The Morning Beignet

Ever since he came to live with us as a kitten at 10 months of age, he's displayed a certain look that warns the bystander when he is about to do something totally unexpected and something to which he considers himself perfectly entitled. 

That's the word. This Beignet considers himself entitled. Probably my fault.

He wore that look this morning when I first woke, raised myself up in bed, and spotted him sitting outside the salle de bains. A barely audible "unnnh" escaped from somewhere in all that fur and he abruptly moved toward the bed, disappeared from view momentarily, and a split second later he was floating above the horizon as though his eighteen pounds were as a feather. 

Donovan might describe it like this: there was a cat; then there was no cat; then there was. He made a perfect landing on the bed in mid-stride and lost not a mite of momentum as he trod across my chest and finally came to rest just below my chin. 

In all this activity, he never lost that expression of his; the one that said, What? as if I was about to criticize his behavior.

"You can lie there," I said, "as long as you don't knead."

He began to knead. 

I wrapped my hand around his paws. He stopped the pushing but he continued to open and close his claws. I was happy that we'd recently clipped them.

"You're going to have to move after all," I said as I gently urged him to decant. He resisted and moved his tonnage ever closer to me. "Don't put your butt in my face," I said as he 180-ed around. I pushed his hips away before he could lie down.

"What?" he said looking back at me from about midships of my stomach. I gave his head a nubbin that said settle in, get comfy.

This ginger-backed boy with a powdered sugar undercarriage looked so much like the deep-fried breakfast pastries of New Orleans that there was never a question about what to name him. It seems only right that he should have a morning habit to keep company with his name.

Beignet is really the ideal cat. I'm sure he was the cat model that all others were based on. His excellent qualities have won him the title of "Cat of the Year" for six years running and he's making a strong showing again this year. If he's awarded the title once more, it will be a new record.

And there's no doubt in my mind that he will win that title this year and every year hereafter.

That Familiar Feeling of Impending Doom

I woke this morning with an unusually large sea of cats around me. I don't know how many cats are the recommended maximum dose for an adult but I'm sure as hell that it's not all of them. I began levering them out of the way and as I did so I became increasingly aware of a feeling of impending doom.

I know you're thinking that the Genome is jumping the rails. But I'm not actually saying that the cats are responsible for the feeling of foreboding. Not even a brindled cat can bring that much damage in a single morning. The feeling I had was undoubtedly the work of Princess Amy, that bad apple of the limbic system.

If you've been following along, you will be familiar with this princess and her dirty work. She has a tendency to stir things up from time to time by pushing the thalamus around causing an imbalance in naturally occurring brain chemicals called feel-good hormones. If left unchecked, civilization staggers and Hell's foundations are shaken.

"Not today, Amy," I said to myself and then, "Poopsie, I have a feeling of impending doom." This last statement arose at the sound of soft footsteps coming down the hall. When those footsteps entered the room, she looked my way and burst into laughter on the magnitude of a steam boiler explosion. Sometimes I wonder if cossack blood runs in the veins of this descendent of the Russian Enlightenment.

"Not funny," I said.

"But, Beignet is stretched across you like you're a moose that he's just brought down, and Uma is on your pillow looking like the hat Daniel Boone wore." She said as though she felt it excused her laughter.

"A moose?" I said, offended not a little. And neither would you be only a little offended if the woman you loved described you that way.

"No, not a moose," she said. "Boone, as in Daniel, and why do you think you won't enjoy yourself today?"

"Well you know how it is," I said, "some mornings shine with promise of a day that will be the merriest of all the glad new year and others not so much."

She gave me a look that included a moue. It is called a moue I believe, when someone shoves out the puckered lips and then pulls them back to starting position?

After a moment of silence, which by the way is always to be avoided, I said, "In many ways, life at the moment has its drawbacks."

On this solemn note, the phone on my beside suddenly tootled, causing me to skip to the high hills, which dislodged Beignet somewhere into the surrounding air. Glancing at the screen on the phone, I saw that some species of Aunt was on the other end of the call.

"This might be a good time to order the lilies," I said to Ms Wonder but it was too late. She'd disappeared into the salle de bains.

Joy Reigns Supreme

Another morning that dawned bright and clear, at least I suppose it did, I wasn't actually among those present at the time. But when I did come to life all nature was smiling. 

Uma, Queen of Cats, who had been working on her twelve hours of shut-eye on the night table next to me, did a sitting high jump onto my lap so as to miss nothing that I might do. Her arrival caused me to sit upright in the bed, mindful of a profound serenity.

"Poopsie," I said, "I'm mindful of a profound serenity." The words were wasted because she was already in the salle de bains.

I remember thinking how odd it was that everything seemed so oojah-cum-spiff. Just this past weekend, we visited my favorite spot on the NC coast, where the wind-bent maritime forest comes right down to the sea, and the wild ponies run free, with absolutely nothing between you, as you stand in the breakers, and the Gold Coast of Africa. 

As I was saying, despite being in that perfect locale, I was deep in the soup and it was about to close over my head. It was that damned tiger/goat thing, and if you didn't happen to read that one, don't worry about it, these postings are not cumulative.

The short of it is that I visited my favorite place at the coast in order to build my confidence for the showdown with the aunts. Useless of course. It's pointless to argue with someone who was at your side all through your childhood because they know what a priceless ass you were then and will have no intention of listening to anything you may say.

Consequently, it was with heart bowed down with weight of woe that I drove back to Durham from Beaufort, that's bow-furt in North Carolina. Bew-furt lies in our southern sister state. 

I remember Ms Wonder saying to me once something about the heavy and the weary weight of this unintelligible world. It was some drivel written by a bird named Wordsworth, if that's his real name. Anyway, the quote seemed to me a good description of the depression I felt coming on.

When all else fails, I fall back on my luck star, or guardian angel if you prefer, or even totem spirit. I've lost count of the number of times I've been walking toward the tumbrel, like all those aristocrats in the French désagrément, when a governor's reprieve arrived, releasing me without a stain.

"Wonder!" I said, when she shimmered back into the room, "I'm mindful of a profound serenity."

"Joy reigns supreme?" she said.

"Very well put," I said, "but I don't understand how it could be. A few days ago, hell's foundations were doing the adagio and this morning--all bluebirds and rainbows."

"Fate's happenstance may oft win more than toil," she said.

"Oh, that's good," I said, "Shakespeare?"

"No," she said with a smile not unlike the one nature wore, "Bertie Wooster."

"Nunnh-uhh," I said, but it was uttered too late for she reentered the bath and left me alone with my tea and Uma the Queen of Cats. Given the circumstances, I decided my best course of action was to accept her word for it and get on with my day.