My Cat Likes Potato Chips, and Other Stories

Good afternoon everyone I’m back!!  Can’t get rid of me that easily can you?  For the past several weeks I have pondered the topic of my next blog post.  Will it be serious? Sarcastic? Researched??  Finally, I decided on neither of these and instead will return to a topic that is near and dear to my heart, my cat Jemima Fish.  If you’ve followed this blog since its inception, you already know I’m a borderline crazy cat lady, if this is the first of my blog posts you’re reading, I will say that yes, I am definitely a cat lady.  Crazy though? Well, I don’t think I’m quite there yet, but I will keep you posted.  In the mean time, please enjoy these carefully crafted vignettes about life with Jemima.

Just look at this little angel!

Jemima Tries Being Vegan (for 15 minutes)

            Once upon a time, I walked into a corner store close to my apartment and bought a bag of goldfish, and a sleeve of Oreos.  The cool air-conditioned interior was a welcome respite from the muggy summer evening.  Walking home in the dusky light after my small purchase I couldn’t help but fantasize about the epic chick flick I was going to watch while I devoured these goodies.  To this day I no longer remember what epic chick flick I watched because I was so struck by what Jemima did in the middle of my movie.

            Now, Jemima has a history of gleefully eating Goldfish (crackers) whenever anyone leaves any around.  This evening I had painstakingly resealed my own Goldfish bag after every handful, to prevent Jemima from ingesting any human food, which would undoubtedly wreak havoc on her digestive system later in the evening.  What I also had done, was leave a couple Oreos stacked next to my laptop completely unattended, because you don’t have to worry about that chocolate thing with cats, so I was wholly unconcerned with this uncovered, unwatched food.  It was at this moment that sweet Jemima sprung lightly to the coffee table, sniffed around the laptop for a few seconds, grabbed one of the Oreos with her little kitty mouth, and hauled it over to the corner where she devoured the entire cookie.  WHAT THE HELL JEMIMA!?!

*Much to my surprise, Oreos are vegan.  This is why the title of this vignette works.

Even Cats Use Computers

            This brutal winter has had the unexpected positive consequence of driving Jemima and myself closer together, physically.  Jemima now relatively enjoys being in "closer" proximity to me now because of the heat my body exudes.  Lovely, I'll take it, as long as I can delude myself into thinking it's real honest-to-goodness affection.  Just the other day she sat with me on the couch, and only left a one-cushion space between us!

            As good as the days are, the nights are a slightly different story.  Exhausted, I fall into bed, often times leaving my laptop open, my iTunes account working its way through a playlist of Bing Crosby or ambient piano compositions to relax both my mind and body.  Just as I'm about to drift off to sleep I hear a horrible thunking-beeping noise and I groggily roll over to see what it is.  As I look across my bedroom, I see two shiny eyes staring dreamily back at me, from behind my laptop screen.  Jemima perches on my laptop keyboard, and the computer is wigging out because it can't find the file entitled "HJJKJKJJIJNNMMMMMML>>NOPHNKM>>>>">""""""""""""" and the "voice over" command has somehow been activated and now I have a stale-vaguely creepy computer voice narrating to me everything my mouse rolls over.  I glance at the clock, which reads 2:38am.  Dammit cat, what on earth have you done??  I search my computer for a way to fix everything.

            "Opening System preferences," drones the computer voice.  Right, first things first I'll figure out how to turn off this stupid voice-over setting.  After a little searching, I find that I just have to press "Command-F5".

            "Voice over off," says Fred, the computer's voice.  Hmmm, maybe I'll change my computer's voice to Zarvox.  Done.  Nice.  Look who's a cool lady now.

              Anyway, when I went to turn on my music to help myself fall back to sleep, I find my entire Ambient Piano playlist has been deleted.

My Cat Likes Potato Chips

            Shortly after my birthday I was reheating a stir-fry for lunch.  While the bowl of noodles, fried egg, and veggies rotated lethargically in the microwave, I was picking away at a bag of kettle chips left over from my party.  A particularly great chip (you know, where it’s all folded over, crispy and crunchy like?) fell from the bag and onto my kitchen floor.  I’ll get that later, I thought to myself, and I would too, don’t worry about that dear reader.  However, before I could “get to it” Jemima had silently approached the chip, sniffed it tentatively for a few seconds, and proceeded to crunch it all up with her little kitty teeth.  Sighing, I add “Potato chips” to the list I keep of people food my cat really likes.  To date, this includes:

1.     Gold Fish

2.     Ritz Crackers

3.     Milk (from your cereal bowl)

4.     Oreos

5.     Peanut butter (but not cashew butter) toast

6.     Potato Chips

So the moral of the story here is, my cat will eat your snacks.

