Cat Tales, 7

The next day, while the pernickety old woman and I sat friendly in the red chair–me on a towel on her lap–I could feel little things crawling around on me. I scratched. Aah! So satisfying. I scratched more. Then I saw them! Little black specks jumping from me to my human.

“Eeeh!” the pernickety old woman said. “Fleas! I should’ve known, shouldn’t I?”

Unexpectedly, she flapped the ends of the towel over me, and started to struggle up out of the chair with me tight in her arms. I was so surprised that she didn’t just push me off, I didn’t struggle.

“Have to take some stern measures,” she said. “Hope you’ll forgive me.”

I couldn’t act out yes or no, because I didn’t know what she meant.

She took me into the bathroom, a hard, shining, tiled place, and shut the door behind us. She opened the taps that make the rain and waited, still holding me, until the water falling from the overhead thing steamed a little.

She stuck her hand under and said, “Well. Here goes. Clothes and all.” She stepped into the warm rain.

Fleas jumped off both of us and were swept down the drain.

When I got water up my nose, I sneezed and started to struggle. I miaowed. Got more water up my nose. “I want to get down!”

The pernickety old woman set me at her feet where I sneezed some more. I walked from the rain stall and shook my wet fur. Brrr. Cold down there at floor level. That warm rain was lovely, I realized. Walked back in.

The pernickety old woman had taken off all her coverings in the meantime and spread flower-scented suds all over herself. Then she let the rain wash it off her. There’s no logic to humans.

She turned off the taps. The rain stopped. She dried herself off with a pink towel, and then me with a washed-out green towel. She slung on her dressing gown and led me into the sun-room at the back of the house. Where she set the little kindergarten chair for me to sit there and continue to dry myself.

She tackled the remains of the flea plague by spraying the red chair and the rug and the couch with an insect-killing fog. She opened the windows and turned on the overhead fan to lift the sickly lemon-scent, and finally she set out a treat for me.

If all that’s what happens as a result of walking in and out and in and out of the warm rain she organizes, count me in next time. Though I will tell you, it will need to be a sunny day, just like it was today.

Lego Robot

My new not-yet-totally-complete robot posing against the experimental terra-forming.

The robot is from the Dreamzz series, set 71454. He’s called Z-Blob but I will be thinking up a name appropriate to the role he’ll be playing in the the ongoing storying.

The terra-forming needs over-painting in places, and a way to attach the long sides to each other that will allow changing the pieces around. Maybe.

In the story, there’s a city in the background on the other side of the mud-flats and river channel, that I’m still cogitating how to make. Paint and draw? Collage? A 2D Lego build? What do you think?

Art Journaling

One of my favourite meditative activities is working on the decorated margins in my dream journal.

They are always different and often suggest living creatures, such as here a beaked being on the right, and a fox-like entity in the centre.

The process is simple. I use my water colour paints and a 0.4 Artline 200 pen. Today I used Quinacridone Gold and Scarlet.

Since this book is new and the paper is an unknown quantity, I’m starting with primary colour mixes. I’ve already noticed there’s a vast amount of spotting on this paper. Don’t yet know why.

I painted patches and streaks of the first colour round the margins surrounding the blocks to be saved for writing, and waited till moderately dry.

Sloppily over-painted with second colour, leaving some of the gold patches and streaks, and making new patches and streaks over the first, and any unused areas.

It doesn’t pay to be too exact. Wait until thoroughly dry. Some people use hairdryers to speed the process.

In my next session I use the outliner—I prefer black—to make lines wherever the colours change including in areas of shading, though it’s easy to go too far.

It pays to keep checking how the work looks, and whether any recognizable entities are cropping up, and then to give them an eye or ear.

Cat Tales, 6

That’s me, Maggy Cat aka Hand-of-God, flashing down the roof

In the dawn while I was still comfortably hidden under the slope of the front roof, I heard a far-off rooster crowing about the sun about to rise. He at his natural work.

I had no time to compare my state to his as human, the pernickety old woman, thumped her feet onto the timber floor, as she always did, so that the whole house vibrated. I heard her stump to the bathroom.

Aaahh!!

She screamed? She never usually screamed going into the bathroom or slammed the door so hard and instantly. I pussy-footed from under my eave.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” my human said. She stumped to the back of the house and completed her ablutions in the laundry.

Oh dear oh dear what? My curiosity ballooned. I ran to the back of the attic, along one of the beams that held up the ceiling. I miaowed into the gap between the inner and outer wall, that the people installing the insulation hadn’t got to yet.

Silence.

“Is that you, Maggy Cat?”

