OKAY IT'S A CAT VIDEO. BUT HENRI RECOGNIZES TRUE GENIUS

Art is futile, like hope...or scratching posts.

We cannot paint away our ennui.

Still, there is no doubt when true Genius is displayed.

WASCALLY WOBINS

One bonus that came with our house when we moved in decades ago was a small pie cherry tree in the back yard.  DH puts cherry pie on the very top of his list of favorite desserts.  And even though it was December when we unpacked, we already had plans for making pie with our very own cherries.

When spring turned into summer we discovered we weren’t the only ones with dreams of cherries.

 Long before they changed from pink to red we had robins helping themselves to all the cherries they could choke down.

Our first defense was hanging shiny, flashy things like can lids from the branches.  The robins used them to preen and check their beaks for smudges and smears.

 We put a radio in the tree turned to a rock station and added balloons for extra effect.  The birds danced and partied while they feasted.

 We put a big plastic owl in the tree.  It might as well have been invisible.  Finally I took some old sheer curtains and made a net. We covered the tree so it looked like we had the worst infestation of tent caterpillars in the county but we harvested enough cherries for a pie.

The net worked for a couple of years until the tree got too big.  So even though we were short on spending money we bought a tree net.

 It looked better but we had to cinch it tight around the tree because the robins were determined little critters and not to be discouraged.

One morning we awoke to hysterical screaming coming from the tree.  Not only had a robin found his way through the net…

 … but so had our big bob-tailed cat.  The cat had gray feathers in his mouth and was going for the rest of the bird.  To restore peace to the neighborhood we hurried out, still in our pajamas, and opened the net enough to let out the cat and finally, the hysterical robin.  Of course that didn’t keep the robins from helping themselves to everything they could pull through the net on the top of the tree.

 “I hate wittle gway wobins.”

Finally the tree got so big that buying netting was costing us more than purchasing cherries at a fruit stand.

One year our sons asked permission to take their BB guns and use the robins for target practice.  We knew the boys were pretty good shots because all their ninja turtles and a couple of old Barbie dolls had already been assassinated by their firing squad.  So we made them promise to all kinds of safety measures and let them go.  They killed dozens of robins and dumped their poor carcasses in the trash which stunk like a gut wagon in the warm summer weather.

 We did have a tree full of cherries at the end of the battle but the neighbors weren’t happy for a lot of reasons.  And the next summer we had even more robins to deal with.  In fact our tree seemed to be the only one for blocks that was being poached.

So we’ve given up and now just think of our tree as a very large bird feeder…

 … and remind ourselves how much of a hassle it is to pick cherries and pit them…

 … and put them in jars, and how much our doctors have advised us against raising our blood sugar.  But we still look out our windows and think, “Ooo, wait 'till I get you. You wotten wobins.”

SWEET BIPPY

Way back when the world was still black and white, DH and I got married.

Then we got a cat. I don’t know why, we just did.  She was a Siamese and we called her Bippy as in, “You bet your sweet bippy.”  Well, we called her that but, although she had amazingly keen hearing, she never answered to her name.

We lived in a cinder-brick duplex on a very busy street so we didn’t dare let our cat outside.  We got the great idea of putting a little dog harness on her so we could take her for walks.  Her reaction was to immediately lie down in the gutter and stay there.  Even when we dragged her she wouldn’t get up.  This was great entertainment for our neighbors.  DH said it was too bad the couple in the other side of the duplex didn’t have a cat too so we could have drag races.

No, our neighbors had a scruffy little dog named Muffin.  They let him run around in our back yard.  When we turned Bippy loose back there she beat up Muffin.  So we had put on her harness and tie her leash on to the clothesline so she could run up and down but not beat up the dog.

Sometimes she escaped out the front door.  She would only do this when we were in our pajamas so we would have to chase her across the busy street and all over the nearby golf course.  She loved watching DH running around wearing his plaid p.j. pants on the driving range in the dark screaming, “Bippy! Bippy!”  She was evil but she had a sense of humor.

Anything on the floor was her cat toy.  Anything not on the floor yet would soon be there.  I had a fish bowl terrarium filled with cactus we got as a souvenir from the Grand Canyon.  While we were at work she would paw out the little round cactus and roll them all over the carpet making certain to leave them where bare feet could find them

She expected to be fed as soon as the eastern sky began to get light.  She had no snooze button. When we went to the bathroom she’d poke her paws under the door.  Since I had nothing better to do while I was sitting there I’d unroll a hunk of toilet paper and let her grab for it.  Sometimes this game went on long after I’d flushed.  We were both easily entertained. 

She never let us to forget she was a descendant of Egyptian gods. She allowed us to amuse her as long as we kept her water clean and her food fresh. She only used her litter box when we sat down to eat. When DH was drafted into the army during the Vietnam War and I was finally able to join him at Ft. Lewis, Washington, Bippy became queen in residence on my parents’ dairy farm.  Their barn cats never forgave me.

OPENING SEQUENCE IN BLACK AND WHITE

Recently my cousin sent me a few photos taken a long time ago during a visit her family made to my family’s farm.

