Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Hound...by any other name...


My Daddy named me Hound...but Mommy calls me Precious in my ear, and I like that.  I am an oddity, you see.  There are not many of my kind who speak both human and ca'at.  Yes, I am bilinguil.  Mommy is playing Somewhere Out There on her music machine and I am attuned to it.   I will pass on many secrets to you because I like the music that is playing.  I love my Mommy and Daddy but they keep insisting that Batgirl and the rest are my sisters and brothers, but really Wallace and Michael and Anna and now Sara are my brothers and sisters.  The others are ca'ats...I speak ca'at so well because the others have been jabbering in my ears since I'm a baby...I get the treats that my human brothers and sisters don't get, great stuff like sardines and jackmack and if I'm a good girl something Mommy calls nip...the other day after I had nip I just touched her lightly and she yelped like mad and got up and went into the little closet in the hall with the water pipes and the big water bowl and came back with the sharpies in her hand.  So I was Hound getting a manicure, not Precious sitting and purring in her lap...Mommy says I'm a good girl living in two worlds.  Daddy says I'm crazy.  Well, everyone says I'm crazy but Mommy...she knows better.  So, I am Hound to the world but Precious to my Mommy...and she who opens cupboard doors is the one who matters.  She who can use the special whirring thing that makes cans of great stuff more available to my tummy is Queen of the world...at least the Queen of mine...Daddy is a lucky Consort...ooh...Daddy is eating Angel Food Cake...gotta run!  Ohoh, Mommy is mad, she struck my beauty and she says dam blogger won't let her put it in...never mind, she'll keep trying...

Thursday, November 24, 2011

how to eat a turkey

 smells throughout the house like fingers of aromatic sage
pull us from our sounding sleep
    and down the hall to find it's source
we are always together we two we twins of mirth and fun
     and now we slink and crawl our way to where we
wind around two legs (poor ma man only two while
  we have 4 or 8 between us)
   while she pulls the glass faced door open and drizzles good
stuff over the huge bird which is warming itself inside
         Sonny do you see?  Sonny do you smell? 
Sonny stop pushing I need to get closer to the source...

Cher, Mon Cher careful you don't fall
   into that blue speckled vessel trying to get
closer still to scents that pour over us...why is Ma man shooing you
   away from the glass faced door?  Oh do you see what I see?
or are we only dreaming?  hurry Cher before the dream evaporates into nothingness...and we are left hungry for more...and the shouts of Happy Thanksgiving give way to leftover yesterdays...

Happy Thanksgiving from the McBride Pride

Monday, November 21, 2011

Pyewackit Speaks

So at last, the Elder Statesman gets a word.  Since HRH (Batgirl) has finally vacated the office I suppose I should tell you about myself.  SHE says I'm old.  Well, I suppose she is right.  I am getting on up there.  I'm seventeen by human accounting.  That is years.  Not days. I know that I am Siamese because my human mother picks me up and sings to me about being Siamese if you please.  She finds it quite endearing.  I find it quite annoying but you do what you must to please this odd race of people. I am known by several names, Pyewackit, Pye and even answer to any of the other c'at people who reside in my realm.  After all, it may mean treats of some kind are about to be shared out.  Before I came into my dotage I was quite a good mouser.  I enjoyed the light snack at midnight and it made my humans happy. Except for the snacking part. 


I came into the McBride Pride as a youngster.  I was busy dozing with my litter mates when a huge Queen by the name of Jayne Wayne kitnapped me and my brother Tommy.  She carried me to a house a long way away.  She was not my mother.  I do not know why she stole me.  Inside the little white house by the highway there lived the most beautiful c'at I had ever seen.  She was called Gizmo.  One day the door opened and stayed open long enough for me to slip inside and once in I never wanted to leave. I played for hours with the right honorable Gizmo.  The humans allowed me to stay.  One day several years later my Lady Gizmo slipped out with the sheltie dogs and was never seen again.  There was much sadness in the McBride Pride.  There was also living in the little white house the Queen, whose name was Ariel.  She explained to me about disappearances, deaths and the cruelties of the outside world.  She allowed me to grieve with her over our Gizmo.  

