Cats Without Vanity

Cats can be vain. They are famous for that. There was one time when My Cat Jeoffry got upset when he was jumping from the mantel and stumbled and landed awkwardly. He could not stand that I was laughing at him so he took a swipe at me.

I said, "Don't take it out on me that you're a klutz!"

I still laugh about that!

However there are times when cats are without vanity.

That is when they are asleep!

Fig. A is Jeoffry up above. I took that picture today. It was hot and Jeoffry stretches out when it is hot in all kinds of odd and unflattering poses. He also enjoys sleeping in the shade of furniture.

Here is a closeup of his face.

Another shot.

And there is this from the other day. I sent this to Howard and he gave it a giant thumbs up.

How could you not give that a thumbs up?

So cute.

No vanity!!

Cats and Cat Toys

Like any pet owners Howard and I have spent money on toys for our cat Jeoffry. 

Just as one example there is a large and alarmingly realistic rat. I bought it at Pet Supplies Plus and I think I went up to over $5 for it. Thanks to my German parents who lived through the Great Depression, I have a problem with that. However Jeoffry loves it. (Me, not so much. If I find it in the middle of the floor I toss it back into Jeoffry's box.)

There is also this cat toy that has a ball running around a circular track. Jeoffry loved it for the first week we had it and now we cannot get him interested in it for love or money. That was also from Pet Supplies Plus.

A great and cheap cat toy that is always a hit is the spring. These colored springs come in packages of a dozen or something and the cat will chase them everywhere -- up and down stairs, around the room, through doorways, skidding across the kitchen floor.

However.

Nothing beats free toys!

"For he chases the cork." That is in the poem "My Cat Jeoffry." Jeoffry does indeed chase the cork! And we seem to have an endless number of corks in this house, need I say more.

There are corks and then there are cardboard boxes.

I do some grocery shopping at Gordon's Restaurant Market. When I leave I always try to grab a box from the selection available that Jeoffry will like. Above is the newest model.

It has a square opening that Jeoffry loves! He likes to peer out of it as he is doing in the picture up above. He also has a game he plays with it. He will rocket into the box and shoot a paw out at me. Not just a paw actually. He shoots out his whole front leg!

Ha, ha! One day I will try to get a picture of that! It is not easy because whenever he does that I am just laughing so hard.

The best cat toys in life are free!

Cat and mouse

"For there is nothing so sweet as his peace when at rest."

Jeoffry caught another mouse!

That sentence rings out with a sense of great joy. However when I actually perceived the event, it was not as joyous. A dead mouse in the house -- perhaps it is not as bad as a live mouse running around but it is still not pretty.

I was at the Steinway playing Johannes Brahms and suddenly my eyes began roaming the room and that was when I saw something by the radiator.

At first I was thinking, it is just one of Jeoffry's toys. He has several toys that look alarmingly real including a small brown fabric mouse and a big alarming-looking rat. Maybe it is that gross little toy mouse. That is what I said to myself as I continued playing the Brahms.

I decided to wait until the piece was over and so I did that. For the record this was the first Impromptu Op. 119. I like to run through the whole set. However on this occasion that was not to be.

After I played the last notes of that first impromptu I got up for an impromptu check on that mouse.

It sure looked real. 

It was real.

Jeoffry got up meowing. He likes to listen to music and he did not like that it had been interrupted. He should have thought of that in view of the mouse. Couldn't he have eaten it or something? Could he not have taken it somewhere else?

But now that I thought of it we had been warned. He had been obsessed with the area surrounding the radiator. He had even been sleeping there.

The things that cats know that we do not!

Meanwhile... it has quietly been five years since Jeoffry's first mouse -- at least the first mouse to our knowledge.

I wonder when we will find the next one!

The oldest houses in Buffalo

Today my friend Meghan and I went out drawing in Allentown. We stopped in a coffee shop where we found a good view of the city's oldest houses.


Buffalo's oldest houses sit on Allen Street one after another. There are three in a row, maybe more but I have always considered these three the oldest. I drew two of them. There they are up above.

As I worked I had to come to terms with an uncomfortable truth.

Pretty as the houses are, and old as they are, what really interested me was the "Do Not Enter" sign and the fire hydrant.

I am still a young enough artist that the bends in the street still amaze me. Every time I sketch a scene like this one, I cannot get over the scale of the houses that stretch down the street. I have to be very careful as I go forward. Those houses around the corner, they take up only a few millimeters beneath the eave of the house on the corner.

That is incredible!

I keep holding up my pen, checking, marveling.

Only when I got it down did I let myself sketch in the "Do Not Enter" sign.

Cool things to look at are everywhere. When I was taking a break I stopped in the coffee shop's restroom. and I saw this:

You have to wonder how many beers went into that logo.

Genius!

And earlier today I took this picture of Jeoffry in his holder.

So many images.

So little time!

The Christmas decorating begins

Today I decorated the mantel for Christmas for what I believe to be the first time in my life.


I mean, I had decorated it before with Candle-Lite candles and whatnot. But it has always been kind of slapdash, as Jeoffry, above, has clearly realized.

Today for the first time, I got some garland and mounded it on the mantel and put lights with it.

Which looks pretty good if I may say so myself.

I am playing host to our Christmas carolers this week so I need the house to be festive. We had great success last year and so this year we are feeling our oats and thinking of adding to our repertoire. We are dreaming of "In Dulci Jubilo" and the Gloucestershire Wassail.

Our surroundings must be right! Next I will go about putting up the tree. I might do it right now. I might wait till tomorrow. For tonight I might just rest on my laurels, you know?

I have a rule I am abiding by and that is to use what is in my house. That explains the colored lights. I know white lights are more tasteful. But colored lights were what I had and you know what? I like them.

