It was in the light of night just listening around everywhere

[austin_dern]

The kitten has discovered that she's small enough to fit on the various shelves of the television's cabinet, and since they don't have full backs -- the lower couple of inches of each shelf are open, allowing space for the radio or the DVD player or such to have their cables tangle in back -- this means she's picked up the ability to jump onto the CD player, disappear behind it, and then reappear next to the Tivo or behind the TV set, like a cartoon character. It's also clear that her sister is jealous, as the middle cat is too big for this sort of thing not to end with a tumbling, a loud noise, and a plaintive meowing for rescue.

The kitten has also discovered that it's very cozy to rest on my arm while I'm using my laptop. This I don't specifically mind, but she has to accept that as long as she's going to be on that arm she's going to be forcibly moved when I need to use the remote control. She also has a fondness for patting my computer's keys and trackpad that's only second to her eagerness to chase the mouse cursor around.

The kitten's also had her first experience with the wonders of changing sheets. I'm not sure how often you're really supposed to change and launder bedsheets, but I have got the lingering feeling it should be more often than I do. I also flipped the mattress, another thing I feel like I should do more. So this was her first experience with anything more than the blankets being straightened out. From her wide-eyed reaction I suspect she never before imagined such a thing was possible and she was filled with delight that she now lived in a world where things like this were known to happen. From how quickly the older cats run underneath bedsheets and blankets thrown into the air for spreading this must be about their most favorite thing in the world. For now, the kitten was too awestruck to act.

Trivia: The fedora hat takes it name from Fédora, an 1882 tragedy by French playwright Victorien Sardou; it was a comeback vehicle for Sarah Bernhardt, who played Fédora Romanoff and for the part wore a soft felt hat. Source: Webster's Dictionary of Word Origins, Frederick C Mish, Editor.

Currently Reading: The Creation of Dino De Laurentiis' King Kong, Bruce Bahrenburg.

(PS: Happy birthday to ETA Hoffmann. Also Mary Lou Retton and Leon Czolgocz.)

Comments

Cats and mattresses

[lexomatic.livejournal.com]

:::The kitten has discovered that she's small enough to fit

I believe someone should invent a hormonal treatment that keeps cats juvenile and kitten-sized. Obviously they wouldn't be able to breed; but then, only a minority of domestic cats ("Felis catus: Is your taxonomic nomenclature an endothermic quadruped...") are permitted to do so anyway.

:::She also has a fondness for patting my computer's keys

This is job for the PawSense (http://www.bitboost.com/pawsense/index.html) software utility, origin of the short-lived "Cat-like typing detected!" meme.

:::I'm not sure how often you're really supposed to change and launder bedsheets

Once a week. That way you interrupt the two-week lifecycle of fleas and such-like human-parasitic arthropods.

:::I also flipped the mattress

Flip or rotate? You do the latter with a pillow-top mattress, which has a distinct and non-interchangeable top and bottom. The recommendation for mine is once a week to equalize wear, but I only achieve a bimonthly interval.

Re: Cats and mattresses

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm not so worked up about her typing; it's pressing the power key that's trouble. The screen pops up the ``do you really want to power down?'' screen, but if I'm typing faster than I'm thinking there's a dangerous chance I'll hit return before I ever see the question, and that would really aggravate me on many compulsive levels.

I flip the mattress with certainty. Sometimes I also rotate it. I have a nagging sensation that there should be some reliable method of flipping and rotating to ensure that the wear is distributed reasonably evenly, but I can never remember it, and when I think to actually look it up is when I have the mattress stripped and standing on its side, at which point it doesn't seem worth looking up.