Hi!

So, this morning I got out of bed at 12:00pm and dragged myself to the doctor to get a note about the fact that dying prevented me from going to my midterm. Then I read a couple more chapters of The Ring of Nibelung and failed at reading a book I am supposed to be. I watched the "Bones" episode "The Cinderella in the Carboard" instead.

My body is trying to kill me by demanding candy. "I want Sour Patch Kids" it says, while an ominous wave of nausea rolls through my body. "Also, throw in some chocolate on the side."

Thankfully, I am feeling a lot better this evening. But my day was still boring, although I did watch a lot of "Bones". Unfortunately, it's a bit monotone compared to what I prefer to do.

Black Cats, Part 2

If anyone reads my former posts he or she will probably notice that I go back and edit them occasionally for spelling and grammar. I'm pretty sure that I'm just kidding myself with the whole "people going back and re-reading posts" thing, but oh well. Here is the conformation for the hypothetical person who does.


There were kittens born in a box on our patio, bloody and without fur. Once they were old enough that we could handle them my parents and I used to sneak them out of the nest when Mother was away and then give them back to her at night.
Then the kittens started dying. Out of a litter of four, we found one dead one, then another, and then another. The last one to die lived to open her beautiful blue eyes. We had been planning to keep her and had even named her after a mother cat in one of my favorite children's books. One day I noticed she was moving slowly and asked my mother to take her to the vet. To clarify, nothing was visibly wrong with the kitten, and kittens do simply die, as is the way of nature. Another day, we looked in her box and she was not moving at all. We rushed her to the vet, but it was too late for the poor thing. Apparently since the kittens had been born in December it was too cold for them to survive. I still remember how their heads rolled when they died, back and forth, unlike the way a living kitten would move.

Spring came, Mother was in heat again and the same scene repeated itself, sex and all. More newborn kittens, another litter of four, arrived in a box on the patio. There was a black and white one who's name I can't remember, a fluffy one named Cuddles, another fluffy black kitten who's name I can't remember, and the runt of the litter, Snuggles. The unnamed black kitten died. Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun with the other babies, putting them in shoe boxes, giving them baths and then watching Mother nurse them each night. Mr President sometimes came by to visit the kittens. I wanted to keep Cuddles because I was convinced he was going to grow up into an enormous, cottony kitty, but we ended up keeping Snuggles, the quietest of the bunch, because he developed an eye infection. My mom always said that Snuggles never gave her any trouble at bath time, but Cuddles would complain loudly. Either way, the decision turned out to be a very good idea.

Once the kittens were all adopted, Mother went into heat and had happy time with Mr. President again. But this time we didn't find any kittens after the appropriate amount of time. My dad said that he was glad that we could wash our hands of the matter, but my mom and I were not so satisfied.
Then, one day when I got up to go to school, I came down to find a tiny, short-haired black kitten sleeping in a shoe box. Apparently my parents had gotten up to find this little rascal with Mother and Blackie standing behind her, Snuggles, Muffy, and Fluffy, Muffy and Fluffy being our two elder cats, staring through the door, watching her bawling to get in through the glass. My parents happily obliged. Her name was Naughty Katy.

Mother transferred a couple other kittens into the yard, but we knew there were more. We finally figured out that they were in our next-door neighbor's backyard, then broke and entered to remove the rest of them. One of them, a kitten I would later name Blueders, scratched my hand in the process. This was a litter of seven, with a beautiful, longhair, loudmouthed calico in the mix. We creatively named her Calico.
Stay tuned for part 3, which won't be nearly as long!

This is Snuggles

Black Cats

Today I went to Petsmart and held an adorable, fuzzy black kitten. He purred the entire time I held him, looked at me lovingly, and when he was put into back into the window box attempted to run back to me. If I could have adopted him I would have done so without a second thought.

Like many people do, I grew up with some strange superstitions about black cats. Then, one summer, my family and I came back from Trinidad to find our backyard filled with an influx of strange kitties. These passed too and from our sight for a while until one day a family led by a small, short-haired black cat started to visit regularly. Against the wishes of my parents I left a cat treat out on the patio, and, as the cliched saying goes, the rest is history. The cats stayed with us in the backyard. I don't remember how long it took my parents to start feeding them themselves, but it was a very short span of time. We watched the kittens grow, wild and free, and leave the family one at a time until only two were left: a longhair chocolate-colored cat named Blackie*, and a short-haired black-and-white cat with "socks" named Frisky. Frisky was "my" kitten when he was growing up, but he also disappeared one day. Blackie stayed with us a long time, until after the third litter his mother(who was simply dubbed "Mother" by us) had, but he also left eventually. He had a favorite blue string which we sometimes used to lure him into the house where we would pet him while he collapsed into a fear-struck ball of fluff. One time he took the blue string and hid it. I don't remember how we go it back; I think it involved breaking into a neighbor's yard.

I was too young then to know that we should have brought all of these cats indoors and I still sometimes regret not doing so, especially Blackie, whom I adored. Having outdoor cats is difficult because if they one day disappear their owner has no idea what happened to them, whether it be they moved into a new territory or got run over by a car.

After most of the first litter had left Mother went into heat that spring. "Meow-wow-wow-wow-wowwww!" and all of the neighborhood cats lined up, quite literally! I particularly remember a gray cat and a striped orange cat that my family and I actually had names for. She tapped all of her suitors on the nose with her paw except for one cat whom we had dubbed Mr. President, and then proceeded to have sex with him on the patio. We though that Mr. President was a Burmese cat at the time, but I think he may have been a Ragdoll.
Then there were kittens born in a box on our patio.

*Blackie has no racial connotations. This was simply the name an elementary school girl gave to a huge, fluffy kitty.

I'm getting tired of writing, so I will continue this later.