Posted by Loulou on Mar 23, 2013 | 2 comments

When I’m rowdy, sometimes, mama hums to me because a friend of hers who used to be an opera singer said that you have to hum as you get older so as not to lose your voice and mama had a pretty passable voice years ago, I hear, and sang in choirs and sang solos in church (knees shaking) and sang in a trio of teen-agers at those dances they used to have in what looks to her now like the middle ages. But she sings ‘Skip to my Lou Lou, My Darlin’ and things that have my name in them, which is not easy because I think there is only one, although she did sing once, ‘Lou Lou over Miami’ and changed all the words to have kitty references. They do that, these weird people. They are always making puns on kitty words and making jokes I just don’t get but I smile to be polite so they’ll feel good.

Shall I tell you my routine, my regimen, as it were, because I am one organized kitty, not all over the map like some cats I’ve seen who cause mayhem and confusion and stress for their owners. By the way, those cats ARE owned and that’s why they are so crazy. They feel ‘owned’ and therefore are not the free-spirited, fre-wheeling kitties that kitties are supposed to be. And while we’re on the word ‘kitty’ you might make a note to yourself that there are no shops called ‘Miss Doggie’ and there was no ‘Dog Woman’ in Batman movies and you’ll never see ‘put some money in the doggie for the office party’, right?

That said, my day to day life:

I sleep on my down comforter with mama, specifically, because she knows that sleeping with cats is tantamount to slipping into that hot pool they used to have in La La Land, or snuggling with her honey when it’s really cold outside or tucking her feet up on the couch with a really beautiful fire slowly burning away the winter blues and a nice glass of red vino, but of course, there is another reason.

Papa does NOT want me on him when he sleeps. They had a kitty once called Stella and she wasn’t yet, adjusted in the you-know-where, and she was howling all over the place and driving everyone nuts, especially papa. They tried everything and this is pretty gross—patting her in the right places so she’d think she was getting laid, but did they have any miniscule idea then about where kitties feel good or even if they do (and would it do any good anyway??) and she kept mewling and howling and going nuts, leaping and jumping all over the furniture and on papa’s head when he slept and finally–Scenario:

Middle of the night. Bed on a second open floor with low balcony to living room. Papa sound asleep and Stella taking a grand leap onto papa’s unsuspecting head and whammo. Papa, in his sleep, pushed hard to get her off, and over the balcony she went with a shriek (because cats can really shriek when pushed from high places into the void), but no harm done. She landed—guess what—on all fours, in a catllike manner and saved the rep of cats everywhere. Mama was just a little upset because in those days, papa really did not completely understand the world of kitties, but he was in a new love, and he knew mama adored us kitties more than anything, at least until he came along, and so he tolerated a little hanky-panky every now and then. But tossing Stella off the balcony was the last toss he made.

On that very day, they went straight to the vet and rearranged her interior and she became a docile but playful, conniving yet thoughtful, rambunctious but cuddly pet. I’m not sure I like the word ‘pet’ either. It sort of implies a no-brained, lazy ball of fur that’s there only to caress and rub on without a thought of interaction, enlightening conversation or comparing of attitudes toward the world at large. And what the heck does that mean? At large? The world IS large, it’s not AT large. I’ve tried, without success, to eliminate all cliches from my ever-growing language, but isn’t a cliché a cliché because it’s such an appropriate way of saying something and lots of people agreed that it worked for them and so why not for others and voilá: a cliché was born. That mean just about everything you’d want it to mean in French: fix something and voilá; find something and voilá; see someone across a crowded room: yell ‘voilá‘ and they come running. It’s a sort of ‘eureka’ without having really found much of anything like the math guy, but it works. So I’m not altogether prejudiced against the cliché, it’s just that I like to enliven my lingo and stretch my brain cells by looking for another path on which I might put my paws as I ruminate (I love that word, too–sort of like running around alot of rooms, but in your mind’s house).

Kitties are the worst cliches around.