So here we are, a handsome Pride with a new Queen.  We lost our Ariel to the C'at Angel called Death, he took her quickly and left us saddened but wiser for having known her.  That is when the highhanded Batgirl took over the Realm.  She is quite bossy and even the dog is afraid of her.  She claims not to bully little Caroline, but I have seen her.  I was watching her words and know that she thinks Hound to be insane.  Well, maybe a little insane, but she at least has an excuse for sometimes sudden temper tantrums.  Well, that's me for tonight.  My joints ache and I think if I go whine in my human mother's lap she might find me a nice tin of sardines. Maybe if I go stand on top of the world...  

Sunday, November 20, 2011

And so we meet

Good morning my dears.  Allow me to introduce myself.  I am the leader of the Merry little Band known as the McBride Pride.  As a Calico, it falls as a natural order of things that I should be Queen.  You may call me Highness or if I like you, Batgirl.  It takes a lot of work to keep the humans in line but they have learned over the past 9 years to toe the line.  Breakfast at 7, lunch at 12:30 and dinner at 8.  They have learned through trial and error not to try to fob off the cheap food imported from unknown countries.  The lesson was learned hard by the death of my sister, Lucile...she preferred the calling of Lucy.  We all loved Lucy.  So now we have our own place to let our kind and kin know what goes on in the world of Ca't.

My elder, Pyewackit the Siamese sleeps uneasily these days.  He is old and has the skinny hindquarters of the elderly.  The female human worries about him because he tends to nap in unorthodox places like the backs of sofas and chairs and has fallen from his perch several times a week.  Very unca't like.  He wears his age like a band aid and gets extra treats of tuna and bacon...the female human boils him chicken livers and chops them finely because he has lost several teeth over the years.  She worries. 

Sonny and Cher, the two Russian Blues are as different as peas from other pods.  To be honest, Sonny is a suck up.  He even helps the humans with mundane chores such as bed making.  I mean really!  How he can lower himself to such depths is beyond my kin.  Cher is quite sweet, if rather vacant.  I have heard the male human say when speaking of her that the lights are on but no body's home.  I finally sussed out the meaning of that.  Though I love the Mister, I take offence at my young charge being thus labeled.  She is, after all, Queen in Waiting.

Then there is Speck...he came to us through a divorce in the family.  Coming from a broken home has made him, as I've heard it said, needy.  He will wrap himself around the human being's necks and cry and purr and demand petting.  They give in to this for a bit, but soon his weight and heat make them shove him off with a pat and "go way now kitty".  And so he goes.

Our Hound was found in the well house whilst a tiny baby, eyes not yet open.  She had been abandoned by her mother and so the humans took her in and raised her as one of them.  Hound is quite seriously insane.  She has one foot in the human world and  three feet in the ca't world and is not quite sure exactly where she belongs.  She longs to be held in the arms of the female human and on the other hand she longs to slap her.  She frequently does both.  She also takes long runs down the hall to climb her human mother and sit upon the shoulder of she who saved her.  I have heard them say that when she was but a kitten, it was cute.  Now it is simply terrifying.

We came by Caroline through the kind act of the child human who lives in the dwelling across the acreage.  She came with her in her arms and asked the male human if she was ours and that they were afraid the pit bulls who lived with them would kill her.  The Mister took her into his arms and brought her inside.  And so she stayed.  She is marked like an ocelot and has wise eyes and tipped back ears. She is quite afraid of my wrath and walks around me ears lowered and cheek by jowl growling like an African Ca't.  But when she is outside she is quite the little bully and takes no trash off any of the yard ca'ts.  The yard ca'ts are not quite right either.  They sleep with a rooster named Dudley and allow him to eat with them. 

We came by JJ because Caroline had a flirtation with a tom who answered to the name of Jack.  My humans were so upset because her appointment for her trip to the land of Hartsville had only been days away.  Our Dr. Lawhon was happy to put off what they called the procedure...and so Caroline became a mother.  I was a mother twice before they managed to capture my person and take me to the land of Hartsville.  Pyewackit tried to warn me, but I figured what could a Tom know?  I hadn't noticed...he always sat like a warrior...who knew?  But JJ is quite the sweet little Tom and he was taken quickly to the land of Hartsville where he was altered.  He loves to sleep on the end of the human's bed and they allow it...I don't lower myself to sleep with the likes of humans...it gives them to much power over a ca't.

So this is my little pride.  I don't believe I have left anyone out, but they do slip in here, so I could be wrong. We shall be writing to you at least weekly and will keep you posted as to our whereabouts and doings.  We have quite a time here in the land of Jeff-er'son.