2008 Archives

12

happy new year efurryone!

daddy and mommy are home again today, and they are busy in the kitchen. as max the psychokitty would say, there are all sorts of real live fresh dead things in the refrigerator.

things like choreeeeeezo (that’s how mommy says it.  daddy says its spelled chorizo.):

Spanish sausage, chorizo

and scallops:

Scallops for the Bambinos!

there are also clams: 

 Clams for the Bambinos!

and shrimpies:

Seafood for the Bambinos

and of course, chicken boobs:

Chicken for the Bambinos!

my brother wanted to help verify that the scallops were good, but he got too close to the flashy box.

 Panda sniffs the scallops

so he just tried to do a refrigerator inspection instead …

Panda Bear in the Refrigerator!

daddy gave us some shrimpies just for us to eat. 

Shrimpies for the Bambinos!

he ground them up and made them easier to eat for us, and here’s what we thought of them:

Shrimpies not so tasty after all

the photo doesn’t tell the real story.  actually, padre was just sniffing it.  he didn’t actually eat any EITHER. 

maybe mommy and daddy didn’t know how to make it right.  max raves about real live fresh dead shrimp, but it just didn’t do anything for me. 

daddy and mommy had all these ingredients because they were making something called pie-ay-uh.  it sounded spanish, but i did not know how to spell pie-ay-uh, so i asked padre, since he is fluent in spanish. padre told me that you spell it “paella”.

daddy has his mommy’s recipe to make paella. it is a puerto rican/spanish/medituhrainian dish with rice and lots of fishies in it. daddy’s daddy is from puerto rico, and daddy’s mommy makes a really tasty paella (at least daddy and mommy think so). we will post gramma’s recipe for paella at the end of this post.  this was the final result:

Paella for the Bambinos!

we weren’t allowed to have any because it has onions in it!  🙁

ok. here is gramma’s recipe for paella. (daddy made it into a pee-dee-eff file so you can download it.)

5

Wowsers!!

Miss Poppy Q highlighted The Furry Bambinos on her bloggie today in her “My Friday Friend” feature!! That was so nice of her!!

Poppy Q is a sweet British shorthair girlcat who lives in New Zealand with her mum. Poppy was adopted on December 30, 2006, so she just celebrated her Gotchaversary. Poppy started blogging back in May of 2007.

Poppy Q

Poppy Q is very friendly and has welcomed others to the blogosphere. Just this week, with Poppy’s encouragement, SophieKitty from Chicago started blogging.

Please make sure that you stop by Poppy Q’s blog to say hello! While you’re at it, go say hi to SophieKitty, too!

Thanks again, Miss Poppy Q!!

9

we have received our first-ever award!!

jb from jb’s big world gave us a “thank you for being my friend” award: Best Friend Award

jb likes meerkats, and he (ooops!) she gave us the award because we have a meerkat (that’s me)!

thank you so much jb! we think you are a fun friend too!

we would like to paw it forward to miss daisy, darling millie, pyewacket & trixie ,and tigger the fbi cat

thanks again jb for our first award!

5

A couple of days ago Mommy pulled out her Rectangular Box With Zippers and started throwing clothes inside.  She talked to us about how she would miss us and would be back soon.  She said she was visiting our gramma and grampa in Pennsylvanicat for grampa’s birthday and Russian Christmas which sounded like fun, but she said we couldn’t go along. 

Mommy took the Rectangular Box With Zippers out the front door.  I tried to go out the door when she did, but she pushed me back inside, said “bye, bye” and then closed the door.  I was very sad about this until Meerkat started chasing me and then I forgot all about it. 

Daddy came home a little later in the day and was happy to see us.  I wasn’t sure he knew Mommy had packed up her Rectangular Box With Zippers, but then he said we have a “swinging bachelor pad”, and that we would be “batching it” with him for the night until Mommy came back. 

Daddy made us a special dish of Stinky Goodness and then I fell asleep on Mommy’s chair in the eating room. 

I don’t know how long I sleeped, but when I woke up, all the lights were off and the door to Mommy and Daddy’s sleeping room was closed.  I heard Daddy snoring and I tried scratching the door to get in, but he didn’t open the door. 

It wasn’t much of a “swinging bachelor pad” if you ask me. 

