One of the most difficult trials of being the family cat, it watching quietly as your humans make the same miscalculations in judgement, all the while conveniently ignoring the results of the last mishap. Part of it stems from the unwavering optimism that this will end better and in spite of the fact, one has failed to conduct oneself any differently than on previous occasions, which ironically, also did not end well. So much for living and learning.

As a feline, I adhere to a strict diet of healthy prescription cat food designed to keep my kidneys on tip-top condition. Rarely, I have been known to indulge in a tablespoon of tuna, or lick an abandoned dinner plate discarded carelessly upon the coffee table. I usually adhere to a non organic diet void of fiber in any form. This little detail means not only am I built for speed, but a love-making machine as well. I have never emitted a butt cheek squeak when making time with the ladies.

The bipeds of the domicile have yet to learn the importance of removing all vegetable matter form their diets. Invariably, during the winter months, Missus Chica will surprise the Mister with a home cooked meal after he returns from the wiles of the lipstick urban jungle of business travel. Nothing says I love you, like soup made from scratch. It appears to be lovely gesture, hot soup, simmering on the stove for hours. The aroma of crushed red pepper, fresh rosemary, and sautéed garlic. As romantic as it sounds, sausage and lentil soup isn’t a very good aphrodisiac. Seduction for the taste buds, can lead to self-propelling oneself from the bed.

Nothing says long term marriage like fleeing the sofa to pass silent-but-deadlies, unless it’s not bothering to leave the sofa at all.

Since, daylight saving time came to end, I have been developing a new found respect for those living in the northern latitudes. I’ve been one to take sunlight for granted, a dangerous assumption in a household in which the corkscrew is automatically programed to function in concert with the setting sun. According to the weather bureau, the sun descends three minutes earlier than our previous home, but the perception is greatly altered by the neighboring mountains, extinguishing the warm rays, before I am ready to complete my afternoon bask, and driving Missus Chica prematurely from the hiking trails as she uses her cell phone display to navigate her way home.

The two legged occupants are adjusting to the restrictions of light and warmth. They aren’t as active as they have been in the past, but I suspect that will change once the novelty of television wears off for the Mister, and the Missus finishes slogging through War and Peace. It’s easier to set lofty goals, than to actually follow though with them, hence the muddy path to the front door flanked by three pallets of concrete pavers. Technically one of the occupants her learned her lesson, which explains why she can’t be bothered to give a shit as the other occupant whines about her being right about a certain procrastination disease.

Anywho, the air is crisper, the days are shorter, and there is adapting, even if it is of an irregular nature. Hopefully, impromptu walks through the neighborhood will develop into habits, once the last leaf has fallen. There’s a fine line between routine and obsession. A routine provides structure and gives you something to anticipate, unfortunately it is easily derailed by the slightest deviation. An obsession, makes you inflexible, and gives your family yet another reason to talk about you behind your back, as if they really need one.

Today’s challenge, courtesy of our beloved sugarplum fairy, Mona is the best Christmas Evah. Uncharacteristically, Mona has imposed rulz on this week’s topic:

Now I don’t mean those wonderful lofty things like “I finally achieved peace with my father”, or “my child who was born before Christmas after 3 days of labor” (yeah, that would be me), or “I decided to give up smoking/sniffing glue/drinking grain alcohol” things.

I mean GIFTS. Real hard items, bought or made, something that you can feel or touch or eat or rub yer nekked self up against.

Okay, fine, be that way about it. The irony is when I look back, I have trouble recalling the specific gifts I thought would cause the world to fall off its axis if they didn’t appear underneath the Christmas Tree. The in-substantialness of memory says much about the inconsequential nature of want versus need.

Anywho, I cheated. I spent the morning sorting through Christmas photos to stimulate my memory, and I discovered in interesting phenomenon. It seems the box is more interesting than the items it contains.

Occasionally the same can be said for the wrapping paper.

Hi-jinx aside, a few years ago, Dirty Girl and I received and excellent selection of cat toys from Missus Chica’s mom. It had all sorts of goodies. Catnip mouses, balls with bells, and toys on springy elastic cords. But the best, the absolute bomb in the bag was the feather. The feather on a string was the quintessential cat toy by which all future cat toys would be judged. Other cat toys dream of being in the same league as the feather.

We still have the feather, and it is still my amusement of choice. It’s ratty around the edges, and it doesn’t have as many feathers in the cluster as it once did, but it will always be the feather. Missus Chica tried to introduce a backup feather on a stick a few years ago, but I wouldn’t have any part of it. It just wasn’t the same. It didn’t stimulate me to jump as high or run as far. New isn’t always better.

For those who are curious about my littermate, Dirty Girl is just a woman at heart. She prefers gifts that smell nice, and maybe, just maybe a little illicit, but she never drives stoned.

Monday, I awoke to the most fascinating weather phenomenon, I have witnessed in my ten years on this planet. I looked out the window and discovered our neighborhood covered in a thin layer of white powder. I’ve never seen anything like it. I thought perhaps we had been pranked, and the neighborhood teenagers had sprinkled several tons of table salt on our yard, cars, deck.

Not to be restrained indoors, I insisted on investigating. It’s my household duty to check out potentially hazardous situations and protect my humans from the dangers of high blood pressure. I was shocked at the willingness of my humans to allow me outdoors. Usually, when you do something for the good of others, they fight and argue every step of the way.

Imagine my surprise when I walked onto the deck and discovered it wasn’t salt at all. It didn’t stick to the bottom of my feet the way salt or even powdered sugar does. And the taste? it was kind of bland, not at all what I expected.

