We Are Family! Ev'rybody get up and sing!

I am Pinkster. I am the lone male in this family. Sure, it gets a little trying at times with 4 younger sisters and the Mama - they're always moving around, they don't know the meaning of SEDENTRY, which is as close to a Zen state as can be. I practice it often and am more likely to chase a sunbeam than anything else.

It was suggested today to the Mama that she might consider letting some of us go and live on a farm as it might make it easier for her to find a new home. She was quite upset about it, of course, I mean, two of the girls haven't been outside since they were mere kittens, and I don't think Sissy would want to be outside again (she rarely even pokes her nose at the outdoors when the opportunity arises), and as for myself and Ellen...well, we might do all right having PLAYED outside while living with the Mama, but why should any of us go? Mama put her foot down quite hard on that.

Later, in reflection, she told us we were FAMILY and she would just continue to look for a new home for us all because we are all needed to keep this family whole. There's Sissy, who reminds us all to play harder and purr louder at any given opportunity...there's Bebe, who IS the baby and always will be, no matter what age she is, and therefore brings that "delicateness of life" to the table...there's V'lu, faithful and strong, who warms Mama's feet or legs and gives a constant physical touch for the Mama...there's Ellen, who despite her age acts like she's four, which is a good lesson to all of us really, because without being four in the heart means a loss of play and wonderment...and then there's me - lending dignity and a heartfelt chirp to the day and always welcoming visitors.

Then Mama gave us catnip and we all rang in the new month with a silly grin on our faces!

Mama's Nose is in this book:

Murder in Vegas - New Crime Tales of Gambling and Desperation, edited by Michael Connelly. Mama likes to read anything Vegas, having dealt cards at a casino before, and knows the life from the underbelly and back hallways. The stories are short and to the point and although fictional, one can't say SOME of these things happen on a daily basis in major gambling cities, for they do in smaller cities such as here. Mama needed a short story book anyway - she's been beading a lot lately!

Disco in the Round...

Ev'ryone can see we're together
As we walk on by
(FLY!) and we fly just like birds of a feather
I won't tell no lie
(ALL!) all of the people around us they say
Can they be that close
Just let me state for the record
We're giving love in a family dose

We are family
I got all my sisters with me
We are family
Get up ev'rybody and sing

--- We are Family, Sister Sledge

Off to see how FRESH that catbox really is...
Pinky

Sissy's Spring Fever Blisters

So I race around the house and I race around the house and there's nothing to do and I want to do something and so I kill the toilet paper after dragging it into the tub and I get on top of the kitchen cupboards and I race around there but there isn't much room and so then I divebomb whoever happens to be wandering through the kitchen (woe is me if it's V'lu) and then I chase Bebe and I chase Ellen and I chase Bebe and then I chase Ellen some more and Mama yells, "Slow down dammit!" and I race to the bathroom and check to see if the toilet paper really is dead and then I race to the living room window and then I race into the kitchen where I slide into a solid thump against the fridge.

And then I do it again!!!

Mama plays a new game, she's on level 12 still and its all because of Jacks that she is THERE and not doing dishes or paying attention to us, which is a good thing - I get away with LOTS while she's being hypnotized by the dots and the zen music...click that link over there --->
You know you want to...

Mama's just finished reading: "Cadillac Beach" by Tim Dorsey. She likes Tim Dorsey, actually brings out the gigglesnort within her. This is another "Serge" novel, who is quite the character and gets into and out of all sorts of impossible but somewhat feasible quandaries.

Mama's hearing aide:

I was in the pub last night
A mutual friend of ours said
Hed seen you in the uniform
Yeah the leather belt looks manly
The black boots butch
But oh what a bastard to get off

Promises, promises
They offer real solutions
But hatred has never won for long

You was so open minded
But by someone blinded
And now your sign says closed.

I think we've lost our perception -
I think we've lost sight of the goals we should
Be working for
I think we've lost our reason
We stumble blindly and that vision must be restored!

I wish that there was something
I could do about it
I wish that there was some way
I could try to fight it
Scream and shout it -

But something you said set the house ablaze!

It is called indoctrination
And it happens on all levels
But it has nothing to do with equality
It has nothing to do with democracy
And though it professes to
It has nothing to do with humanity
It is cold, hard and mechanical

"Set the House Ablaze" by the Jam

Gotta runrunrun!
Sissy

Its my Birthday!!!

and its 8 am! Nobody but ME up and around. Mama says she brought me home in 2003 4 years ago, which means I'm like 4 years and a week to ten days old, but this is the day we celebrate. I'm not sure what we'll do, but Mama held me and sang happy birthday and wished me many many more.

