The Great Blog CatchUp (or sucking on lemons)

It's been a busy week at Casa Kitty. Apparently when you haven't lived with your husband for three weeks, you need to adjust to each other again. So I'm almost totally behind on my blog reading... it's 3:30 AM early Sunday morning... gonna put on some new music and attempt The Great Blog Catchup.

Fernando was just in the room. I just told him he's beautiful. He told me to go suck on a lemon. There's something particularly charming about having a grade three insult aimed at you.

Okay... off I go...

LISTENING TO:

hubby tracking update

It's 6:50 PM - still no sign of him. His plan landed at 5 PM.

lol

When you're married to Fernando Ferblantier, you don't worry when your husband goes AWOL. You just assume he's either:

(a) wandering the airport shopping

(b) has run into an immigrant who needs help with something and is showing them around Montreal

(c) met someone interesting on the plane and went to have dinner with them and talk for hours

(d) curled up in exhaustion on his bags and went to sleep.

Or all of the above.

Well, I had time to do groceries--they had Daiya cheese with today due date, for $1 per bag! I scooped up all four, put 3 in the freezer, kept one for supper. Nachos! But I'd better find something to eat in the meantime. Though I'm de-hair-greased, leg-shaved, perfumed, and festively dressed, none of it will matter when Fernando makes an appearance if I'm a total bitch.

I also bought flowers. He loves to receive flowers. (Okay Minion, leave some for Daddy, yes?)

 

Fernando arrived as I was writing this. Minion thought it was a visitor and ran away! And then, as he was coming in, the neighbor's smoke alarm went off so Haley ran and hid too! Some homecoming. We had to get out the Snappytoms so he could bond with his cats.

Tsk. Kids.

hubby tracking

Fernando is currently over Winnipeg. I still have time to put away the laundry and store up some provisions on the old homestead before he gets in.

He's been helping to care for three little peeples for three weeks--I suspect he's going to expect royal treatment for the rest of his time off (this week).

Haley knows he'll be back, cause she's seen us leave and return from vacations. Minion is confused, but she hasn't given up hope--she's an optimistic little kitty! She still raises her head optimistically when she hears bustling in the hallway. I look forward to seeing her excitement when The Bustle really does turn out to be Her Bustle.

Unfortunately I'll probably have to go help Fernando with his bags, and therefore won't get to witness it from this side of the door.  :-(  Should have made arrangements with him on the phone yesterday.

"Mahmmy's book says hope is a thing with feathers. ...I like feathers."

Kitties and Peoples

Boy, the husband and stepmommy are even as cute at the cats sometimes!

A boy and his cat

This is one of my all-time fave pics of my husband "Fernando" and our now-deceased cat Nombly.

A million years ago I was living with my roommate Delyriam, and she brought home this abandoned tabby from her work place. Not to keep, but just to foster for awhile, because he hated being caged so much. He'd tear up his fresh newspaper every day. Delyriam used to let him out to wander around. (We think he was living on the streets for awhile before being brought in.)

Well obviously we kept him. It would be very difficult for me to foster and animal and give it up after. Nombly had a gentle, sweet nature. He was a little bit timid, a bit neurotic, but soon warmed to visitors. My friend Gilby is uncomfortable around animals because he doesn't understand them, so their sudden movements startle him etc. But he loved Nombly, because he would move slowwwly and gently.

Most people know that my husband had a rough childhood. F. used to come to our apartment (we were dating) and when he and Nombly met it was love at first sight. They were both a little bit broken, both saw the world in the same way, and both had the same gentle spirit.

While Nombly would cuddle and hang with me and Delyriam too, Fernando was the center of his universe. When Delyriam and I un-cohabitated (when I got married to F) it was obvious that Fernando and I would take the cats, while Delyriam took the dogs. If Fernando and I had ever divorced, there's no question I would have had to give Nombly up.

When Fernando got home from work, Nombly would hop about his feet until F. finally picked him up. When F would wake up, Nombly was the first down the hall to greet him. He was happiest when being held by Fernando, or sitting on his lap, or guarding him while he played his video games.

And Fernando felt the same way about Nombly. Nombly was his soft place to fall. His unconditional love. His unjudgmental best friend.

What I love about the above photo is that we somehow managed to capture this relationship on "film". The universe was just a little bit less scary because they had each other.

The first I'd see of Fernando when he woke up. Always with Nombs on shoulder...
 

Haley and Minion are great, but there's a lot less Tenderness around here since Nombly died in 2009.

