Return to Meowee East: One and Only Remaining Cat

I'm sitting in the bedroom cause there's no longer a couch. Haley and I are locked away from Minion so that H. can pretend she's still One and Only Remaining Cat. (That's what I call her now, when we're taking a Minion break.)

Minion had her cornered in the bathroom and she was Very Unhappy about it--I grabbed her, hissing and growling, and brought her in here. She wandered restlessly about the bed until I opened up a suitcase for her, and she settled down for a sleep.

Minion is a formidable foe because she's just RELENTLESS. There is very little that will dissuade her from a course of action, and the tougher you get with her, the more excited she gets. Her original playmate was her brother (adopted by someone else) so I assume they used to rough house like hell. It's near impossible to get her off the counters, off my finger, off Haley's back, off anything she wants to be on! Teaching her that the stove is A VERY SCARY AND UNACCEPTABLE PLACE TO JUMP hasn't met with much success so far. And Haley's had just as much luck trying to convince Minion that she is Scary and Mean and therefore Minion shouldn't Jump On Her Back.

Maybe kittens are always this insane--but the girls we got her from said she was the hyper-est of the litter. Most people prefer boys cause they're mellower. But the girls loved her craziness, and we do too. I'm sure Haley was similarly hell on wheels as a child. But her natural exuberance and toughitude were probably thwarted by repressed owners, resulting in her latent insecurities and frequent hostility. (That's my psychokitty babble.)

My mum (who was fostering Haley, that's how we met) reminded me that Haley was actually a "code red" cat -- considered impossible to adopt out, because of her aggression, and probably best to put down. (My mother always takes these kinds of fosters.) The couple at the feral cat shelter took forever just to be allowed to approach her.

The first time I went into the lockdown Haley room (at mum's, years ago), I sat on the floor, and she came right over and purred, and rubbed her cheeks on me, and I petted her, and we had a lovely time.

That night when she heard me getting ready to go to bed, she pawed at the door to be let out, so I let her hang in the bathroom while I brushed my teeth. But when I put her away, she pawed incessantly at her door again. So I hauled up an armful of blankets from the room I was in, put them on the floor of her room, and slept there. She came under the blankies for a cuddle, and then slept on the office chair.

The next day I sat at the computer internetting, and she introduced me to Shnoogling -- sitting flat up against your chest, with her head under your chin.

My mother figured we were just meant for me, and that I had to adopt her. The feral shelter woman was "miffed!" to hear of Haley's easy of acceptance of me.

Ohhhh One and Only Remaining Cat. So sweet, beautiful, and evil. We love you.

The story of me in -- reorganizing the apartment

Tomorrow I'm going to reorganize and tidy my bedroom. When Nombly was alive I re-did the room so there was nothing on the bottom of my shelves, and other things in tupperware (pee proof.) Now I've got to get rid of the tupperware bins and fix things back. I also have a small desk next to my bed, piled with at least 30 books. Time to put those away! (Julius Caesar, Cat Confidential, Elle magazine, Les Trois mousquetaires, Frederica, 3 more cat books, the Jane Langton I'm reading, Hero With a 1000 Faces, Aerosmith biography, money book, Dante's Divine Comedy, Mais que lit Stephen Harper, Conrad Hilton's biography, Henry V... that's the ones I can see. On the other side of my bed I see a book on Britain, Henry IV, Beaumarchais' plays, a Molière, and an Agatha Christie has been knocked onto the floor.)

And there's a shelf in the livingroom that's only used for crap, so I'm going to put it in my room.

And a couple years back Fernando dismantled my crafts/broom closet, and since then I've had these random boxes of things kicking around. I've got to find a home for them. (Still not sure where to put the brooms... There are two things I've learned you can't live without. A broom closet, and a junk drawer.)

And then there will be a little more space in the front room. The old couch has been dismantled and thrown away. New one needs to be put up, along with an ottoman we bought today.

Need to take down the old curtains and hang the new. Take down the kitchen ones and bedroom ones, probably replace with some curtains I bought but hadn't yet put up.

Need to put up my new kitchen sideboard, and fill it up, hence clearing out another Tupperware bin and half a cupboard. (There's bins everywhere from the Nombly Days.) And maybe move a shelf into the corner, if there's room. I have room for all the food I need, except when Fernando buys in bulk, and then it just sits on the kitchen table. 

It'll be a busy few days before I return to work, but things I need to go if I'm going to get through the winter. I'll feel mentally much better once it's all done. Meep meep!! I haven't had the energy to clean all this up in a long-o time-o. No idea why the energy has arrived, but it's welcome.

The Story of Me in movie-tiiime

I don't watch a lot of movies, but seem to have gone through a phase lately. Here's the ones I remember.

Borrowed:
The Shining
Empire Records
My Dinner With André (rewatched)
That Hamilton Woman

On the planes:
Sex and the City 2
Knight and Day
A-Team (rewatched)
Aurélie Laflamme (watched best parts, already read the book)

On TV at hotel or mum's:
Sex and the City 1 (rewatched while flipping)
Wall Street (rewatched)
Deepa Mehta's Fire (kept telling myself I had to go to sleep, and yet kept watching)
GI Joe
Pineapple Express (rewatched)

TV at home:
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (rewatched)
Made of Honor (quite dumb)

Rented with Fernando:
Me and Orson Welles
Death at a Funeral

Cinema:
Step-mummy and I saw Inception.
Fernando and I saw Social Network tonight. Very good. Probably a good date movie, cause there's lots to talk about after.

How songs fall into my life

Sometimes an old song comes back to me which I Must Own. Today it was: Boys in the Street by Eddy Grant.


(Good heavens--I adjust the width of my blog and NOW youtube comes up with a "custom size" option. Bahstads.)

Then there are songs I used to own on tape, and thought I had in mp3, but didn't! - Revolution by Arrested Development.



And a song I heard in an ad for a TV show. (If I was a musician's agent, I would so try to get their stuff in ads. SUCH good marketing.) "Short Change Hero" by the Heavy (Sounds like a funeral dirge at first, but then it gets funky!)


Music I get into way after everyone else did. Duffy's "Hanging On Too Long."


Bands universally acknowledged as great, and I'm not sure I love them enough for whole albums, but LOVE the occasional song. The Roots' "How I Got Over." Don't you even just love the title?


Best of album for the husband: Phil Collins. ("Against All Odds" really is one of the greatest lovebreak songs of all time. And with heavy drums--how unusual is that?)