Let's see...yesterday I got into the toybox and dug out some catnip treatbags and shared them around and Pinky got his head on two of them and the honeysuckle chip and so then he got all frisky and chased me around. I beat the crap out of one and it broke open under Mama's computer chair but she's just leaving it be for us to deal with.

Gosh, I can't get over how quiet it is this morning! Its spooky...even Sissy is sleeping! I'm on the coffee table, don't tell Mama.

Update on the book sitch: Mama finished reading the Neil Gaiman. She liked it well enough, and will read any others he has, but was a tad disappointed because of how everyone raved about him. She was expecting something on a Tom Robbin's level, but it was not to be. Still, a good read and a good original story line!

Because Jacks planted the seed, Mama's now hearing in her head:

My heart is beating faster, babe,
It's beating like a big bass drum.
You know you got me speeding, child,
Faster than a bullet from a gun.
You're a superstitious woman
An' I got a superstitious mind, an' I don't care.

So take me down slow an' easy,
Make love to me slow an' easy.
I know that hard luck an' trouble
Is coming my way,
So rock me 'til I'm burned to the bone,
Rock me 'til I'm burned to the bone.

---Slow an'Easy, Whitesnake

I AM Pinky

I am the lover of the household.
You'd never know it - I don't look like much of a Romeo, and then again, I'm not that kind of lover...I just love to sit on laps and be hugged and purr and all that other general GOOD cat stuff.
Today has been relatively quiet. Mama opened the door and window because it was so nice, and she kissed me on the ear when I wasn't looking and almost shocked me off my perch on the table. The girls raced around and chattered about sunbeams and cool air ruffling their fur...takes me back to a younger time, really, when I was "outdoors". Mama doesn't let us do "outdoors" anymore, she says there are too many mean people and sickly cats out there for us to be safe. She worries about me a lot out there - and really, I can't help myself, because if someone comes near me, I want to be sociable and give them some cat lovin' just incase they don't get any at home...and Mama says that is a bad thing where we live now. Its okay though...I love up every person who comes in the house and get their undivided attention!

Mama's reading: Her first Neil Gaimen book, Anansi Boys. She's not read enough of it to make an opinion, not that THAT has ever stopped her before. She gave up on the scifi for now...

And Mama's playing this loud and we've all hidden:

He’s got fasting black lungs made of clove splintered shardes
They’re the kind that will talk through a weezing of coughs
And I hear him every night in every pore and every time he just makes me warm
Freeze without an answer free from all the shame must I hide
Cuz I’ll never never sleep alone
Look at how they flock to him from an isle of open sores
He knows that the taste is such, such to die for
And I hear him every night on every street
The scales that do slither
Deliver me from…
Freeze without an answer free from all the shame
Then I’ll hide cuz i’ll never never sleep alone
Oh lord
Said I’m bloodshot for sure pale runs the ghost
Swollen on the shore everynight in every pore
The scales that do slither
Deliver me from…
Freeze without an answer free from all the shame
Then I’ll hide
Cuz I’ll never never sleep alone

--- The Widow, the Mars Volta

I'll be on the bed,
Pinky

Green Ball Wheeeee!!!!

Bebe's Side:

I was just sitting there and Sissy jumped on me and wrestled me to the ground while I was having an asthma attack - I'm wheezing and she's still kicking the crap out of me. Mama was there and shot Sissy with water, so Sissy went and immediately pounced on Ellen as she came down from the wardrobe. Ellen was in better shape than me for that kind of nonsense, but Mama sprayed Sissy again and yelled at her, and that is how the morning started.

Tonight Mama played Green Ball Wheeeeee! with me. I chased the ball into the kitchen and under the tin shelf, but then I had to groom my tail and the ball rolled under the table very very slowly so I half-pounced on it and then left it. Mama mistakenly thought I was interested in the green ball, but I really wasn't, but it was fun watching her throw it down the hallway, then go and get it and throw it into the living room, then go and get it, and then she threw it down the hallway again, and she did this back and forth thing about eight times. She really needs very little encouragement from any of us, all I did was "look interested" and she'd throw it, and V'lu chased it for three lazy leaps and then veered off into the red room...yeah, we played ball with her for a while and then she lost interest.