The next morning Mommy wasn’t around, but Daddy fed us like usual and snuggled us.  Then we went to sleep.  Mommy came in the door later in the day.  Yay!  She came back!  She had the Rectangular Box With Zippers, plus some other boxes and she hugged us and petted us and snuggled us and said how happy she was to see us and that she “missed us so much”.

So naturally we have been following Mommy around to make sure she doesn’t make another such disappearance. She and Daddy have gone to “work” but they come home together, so that is OK. Mommy explained that they have to visit a place called “work” so that they have green papers to trade at the store for our stinky goodness.

But we have been hot on her trail while she is at home…

12

Mom here. Today, The Furry Bambinos said I could post about Mohawk, one of the kitties who came before them. 

Mohawk’s Gotcha Day was Friday, January 11, 1991, exactly 17 years ago today.  This is the story of how Mohawk came into our lives … 

1991 Mohawk posing 
Mohawk in 1991

Back in the middle of 1990, my friend Lynn had been encouraging me to adopt a cat. Lynn and I worked at the library together while I was in college, as well as the summer after I graduated. I kept telling Lynn how much I wanted to have a kitty in my life, but until I got a regular job after college, I did not want to adopt. I wanted to be sure that I could support myself and the kitty.

Lynn, Dorothy, and Art from the Library
Lynn, Dorothy, and Art from the library

I got a temp job through an agency for a few months, then in late November 1990, I started My First Real Job After College.

Meanwhile…

One of Lynn’s adult kids had a cat who gave birth to a litter of kittens in late summer. Lynn had received one of the kittens from her son, for her birthday in October.

By early January, Lynn had called me to “come visit” her at her house. She wanted me to meet her latest family member, a little kitten named “Mohawk”. Mohawk was all white with a black stripe on his head, hence the name. He had beautiful green eyes that looked like emeralds.

1992 Mohawk 
Mohawk in 1992

Lynn really liked Mohawk, but the two other cats in the house did not. Plus, there were two dogs in the family, including one that resembled a small horse. So Lynn thought that Mohawk would be better off in an environment where he could be the center of attention.

Enter yours truly.

David and I drove over to Lynn’s on a cold Friday evening in January (Friday, January 11, 1991). I had told David that I just wanted to meet Mohawk to see if he liked me. To see if we would be compatible.

Apparently, Lynn had other ideas.

Lynn had gathered up a few of Mohawk’s favorite things – a pink towel, a tiny white teddy bear – and put them into a cardboard box that had once contained a toaster oven. Lynn already had cut holes in the box.

Hmmm … seems like Lynn’s mind was made up.

I thought Mohawk was a real sweetie, but I did not have anything at my apartment for a kitten – no food, no food dish, no toys, and no litter box. I felt so unprepared to take him home that night.

After a pleasant visit with Lynn, David and I got ready to leave. Mohawk had vanished behind the Christmas tree, and would not come out. So I suggested to Lynn that we come back another time (also to give me time to acquire the essentials). In reply, Lynn grabbed a box of dry cat food, rattled it, and Mohawk flew out from behind the Christmas tree. Lynn scooped Mohawk up, and handed him to me.

In parting, Lynn said, almost as an afterthought, “Oh, and by the way, Mohawk likes bread.” I figured that meant I could give him some bread as a treat.

When David, Mohawk, and I got into David’s car outside, David turned to me and hissed,

“Are you crazy?! You don’t have time to train a cat!!”

I looked at David like he was nuts. “Train a cat? What are you talking about?”

“You know, paper train them to, you know…”

I realized then that David had no clue about raising a cat. As a kid, David’s family always had a dog, but never a cat. And my family had never had dogs, only cats. Vaguely I remembered a friend from high school who had had a puppy. Something about lots of newspapers and accidents.

I started to laugh. “You don’t NEED to train a cat! The momma cat takes care of all of that!”

David did not press the issue further, and let it drop. But I could tell that he did not believe me.

We stopped at a grocery store on the way back to my apartment in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland. David and Mohawk sat in the car and had some male bonding time while I ran in and purchased the bare essentials: food and water bowls, food, litter pan, litter, and a few toys.

When we got to my apartment, I immediately set up the litter box in the middle of the kitchen floor and added the litter. I wasn’t planning on keeping it there, but needed to set it up quickly just in case someone needed to use it ASAP.

As if on cue, Mohawk daintily climbed into the litter box, did his thing, covered it, and stepped out with a flourish. He all but blew on his knuckles and rubbed his chest, as if to sneer at Doubting David.

