1. The best picture you have ever taken of something/someone
This is one of my favorite pictures, ever, of the spud. She had just woken up from her nap, and I came in with the camera, and took several pictures of her, and she started getting fussy because I kept snapping PICTURES instead of freeing her from her PRISON. You’ll note that she’s holding onto a pacifier, which is attached to a ribbon, which is attached to her shirt. She love her pacifiers fiercely when she was little. We didn’t call them “binkies”, though, we called them “rah-rahs”.
2. The best picture of yourself & why you think it is.
My favorite picture of myself, ever. I don’t know that it’s necessarily the best picture of me, but it’s certainly my favorite. Christmas day, my Junior year of high school, and a bunch of us were hanging out at our friend Norm’s house. I just look so damn young and happy, it always makes me smile.
3. A favorite picture that someone else took/painted/doodled
My parents and my nephew, Brian, on the last day the spud and I were in Hawaii. Debbie snapped it, using one of the waterproof disposable cameras I took to Hawaii with me. I think I was laying under the trees trying not to get sunburned, and the spud was snoozing on a blanket on the beach. Seeing this picture (I have it hanging over my desk) always makes me want to go back to Hawaii, even though I was miserable much of the time while we were there.
* * *
In my comments yesterday, Martha asked for more information on the cube I mentioned. This is what it looks like:
It’s basically made of nylon and wire, and there are nylon tassels hanging from the top. I got two cubes (I had to toss one because it was covered in cat poo and I didn’t want to scrub it down) in the cat section at Target. They were in a pack of two for $9.98, I think. I’ve also seen them at Wal-Mart in single packs for around $4 each. I cannot tell you how much the cats love this toy. It’s light and moves easily, so they can get in and push on the side and basically “roll” it around. Like I said yesterday, the kittens loved to roll it from one side of the room to the other, and once we were keeping the door to the kitten room open all the time, I’d occasionally find it in the hallway.
I looked online to see if I could find them, but had no luck. The label on the top says “Sport Pet”, if that helps at all.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that they’re pop-up cubes, so in theory if you wanted to pack them away for a while – if, say, your cats got bored with them, or for moving – you could fold them flat to do so.
* * *
So we were laying in bed last night, and I was harassing Fred about keeping Bear. This is nothing new, I did the exact same thing with all the other foster kittens we’ve had in the past, especially Jodie and Rambo. His response is always “You promised you wouldn’t beg to keep any of them!” and “What’s that you’re saying? That you never want to have any foster kittens ever again?”
“What would we name him?” Fred said. “If we were going to keep him.”
This is nothing new, either. We thought of new names for Rambo, too – the most popular being “Worm” and the second most popular being “Gollum.”
We started throwing out names that started with “S”, just to keep in the tradition, since all of our other cats have names that start with “S”. Not that we ever CALL them by their names, but still.
“Satchmo!” Fred said.
“Uh, no. Satchel!” I said, thinking of Satchel Pooch, the dog from the “
Get Fuzzy” strip.
“Uh. NO,” Fred said. “Stevie! We could name him after Stevie the blind wonder cat!”
“Cute,” I said, pondering. “But Stevie was a pain and Bear is a sweet little monkey.”
I thought some more, then giggled.
“Shalimar!” I said.
Fred laughed. “That’s a good one!”
Silence fell as we both thought some more.
“Tom Cullen!” Fred said.
You know how something that’s not THAT funny hits you just right, and you start laughing so hard you come thisclose to passing out? That’s what I did when Fred said that.
“M-O-O-N!” Fred said. “That spells Tom Cullen!”
I flailed around and laughed, gasping for air. Under the covers, the kitten in question became alarmed and ran out from under the covers and jumped off the bed.
“These are our cats,” Fred said. “Spot, Spanky, Scrappy, Stanley… and Tom Cullen.”
“Man,” I said when I could breathe again. “That’s a good name. It’d be fun to call the vet and say ‘I’d like to make an appointment for my cat’ and when they said ‘What’s his name?’, we could say ‘Tom Cullen. But we call him Moon.’ and see if they got it.”
We went on to talk some more about other things, and I tried a few more times to convince him that we should keep Bear, even going so far as to say “Mister Boogers likes him so much! No one else will play with him!”, but it was no good, the man would not be persuaded to add a little kitteny goodness to the permanent household.
Hmph.
Bear hung out with me for a while, and when I went to put him in the kitten room, the spud asked if he could come in her room for a little while. I told her to put him in the kitten room before she went to sleep, and I went to bed.
This morning, I was awakened by cold little kittens toes on my shoulder. Fred was standing over me holding Bear.
“Two conditions,” he said.
“Huh?” I said, and yanked an earplug out of my right ear.
“I have two conditions,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“First of all, his name has to be Tom Cullen.”
“Of course.”
“And secondly, no more foster cats until he’s old enough to not get sick from every little illness they bring into the house.”
“Okay,” I said. “Kitten season is mostly over for the year. He’ll be old enough for us to start bringing kittens into the house when it starts up again next Spring.”
“Then I guess he’s ours!” Fred said.
The shelter manager called me a sucker when I told her we wanted to adopt him. Heh. Of course, if I’d had my way we would have adopted the first five, the second two, and all four of the most current batch. I guess it’s probably a good thing that cooler heads prevail in the And3rson household.
Meet Tom Cullen And3rson:
“Be vewwy vewwy quiet. I’m going to sneak up on him and scare him!”
When I talk about his crazy eyes, this is what I mean. Big, round, crazy psycho eyes.
He’s very clean.
We let the cats outside for a little while yesterday. Mister Boogers kept an eye on Tom Cullen (hee!). I guess we need to get Tom Cullen his own collar. We don’t want him running away!
He doesn’t need much room. He just wants a little of the Poo warmth.
Playing in the bubble wrap.
Making himself just a little TOO much at home.
All of today’s uploaded pics are
here.
Previously
2004: No entry.
2003: I’m pretty certain “Never going to fucking go hiking with him EVER A-FUCKING-GAIN” crossed my mind at least once.
2002: Hotel room so big/ roomy, spacious, perfect. Butt/ is what it smells like.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.
1999: Don’t get your bippies in an uproar, though; we’re not trying to get pregnant. ]]>