Kitty pics and vegan tricks (well margarine, actually)

Still slogging my way through the "Vegan No More '10" (it doesn't have a catchy name as far as I know, but that's the name of the post that started it). No, I haven't joined Them (though my morals on this issue were, and still are, around abouts what Quasi-Vegan blogs). My thoughts tonight (erm this morning) are on more traditional vegan topics.

But first, some pictures of my favourite non-humans:

Practicing ridiculous cuteness as usual.

 Here she was trying to attack Haley, so I gave her the Minotaur to beat up; but you can see her cake eyes still straying back to the true object of her Grand Passion (sitting in the green tray.)

 

 

I placed a VHS tape in her way. Here she is in a death grip with Minotaur, but peering around the tape at the object of her slavish devotion (determined to remain in her green tray.) Haley used to have one tray, which she took over when Fernando bought it (so we can never use it). But Minion kicks her out of it sometimes, so now we have a second tray which also must remain empty. She travels from one tray to the other, and back, as Minion torments her.

"Oh. But I lobes you so very, very much."

 And here she has fallen asleep while sucking her thumb (aka my finger.)

 

Here's a picture of my favourite human, disguised as a non-human in his bunnyllama hat.

 

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

I just wanted to share this post, with its comments, because it's such a good example of how twisty life gets when you try to eat ethically. It begins with a discussion of palm oil, which is apparently killing the orangutans (this is old news, but I hadn't heard it -- and there are apparently many ethical problems with palm oil) - and then a discussion about which, if any, vegan margarines to use because most use palm oil.

I don't think the complexity behind the issues is reason to just sing "Fuck youuuu" and go back to eating any way you want. But I've always wanted to be an Ethical Purchaser for the long haul, so I just do it in stages.

-> Before I describe what I mean, I'll take a moment to say that... perhaps it's our obsession with food in North America that makes us focus so much on food as the main area for activism. Orrrr it's just because it's relatively easy to do? Anyway.

I use my patented Lazy Method for transitioning. I was a Lazy Vegetarian first--take one year to try to be vegetarian, give in to the worst cravings, then stop. Later I did Lazy Vegan the same way. After going food-vegan I didn't throw out every non-vegan or animal-tested thing in my home, I just worked on not replacing them as I used them up. I have "broken" my veganism at times (shoes) but that doesn't mean I will or won't again in future--the only thing I can promise is to Not Be Perfect.

And for the occasional thing I've cut out, there's the occasional thing I let in. I finally let honey back in after reading about what's killing off the bees, and some comments from Jae Steele's books (one re. the ethics of it locally speaking, since my alternative was agave, coming from far south - the other a letter she received from a honey farmer). But my condition is it has to be Quebec honey, so it wasn't a cost trade-off, and I've only found that at certain chains (Metro.) All the other kinds are a mix of Prairies honey and something Far Away like Argentina.

And margarine is another one I've always kept a wary eye on, just since I've tried eating less processed food. Man there is nothing more processed than margarine, and that includes the old vegan fave Earth Balance. (Right now I buy Becel's Vegan, which appeared in the large chain I mostly shop at.) But the real problem is that I love margarine. I love fat. I eat a lot of margarine, whether on bread or rice or potatoes or in baking. So the "OH it's so PROCessed!!"ness of it all just hasn't been enough to fight against "Ooh but I'd just like a nice piece of bread and margy please, thanks!" Or shortbread cookies, or baking powder biscuits, etc. And the unhealthiness of eating this much fat... no, that doesn't make the cut either.

But orangutans might do it. Not that the human suffering involved doesn't suck too. But like those cute pics of Minion, dead orangutans is my weak spot. I'm not the person who coos over other people's babies, I coo over their dogs and cats.

I still have some margarine on hand. ...I'm not sure I can go cold veg-turkey. Maybe I can allot a certain # of times per year when I can buy it and just go into a margarine frenzy for a week. And the rest of the time depend on my semi-local Canola oil (Canada), definitely-not-local-but-I-am-SO-not-ready-to-give-it-up-unless-there's-a-monkey-involved olive oil, and the other non-local oils I use in small quantities (coconut, sesame, peanut).

:-'(

It will mean processed foods with palm oil too. Probably just the croissants I like to buy.

X'-(

Oh well. Experience tells me that if I'm firm enough I won't miss it that much. ...Which brings me to another topic. But I'll write it up and stick a later date on it. Enough blabbing for now.