origin stories

I started this a while ago - but didn't get around to finishing it. I was reminded it existed when I came across the Bird's original collar, still with the message my mother had put inside it when we were trying to find his original people.

"Hi, your beautiful cat visits us and our cats a lot. We wonder where his real home is.
Could you please call us at ### ###-####. Thank you."

___________________________

To understand how the Bird came to live with me you first need to understand Rosemount. Rosemount is my parent's house - the ancestral homelands, if you will - and it attracts cats. There is something about the wide porch and riotous gardens that says that it is a good place to come visit and perhaps to stay awhile. My mom's cat Gumpy was such a stray - turned up sleeping on the couch and so clearly bedraggled that he needed a home. Another grey cat who stayed for just a while had feline leukemia and had his people come to get him before he needed his next set of meds.

The Bird turned up one morning on the porch. As he had a collar - with a bell - and was clearly well fed and taken care of there were the clear admonishments from my mother to not interact with him. "Don't pat that Jingley Cat! He has a home." At other houses you just didn't have to feed stray cats but my mother knew, from experience, that the first step was not the feeding; it is the conversing. Once you talked to the cat it was downhill from there.

But the Bird continued to come around for a couple of days - "that Jingley Cat" became somewhat of a fixture. We even tried to find his people - put up posters and an add in the classifieds. To no avail. His original people could not be found and Bird had decided that he had new people so what exactly was our problem?

Birdy was allow to stay, Cat #5 at the time, on the condition that he leave with me when I moved out in six months. Which was fine with the Bird - he had already decided that I was his person.

He knew that something was going on when the boxes started appearing. My mom said that he was being extra nice to her - but she knew he was a fraud and was just worried I was leaving. The final straw for him was finding his chair (!) on the porch. He sat in there as all the boxes and furniture went by being completely unimpressed.

He settled after the move, and even forgave bringing a dastardly orange cat into the house. Patience, they name was Bird.

busy busy

It's looking like April will be my month of too many things this year. There is travel for work, finishing packing for my move, the actual move itself and far too many rehearsals. I'm at the point now where the list of things is long and I just want to get started on doing it. Which is why, at not quite the end of March, I am about 70% packed. Yeah. It's a bit psycho. I have clothing and the kitchen left. Which is by no means a small task - the collection of kitchen related items I have accumulated it getting a little ridiculous. Fun... but ridiculous.

the max, taking advantage of an angry-cat-free moment

I am excited about moving though. It will be good to have my own kitchen again. And I'm looking forward to settling in and setting up a new house. I have not been so comfortable these last months - what with all the changes. I was told the other day that that was OK - it is not human nature to be comfortable in transitions and well, ain't that the truth. I mostly just want it done. Which will surprise no one who knows me.

traveling

Photos to make you want to come home after a trip.

cats that are mine, and not

At one point earlier this year I was asked by someone who didn't really know me how many cats I had. I said "Two. One gray and fluffy, one orange and crazy". When I related this to 'Col she said "Um. When are you going to mention the other two cats?" and you know, I was kind of surprised. Surprised that I'd really have to mention them.

gray cats, one and two, mine and not

Somewhere in my brain the cats remained divided into 'my cats' and 'the cats I just live with' even though we'd been living in this house for more than a year at that point. It is odd how that works because the example up above is not the first time that had happened - I might have live in a house with four cats but -I- only had two cats. Apparently I am not so good with the math.

And weirdly, this notion of two cats has remained stuck in my brain even though the Bird is gone. My language choices still speak of multiple cats - which makes sense if you think about the fact I live with three. But I've realized that while sometimes I speak of 'the cats' and I'm talking about Max & the Roo there is still quite a lot of times when I'm speaking with someone who doesn't really know me and when I say 'the cats' I mean Max and Bird.

Yeah. Like that's not slightly crazy.

And sometimes, just to make matters slightly more complicated, I am talking about Max and his hypothetical kitten who we will get when we move to keep Snacky company.

the snacky max, with chair

My life, apparently, is fill of cats that don't exist.

too many things

I am a little tired of being an adult. I have been being -very- grown up lately and attempting to get my financial house in order, be more fulfilled at work and take care of myself physically. Which has mostly seemed to involve making a lot of appointments and then running around like a crazy person trying to keep everything going.

My mother often says that if you want something done you should ask a busy person to do it and I can see her point. There is a certain momentum gained from the full-frontal assault on the list of things you've been putting off. But I am tired. And I need some of things that are up in the air - booking my flight for work, filling out the novel worth of forms for the nutritionist, doing the homework for the homeopath - to get checked off. Which they will... soon... but until then there is just too much floating around in my head to really feel settled.

Which I know is not exciting. But is true.

pears

I have been cooking. It is largely an attempt to make myself feel better. And if it is not totally succeeding it is at least giving me delicious breakfast.

meh

I am tired. And feeling really stuck. Oh, and weepy too. It's really super fun.

The thing is, I'm working on getting unstuck, I really am, but I am not yet feeling like I'm getting much traction. And the longer I feel like I'm not moving forward the easier it becomes to just let myself slide back into the deep dark hole that I know is waiting.

But I am trying to be patient and let things 'process'. I seriously hate that. Process. Stupid talking about your feelings. I hate feelings. Argh!

Anyway, to move on from the less than witty anti-feeling diatribe, I had kind of an interesting experience with looking at what my 'core values' were and what my... I guess I shall call them 'anti-values' were. The core values were ten things that I picked out of a list of perhaps 50 different values that were the things I can't live without. The anti-values were like the 'I hate that guy' of values. You don't like them and people who hold those values highly make you mad.

So. There I was with my pretty lists. Good things/Not so good things.

The next part wasn't as easy. I then had to write down my definition for each of the values (both sets - good and anti-good) and then how much of that value there was or wasn't in my life currently. This seemed a lot easier to do before I sat down to do it. But I made a little chart and filled in all the boxes and the strangest thing became clear. In the current life I lead, rather than having too much of the anti-values kicking around making me upset, I don't have enough of the good values. This perhaps would have been obvious to some but it kind of caught me by surprise.