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 by Rondo, Blogger and Poet Hello dear friends, One of our readers wrote asking when I would be presenting another poem or two. Unfortunately, I haven't been inspired for a while. It must be the summer heat that has made my brain lethargic. Not only was the brain a little slow, my whole body went into summer slumber and sleep mode surfacing only for food and belly rubs and to tease Grammy on-line. But, thanks to Aunty Patrice and Aunty Maron both giving me the nudge I've been hard at work and so, in honour of Autumn which has just crossed our threshold I have two new poems for you. So without more ado I give you my latest. Autumn
Autumn leaves fall gently now; There's a crispness in the air. Whiskers alert, on sill I sit and search For vanishing friends in flight Or gathered on baring bough. The southbound birds murmur together: Charms of hummers, hordes of geese, Flutters of others, all birds of a feather Preparing for the long fall flights To lands safe from the cold winter's blights. Squirrels swiftly nest and gather their foods To store before frosty snow. They'll be safe and warm within these woods Rushing black, red, grey mastering the game Before winter begins to blow. Autumn Leaves Sweetie stalks at balcony door Awaiting errant and crispy leaves That tempt and bait the little puss; At hunter's lair they tease As they toss about the floor. There is no doubt that Autumn's arrived full on In yellows, browns, orange and red Dresses of many shades and hues To adorn the land... a spendiferous spread As it dances on toward winter's dawn. © Whiskers, Mouse, Sweetie, Etude & Rondo - Mischief and Mayhem Central Comments are welcomed. We love to hear from you, our readers.
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 by Whiskers, Matriarch of Mischief and Mayhem Central So, my question here is... how do you name your cat? bunny rabbit? dog? or other pet? Well, let me tell you a little bit about the old dear and her naming process! She's an odd duck, that one. Well, not exactly a duck, though she does waddle. Don't put her in a pond to swim around though. More likely she'll sink like a rock and without webbed toes it isn't likely she'd get anywhere even if she did stay afloat. But back to the topic at paw. How does this old bird name her animals.... Let's start from the beginning of time.... millennia ago when said old bird was barely hatched. Her first pet, of sorts, was a stuffed kitty. Yes, merely days old and already she was a cat lover. Well, this kitty was made of hypo-allergenic material with a rubbery face, big blue eyes, a cute kitten nose and mouth and dimples where her whiskers would be if she'd had whiskers. Now we haven't seen this critter as it is long since gone but we've read that though a cute pink and blue originally, the kitty had become well-worn, shabby grey. Over time the eyes and pink nose had lost their colour too. She became real like The Velveteen Rabbit. BUT back to the story. This kitty was designed to cuddle. Paws would wrap around a baby hugging the infant. This was important because as a baby the old dear was as stiff as a board. She couldn't cuddle and snuggle until her third week of life when her rigid muscles finally relaxed. But Allgie Cat, yes HER name was Allgie Cat, could cuddle into the stiff little human. Now you ask, what about the name.... well, she wasn't named until the human could talk and precocious or what!? You remember reading above... hypoallergenic.... well, she named her Allgie and of course, she was a cat... so Allgie Cat she became. The only other pet in the household during early childhood was a dog.... a long haired, shaggy thing with extremely bad manners but that's a story we won't address. It's name was Bootsie. No idea where that comes from other than the fact that anything that looked remotely fuzzy, soft and furry - including caterpillars - was called Bootsie by the toddler and it seems the name stuck with the dog. Through childhood animals weren't a large part of the household due to the fragility of Grandpa but once Grammy (not Grammy back then though) had moved out of the family home she started collecting animals. We've talked about the bunnies... if you remember. There were Powderpuff/Puffy, Twink and Wendell and Pepper and Peaches and their names were explained in the various blogs. Or we think they were. I didn't write the Twink and Wendell one... but Twink had twinkly brown eyes.... and Wendell was originally Smokey (yes, grey colour) but was renamed after Oliver Wendell Holmes... and Grammy loved the name Wendell - sophisticated, don't you think?  Now this photo collage is a year old but we haven't changed much so.. Now, the cats...
