Posted by Loulou on Aug 27, 2021 | 14 comments

Thinking.

2013

As I mentioned, I sit a lot and think and THEY just assume I’m sleeping but I’m working out all sorts of answers to problems that most kitties don’t even consider. Right now, for example, mama is typing away on some cookbook she’s re-writing, well, at least I think she is, but she’s probably writing about me and thinks I’m snoozing, but oh, no, I’m lying here on the petit point piano bench cover, made by her aunt a gazillion years ago and thinking about these flowers I’m ‘snoozing’ on and how much work it took to make one of these things and there are six of them, for heaven’s sake, which meant her aunt had to have had some time on her hands to make them.

All are different and I sleep on a bouquet of roses one day and on a different mixed bouquet another, but what I’m sleeping on is not a hard floor or one of those kitty beds that cost a fortune in the kitty and dog shops, but a lovely, hand-made piece from the early 1900s, made with love and skill by mama’s aunt, an antique-shop owner married to her uncle, a shipping owner who left mama in his will a very small sum of money to be stretched out over however long it lasted and which she gets every now and then takes her honey to dinner or buys kibble with it but what’s most important, ’cause I’ve heard her comment each time the little memento arrives, is that she says oh, look, what a sweet gift from my funny uncle who used to lie on the couch after Thanksgiving dinner with all the family and a huge turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy and my mama’s mama’s corn bread dressing and cranberry sauce made from real cranberries, I’m drooling just thinking about that turkey drumstick—and so he stretched out on the couch and pretended to sleep and when mama and her little cousins gathered around him and tried to lift one of his eyelids with their little paws, he snorted like a wild boar and scared the bejeesus out of them and they all ran screaming in delight until he went back to ‘sleep’ again and the whole thing would start up again until one of the mothers came in a scolded them and said let him sleep, he’s exhausted, you kids go out and play in the street or something like that and so they let him alone for another fifteen minutes until one of them sneaked in and tried again and then the mother was really mad and the kid beat it out of there like a bullet, so this same uncle left VERY small sums of money to these bad kids and my mama delights in having that little reminder that her uncle thought about her and wanted her and his nieces and nephews to have a little hello every now and then from wherever he went.

And so I recline on this, I just have to say it, exquisitely beautiful petit point, whatever that is, and I do not let my claws pull on the yarn and I do not shed on these precious cushions because I am not one of those Persian numbers or, heaven forbid, a DOG and my hair simply does not come out in great disgusting clumps all over the house; plus mama brushes me with a little wire brush, which I pretend to try to avoid and squirm all over trying to get away, but actually, I love it and it’s very, very pleasing and I’m just wiggling to get more of my cute little body brushed so that I can have that caramel malt paste she gives me when she has finished and says good kitty, good kitty and now you can have a little treat because you are so, so cute and so, so good, kitty, kitty, kitty.

Why they talk that way is beyond me. It’s hilarious when I hear some of the things mama and papa think up to cajole and pacify and tempt and lure and even sometimes scold me, which is rare because I am so well-behaved and trained not to make life one big stress after another, which is more than I can say for adults. Jesus, the stress I hear about around here, not with these guys because they are a pretty cool couple—well, some of the time—but with other members of the family that shall not be named for now…

I think I’d better stop while I’m ahead…not sure these memoirs are going anywhere…