until I get a scanner and convert them ALL to digital, and I someday WILL, they will have to be stored. I already admitted to you I have tons of perfumes, and I don't even want to talk about the lip glosses and balms scattered about, and my yarn is OUT OF CONTROL. But I do not get attached to things in an EMOTIONAL way like she does. Or maybe I'm just justifying. Yikes.

Anyway, that's been my whole day. Real exciting for you, I know. To redeem this post, I will tell you my new recipe for white bean spread. I love white beans blended into a spread; I used to do this a lot but sort of forgot about it until now when we are eating more beans. You just blend canned cannellini beans with olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs - sage, rosemary, or parsley is what I usually use, but last night we had a handfull of basil that needed to be used so we threw that in instead. But the NEW thing was this: we put in an AVOCADO. We spread it on knäcke and it was wonderful. Of course, we were tipsy, so keep this in mind.

I booked our tickets for London yesterday. I'm so happy about that, even though I'll be working part of the time - Davey's friend Jimi may meet him there to keep him company during that time, which would be fun for them, and fun for me come evenings. My job mainly consists of creating European itineraries right now, so I'm a little obsessed with getting back. I am happy for everything that has happened and I wouldn't trade it all for a visa, but I sure am missing my Amsterdam quality of life recently.

Not because of the onions.

Tonight I made a green thai curry. It was really nice, actually. Making one's own chili paste is revolutionary. Again, it was a bit time consuming.

I needed the time to think though. Tonight I found out my old cat Marley has the cancer. He's been struggling a bit the past four or five days, and I knew it was going to be bad, so I had put off taking him to the vet a couple days. But I KNEW in my heart it was going to be the worst news. So I cooked and cried over the ingredients a little. It was ok though; she didn't have enough salt incorporated into the recipe.

I've given him a bit of tuna for the night. That was a nice treat for him.

Born a travellin' cat.

The cats - or, at least, Gus and Tugboat - have been having a hell of a time with the many boxes strewn about the house in various stages of open, half-packed, or sealed. I imagine they think the place has been turned into a little box amusement park especially for their benefit. AH, LITTLE DO THEY KNOW the HORROR that awaits. Let's just say that if you have never travelled with a cat, you can't know the head-banging monotony by which they can meow over and over like this:

Cat: mrowmrowmrowmrowmrowmrowmrowmrowmrow...

Me: Shhh...

Cat: mrowmrowmrowmrowmrowmrowmrowmrowmrowmrow...

Me: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Cat: mrowmrowmrowmrowmrowmrow

And driving for three days with not one, not TWO, BUT THREE OF THEM! MAKING THIS NOISE! My god what a ride it will be! Wheee! Does anyone have any Vicodin?

Guest blogger.

Well, if she isn't going to write, I might as well take a stab at it. After all, absence may make the heart grow fonder, but it is consistency that keeps one faithful.

This is what I try to tell her each morning at 6:00am, which is when my rumbling tummy awakens me. A consistency at breakfast must be the most important! Often I am sleeping at her feet, and I try to awaken her gently. Fortunately, the orange alpha cat has devised a clever scheme by which to wake her, coming off as the bad one, while my soft prods seem cute in comparison. His method is this: he finds any manner of paper upon the ground, and TEARS IT INTO PIECES WITH HIS TEETH! Ingenious! And it always works. Though there is much cursing, and he gets sprayed with a water bottle, she always gets up to feed us.

But it is this food itself I must protest. When I was but a small cat, she would feed me soft and moist fragrant foods. But whither hast such foods gone? Now I am fed twice a day small hard pellets that smell of little and taste of nothing. Am I being punished? Where is the plentiful and wet food of my youth?

She speaks to me of my belly, and its girth. I accept myself as I am! Why can't she? And while she's at it, why can't she feed me more often, with the aforementioned foods? I have noticed that my household compatriots have lost weight. This must be a sign that the foods we are given are insufficient. In short: I object.

However, I do not quibble so much that I do not sleep next to her every evening. I may wish for more food, of course. But strong-arm tactics such as the one Orange uses are not my style. No, I'll just keep snuggling into her armpits at night. Surely she will see that I am the most loyal. That I deserve more.

Surely she will see it.

Best photo ever.

I can't believe American Boy caught this stretch and yawn on camera.

In other news, I hate working. Writing is better. But it would seem that writing is not in the cards for me this week. So photoblogging it shall be.