PussCat during their life before Grammy moved to Toronto, started out with a long investigation into names that started with the letters PC. Grammy was obsessed with computer technology when it was in its infancy and thought PC related names would be great fun. So, Personal Computer, Progressive Conservative, Politically Correct, Pussy Cat, Power Corporation, and many others were tossed about and of course Pussy Cat won out... but was shortened to PussCat. Then once they were in Toronto it morphed into PussPuss. Malcolm was a black cat. There was a cat book out around that time about a cat named Malcolm. Grammy had just read it ... and as Malcolm was black head to tip of tail she toyed with Malcolm X, but finally settled on just plain Malcolm. Now let me clarify that the name had to suit the cat too. If he hadn't looked like a Malcolm he might have been called Murgatroyd or some such silly, hardly pronounceable name. Phew! Imagine living down that name! Monty was third cat to enter Grammy's domain. A youngster of 14 months, abused by his sibling and no longer wanted by his 'family' when a new baby arrived in the household, he was called Gizmo. When Grammy saw him he was too regal for that name and needed to forget that part of his life. That warranted a name change and besides, he needed something more distinguished for such a handsome boy. The name Montague came to mind and seemed appropriately elegant... and it stuck. Later it was shortened to Monty to keep the names to 2 syllables but in Grammy's heart and mind he was always Montague, the handsome boy who never really grew out of kittenhood. Now on to our current batch. We've probably bored you with this and our names have been explained on FB but here goes once more. Mousie and I, Whiskers, arrived together as fosters and when the door to the carrier holding us opened I jumped out into Grammy's arms, tickled her with my whiskers as I wrapped my paws around her neck and purred. The Rescue named me Chelsea but I preferred Whiskers because I'm so proud of mine. Grammy agreed. Mouse was the wee timid beastie cowering in the back of the carrier, refusing to make eye contact with Grammy and scared to the core. Well, her name has evolved over time. She is such a gentle creature. Wary but never nasty or mean or aggressive so Grammy added Gentle and she became Gentle Mouse or Gentle Mousie and it suits her to the core. Those boys.... Yes, Etude and Rondo...were littermates born to a cat that Grammy was fostering name Fidelia. Grammy got to name the litter and decided musical names would be fun and since the little scraps of fur were very vocal and constantly on the move (dancing so to speak) the group became the Sibelius Quartet - since it almost rhymed with the mom's name... and they became Musetta (the girl), Scherzo, Etude and Rondo and these boys names have stuck all these years, though Grammy does have a few choice names for them when they get into mischief. Best not divulge those here. Sweetie, the last of the menagerie to arrive was just a baby and Grammy was into her flower phase of naming cats for the rescue... so when Grammy saw that cute little face she thought of the flower Sweet Cecily and that became her name. Of course, it had to be shortened to two syllables and so she became Sweetie, which suited her nature when asleep. Her demeanour when awake was much different and she might have been called Rapscallion if it hadn't contained too many syllables. So there you go. For Grammy, naming of cats was based both on the visual and the personality. And our group name, Mischief and Mayhem Central comes from the chaos created by us all. That's it for today friends. We welcome comments from you, our readers and will do our best to respond to them. Let's keep them light, fun and if you'd like to share how you name your kitties and other furry family members we'd love to hear it.  by Rondo, Poet and Chatty Charlie Good morning, Friends. Grammy has been up to her eyes in 'stuff'. Between having an 18 year old university student camping out in the livingroom in a one bedroom condo, dealing with an infected eye and her own stupidity she's just a little stretched. Yes, you heard me... HER OWN STUPIDITY!!!!! With a food allergy you would think she'd be more wary about what she buys. It used to take Grammy at least an hour to do a small grocery shopping. Every label read, every minute detail noted on each and every product every time she shops. Shopping becomes a time consuming task. Let us tell you, that ingredients are often changed on products and more often than not there is no flashing notice on the packaging to advise this. Firstly, her allergy is to SOY in all its forms and it doesn't matter which of the 50 different names for soy are used to confuse the customer it is still SOY! AND it still affects Grammy the same way. We won't go into details... just that it is nasty! Lately she's gotten lazy or has been in a rush and hasn't bothered to read ingredients and … well, it caught up with her.. A wee treat that she's loved and eaten for years is now made with soy flour and soy oil. She had a feast on this supposedly safe treat and now.... well, we all dove under or behind sofas, chairs, anything to avoid the old girl until she felt better. Thankfully, she's feeling more normal this morning. THAT'LL TEACH THE OLD DEAR to cut corners. Well, now, on to our blog.... Our friend, Suzanne, had a wonderful experience this summer. Monarch butterflies graced her gardens which include milkweed and hyssop and she was able to watch caterpillars and bees feasting and the transformation of many a caterpillar to butterfly. We are going to show you a few of her personal photos of these and I think I should also reprint the appropriate poem.  So here goes....
