Many Years of Poems

Catty's gone. The vet said she appears to have had a stroke or an embolism or a series thereof.

After 20 years, we've lost our Catty. Roxanne is the boss kitty cat in my parents' house now. I think she misses Catarina too; for all but 8 weeks of her life (Roxie will be 19 in October), she and Catty lived together.

May Catarina chase butterflies over warm fields, moving with the ease and joy of kittenhood, and may she have the softest angel lap for her naps.

In other kitty news, Little Guy has been neutered and will be going to live with Eric and Fat Cat as soon as Cliff gets with Eric and works out the logistics of transferring the furball from our home to Eric's.

Little Guy has become a misnomer. According to the vet, he weighs 10 lbs at the approximate age of 7.5 months. Not such a little guy. Tessa weighs 10 lbs and she's fully grown. Sweetie Pie only weighs 8.5-9 lbs. (Tessa is taller and stockier than Sweetie Pie.)

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

Gaming: I came rather late to gaming, compared to most of my gamer friends. I gamed some when I was married to Mini-me's dad, 1st Edition Shadowrun and Battletech (yeah, I'm an old fart), and then after I packed up my baby girl and left his ass, I didn't game for years. Then Cliff and I hooked up and he's a gamer geek, so I started gaming again to hang out with him and our mutual friends. Nowadays, I've been dragged kicking and screaming into World of Warcraft, which I must admit I'm beginning to really enjoy, I play a fantasy RPG in a world called Teara Adan on IRC, I used to play 4th Ed. Shadowrun via IRC but RL caused my GM to have to cancel the game, and I do some tabletop stuff when we can get everybody together, mostly Star Wars or D&D or World of Darkness stuff. Most of my gamer friends, though, have been playing various games since adolescence or earlier.

Poly: From what I've gathered from online forums, I came to polyamory a bit differently than most. It seems like a lot of people in the online communities always felt "wrong" in monogamous relationships. It just kind of happened for me. Cliff and I have always had an open relationship sexually, and we've had our bumps in the road adjusting to having more people in our love lives and home, but it seems to be working out fairly well for the most part. It does get sticky when you add in family considerations. I'm not sure Dixie is fully aware of the exact relations in the household, and I know my parents don't have a clue.

Paganism: I grew up United Methodist, but began to reject Christianity in general in my very late teens. I stopped going to church around the time my parents and Mini-me moved to Florida, leaving me in Charleston to finish my degree. I fumbled around for a few years, studying various things such as Buddhism and Wicca, but nothing seemed to quite fit, although bits and pieces of different paths appealed to me. So I quit trying to find a pre-made path that suited me and just developed my own version of spirituality, religious belief, and ritual practice that works for me.

Florida: It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there! Just kidding. I wound up here in Florida because my parents and daughter are here. I'm considering moving at least out of Jacksonville, which I find to be a rather tedious city, after Mini-me goes off to college, but I plan to stay here until she's finished with high school. My parents will probably stay here for the rest of their lives, which does not particularly thrill Mom, who had hoped to go back to Charleston after they retired, but I think my stepdad doesn't want to leave his golfing buddies. :) Most of the time, it's pretty nice here, though. I definitely enjoy the absence of winter, but I could live without the blazing heat and stifling humidity of summer, and I could do without hurricane season too.

Cats: I <3 kitties. All kinds of kitties, actually. Any and all felines are cool to me, from lions and tigers (and bears, oh my!), down to domestic kittens. I've had dogs and cats most of my life, but I find cats more interesting than dogs, not that dogs aren't good pets too. In my heart of hearts, I really really want a toyger. They are SOOO beautiful, even though the breed is still in the developmental stages. I doubt, short of winning the lottery, I'll ever be able to afford one, but that doesn't stop me looking at breeders' websites and making "oh how cute" faces at the kittens. I presently have two adult domestic short hair tabbies, Tessa, a ginger tabby who will be three years old in a couple of weeks, and Sweetie Pie, a brown tabby who is almost two, and one brown tabby and white foster kitten with the temporary moniker of Little Guy. He is soon to be neutered and turned over to his permanent owner, and we will miss his goofy little furry ass.

