365 Muse

365 Muse : creative non fiction or fiction musings based on one musical album every day for a year. My muse. My musings. My eclectic music collection.
Welcome to my challenge.




Friday, July 2, 2010

Squrriel Girl and Charity Hope Valentine








Sweet Charity / New Broadway Cast Recording







I was a little surprised to think of Christina Applegate as Charity Hope Valentine. After all, that role belonged to Shirley MacLaine. But things change and the more I thought of it, the more I thought it was apt casting.


I also think this character is a fit match for the other cat: Miss Lulu Bella Vamp (not the Damn Cat Jack who wants the bowl full). For those up on their cat requirements, you know that all cats should have three names. Our attempt to find a suitable name for Miss Lulu started with her vampyric tendencies. She has a fondness for necks. At the time I read somewhere that Bella was a most popular vampire name. The vamp part however was an intentional pun. She had attitude.


“The minute you walked in the joint, I could see you were a man of distinction…”


Lulu is my cat. She chose me. I had no say in the matter. Xingu had passed away several months before and I was still saying no way was I getting another pet. I couldn’t take it. Not expecting it to come of anything, M. convinced me to go to the Crazy Cat Lady’s house. He wanted an orange tiger.

Crazy Cat Lady was a person in a neighboring town we knew from our neighbor. She rescued cats through out the area and was known to tend them, interview families for adoption etc. She’s hard to reach and a bit frenetic on the phone. I’m not sure why we ended up actually taking the ride to her house, but we did.


When we arrived, her dining room ceiling had leaked, so all her furniture was in her den, off her kitchen. It was worse than a furniture store. My memory is that a bunch of cats were just hiding. Then there were six loose in the bath. M went there as a tiger was supposed to be there. Off this mess was a sun porch with at least 8 huge cages and each had at least one kitten in them.  The entire time we were there, she yammered, endlessly, about the roof, the cats, her life, the universe...


Squirmy kittens were taken from the cages and placed in my arms. They purred and played and tried to run off. They were cute. I said, ‘no thank you.’ One little cat stared at me the whole time. Her eyes followed me. She didn’t mew, she didn’t play, she just watched. It was noticeable.  It was odd.

Soon M. returned with an orange tiger and he was in love. Jack would be coming to live with us.




 As I was still standing around and Crazy Cat Lady was still pushing kittens, she suggested that I should hold the little grey fur ball that was clearly fascinated by me.  We still had to go through the interview process to make sure we were the right kind of people to get a cat.

The little cat was placed in my arms. Unlike all the others she didn’t squirm, try to run away, play with my hair or her tail. She nestled in. She purred. She pressed her cold wet noise against my neck and nuzzled. Lulu had chosen me. I couldn’t say no.


"There's gotta be something better than this, There's gotta be something better to do..."


We were told she had been found above a Subway sandwich shop not far from where M. worked. She was rescued, but still pretty feral. Jack had been in a home and then left in a parking lot. Lu had never known domesticity. Still, she was being the calmest sweetest little thing in my arms.



When Lulu and Jack came home it was a whole different story. She was a wild child. Fearless and full of attitude. While Jack could be laid back and saunter around, Lulu’s tail is almost always straight up: an exclamation point that follows her. She never sat still, would not be held unless she climbed onto me, and it's taken years before she really would let M. hold her.

“If they could see me now, that little gang of mine, eating fancy chow and drinking fancy wine…”
What I find the most intriguing about Lu, though is the what and way she eats. Like her adopted mom (me), she likes a wide variety of culinary adventures. Some favorites: black olives, red onion, smoked salmon, berries and yogurt, preferably not all at the same time.

However, what most puzzles us about Lu’s dining is not what she eats, but how she eats. Of course, she is a cat so, she will paw at things, beg for things, meow for things. Some times if she’s particularly annoyed, she shifts back and forth lifting her little back feet while shaking her tale like a rattlesnake. We’ve come to understand this means: “I’m angry at you.” But it’s so amusing it cannot possibly be taken seriously.

She will at times eat like a cat… but more often she eats like ... a squirrel. Sitting proper, she will lift a single piece of kibble in her two front paws and nibble. Some times, this is done with just one paw. This has prompted the nickname, “Squirrel Girl.”

But the most intriguing is when she picks up the kibble, tosses it in the air and then tries to catch it to eat it. I’ve never seen a cat do this, and she is surprisingly very good at it.

I’ve mixed feelings about this. As on the one hand, it IS amusing. On the other hand, I don’t want to live with a tiny female cat that eats like a frat boy.

 

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