Highgate

Sunday

Pretty kitty

"JC Penny's with Dead Palm and Succulent"


So this weekend was JC Penny's first weekend in her new home, and also her first weekend with her newly reinstated name, since SP and Toby decided about a year ago to rename her as Neyko, which is apparently Japanese for Cat, clever... not that it matters all that much with JC, since from what i can tell i could call her Hillary Rodham Clinton and she'd still just stare at me with indifference... did i say indifference, i meant love...

I kid, in fact - aside from a little nervous transport peeing (she's notoriously bad in vehicles... i found this out a few years back when she pee'd, pooped, and threw up on me during one 20 minute car ride.) she's settled in quite nicely, the first evening was alot of skulking around behind things, nervous tentative smelling, random freakouts and the occasional lonely mew... but after a while she relaxed, i put out food for her, in her favorite little kitty food bowl, gave her a little succulent plant by her water bowl - she started to pur again.

It also helped that the night before i brought my old baby blanket over to toby and SP's so that she could get a little accustomed to my smells again, i was really excited to see her sniff it once, and then immediately try to burrow her way into it - SP said she slept on it all night long, which is good, cause i cried myself to sleep that night, being the first night in 25 years without it...

Now it's a couple of days later and JC is the queen of the castle again - she's taken to a few key locations, she has her perches on top of the orange couches that look down onto Pearl street and all it's goings on (mostly alot of "ooooh fuck you ya fuckin fucker, bitch you ain't my fuckin' mutha, mutha fucka..." etc till all hours of the weekend night..), and a little kitty bed that i didn't think would work, but she actually loves it... She's back to her old self again, and i've been reminded just how great it was to have her around... I know everyone thinks their cat's are the best, or the cutest, and i know how disgustingly twee all that is to read... especially in a blog... ( is this Live Journal?) But you know what, i'm sorry, JC Penny's got all you bitchass kittens beat... She's the cutest!

(if you're prone to cuteness nausea, skip this next paragraph)

She's shy and sticks to herself, so i don't get annoyed with her rubbing on me constantly, but when she wants affection she comes right over and hops up on my lap, usually she does a little belly kneading, and then curls up for a while... when she's hungry she'll let me know, and then thanks me profusely, at night she wants under the covers for some puring and snuggling and when I come home from work she circles and then rolls over and shows me her big fluffy tummy, with her paws tucked up by her cheeks, and rolls around like that till i embarrass her with tummy kisses...cute little tummy kisses....

ahem.

(Ok. i'm done now.)

Anyway, so beyond all that the weekend was wonderful, and since i was expecting JC to be a super freak i made plans to stay in with her all weekend ... Eva came over Friday night to help with any kitty care, but by Saturday morning it was pretty apparent that she was fine, that we were all hungry, and that it was a beautiful Saturday morning.
Eva went out and hunted for breakfast while i stayed in and gathered up all the dirty dishes and cleaned the kitchen in preparation for a hearty autumn breaky - and boy was it hearty, we had to enlist Margot's help.

Breakfast consisted of

1 can fancy feast seafood banquet for JC

McKenzie maple smoked bacon
vt goat cheese scrambled organic eggs
whole grain homemade waffles
French pressed coffee (house blend, beans from uncommon grounds)
Orange Juice (Odwalla)
and fresh cut apples, bananas and raspberry's

all to the tune of Elton John (honkey chateau) and Ziggy Stardust. perfect.




After breakfast we digested with a couple episodes of six feet under (JB, Eva and Margot haven't seen it yet, so that means i get to relive it vicariously through them...) and then after a bit of prodding Eva convinced me that JC was fine, and that their was a drive to be taken. Alas their was, and it lasted us the afternoon into the evening as we drove out to Eva's old hometown of Johnson, and around through some back roads to the Stowe area. Of course, this is Vermont, and it's Fall, so it was beautiful, i'm not going to go into details, because if you live here, you already know how glorious it is, and how fucking annoying it is to hear from tourists and the like just how beautiful the place that you live in, is. I know, i live here, go back to Hartford.
I did think to myself as we were driving around, "fuck... this is really great." and a few times i was made to grin and stare like a fool and some sun struck vista or another... I'm a Vermonter, i was born here, in the sticks no less, but i'm so often surprised by it. I feel lucky for that... (then i remember how much i pay for rent...) I could have just as easily been born in some Suburb of some shitty satellite city of some major city in new jersey. Hell, i could have been born in Newark...
I also have to thank Eva, who somehow makes every thing we do together, that much better... she has this enthusiasm for experience that is bewildering. She can be so jaded sometimes, down right morbid (who isn't... i guess) and then in the next moment she's like a young girl full of excitment and novelty... getting to be with her while enjoying a lazy drive in the mountains, doesn't get much better.

Anyway, after a lot of sights, alot of good music (ipod on random w/ a little help from Eva's birthday mix (slow version)) rambling conversation, cigarettes, fresh breezed windows, sunglasses, warm sweaters, hot apple cider, hot apple cider donuts, maple tea, a bus load of Asians, and a few more cigarettes - we made it home, and called it a night... JC was curled up in her little cat bed.

The next day, was the perfect compliment to the previous, i woke up to a dark grey rainy window, and in the living room JB had been up for hours before me and was putting the finishing touches on another disk of 6 feet. I sat down and pulled a blanket over my legs, with in a minute JC was there, kneading away at my belly and purring...

And on a funny note, i happened to catch JC in this position:

after i had said "JC what are you doing!?" she stopped and looked at me as if considering "indeed what am i doing?" and continued to sit in this awkward position like she had forgotten that she was in it, for at least a minute or two...

Ok, i'm done now, i promise this will be the first and last epic post about my cat. (yeah right)

Eva has her side of the story here

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi tanner,
those are nice pics of JC! my fondest memory of her is when she tries to lick/eat your breath.
-michelle

Anonymous said...

We got to cat sit JC once. It was when Meghan and Misato were trying to soften me up on letting us have a cat. Given that we're on cat #2 since then it is clear that JC accomplished her mission with aplomb. Or applomb. Or a bomb. Or whatever. Glad to see some pics of her!

On a side note... is that first VT photo available in high res? Let me know. It's (as they say in "The Commitments") rapid.

[on a side note to the side note, my magic word to type for the word verifier is "giouhlhm" which is Gaelic for Gollum).

G-lo

Anonymous said...

Tan,
It warms my heart to see you reunited with JC again. You two always did make a good pair.

TM

Tanner M. said...

Thanks Tara and Michelle and "G-Lo" :)