This was one of them.  That’s me in braids trying to hide in the flowers by our house.

This reminded me of other photos which came into my hands after the death of my parents.  Funny how the world seemed to change from black and white to colors about the same time Dorothy landed in OZ.  I know these photos were taken well after 1939. (I’m not THAT old!) But they have the same eerie quality of a time so totally removed from the fast-paced flashy world of today.

Baby Me dressed in my sunbonnet and yet still squinting in the bright light.  I’m stashed in the high chair which survived all four children before giving up the ghost.

Farm cats had to be tough.  Not only did they have to endure a rugged outdoor life, but there were those sticky kids who didn’t know the difference between hugging and choking.

My mom was a farm wife.  She didn’t have time to take a lot of pictures, but there seemed to be one every year of us in our Easter outfits.  This is me in a dress.  I remember it well.  Mom sewed it and added a store-bought belt to make it extra cool.  It’s one photo of me in a dress where I didn’t have a big bandage on one or both of my knees.  That’s my older brother looking very Indiana Jones in his fedora.

Here I’m wearing a hat and jacket that used to belong to my big brother.  I’m sitting on a Flexible Flyer sled like you’d expect to see in “A Christmas Story.”  It was an evil sled.  I have one of those memories which runs like a movie trailer in my mind. It involves propping that sled at an angle against a stack of wood.  My plan was to turn the sled into a short slippery slide.  It was an okay plan except there was nail that had worked itself loose enough to rip through the seat of my jeans and me.  Hurt so bad I could hardly breathe.  I still have a scar.

Not a very good ending.  Well, here is a sweet photo of Mom and me.

THE LIFE OF DARK THOMAS

A blatant knock-off of 

WillBraden's video of Henri the Cat 

who grapples with the despair and pain of his life.

My name is Thomas.

My domain is shadows in the sunlight.  Each day I wake to the same tedium.

I fell empty, forgotten on the floor.

I sleep for myself and no one else. My caretakers ignore me.

Yet occasionally they taunt me mercilessly.

I will seek revenge by weaving around their feet as they stand at the top of the stairs.

I am surrounded by morons.  How can they be this obtuse?

I alone feel this torment.

I punish them by sleeping in their precious flowers.

I am free to go and I defend my turf against vagrants such as squirrels and crows.

A trash-talking rogue named Jet attempted to invade, but I quickly overpowered him.

I seek refuge from this life of ennui in random abandoned containers.

Yet still I am empty.

Existence is painful.  We cannot escape ourselves.

PARAPROSDOKIANS

Paraprosdokians:  Figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected.

Do not argue with an idiot.  He will drag you down to his level

and beat you with experience.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you.

But it's still on my list.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.

Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

Whenever I fill out an application; in the part that says,

'In case of emergency, notify:'  I put DOCTOR.

I didn't say it was your fault. 

I said I was blaming you.

Women will never be equal to men until they can

walk down the street with a bald head and a

beer gut, and still think they're sexy.

I used to be indecisive.  Now I'm not sure.

Did you put the cat out?

Why is he on fire?

The advantage of exercising every day is so when you die

they'll say, "Well, he looks good, doesn't he."

I have to walk early in the morning

before my brain figures out what I'm doing.

NOT IN A HOLIDAY MOOD

Thomas and I came to a compromise a long time ago.  If he won't sleep on the couch (thus leaving behind hair that decorates our guests' tan pants) I'll let him sit on the back of the couch so he can look out the window and fulfill his job as neighborhood watch.

All goes well most of the time.  He keeps track of the vagrant squirrels, passing dogs and feline intruders in his kingdom and still keeps his sheddage to a minimum.

But in December we put a tree in the living room covered with dangley shiny things which he is supposed to leave alone.  To make matters worse the couch gets moved away from the window to make room for the tree.

Thomas still roosts on the back of the couch even though he can't see out the window.  

(Before I got the camera out he looked more like this --a thinner Thomas look-alike)

Then the paparazzi shows up up with cameras flashing 

and completely ruins any possibility of a nap.

Bah, humbug!

JUST A BUNCH OF PANSIES

Every year when the temps get down to freezing I bring in a piece of my three geraniums, Phyllis, Florence and Blossom and put them in small flower pots so they can winter in the house and have a head start on blooming next spring.  This time I also had a nice crop of pansies in small planters that I just couldn't leave out in the cold.  I brought in two containers to see how they'd last the winter.

I set the hanging basket in a sunny spot on the floor.  The pansies were so colorful I decided to use them as models to learn a little more about how to work with my new watercolor pencils.

Well...I can see a lot of potential and that there's more learning to be done.

Back in the kitchen Thomas was checking out the new flowers too.

He's a finicky eater but he does like to occasionally add a few greens to his diet.

 If he could do a guilty nonchalant whistle he would. La-la-la-la-laaaaaaa.

Then he dives head first into the flower pot for some stolen salad. 

I decided the pansies could stand a little trimming so I let it go.  Then I noticed the other container of flowers was looking a lot worse for wear.  Beavis photographed what was happening.

I moved those pansies out of Thomas's favorite sunny spot to a  different window.