David was flabbergasted. So began David’s affection for Mohawk.

1991 David Holding Mohawk
David and Mohawk in 1991

I could tell then that Mohawk and I were going to have a beautiful friendship. “Mo” and I shared a very special bond, one that is hard to describe in words unless you have had a similar close relationship with a non-human friend. Mo seemed to really understand me.

1993 Sue sleeps with Mohawk 
Mohawk and Me – 1993

Mohawk, in physical form, was in our lives for exactly 11 years. He has resided at the Rainbow Bridge since Friday, January 11, 2002. After several months of fighting cancer that had spread to his lungs, Mohawk passed away at home, on the anniversary of the day he came into our lives.

January 9th, 2002:  Keeping Mohawk comfortable
Keeping Mohawk comfortable in his last days.
January 9, 2002

So today, January 11, is a melancholy anniversary. It is both the day we adopted Mohawk (or more accurately, the day Mohawk adopted us), as well as the day Mohawk left us to go to the Rainbow Bridge. Mohawk will always be with us in spirit. In fact, we named one of the bedrooms in our house “The Mohawk Shrine”, which is where my computer is and where The Furry Bambinos make most of their blog posts.

1991 Mohawk in the sink!
Mohawk in Sink in Little Italy Apartment – 1991

Mohawk was a very special cat and our first “Furry Bambino”. Perhaps in the future, Padre, Panda Bear, and Meerkat will let me post some more stories about Mohawk, as well as stories about his adopted brother Clyde. While today marks both the beginning and end of our time with Mohawk, we enjoyed 11 happy years together and still get misty-eyed thinking about him … especially on January 11th.

1995 Clyde and Mohawk
Mohawk and Clyde – 1995

4

Gee, thanks Mao, and Annie, too.

Mom says because of all the missing kitties in the Blogosphere lately, that Padre, Meerkat, and I have to wear these dorky collars with dangly circle thingys on them. Apparently, Mom wrote our names and their phone number on the dangly circle thingys. She says that it is so that in case we ever escape that we could be returned home safely.

My dorky red collar

Mom even had the nerve to say to Dad that I “am a flight risk”. Wth? I don’t have wings! What is she talking about, dudes? Just because I like to try to sneak out the door to give her a warm sendoff when she leaves for work? Mom won’t let me escort her to the room that moves that is sitting in the driveway, she always shoves me back inside. Doesn’t she understand that I am just trying to be a gentleman?

To top things off, Meerkat got her collar stuck in her mouth, while she was wearing it! It took both Dad and Mom to rescue my poor sister from the Evil Collar Monster. At least Meerkat got a really good bite on Mom’s finger, as well as digging one of her claws into another finger!! Heh.

Later, the collar dangly thing somehow managed to get stuck on one of my teeth!! Again, it took Dad to rescue me from the Evil Collar Monster.

Padre also has to wear a collar. He tried to get his off at first too, then has largely ignored it. What a wuss! We need to have a unified front here, and I don’t take kindly to traitors. Maybe I should put the bitey on him…

In other news, I received word that I am officially a Tuxedo Gang Hideout Member!! Of course I am thrilled!! More about this later. This is what the logo looks like for the Tuxedo Gang:

New Tuxedo Gang Hideout Member

But how humiliating that now that I am finally in a gang, that I have to be seen wearing this dorky collar!

I think that tonight while she is asleep, I will give Mom the bitey… or maybe I should poop on her pillow… decisions… decisions…

P.S. Mom told me that I had to mention that Padre, Meerkat, Mom, Dad, and I are so relieved that Mao is back, safe and sound. Still, we are worried about Annie being away. We are purring and praying for her safe return.

9

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday today, last night I managed to wriggle out of my collar before Mommy and Daddy got home from work yesterday. Free At Last!!

I wore the collar for less than 24 hours! I left the collar by the front door so that they could see my work! Heh.

Unfortunately, I should have hidden the collar deep inside a trash can, because Daddy just grabbed the collar and put it right back on me. Sigh. Don’t they realize that they are hampering me in my efforts of civil disobedience?

Well, I will just have to follow Ivy’s lead (Tybalt the Prince of Cat‘s sister) and continue to wriggle out of the collar like Houdini!

P.S. In case you haven’t heard, Annie is home now too!!