Things that Get Knocked Off Bookshelves in the Night   

            Jemima has always, and will only ever knock the same four things off my bookshelf at night.

            The End.

I Discover Jemima has a Heart <3

            7:00am: I'm sitting on the leftmost couch cushion eating cereal out of a large latte mug, because it definitely tastes better this way.

            7:03am: Jemima Fish leaps onto the left armrest with a quiet chirp.  Jemima proceeds to climb up and move behind my head on the back of the couch.

            7:05am: Jemima Fish jumps onto the middle couch cushion and stares at my lap, sniffing my leg every so hesitantly.

            7:07am: Kitty-kins walks quickly over my lap and on to the couch arm rest.  Turns in a circle once, then climbs into my lap and sits down.

            7:10am: I decide that I would be willing to be late to work if she continues to sit on my lap, because this is an opportunity I simply cannot miss.

Dear reader, I was not late to work, because Jemima did not stay on my lap for very long, but she has since that time become much more cuddly, often burrowing under the covers at night by my stomach and purring ferociously.  After years of searching, hoping, dreaming, I now know my cat loves me.

Jemima approves of my new accessory

 

Book Review, Frozen Lakes, and more Cat Pictures

As you might know, the northeastern part of the United States has been harangued with excess snow, record-breaking low temperatures, and more completely frozen over lakes then we know what to do with (which, as you'll see is kind of cool).  Yesterday when I got to work there were small icicles on my eyelashes.  ICICLES ON MY EYELASHES! Now tell me, when was the last time that happened to you?  Anyway, I've undertaken an abundance of indoor activities during this time, including catching up on my massive reading list.  One of these days, perhaps I'll just post my reading list instead of an actual blog entry, and I bet it will be the longest blog entry in the world. This week, I finished reading Where'd You Go, Bernadette? a novel by Maria Semple.


This is the cover art.  As you see it features a woman who looks like she stepped out à la 1962, with a hair scarf and large dark glasses.  I was definitely into the cover art.  I also love the title, because it just leaves you with so many questions such as:
1. Who's Bernadette?
2. Where did she go?
3. Why did she go there?
4. Who is looking for her?
5. Why should I care where Bernadette went?

And so on.  Needless to say, with all the blurbs on the cover about how delightful the book was, I decided I would definitely give it a shot.

To tell you the truth, this novel was not what I was expecting at all, which actually made me like it even more!  It is first and foremost a satire about a dysfunctional family who live in Seattle (ergo, some of the satire directly targets certain aspects of Seattle culture, I'm not sure how accurate this part of the book is since I've never visited Seattle, or even the West Coast in general, so I can't even draw regional comparisons).  Semple tells this story from the perspective of Bee, Bernadette's daughter who is putting together stacks of documents including emails, faxes, letters and other correspondences from Bernadette, her husband and Bee's father Elgie, doctors, administrative assistants, busy body neighbors, and everyone in between as she tries to figure out why her mother disappeared, and where she may have gone.  I've met some people who have told me they "just didn't get it."  I can empathize with this, at the start of the novel, Bernadette is portrayed by her neighbors as certifiably insane.  She's anti social and wears dark glasses everywhere, she doesn't participate in the PTA like other parents (a travesty!), and she allegedly ran over another mother's foot with her car.  When you read the emails from Bernadette, her topics of conversation imbue a practically stifling level of weird quirkiness that may possibly be covering some ongoing mental illnesses like depression and anxiety, but you also have the distinct impression that she's a freaking genius.  I really liked this book because practically all the characters become better people by the end of the book.  Even the terrible neighbor character about whom I had an immediate horrible visceral reaction at the beginning of the novel, delightfully surprised me with accepting accountability for some of her more devious actions, and taking steps to make amends with the people she affected.  When the day's over, this book has a happy ending, not a perfect ending, but a happy one with the promise of continued positive change.

Moving on to the weather.  It. Is. COLD.  Last Sunday, I started a new job (yippee!!) and after the training session I had the rest of the afternoon to myself.  Since my new office is right on the Lakefront, I decided to take a stroll out on the lake.  Yes, I walked on the frozen lake because, you know, everyone else was doin' it.  But actually they were, there were families, old people, young people with dogs, college students, tourists, and me strolling around the lake, and contemplating walking all the way to New York (probably, I don't know for sure).  What an amazing experience though, I'm not normally a picture taker, but I took some pictures of the sun pouring through the clouds, and of the vast expanse of completely frozen over Lake Champlain.

 So this is a patch of ice someone scraped the snow from.  It's quite black, or perhaps a very very dark green.  Either way, it was eerily look down and see basically nothing.  It's almost disorienting, and like Anne of Green Gables, I could imagine I was floating through space, unhindered, weightless, without a thought for the suffocating confines of life on earth.  I'm not sure Anne would ever have imagined anything quite like that, there wouldn't really be any context for space travel in 1880s Prince Edward Island, it's more of the "imagining" part to which I found parallels.