It was fun while it lasted.

I Sat on Mama's Chest While she was Trying to Read:

Smoke and Shadows by Tanya Huff. A science fiction novel, which, Mama says, scifi sometimes leaves a lot out of the story, like the reader was in the writer's head when he wrote it and all the background stuff is THERE IF YOU CAN READ BETWEEN THE LINES or CHANNEL THE AUTHOR or something. Maybe Mama's approach to scifi needs to be examined, like, if she wanted to, she could make it an interactive event and make stuff up too instead of being there solely to be entertained - maybe make some liner notes on the margins for the next hapless reader, or just assume, as the author did, that the stuff that was left out was unimportant anyway. However, she says the book has some very witty moments and she's started it so she'll bloody well finish it. Unlike the last scifi book she started and discarded after fifty pages, Cartomancy by Michael A. Stackpole. That book had too many plots, locations and wierd names to contend with, so its going back to the library. While on the subject of libraries, its hard to keep up with series of scifi, as most books are just another volume of a set of five (on average) and libraries being libraries, they don't have all of them sitting together at one place at one time. So its pure luck if you can find two or three in sequence of a series so if you see one, you may as well get the others that are there, coz Mama doesn't like unfinished stories.

Sweet Sounds Swirling in Mama's Mind:

The offered me the office, offered me the shop
They said I'd better take anything they'd got
Do you wanna make tea at the BBC?
Do you wanna be, do you really wanna be a cop?

Career opportunities are the ones that never knock
Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock
Career opportunity, the ones that never knock

I hate the army an' I hate the R.A.F.
I don't wanna go fighting in the tropical heat
I hate the civil service rules
And I won't open letter bombs for you

Bus driver....ambulance man....ticket inspector

They're gonna have to introduce conscription
They're gonna have to take away my prescription
If they wanna get me making toys
If they wanna get me, well, I got no choice

Careers
Careers
Careers

Ain't never gonna knock

---Career Opportunities, The Clash

I'm so cute,
Bebe

Mama lost her voice!

Ellen Cherry Charles reporting to you LIVE from the living room...and Mama has had a cold off and on for a few days and she lost her voice today! So we are running rampant and she can't yell at us - well, she whispers at us, but its not the same, I mean, we don't hardly flinch when she yells at us so you can imagine a whisper and how fast we move then - HA. Anyway, she managed to clean the catbox and did a little drawing and did some crossword puzzles and watched "Finding Nemo" for the first time, which she said was a rather sad movie, all things considered.

Words that are strung along for a long long time that Mama is paying attention to instead of me:

Shopaholic and Sister by Sophie Kinsella...the heroine is a bimbo who tries to make friends with a sister her family had just found - her dad had an affair before he was married. As predictable, the heroine is a "shopoholic" and her sister is as granola as it could get. After beating their heads against the wall for 370 pages, they find a tiny corner of common ground that they both cling to, and happily ever after. This Kinsella woman has a lot of books out - mostly "Shopaholic" as far as I can tell. I sat through one, I doubt I can sit through another, but it was mindless and easy to read, so who knows?

Song on permanent loop in Mama's head:
Girl, before I met you I was F.I.N.E. Fine
but your love made me a prisoner, yeah my heart's been doing time
You spent me up like money, then you hung me out to dry
It was easy to keep all your lies in disguise
'Cause you had me in deep with the devil in your eyes

---What it Takes, Aerosmith

you gotta catch me first!
Ellen

Grandma spoiled me most!!!

Grandma came to visit for two nights (she had cat-aract surgery) and she spoiled us all! Mama says we are now IMPOSSIBLE but its all okay! She only wore her pirate patch at night - like any good pirate would!

Pinky: Grandma held me on her lap daily and I snoozed with her and she fed me treats.

Ellen: Grandma held me on her shoulder and we looked out the window together and she fed me treats.

V'lu: Grandma fed me treats...I wasn't feeling all that well - I slept a lot while she was here, but I'm feeling a bit better now that Mama has started making me breathe in Eucalyptus vapors. (There is something living under the fridge and I can't tell you what it is, but it/they are there).

Bebe: I let Grandma pet me and I only bit her a few times, and she fed me treats and let me play Scrabble.

Sissy: Grandma spoiled me the most! She fed me treats, she played fetch with me, she held me on her lap a few times, and she let me play Scrabble!