I wasn’t the only one perplexed by this mysterious white powder. Later in the evening, we had an anonymous visitor surveying the situation. The visitor seemed interested in more than just snow, being the footsteps led to the door.

After a thorough investigation, I deduced the white powder might be snow. It was highly reactive to changes in temperature and direct sunlight. I had heard if snow before, though I had never experienced personally. In our old neighborhood, it was the subject of local legends, people frequently spoke of it when the temperature dipped below freezing, but few had witnessed more than a flurry in the last decade.

I was beginning to think snow in the south was nothing more than local legend designed to entice young children into falling asleep in hopes school would canceled the following morning for a snow day. Maybe snow is like Santa; it’s real if you believe. Though I suspect if it were that simple, Maggie and Nancy would cease believing in any form of frozen precipitation.

Based on the assumption I am, in fact, normal, most fantasize about committing questionable acts of violence or humiliating justice, that they would never consider beyond the three foot thick reinforced concrete walls of their minds. Too existential? Too hypocritical? Or too obtuse?

For instance, in August, Missus Chica was sulking down the aisles of the Nationally acclaimed home improvement store, when she noticed on the top shelf of the gardening section, no fewer than twenty compressor powered holiday inflatables. A perpetual delight for perverts, provided they are smitten by conquests baring the same physique as the Michelin man. Nothing proclaims spiritual devotion like an eight foot syndicated cartoon character peering into the manager of christianity’s lord and savior, just like in the book of Matthew.

As Missus Chica looks up at the cataract nightmare of red and green overhead, she imagines executing all the inflatable participants, one by one with a shotgun. Slowly and methodically so that each nylon character is a allowed a moment to reflect upon its transgressions. She clenches her teeth and narrows her eyes, not because she is void of the spirit of Christmas, not because she’s iconoclastic, but because it is August, for fuck’s sake.

The Missus would never walk into retail space with a shotgun, nor would she consider vandalizing property. She’s not a postal worker, or a gang banger so she is simply, allows her imagination the privilege of running free, in lieu of permitting her lips to flap uncontrollably ala Mark Twain*.

So what you fantasize about in the checkout line at the grocery? The gate at the airport? In your mother’s living room? or in the litter boxbathroom stall?

*”It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt” ~ Mark Twain

I’m domesticated, but I’m not very domestic. Cleaning is overrated. Besides, there’s no incentive for me to expend unnecessary energy when Missus Chica has things under control. I offered to assist her with the dishes on tuna night, but it seems I’m the only one who believes in devoting one night a week toward the worship of that king of fish, tuna in a can.

Since the holiday season is breathing down our necks like a middle management lackey set to sneak out early on a Friday afternoon, I’ll leave you with a few inspirational quotes to ponder while you are shoulder deep in a turkey’s ass.

My second favorite household chore is ironing.  My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.  ~Erma Bombeck


Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.  ~Phyllis Diller, Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints, 1966


Housework is something you do that nobody notices until you don’t do it.  ~Author Unknown

Don’t cook.  Don’t clean.  No man will ever make love to a woman because she waxed the linoleum – “My God, the floor’s immaculate.  Lie down, you hot bitch.”    ~Joan Rivers

The obvious and fair solution to the housework problem is to let men do the housework for, say, the next six thousand years, to even things up.  The trouble is that men, over the years, have developed an inflated notion of the importance of everything they do, so that before long they would turn housework into just as much of a charade as business is now.  They would hire secretaries and buy computers and fly off to housework conferences in Bermuda, but they’d never clean anything.  ~Dave Barry

I’m not going to vacuum until Sears makes one you can ride on.  ~Roseanne Barr

That’s right, the denizens of the Raccoon Sushi Bar.

SOMEONE has more than a passing fling with the fish pond. It’s more like an obsession than your typical human fish relationship. So, maybe she hasn’t actually named all the pond fish, an accurate indicator for fish affection. She TALKS to the fish, and remarkably, they respond in kind. The nibble at her finger tips and bump against her hands as she tends to the filter.

Most of the inhabitants are goldfish. Comets to be more specific. These are hearty fish and survive well outdoors, even in freezing temperatures. In colder zones, people are known to bring their fish indoors to winter in aquariums (snow fish?), but that isn’t necessary for this zone. Our pond also houses a shubunkin and three koi.

This is the newest arrival. He (she?) is a small koi resembling the Kohaku variety. For those part, these fish don’t exhibit the desirable characteirstics that make them attractive to breeders, in other words, we have the heinz 57’s of the koi community. But these fish have heart and personality, though one is missing its scales.

Eventually, enough plants were procured so the pond would appear only slightly less artificial than it appeared during its first weeks. This by no means adequately mimics nature, the fish don’t seem too bothered, and the bees enjoy using it as a drinking fountain.

Eventually the small pond and abundance of hearty water lily specimens created a dilemma. The pond was too small to accommodate two water lily varieties and a fountain….so I small bucket for a deck water garden was procured.

This was to house two small comets and a pink grapefruit water lily. Strangely, the inhabitants of this small pond were granted names. Ms Chica named these fish after the One Eyes, since they constantly chase and nag one another. That whole lifetime commitment gig has strings attached to it.

Today, the Mister called out to Ms Chica, “Do you want to see your goldfish?” She asked if they were dead, as Mister Hombre seldom inquires about the fish. He replied, ‘No,” so she dutifully walked out to the deck to inspect the One Eyes, but she couldn’t see them immediately, as the ice was too thick.

As for me, I’m developing a god complex. It isn’t everyday I have the opportunity to display my superiority over mankind by walking on water.