Cat Blogging is Like, So Last Year

But maybe it's so old in blog-years that it's retro.

The one on top, doing a fair imitation of the lion in Maurice Sendak's Pierre, specifically the scene where "They pulled the lion by the hair. They hit him with the folding chair," is Pärt. I named him after the Estonian composer, which was a mistake because a) it was pretentious, and b) there is no cat less like his namesake. The composer Arvo Pärt has said, "Silence is harmony;" the cat Pärt yowls incessantly for food, door opening, kneading and attention in general. He's a particularly needy dog trapped in a cat's body. The shaven bits on his legs testify to his Christmas present to himself, an emergency cashectomy on my wallet courtesy of our veterinarian, who informs us that there's more medical intervention to come -- though he never once suggested that, you know, we could just let things run their course.

The one on the bottom is Bailey, his sister, whose hobby is slinking, and who will allow only me to pick her up. They're from the same litter; their mother was a sleek black animal that my then girlfriend, whom for years after our relationship I called "The Antichrist," brought when we moved in together. She hadn't been spayed -- the cat, that is -- and when she went into heat, she dragged her ass all over the floor until the girlfriend let her out to get impregnated by all the scrofulous toms that used to lived around the neighborhood. Pärt's sire was an old, gaunt Siamese who looked like a rectangle with legs, and Bailey's was a foul beast vaguely resembling a tabby. There was a litter of three 13 years ago this summer, one of whom we gave to neighbors. The other two have behaved like a three-legged stool missing a leg ever since.

So there you have them, 20 pounds of neuroses wrapped in fur. Bastards.