Extreme Cat Lady

“Cat Lady, Cat Lady, come here quickly!” Cat Man was summoning me to the kitchen, where he was watching a DVD on his laptop. He loves Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries, and The Clocks was screening at Catland.

There, on the miniscule monitor, was a character after my own heart. Mrs. Hemmings is her name, and she is described in the liner notes for the Poirot DVD series as being “the extreme cat lady.”

I imagine that Mrs. Hemmings’s “collection” of many, many cats looms even larger on the big screen. I took a quick look at some scenes from The Clocks, and Cat Man and I had the same thought simultaneously. “Do I look like that?"
I was reminded by Cat Man of the adage “strength in numbers,” and I returned happily to my daily task of menu-planning for our ten cats.

Query of the Day: How would you define an “extreme cat lady”?

Happy Birthday, Cat Lady

Yes, it’s my birthday, and I’ll meow if I want to (with apologies to “It’s My Party” from the 1960s).

I was feted royally by our ten felines this morning. While out and about last week, Cat Man furtively selected a theme-appropriate gift from each cat to Cat Lady.

Because Lucius likes to stay close to me at all hours, he gave me a refreshing fragrance to wear at all hours. Lydia likes to coo and trill, and apparently she likes the most-recent album by Lily Allen and wanted me to have my own copy. Leo hits me up for treats as often as possible, and he reciprocated by giving me a snack-sized box of one of my favorite treats: Groaties, otherwise known as oatcakes from Scotland. Linus, L.B., and Alvar saved their pennies and advised Cat Man to give me the definitive biography of Nancy Mitford. I love my three amigos!

Lillie, who always smells so lovely, gave me Penhaligon’s Artemisia hand cream. Her daughters Miss Tommie and Perkins pursued the Mitford theme and gifted me with a new paperback edition of The Pursuit of Love. T.J. opened one of his large paws and pushed a Starbucks card in my direction.

If all of that is not enough to make a birthday girl happy, wait 'til I tell you what I got at the office: One dozen donuts and one dozen cupcakes to fuel a daylong sugar-high (and conveniently feed a staff of eleven “hungry girls”).

Keep those feline-inspired birthday cards coming! It’s my birthday for many more hours….

Query of the Day: Do your cats help you celebrate your birthday?

Music to My Ears

There is nothing like a “staycation” for catching up on housekeeping and reading and for listening to my favorite music. I found many opportunities for all three pursuits this past week, although I confess to having been easily distracted by HLN’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Casey Anthony trial.

Nevertheless, I stuck to my original plan and unearthed real, live clippings from magazines and newspapers; retrieved books from the bottom of stacks; and reviewed my collection of record albums—real, live LPs! I am an oldie, but I found some goodies.

I was very pleased to discover feline connections in three different, perhaps unlikely, sources.

When I was in high school listening to Carole King’s Tapestry, I never paid attention to the artwork on the album cover. How could I have missed the adorable tabby cat in the foreground, now staring directly at Cat Lady?

When I was rereading a magazine article I had saved about Bryan Ferry’s art-collecting strategies, how could I have overlooked the best pull-quote of them all? According to the Roxy Music man, “Having things you love is like having a lot of pets all in the same room.”

And while reading, for the first time, Nancy Mitford’s delightfully frothy novel Don’t Tell Alfred, how could I not identify with the following line delivered by one of Mitford’s most-amusing female characters? Northey loves to rescue cats, among other animals, and she asserts: “These little creatures are put in the world for us to look after them.” Music to my ears!

Query of the Day: Do you take "staycations" with your cats?