Pussies.

My hands and hair are covered in white paint. Just returned from spray-painting all the Normal props. If ever you are alone in an abyss, still alive and needing to pass the time I highly recommend trying to spray paint a jump rope.

My kitten was out on the balcony when I arrived home. I saw him blazing- an orange blob-from the street.

I was reminded of the time my evil childhood kitten Warbucks climbed a tree and was eventually convinced to let go of the branch. He dropped about 12 feet into my mom's beautiful light pink dress with white collar. That dress spun very beautifully. I remember being very impressed by that.

I had a lot of attempts at having a cat over the years.

First I had Buffy. I don't remember where we got him from, but he was GORGEOUS long haired gold and white puffy cat. He was therefore stolen. My dad was livid. As was I, but I just felt he hadn't liked me very much because I was so determined for him to like me. Whenever he sat with me I would be so excited when he would purr because I thought that meant he was pleased, so I would keep doing exactly whatever patting I was doing. But then he would leave, and I would be left in my plastic chair on the back deck wondering why the kitten did not have an emotional connection to me. I felt sure I was a failure regarding animals.

Then I had Puff.

Puff X.

(Nothing more really needs to be said regarding that. The above is the most succinct sentence every uttered. And utterly true. But just for reference- Puff was a beige ball of gelatin and love who was the CUTEST kitten EVER and then one day I went with my grandma to Maryland to see a large show that I remember nothing about except rifles being fired and my being horribly upset. When I arrived home I asked after Puff and was informed that Puff had decided to take a nap in a choice location. The engine of the car.)

Puff X. X.

Then I think was Warbucks. I got him right after I did Annie. He was a tabby, white on bottom, gray on top. He was hateful and wanted to eat me. He tried. One day Warbucks just wasn't there anymore. I still think my parents drove him out to the side of Rte. 10 and left him there. As that is a good thing to do when a cat tries to lunch on your daughter. My parents maintain this is not the case.

Then Misty. I wanted a Persian SO BAD. Cause they are angry and fat. So my dear grandma found an ad for persian kittens in the paper and got me one. So excited. Turns out the people who posted the ad just desperately wanted to be rid of their kittens, so what I ended up with was a morsel of a late-stage kitten embryo with leaking eyes from a trailer park with a complete inability to eat anything other than breast milk. Gray. Wasn't weaned. Died.

Also wasn't a Persian.

Then a large orange tomcat started hanging around at my Dad's work, so he brought him home for me. His name was Toby and he was a fine, fine fellow. Everything was great for a few weeks. Then one day I couldn't find him, so I went walking looking for him. Walked down to the end of the street where there is a dock and a forest and noted to my left in the mouth of a drainage pipe the eroding skull of a cat. Decided Toby had died in war with a raccoon. This was sad.

So bad cat luck so far. (That made me think of potluck and want macaroni.)

Then I made friends with Laura (who has amazing legs) and Ed (who is devastatingly handsome and plays piano like a madman). They took my brother and I to Applebee's all the time.

Laura's cat Pandora had kittens. I got one. Named her Jazz. I was very pleased with this name until my friend Lesley from middle school came over and said she would have named Jazz Sundae because she was white on her body with splotches of dark brown and caramel on her head with a pink (cherry) nose. Irked me.

I still think Jazz a much more appropriate name.

Anyway, you couldn't kill Jazz with a steamroller. Still can't. Has to be at least 30.

She kills everything and gets on very well with all of our parade of dogs and likes me. She is a good woman.

Jazz lives at my parents' house.

When I moved in with Joseph we began raising kittens who had been abandoned by their mothers before they were old enough to eat or poop on their own. First we raised Kara and Jenny. Who then became Kara and Bocouscous. WE LOVE Bocouscous. Tubby pale orange tabby who is dumb as a wall and sits in your lap like a human toddler. He had a fun belly to jiggle. He called Joseph Dad and pooped under my bed once. Kara was a tortoiseshell who was a flaming hateful maggot. 

We gave her to Matt Shofner. She liked him. He took her to New York where he renamed her Rosalitas and she contracted a horrible skin disease. There is a picture of her smoking a hookah.

Then I wanted another one because I have a problem with this. I got my way because Joseph loves me a lot. So he brought home from rehearsal one night a gray furious female kitten in a box. It was immediately clear that she was a spy for the Russians named Norah Natalia Simonavich. And once she developed her swingy flabby gut that cats develop it was clear that that was where she stored the assault rifles she was packing.

We gave Norah to Natalie. She is now fat and sits down all the time.

Then delivered unto Joseph and I was a tiny tiny 3 day old kitten that was found in in a shipment of Nabisco crackers at a train station. I am still not convinced that this kitten was not a cobra.

He was that dark gorgeous swirly tabby. I named him Danforth as it was during The Crucible and he was clearly the lord of darkness. Well- he was totally fine until one day I was feeding him on my shoulder standing up on the hardwood floor and he JUMPED to the ground. Joseph maintains I dropped him. Which is probably true, but regardless. We fetched him up, his neck was quite clearly snapped and he was leaking fluid from his face. So we rinsed him off and then he was fine. So it was quite clear that he was back from the afterlife in hell. From then on he HATED us. Would never scratch or bite, just gave us LOOKS. His favorite thing was to curl up inside one of those large plastic bins of pretzels like a snake and observe us for hours. 

One day he leapt up off the couch, raced into the bathroom and leapt directly into the toilet. Soaked. Leapt directly out again. Very amusing.

Bocouscous and Danforth both went to live with an elderly woman in Petersburg who had recently lost her dear pets and had no idea what she was getting herself into.

Then someone gave us a found newborn black kitten who had clearly been attacked and was missing half his skull. That one died in a pink towel later that day.

Then someone gave us THE MOST ADORABLE KITTEN OF ALL TIME. He was black and white and puffy and had round blue eyes and smelled so good. And I couldn't tell you what he smelled like. Just good. And had the dearest, roundest little paws. Oh Lord. Anyway- we were convinced he was blind as he rarely moved and when he did he would just smack directly into the speakers. So Joseph took him down to the clinic in Petersburg where our friend the vet Debby dangled a string in front of him to test for vision. He immediately commenced batting at the string and darting around in hot pursuit. What a jerk.

But we loved him. Cannot remember what we named him. Gave him to Emily and Michael Mason, who gave him a name we did not approve of.

THEN (this is getting long) someone gave us three gray brother kittens who needed raising. One of them we definitely named Buffalo. You should really see their tennis ball guts when they finish their meals. The other two were non-descript. Again given away. One given away as payment for a headshot session.

And then came Mary Elizabeth Paris von Tubbybitch.

The internet doesn't have the space.

My current kitten is the orange one who goes insane periodically throughout the day and devoutly pursues Wilson's rectum. You can always tell when the insane is coming because he pupils become enormous. He is the same one who chewed an inch of flesh and bone off his own tail and thus had to undergo a tail amputation. Now just has a creepy lively nub. 

I love him. He's bonkers.

This was going to be a post about how I went to New York this week and took naps and ate soup, but oh well.