Butterfly - Creatures Divine Of birds and bees have I much written And more there is to say But other creatures delight me too ‘Tis time they had their day. There is a creature I do adore It grows in stages; There are four. Egg to larva that crawls and eats At pace no other creature beats Leaves and such to gain its strength For stage three – when at length Its skin reforms and dormant seems. But ‘cased inside are magic dreams That to outsiders make no sense For shell they see, ‘tis plain and dense. Yet within a subtle change is made As soup reforms the old will fade ‘Til nestled safe within the shell That soon will ope’, will soon dispel A delicate beauty. As it uncurls It’s newborn self, it will unfurl As heart its veins infuse Gossamer wings of many hues. And when the wings are held up high We’ll see a wondrous butterfly. © Whiskers, Mouse, Sweetie, Etude & Rondo - Mischief and Mayhem Central Dear friends, we welcome comments. Especially the light, humorous ones.  by Sweetie, intrepid explorer of boxes and other bits and pieces Hello friends, Sweetie here again to continue with the stuff I gleaned from dumpster.. oops, I mean archive diving. Well, you met Twink and Wendell in the last bunny blog.....and they were real cuddlebuns. Now to tell you about another two bunnies. Peaches and Pepper were their names. We have a bit of a disconnect here. This was another time when Grammy was in flux. She was dealing with another family situation, as she says, "life, just dealing with life!" so things had to be fluid and it wasn't such a good time to have bunnies, but a friend, Mr P we'll call him, felt otherwise. One day when she arrived home from work there it was... or should I say, there they were: Peaches and Pepper were sitting in cardboard transport carriers in the middle of the livingroom floor. We'll talk about Pepper first.... only because there wasn't very much about the beautiful boy in the archives... at least not in the boxes I dove into. Pepper was the most beautiful black velvety bunny with silver guard hairs all over his body. His ears stuck up straight and were pink-tinged inside. Grammy said they were so silky soft. There were no photos of him, or of Peaches in the boxes. Probably lost during a move or two. He was a gentle boy who loved to be snuggled and was shy of Mr P. While Mr P was a nice guy he had no clue with bunnies... he was a dog person so when he visited he wanted to play with Pepper like he was a Jack Russel Terrier. That didn't set well with Pepper. He was no terrier. He was a little puffball of beauty and serenity... except during Mr P's visits.... so those visits were kept short and far between. Pepper passed at a young age... and there's no indication in the archives what it was that took him. We think Grammy may have found it too upsetting and has blocked the memory.  These are not Grammy's bunnies. Now Peaches was of a different temperament. He still didn't like the rough play but he didn't hide, he attacked and ran. Smart little fellow only attacked the aggressor. With Grammy he was a snugglepuss or should we say, snugglebunny. You might ask why the name Peaches for a brown bunny.
Peaches was a long, lanky almost hare-like rabbit with equally long lanky ears. A cocoa coloured bunny he had a creamy tummy and legs rimmed in a bands of the most delicious shade of peach, thus the name. His long floppy ears were cocoa coloured like the rest of him but had peach and cream highlights on the inner front side. Likewise his eyes, nose and mouth were rimmed in peach and cream and his feet and toes were striped in all three colours. He was a strikingly beautiful little fellow. Peaches favourite pastime was to sit on laps or shoulders and watch television. Imagine! Who would have thought a bunny would like mysteries, sewing and crafting programs? But he did and he loved the balcony, just as Wendell did... though he was less inclined to make snow caves so Grammy had to bring him indoors during the cold weather. This wasn't the best situation for a little duffer who liked his freedom because sadly, he was confined to a cage when Grammy was working. Grammy realized this was causing the little fellow distress and he started to decline. She had to make a very difficult decision. He needed a home where he could have his freedom and yet enjoy his social time with a family too. As much as Grammy loved and would miss him, she couldn't allow him to be distressed and sad. Fortunately, Grammy had a co-worker who lived on a farm, loved animals as much as or more than she herself and would take care of him for the rest of his life. Little Peaches moved to the farm, lived out the rest of his days living in the barn during the day, scampering around and snuggling with the lambs and the barn cats and kittens and his nights sitting on the shoulders of his new family members watching television and getting the snuggles and pets he so enjoyed. And since Grammy's career was getting more hectic and she would have long days away from home she decided she shouldn't have anymore adopted creatures until her career stabilized and she could be home more. Well, THAT DIDN'T LAST!!!! but you'll have to go back and read an earlier blog or two. You might also check out this one for another hint since some of the non-furry kind lived life on the edge. Comments are welcomed. Lets keep them light and fun. |
AuthorFive Cats, Five Personalities, One Goal - Mischief & Mayhem. Archives
August 2023
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