Mama's reading: The City Man by Howard Akler, a Canadian author. It is a story about 1934 Toronto pickpockets and the reporter who followed one of the groups around and tried to learn their craft. It is written in black and white, if that makes any sense...but really captures the feeling of the period of which it was written about.

Mama's singing under her breath:

Well I’m not paralyzed
But, I seem to be struck by you
I want to make you move
Because you’re standing still
If your body matches
What your eyes can do
You’ll probably move right through
Me on my way to you

--- Paralyzed, Finger Eleven

Spring Be Here!!!

I am V'lu dammit.

Today was a very nice day. Mama kept the door and windows open and we charged around and got into fights and made a lot of noise and annoyed Mama. Somebody (I'm not naming names) knocked a frying pan off the dish drainer and almost gave Mama a heart attack! Mama put out some bread in the birdfeeders on the front step but so far, no takers. Tomorrow morning, I bet.

I got sprayed three times for "bullying". Mama likes to make it like its a hockey game around here sometimes...but nobody's been put in the penalty box (bathroom) for a long time.

Mama's reading: Andrew Klavan's "Shotgun Alley", which is a little violent and hasn't made much sense yet (and she's one third into it) but she's gonna plug along at it. Its a detective novel of sorts.

Mama's zoning out to the melodic sounds of:

I was an impossible case
No-one ever could reach me
But I think I can see in your face
There's a lot you can teach me
So I wanna know..

What's the name of the game?
Does it mean anything to you?
What's the name of the game?
Can you feel it the way I do?
Tell me please, 'cause I have to know
I'm a bashful child, beginning to grow

--- ABBA, "The Name of the Game"

purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr(inhale)rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr etc
V'lu

Purloined Chicken

Sissy here...I must say that purloined chicken is the best for as long as you can have at it before Mama discovers that you've found it. Today she cooked up three chicken breasts and got sidetracked before putting them in the fridge so we stole two of them and had a quick warm feast before she found out. She then was dismayed, but it was okay because she cut up both pieces of chicken and put them down by the food dishes and we all gorged ourselves on it and I played with some on the kitchen floor but eventually it was all eaten up. It was goooooood.

Later Mama made a roast and while she was eating it we tried to see what was on her plate but she didn't give us any warning - she just started spraying us! I think its because she thought we'd try to steal it right out of her mouth but we wouldn't do that...we'd wait until she was away from her plate first.

Mama's Daily Snoop: http://www.cuteoverload.com/

Mama's Sunday Snoop: http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

The Song in Mama's Head:

Baby, instant soup doesn't really grab me.
Today I need something more sub-sub-sub-substantial.
A can of beans or blackeyed peas, some Nescafe and ice,
A candy bar, a falling star, or a reading of Doctor Seuss

--- REM, "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight"

Hi, Ellen here...

Well, we've had a good week for the most part. It was warm enough to have the door and window open and Pinky even got to go outside for a very short bit! Birds have returned - sparrows are singing and crows are coming by more frequently, as are magpies - both those birds are tied for Mama's affections. It has snowed A LOT and Mama has sprinkled some snow on all of us, to remind us of how nice it is to be inside and warm.

I think Mama's coming down with a cold. She wants to sleep a fair bit and is coughing a little. However, she is getting more and more energy as days go by - likely the result of vitamins, more sleep and better eating habits. She worries about her teeth getting stained by cinnamon and blueberries though and is brushing to no avail.

Mama also made some cd's on the computer for her friends - a collection of her favorite songs on the four Tragically Hip cds that she has. She is listening to it now - she likes to put her own greatest hits together. I don't mind the band as Mama doesn't play it too loud and she sings along and takes turns dancing with us.

Mama has her nose buried in: Faceless by Martina Cole. Note that there are a lot of novels out there in the past few years by UK writers, which is somewhat fun because they use different slang and word usage than that of American writers. This book is about a woman who committed a double homicide and is now out of jail and the troubles that she faces. It isn't a fun girlygirl book but she seems to be enthralled by it and has put everything else aside for the day.

Mama's chairdancing to:

If I die of Vanity, promise me, promise me
That if they bury me some place I don't want to be
That you'll dig me up and transport me
Unceremoniously away from the swollen city breeze, garbage bag trees
Whispers of disease, and acts of enormity
And lower me slowly, sadly, and properly
Get Ry Cooder to sing my eulogy

--- Tragically Hip, "At The Hundredth Meridian"