 If you've ever been to Burlington and visited the water front, you may remember being at the ECHO Center, the Spirit of Ethan Allan, or even the boardwalk and seen a rocky wall apparently sitting in the lake.  I still am not quite sure what that's for, I bet I could easily find out if I asked someone at the ECHO Center.  My point though, is that is picture here to the right is of that wall, and I was standing on it because I walked across the ice to get to it. 

 No words for this one really, I just think it's gorgeous.

I really have nothing else to say about anything except I hope Vermonters vote on Town Meeting Day next Tuesday (March 3), and LOOK AT THESE PICTURES OF MY KITTY!!

She's just so absolutely adorable I don't know what to do about it.  So there.  I'm sorry this was a pretty anti-climactic ending.  I didn't even write any poems this time (yay! says the audience).  Anyway, practice makes perfect, and hopefully I'll have a better, more uniform post that will capture your hearts and minds, and tire my fingers with my furious typing!

Light-Hearted Post #1: Jemima Fish

Since I missed my own personal deadline for my second ever blog post, I am now pushing myself to write my third one on time.  Needless to say, the quick turn-around has left me no choice but to write about my cat, Jemima Fish.  Just kidding, I really really really want to write about my cat, a lot.  The only snafu I can see, is how exactly I am going to write about her.  This shouldn't be my typical (do I have a "typical" yet?) prosaic, structured blog post.  Actually, upon further reflection, I haven't really given one hoot to the structure, or prose, for that matter, of my blog posts so far.  Clearly, this is something I will work on in the future, but not now.

Now, back to Jemima.  I figured I should have a little fun with this.  I picked out some of my favorite pictures I've taken in the last few weeks, and have decided that I will write a little poem about each one.  I'm no poet, so this should be...interesting?  I'm actually a little nervous, because my sister, Melba Chops (I've given the option to everyone I mention in this blog to come up with a sweet pseudonym), writes very good poetry actually, and I honestly feel a little intimidated.  So here it goes, I've tried to pick a variety of poetry styles for your added enjoyment, and my sanity, because if I wrote them all as sonnets or something that would just be annoying, for me at least.

A Limerick of Love

Here lies a cat named Jemima Fish,

Who eats grain free food from a dish.

And every day right before my alarm,

She jumps on my bed and scratches my arm,

So I dive under my sheets with a swish.

 

Now, I'm not sure if that was a real limerick, because it didn't start with the famous phrase "there once was a..."  In some of my first drafts I started with those words, but I later changed them to better illustrate what you see in the picture.  More importantly, that old beginning phrase makes it seem like she's dead, and I can assure you, she's not dead, not even a little bit.

 The Acrostic Kitten

Judicious
Energetic
Mercurial
Insistent
Motley
Amazing

Furry
Inquisitive
Sophisticated
Heartening



Yes, I know, acrostic poems can be more complex than this, but it also took me a very long time to come up with appropriate adjectives.  I have a (self-imposed) deadline people!  The next two poems are haikus because they're the easiest poems for me to write.  I know I mentioned in the beginning of this post that I wanted to do four distinct styles of poetry, but I learned that writing anything in iambic pentameter will take me forever, and I'm just not in the mood for free verse, but I love a good haiku.  Like I said, my sister Melba Chops is much, much better at this poetry thing than I am.

When she sleeps like this

My ode to Star Trek fandom

Here is a Tribble

If you didn't already know this about me, I'm going to come right out and say it: I really enjoy watching Star Trek.  My parents are Trekkies, so it was a big part of my life growing up.  My favorite series is Deep Space Nine.  Since "Trials and Tribble-ations" is one of my favorite episodes from the series, not only is this an homage to Star Trek in general, but also to that show in particular.  I suggest you check it out if you haven't yet.  Seriously, do it.  I'll wait....

Ok cool, now back to my final haiku:

Saturday morning

Were you going to read this?

Guess who got here first

This happens a lot in my house.  Jemima loves sitting on paper, and she especially loves sitting on my copy of Seven Days.  She also loves to give me that "what are you gonna do about it?" look and my heart melts a little, because when it comes to her, I'm a really big pushover.  

In conclusion, I would like to thank everyone who has taken time from their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or (hopefully) your favorite news website (but not Fox) to read this poetic post about my cat.  As I've mentioned before, this blog is a forum for me to reflect about my life through pictures and poetry, but to also compose well researched opinion pieces about everything that's happening on this big blue marble.  I'd love to have a journalistic piece soon, but the research is going to take time, and I'm a wee bit out of practice.  So in the mean time, please enjoy looking at pictures of my cat!