I'm still sick. I just looked and Solantic, one of the urgent care places around here, does in fact accept Medicare, just not Medicaid. Not sure what the deal is with that. But I'll probably take my sick ass to Solantic and get checked, in case it is strep throat. You don't want to mess with a strep infection.

Little Guy is a brat, in addition to being a kittiot. Not content to eat every bit of food in sight, he also feels the need to play with any toy he can get his little paws on, whether someone else is playing with it or not. I saw Sweetie Pie debating the relative merits of kicking his ass whilst he played with one of her bottle caps, utterly oblivious to impending danger from a cat easily twice his size.

He's getting to be not so little. Damn kids for growing up, anyway. :)

...has got to be Little Guy's motto in life. He is currently playing with a twist tie that is snagged around one of the casters on Cliff's desk chair. I am surrounded by kittiots. :)

Dixie has taken to calling Little Guy "Little Shit" when he aggravates her, which amuses me. Sometimes he is a little shit though. He's as bad as Tessa for wanting to eat anything any of the people are eating, and even pushier than she is about getting in your face for food.

Sweetie Pie gives him regular beat-downs because he starts with her by running up to her and pouncing on her; it doesn't hurt her cause that she's easily twice his size, although she is not a huge cat.

Tessa is less likely to beat the hell out of him. She's more likely to just give him this look like, "You have GOT to be kidding me?" I did catch them chasing each other earlier today though, so maybe having a kitten around is giving Tessa a little of her kittenhood back. She played with Sweetie Pie when Sweetie Pie was a kitten, but she hasn't done much playing since Sweetie Pie grew up and started playing mostly with toys and not with Tessa. I think Tessa needed some play in her life.

CC likes to chase him and try to bite his butt. For some reason, CC likes to bite cat butts. Go figure. He doesn't bite hard, but I do wonder what is so attractive about a cat's ass that he feels the need to bite every one he comes across. Must be a dog thing, or maybe it's just a CC thing.

But I just thought the "Little Shit" thing was too funny not to share.

Dixie was trying to use her laptop, and um...couldn't.

Why, you may ask?



Then, Tessa decided to...um...help.



Cliff took these pics of Little Guy napping on the quilt of unknown origin. It's not one of my Nana's quilts; she made prettier ones than that. But Little Guy decided it made a good nap spot.





And yes, he was actually asleep in that odd position. *eyeroll* Cats!

I was trying to eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes for my breakfast and who should show up and stick her face in my food but a certain ginger tabby cat? I had to fight her off so I could eat my cereal. Goofy cat.

CC. I just took this pic of him.

His real name is Coca Cola Bear because when he was a puppy he looked like the polar bears from the Coke Christmas ads. He is Cliff's darling son. He will be eight years old on New Year's Day, and I'm doing everything in my power to make sure he stays with us for as long as possible.

He is one of the world's great dogs. His only real fault is that he runs like hell when he gets outside off his leash, which scares me because I'm afraid he'll be hit by a car and hurt or killed. He is loving, cuddly, protective, well-behaved, gentle, and compassionate.

He presently has an upset tummy, but he doesn't mess in the house. He let me know that he needed to go out, gave me a minute to put shoes on, took me to his leash, held still while I clicked his leash onto his collar, and half dragged me outside to do his business. I gave him something for the upset tummy and his arthritis medicine (which he loves because it's beef-flavored chewable tablets) and a couple of dog treats.

He hangs out with you when you feel like crap and lets you know with his soulful brown puppy dog eyes that he cares and wants you to feel better.

He's just a great dog.

Even the kitten plays WoW.



That's Cliff holding Little Guy, who was just entranced by the WoW screen. All the pretty colors and stuff I guess.

Nicholas said when he saw the post with Little Guy's pics that I never post pics of him. I have a few that he sent me a while back, but here's one taken this evening of both of us in the computer room. It's not a particularly great shot of either of us, and it's also not the best pic my camera ever took, but it shows what we look like.



And this is Cliff and CC.



When I had Dixie take the pic of Nicholas and me, I wanted a pic of Nicholas, Cliff and me, but Cliff hates being photographed so he wouldn't get in the picture. So that's what we look like, anyway.