I miaowed again, as loud as I could.

“Come along. Come along,” she said as she walked back to the front of the house.

I followed her voice.

She went out the front door

I went out the owl’s exit.

“There you are,” she said. “Run down the roof, along the porch roof and into my arms. Have I got a treat for you!”

My curiosity got the better of me. See me running down the roof?

She caught me in an old towel, ran into the house, shoved me still bundled into the bathroom. Shut the door with her on the outside.

When I’d wriggled free, a toothsome sight greeted me.

What can I say? I put the poor creature out of its misery. I’m not one of those cats that play with their food. Besides, I was hungry!

Lego, Puzzle One

It’s harder to set up than it looks, even for me, and I invented it.

There’s one piece missing … it’ll be in the post as soon as I have my computer back and can get to my favourite Bricklink store … but I want to get begun on my next project.

I started it as an experimental thing seeing how these slopes could work together. One thing led to another.

Cat Tales, 5

Me, Hand-of-God, sleeping in the contested red chair. On a towel because I shed black and white hair.

Last night, creating that havoc I promised, I ran and slid and skittered in the moonlight and shadows on the slippery wooden floors.

I took a running jump and leapt to the top of the tall wooden shelves in the living room. Lucky for me that they’re fastened to the wall. Dislodged books and ornaments thumped and clattered to the floor.

After each big noise I expected the pernickety old woman to come running from the bedroom in her nightdress. Shouting, maybe. I didn’t know her very well yet.

She stayed stubbornly in her room, the door stubbornly shut.

Is she deaf? I suspect that now. After a while I stopped my argy-bargy. It’s not much fun when there’s no reaction.

The pernickety old woman spooned in her usual breakfast fare while standing at the kitchen bench. Drank her tea as if she listened for something.

“Be a good cat today, Maggy,” she said.

But … yesterday’s doings were small stuff compared to my adventures to come! And there are no photos of any of it. Just our memories.

To help me be good, the pernickety old woman spread an old towel in the red velvet chair. “Sleeping is good,” she said.

Fine. I settled.

Then a man’s voice called from the front. “Okay if we bring a ladder in?”

The pernickety old woman went to the front door to talk with the man. He brought in the ‘ladder’ whatever the thing is. They decided that he could set it up under the guest room ‘manhole cover’. Another thing I’d never heard of.

A lot of to-ing and fro-ing followed, stumbling, swearing and apologies, and knocking on the wooden walls. The pernickety old woman stayed in the corridor while the person and his apprentice hauled in gear from their truck parked on the front lawn.

After a long time of barely dozing, I woke with a start. Silence in the corridor and guest room. I could hear the pernickety old woman talking at the washing machine, telling it what-for. My chance.

I soft-footed through the corridor. In front of me in the guest room stood a metallic set of saplings, with little shelves rising between the front pair, toward a yawning hole in the ceiling.

The aromas coming from the hole spoke of mice! And rats! And even birds! I climbed of course, and from the top little platform, jumped into the roof space.

While I explored up there, the men came back from their ‘smoko’. I ran to a little nook I’d found. Hid there, with my black back toward the men, making an extra shadow.

They worked at their mysterious project for hours. I have no idea what they did. High-pitched power saws came into play. They used chisels and hammers to ‘smooth edges’. Finally they left. They pulled the manhole cover back over the hole.

Then I heard the pernickety old woman calling me. “Maggy! Maggy! Where are you?” She rattled the kibble bin. “Dinner time!”

She stood at the back door. I was over the front corner of the house. She didn’t hear me and her feet went into the house. Small thuds. Cupboard doors clattered.

The roof space darkened with night. The pink fluffy floor was littered with tools and boxes. I explored a little longer but the animal aromas were overburdened with the chemical smell of the pink fluff and the tools.

So I hid away. What else to do? I listened to the night. I watched flitterings and an owl stalking a little bat. Eating it.

Then I saw where he’d come in. I growled, just a little. Owl took off, back into the night, flapping slow silent wings. I began to wait for dawn.

Life Admin xyz …

This is one of those days that I need to “make my daily march (back) with the heavy baggage wagon” These words from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching as interpreted by Ursula K LeGuin.

Meaning to me that I need to attend primarily to my physical and on-ground community needs.

I must be out of the house by 9 AM, spruced up and ready for anything. First an after-care eye specialist appointment that’s walkable. Then bus into the city for early voting on the Yes/No referendum, and a bank ‘appointment’.

I call it an appointment despite that they don’t know I’m coming.

If you’re interested, I’ve begun summarising entries into the Lodestar Timeline on its dedicated page, accessible through the menu.