I make no apologies!

Recently watching one of those corny Hallmark Christmas movies, about which more later, I saw a comment from someone in ... Denmark, I think it was. One of those countries.

He wrote: "You Americans, do you all decorate your houses like that? I think it is ugly."

It did not matter that a few minutes before, I might have agreed that the houses were overdone. All of a sudden I grew defensive.

What a rude jerk!

Butt out, plain Dane!

Go back to your hygge!

We will decorate our homes as we see fit. All of a sudden I want to overdecorate my house and I will not stop until it is done.

Wassail, wassail!
 

Happy cat

For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.

That is a line from "My Cat Jeoffry" and I found myself saying it because, well, our cat Jeoffry is better.

He had a cold for a few days and was sneezing alarmingly. He was not quite snoozing a lot. He was still on his feet. But you could tell he was not his true self.

He became his true self at a most inconvenient time of course when I had just cleaned off my desk and was trying to get work done.

How was I to interrupt him when he was scanning the yard below looking for the groundhog?

"Is there a groundhog?" We ask him that.

"Is there a Chihuahua?" Poor Jeoffry was down with his cold and scarcely noticed the Chihuahua at Thanksgiving dinner. Now that is it for the Chihuahua until next Thanksgiving! Our friend Larry's mother brought the dog and there will not be another chance for Jeoffry to see them again until next year. I keep thinking the Chihuahua is a he but it is a she. Her name is Precious.

Precious is precious and so is Jeoffry.

For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.

For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.

Our cat is once again complete!

Color and light

For some reason I like doing art.

I use the term loosely. I do not have any pretentions as an artist. But late at night, or of an afternoon when I have been busy with work most of the day, it is fun to sit down with watercolors and relax. What is it about watercolors? They are just so cheap and easy.

Especially cheap. I have this $5 watercolor set I have been working off of forever. That is it in the picture above! I also have a sneaking affection for oil pastels because they, too, are cheap. That masterpiece in the sketchbook visible in thePain back on the right was done with oil pastels.

Not only that but they were oil pastels I purchased in Tupperware at a garage sale! I think I paid a quarter. The brand is Loew-Cornell, which despite the patrician name is made in China, let's not kid ourselves.

I remember my mom telling me at that garage sale that buying the pastels was worth it just to get the Tupperware! LOL! Anyway, those are the pastels that painted that picture in the picture.

HOWEVER. Once at another garage sale I bought a little wooden box of oil pastels of the Van Gogh brand. Van Gogh is not an exalted brand. Looking it up, I see it is a "student brand." However. sets of 10 or something (mine has 15) go for a cool $30 or something. So when I get better at oil pastel I will let myself use the Van Gogh pastels instead of the Loew-Cornells.

I will be the Leonard Pennario of pastels!

Jeoffry also enjoys art.

Good boy! Good boy!!

We are artists!

The cat and the tree

I put up my tree on Sunday. It was Gaudete Sunday! That is THE day to put up your tree.

All kinds of people put up their trees. I saw it on Facebook. Jeoffry assisted me in putting up my tree as you can see in the photo above.

After it was up I sent this photo to Howard who put it up on Facebook.

OK, well, things are not perfect. But we are moving into the season!

The day you put up the tree is always one of the happiest days of the year. The day you take it down is, I am sorry, one of the saddest. I hate to take down the Christmas tree! One of these years I will just not do it. It will stay up until next year. Some of my Facebook friends have already taken that route.

I should just leave it up all year! I am a grown-up and this is America.

And Jeoffry would love it!

Jeoffry in the jungle

It is hard not to laugh when you come home and your cat is lounging on your shoes.

Jeoffry had found my sandals under the dining room table and was stretched out on them.

It is funny to try to think how a cat thinks, not that you will ever understand it.

One morning last week I got up early, before it was light, because I had work to do. I made my way downstairs to make coffee. Then I went looking for the cat.

He was in the front room, staring out at the dark garden. God knows what he saw there. But he must have seen something. Because when I reached out to pet him he jumped out of his skin. Then he leapt off his perch and backed up, staring at me.

He did not hiss. Sweet Jeoffry, he never hisses or growls. But he looked at me as if I were some kind of threat. He did not seem to understand who I was. It took him a good 10 seconds.

I was thinking: That is a clue to how he thinks.

He thinks he is in the jungle!

It was almost like getting a clue as to how Leonard Pennario's mind worked. A foreign being. I would look for clues.

Wild!

Mr. Fix-It

Another thing that happened besides the market madness is that the repairman showed up and finally fixed the Bosch stove. Above is a picture I snapped of the repairman doing the job, to the tune of $219.

Jeoffry helped the repairman.

That was the caption Howard wrote on Facebook for the picture I took and it is most apt. We were talking about how nice it is that Jeoffry is sociable. So many cats run and hide and there is nothing wrong with that, but we like that ours comes out, says hello and sometimes even offers assistance.

In celebration for the stove being done I roasted some of the cauliflower I had bought at the market on my spending spree, plus I roasted and stuffed an eggplant. This morning I made peanut butter/ oatmeal bars for church coffee hour. The recipe is from an ancient Pillsbury Bake-Off competition. The booklet shows the winning entries being judged by Pennario's friend Greer Garson so I know the recipes are good.

Wow, look at this. Naively I go looking to see if I can find the recipe online and I cannot. This is what I found on the Pillsbury site .. a bunch of recipes built on convenience foods and prepackaged mixes. One of them even starts with "a roll of Pillsbury refrigerated chocolate chip cookies."

Clearly with Greer Garson gone this contest has hit the skids.

Oh well. Aside from that life feels right again with the oven working.

Now, if I could only stop baking!