Fodder

August 24th, 2009

I was reflecting on my very first blog last night. I was thinking of new topics to write about in the future when I realized I was pulling a Jim Qwilleran. One of my favorite series of books is "The Cat Who..." mysteries by Lillian Jackson Braun. Her main character is James Mackintosh Qwilleran. He is a writer for the Moose County Something by day and a crime fighter by night. He inexplicably finds himself surrounded by mystery and is able solve them with the aid of his super intelligent Siamese cat. I do have several cats in my house. Maybe that's why I was coming up with great and new ideas to write about. Qwill is always stumped when trying to find ideas for his column in the Something, The Qwill Pen. He uses many different people and books to help him come up with the thousand word essay he has to write two times a week. He calls it Fodder for the Qwill Pen. You would think that it would be easy but he inevitably relies on his cat, Koko to inspire him. So that's what I was doing last night. I was coming up with Fodder for the Music Barr with inspiration from my three bedside cats.

My cats are my family, aside from my loving husband. The oldest is Chloe. I found her in an ad and gave her to my husband as a present before we were married. She is a Daddy's girl and only begrudgingly lets me feed her and change her litter. She is impossibly prissy and likes to get her face scratched as much as possible. I am convinced that if there were a machine that scratched faces she would sit in front of it all day and wear it out. Then there are Clancy and Lucy. They are the "kittens". Even though they are 9 years old, we still think of them as the little ones. There are several reasons for that: 1) We got both of them (they are sisters) and another sister at the same times and it was a crazy bunch of kittens 2) they are very small and still look like kittens. Clancy is a fickle little girl. She doesn't meow the right way. She kind of squeaks. She loves to be petted but it hasn't always been that way. She HATES to be picked up and will wiggle like there is no tomorrow if you try it. Lucy is not the brightest cat we have (don't tell her I said that). She does silly things like leaving her tongue partially hanging out of her mouth and trying to jump up on something but not calculating the distance correctly and missing the mark. I love her though, she likes to sit on my head. Quite literally, it is a battle in the evening for who gets to actually lay on my pillow, me or Lucy. She usually invades and little by little, I'm on the other side of the bed. There are two other cats at our homestead that belong to my Brother in law (he lives here too). There is Ande, an impossibly loud and ancient Siamese and there is Flannel, a lovable tabby who lives outside and hunts all kinds of prey.

Cats are a great stress relief to me. No matter how bad your day was or how bad you feel about yourself, cats will always love you. They rub your ankles and your head and remind you of all that is right and good in the world. They bring you back to a point where you can evaluate whether or not to actually be angry at someone at work for something they said or at that person that cut you off as you were driving home. Cats are a gift from God. It's like he knew that I liked furry little creatures that I could pet and touch and created them just for me. God put these cats in my life to help me weed out all the bad and always keep a balanced perspective on the world. I'd like to take a second and thank God for all his glorious creations. Seriously, God, you did good.

That's all the Fodder I came up with last night. I'll think on it some more and be back to give you more revelations from the mind of Keren.

Have a blessed evening and thanks for reading my 2nd blog.