The Longevity of Lena

Lena lounging

Well, one of my best pen pals lives in Santa Barbara in a magic garden and sweet carriage house her mama is a friend my mama has known for a gazillion years beginning at college where they met in a house for girl students run by what could only be described as a madam of a certain age, but of course she wasn’t really.

She was just partial to purple ostrich-trimmed, low-cut, silk dressing gowns and Victorian furniture and had lived in wilder times and so opened her many-roomed old Texas dwelling to students like mama and her friend, who could not actually be considered typical. Maybe a little left of crazy and right of righteous but there they were and they grew in and out of one another’s lives over years and years and in one of those moments appeared little Lena.

She was from a litter of mama’s friend, and “she chose me”, her mama says. And that was that.  Makes sense to me.  We kitties always choose–especially when someone doesn’t want us near.  Straight beeline for that dumb human!

The wonderful thing about this kitty is that she looks like her MAMA, especially in the slanty eyes that are blue and knowing, and in the tilt of her little face with its heart-shaped nose. No, her mama does not have a heart-shaped nose but it comes close.  Her hair was once Lena’s color!

This back-story leads up to the email mama received yesterday along with Lena portraits that Lena is “slipping toward 20 years old” and that’s something to celebrate in my book! I think her birthday will be July 14th, like her mama.

Lena’s mama recalls when papa and mama were staying in the carriage house years ago (and Lena pretty much chooses her friends in a BIG way) and that night, there she was choosing to sleep on the guest bed with mama and papa and I’m not sure she had done that often so they felt honored. I certainly choose with whom I sleep!  Sort of…

Then there is the time that mama was making catnip presents for kitties and sent Lena a LARGE stash of fresh-picked nip in a paper bag and she went bonkers over it, Lena that is, not mama, and Lena’s mama hid it in a drawer an Lena searched and searched frantically and found it and of course got completely stoned to the point that it had to be meted out to her in very small doses after that.

I am not hooked on nip, I am a very contained little kitty.

Mama doesn’t eat many sweets, either, but makes them often for dinner parties and papa says she is a pusher, not a user, and I guess it’s sort of true because she couldn’t help sending nip to Lena for her birthday or Christmas or whatever it was. Maybe nip helps you live a long, long happy life, no?Anyway, auguri and felicitations to Lena, the beauty, even she doesn’t have a tail.

Mama thinks that Lena is living a long life because of the special mama she lives with.  Really special.

Lena, a bit younger, but always regal.

*****

My blooper photo for today’s Bloopers.

No one really wants to see that much mouth, right?