The Mini-Kitteh - a Dream

I have to guess that I heard my co-worker talking about her new black kitten without knowing I had heard - she was talking about him near me, so it's entirely possible. And maybe it was because while trying to park yesterday, I drove past a very cute tan-and-white Mini Cooper. Or is it Cooper Mini? Goodness, it's small. How do you fit a whole family into that- OMG a spot opened up!

I dreamed I found a Mini-Kitten. It was a full six weeks old and healthy and fit neatly into the palm of one hand. So I took it home. That was okay, because it was a mini-kitten, not a full-sized cat, and besides, it was really cute. it was black all over and it had slightly-longer, thicker, white hairs here and there, like super-soft porcupine spines.

It wrecked the house. It went tearing across my living room, knocking over tray tables, and shoving the ottoman out of the way. It went tearing across the dining room, knocking over dinner chairs and spilling half-full glasses of water and pushing lunchboxes and purses and newspapers off the table. The other cats were terrified.

It grew to the size of my whole hand, and then to its adult size - about 2/3 the size of my ninja kitty, who weighs less that 4 lbs. A mini-cat.

On Cats

Screamy, the family cat

I have five cats, so if you can't keep up with which cat is which, I can't blame you - I can only keep up most of the time. That's how Screamy got her name. Ursa's babies were about 2 weeks old and at that noisy phase, but one of them was significantly noisier than the others, so I asked my then-stay-at-home husband which kitten was the screamy one, because she was always screaming, she was so screamy!.. And there you have it. She's still plenty noisy, but she's also the Scream-puff and when she's all up in the computer, she's the i-Scream. She's the family cat - she's always in the middle of whatever we're all doing.

One of my favorite cats is Ginger, so named because she's so lithe and light on her feet. She's Screamy's opposite, in that she has no meow - just a strangled little cry when she really needs to, but mostly a silent, mouthed "meow." (There was one time she was stuck in a closet and let out this loud, clear, alto meow. She must have been really scared; I've never heard it before or since).

Even super-tough ninja cats need naps.
And cuddles. And blankies.

She's a superb climber, and an even better hunter; I don't think she eats cat food more than a couple times per week. My mom pointed out that she is almost eerily silent. Between the silence, the climbing, the killing, and the muteness, she is the Ninja-cat, or Ninja-Ginger.

My old Siamese is cranky and sleepy. He smells like an old cat; not bad, just... it's different. Sometimes, I can smell stale cat-breath where he washed himself.

Ginger is the best-smelling cat. She smells like woods and wild and musky and dusty and sun-dappled grass and cool, under-a-fern darkness. It's one of my top-three, all-time-favorite smells.

A Failed Attempt at Outdoor Knitting, or A Few of My Favorite Things

Yes, that is a pile of cats sitting on my lap, on top of my knitting, as I'm trying to knit it. So, like any good cat owner, what I do? Knit calmly and slowly, being careful not to disturb the pile of cats. Who's evolved?

I got the coolest knitting compliment ever. Petra, a lady who works in my dentist's office, saw me knitting. She's German and I know from the last time I went in that she's probably been knitting longer than I've been putting my own pants on. She complimented my evenness of stitches and taught me the German word for cable knitting - Sopf. It means braiding. Sopf is the same word applied to braiding hair. Of course, I'm looking through online translators now and am not finding it. But whatever.

Speaking of "a few of my favorite things," I'm once again considering starting a fiber-enthusiast group at work. We have a little cafe nearby. We could sit in there and sew-knit-crochet-scrapbook for an hour on Wednesday afternoons. Right? I don't know. I'm scared. What if you threw a party and nobody came?