MILK / WHISKERS

Nanami the Kitten: [nuzzling Nobu the cat's belly] Got milk?

Nobu the Cat: Dude! WTF?!

Nanami the Kitten: [persistently] Got milk???

Nobu the Cat: [resignedly flopping on his side ] Whatever.

* * *

Heartichoke to Nanami the Kitten: Hey, where did all your whiskers go? Why don’t you have any whiskers? Nobu! Did you chew off all the kitten’s whiskers?

Nobu the Cat: [crickets]

Heartichoke to Nobu the Cat: Don’t you make the ajapa face at me, mister.

Nobu the Cat: [ crickets]

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IN WHICH I AWAKE TO A BIZARRO TAZO TEA-BAGGING INCIDENT PERPETRATED BY THE CATS

What I Wish I Was Doing this Afternoon:

1. Writing, writing, writing

2. Reading Murakami

3. Confessing all my secrets to the river, and secretly trysting with the sky

4. Sipping absinthe in the bathtub while listening to Thelonious Monk humming in the bright gilded spaces underneath the keys

5. Transgressing

What I Wish I Wasn’t Doing this Afternoon:

1. Preparing an important, but frankly-sort-of-completely-fucking-boring document

2. Grading and commenting, and grading and commenting some more

3. Procrastinating grading and commenting, and grading and commenting some more

4. Self-flagellating in completely tedious/predictable/not-even-vaguely scintillant way re: procrastination of grading and commenting, and grading and commenting some more

5. Resisting transgressing

* * *

Recent Linky-Lou Who’s:

Interview with Superstition Review

Poems in Fall 2008 Issue of diode

Poems in coconut 14

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CELL-EH PHONE KITTEHS

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A STORY ABOUT TAMPOPO

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FELINE AND INTERNET (FELINTERNET) WITHDRAWAL COMMENCES

Today I will drive across Nebraska. All of Nebraska. All of big, square, hallucination-inducingly endless Nebraska with all of its corn. Nebraska has a scary amount of corn. If all goes well I’ll be in Laramie by tonight. I’ll try and update when I can get to a Wi Fi source, but plan to do some Moblogging in the interim.

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CLEARING THE FOG

Loose mist of fog tangled like bits of wool in bare tree branches, climbing up my balcony like a lovesick intruder, breathing on my windowpanes. Morning bathroom after a hot shower. The fog now bitten to nothing by the icy quick sting and staticky swarm of buzzing snow.

* * *
Yuki the Cat leaves a marvelous present of chipmunks in my shoes.

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ANTONYM OF THE FALLING DOWN SICKNESS

In a somewhat upsetting turn of events, I was recently stricken with what appeared to be either (1) food poisoning, or (2) a virulent strain of the stomach flu. Things at Artichoke’s House of Wayward Cats & Co. were bearing a distinct resemblance to cattle call auditions for Linda Blair’s role in The Exorcist. Only not so pea soup-ish. More, well . . . never mind.

I’m still feeling pasty and diminished, although much less in dire need of an exorcism at this juncture, so there’s that.

In other news, I recently purchased a nice chair I was very excited about, which has already now officially become a very nice chair for my cats to sit in.

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SORT OF LIKE A KLIMT PAINTING . . . EXCEPT WITH CATS

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EVIDENTIARY BLOGGING

Here is the hole the cats gnawed in my shower curtain.

* * *

Here is the appropriately prophylacticized new MacBook. (I wish I could have afforded a MacBook Air! Perhaps the next time there is a CatMacBook Debacle? Although please let there not be a next time?)

* * *

Here are pictures of the offending beastlets.

Tampopo Stuff-On-My-Catting Nobu

Grrrls

Dangle

Behold! My splotchy paws are cute!

Our Machiavellian Machinations to import a large and compelling laptop box filled with crackly paper to lounge about in by killing off the old laptop through Death by Coffee has been successful! Mwa ha ha ha!

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FUBAR BLUES (A VARIATION ON THE FOUR-BAR BLUES)

I get up to discover that crazed beastlets have gnawed a large hole in the shower curtain. Because I really wanted a ragged hole to peer through on those occasions when shower time seemed dull and not-so-fun. Or to keep a bead on the advent of any possible Psycho reenactments.

Then, while writing this morning with my large mug (okay, it’s more of a soup bowl . . . okay, it’s more of a smallish vat) of coffee, cats thundering up and down the length of the apartment like rhinocerouses on crack, Tampopo suddenly charges the little tray on which I’ve set up my laptop and my smallish-vat–setting in motion a tidal wave of coffee cascading in mini-Katrina fashion, all over the laptop keyboard.

Historically, I am kind of meticulous about keeping a keyboard protector on the laptop. Somehow, I got all casual and laissez-faire about things this summer, and the laptop? It’s been going commando for awhile now.

My adored MacBook? FUBAR.

FUBAR! FUBAR! FUBAR! FUBAR!

Work completely disrupted/interrupted.

Later on in the day, Aiko charges my dinner salad when I’m trying to pour dressing on it. She wants to get at the grilled chicken. And the almonds. She apparently loves the slivered almonds, too. Somehow, during evasive maneuvers, she ends up lunging at the bowl, knocking it clean out of my hand, and it all goes splattering all over the newly-cleaned kitchen floor.

While I shriek profanities in the kitchen, the kittens gleefully scarf down the windfall of chicken and almond pieces off the kitchen floor.

I have decamped to my office at school, where I am posting this, and reading more-and-more-grim MacBook anecdotes regarding Death by Coffee.

I am frankly afraid to go home, because I will probably return to discover that the kittens have somehow managed to set the place on fire. Or are building a homemade bomb out of common household materials.

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