Cool Hand Llew

Since Saturday, we have snow! Snow on snow! Snow worth calling snow!

And my dog Llewellyn loves it.

He doesn't care how cold it is, he goes out and chases squirrels from one corner of the yard to the other. While my lunch goes frigid, as I get up again and again and again to go to the back door to check if he's ready to come in yet. Nawyet, Mommee, nawtymecominyet! Nawyetnawyetnawyet!! Gonnagitthaskwurl,yesyesyesyesyes!!

Enter the neighbor girl, Sophie*, who for the past three or four afternoons has dropped by to show me her new snow toys from Christmas. Two new toboggans. A snow brick maker. A snowball maker.

And to play with Llewellyn in my fenced-in back yard. She has dogs, but not a proper fence. And her dogs are runners. So Sophie comes and plays with my pup in the snow, and he likes nothing better.

Every time, I tell her that I have work to do and she can play out back with him by herself. And every time I come out and join the fun, too. And we all stay out till my dog lets me know his toes are getting cold. He lifts a forepaw and hesitates to put it down, then a back paw the same-- All right, that's enough! Time to go in for milk and cookies!

Whereat Sophie spends most of her time petting Llewellyn and cooing over how sooooooffffttt!!! his ears are.

(Well, they are!)

What I can't figure out is how my dog can tell the snowball Sophie has just thrown him from all the rest of the snow so he unmistakingly goes after it and eats it. He's been eating a lot of snow these past days . . . and I wonder if that's why he peed on the dining room floor just as I was sitting down to dinner this evening? He'd been out only two hours before!

Peeking

Yesterday I stopped by the local PetsMart to buy food and a slicker brush for the kittens. As long as I was there, I picked up Christmas presents for my four-leggedy children.

For Llewellyn I chose a giant stuffed carrot. Suitable, considering his penchant for eating everything within reach, not excluding vegetables.

For Rhadwen, Gwenith, and Huw I got a collection of mousies, fuzzy batting balls, jingly rolling balls, that sort of thing. I'll share them out among them all.

So I get home, and I put the bag with the brush and the toys on my bed, out of the way. Then I went up to work in my study.

Time to go to bed last night, here's the PetsMart bag on the bed with the brush and the carrot-- but no kitty toys! Where could they be?

Oh, yes, the bag came open in the back seat of the car on the way home. I'd probably find the plastic pouch of kitteh jollies on the car floor.

Come the morning, I'm getting dressed. I drop an article of clothing on the floor and stoop down to retrieve it.

And what do I see, under the bed? That plastic pouch of kitty toys! So that's what Gwenith and Huw had been up to when I found them lying on the bed so nonchalantly last night! The little peekers had pulled it out of the sack and had been playing with it already!

I guess I hadn't figured on the attraction of the teaser tail toy that's fixed on the outside the pouch.

But who could have figured that even four-legged children would get into their Christmas toys ahead of the day?

Ode to a Pink Tabby Kitten

I've written a poem on the ways and character of Gwenith, my pinky-yellow medium-haired tabby kitten.

WARNING: Egregious Sentimentality and Affected Archaisms Dead Ahead!
To My Capricious Kitty

O Gwenith fair, thou pink and coy,
How dost thou wend within my heart?
Flirtatious, clinging, shrinking, shy,
Thy feline ways a thing apart.

Thy pale and striped tabby fur,
Thy bib and belly white as dove,
Thy elfin face, thy plushy tail
Me call to give thee snuggly love.

And purring, purring like a mill!
Content thou seemst in all thou dost:
At play, at food, at mischief, too:
To pet thee seemeth only just!

But O! illusive as thou art!
Thine act denies thy winsomeness:
So quick eluding every touch,
So loath to brook the fond caress!

Thou might'st be tripping through the hall
Or crouching snug the stairs upon,
Or anywhere the house abroad:
I stoop to stroke--and thou art gone!

But let me lay me in my bed,
Or sit to work, then verily,
There art thou, Gwen, upon my lap,
My desk, my work, all over me!

Thou trammelst me at every turn!
I cannot see, thou block’st my view!
With kisses rousing me from sleep,
With paws that knock my plans askew!

No good nor use to sigh and groan,
For kittens walk in fancy’s ways;
And Gwenith fair will grow a cat,
And then I’ll mourn these wanton days.

Flirtatious, clinging, shrinking, shy,
Thy feline ways a thing apart,
O Gwenith fair, thou pink and coy,
How thou dost wend within my heart!

Not Such a Good Idea

What, pray tell, is that?

Dear reader, you well may ask.

Is it a blanket for a late-season picnic? A quick and easy way to kill the grass for a new garden bed? An insidious pattern fungus growing in my back yard?

No, it's the wet memory foam mattress topper from my own little bed. And it's the sign and evidence of an experiment gone wrong, of an idea Whose Time Had Not Yet Come.

Yesterday I did the wash. Rhadwen and her predecessor Didon always derived great amusement from "helping" me fold the laundry. Let's see if the kittens will like it, too!

So I brought them individually into the front bedroom, where I was working. Gwenith and Huw liked that. But I noticed they were more interested in the room than in diving under the sheets and towels and T-shirts.

Hey . . . Why not let both of them sleep in my room? It'd expand their territory and get them more familiar to this part of the house. True, that meant closing the door to keep out the dog and Rhadwen the big cat, but if they needed to pee or poo, they'd let me know, right?

Gwenith and Huw had a field day-- or night. Wonderful places to jump and climb and tunnel through! Unlimited fun with mirrors, windows, curtains, and bed rails! The frolic went on far past lights out.

But eventually all subsided into silence and sleep . . .

. . . . Until the dawn's early light, when I was roused by the sound of kitty claws going scritch, scritch, scritch in the sheet next to my shoulder. Simultaneously, I became aware of a strange wetness on the sheet, on my nightclothes, on me! The air was filled with the delicate odor of kitten pee, and my now wide-open eyes beheld no kittens on the bed, but a rapidly-spreading wet spot right next to me on what had been the clean white sheets.

Oh, p----! I guess they are too young to let me know when they need to go!

Instantaneous leap to action! Get the kittens back to their own room and their own litter box! Get out of the wet nightclothes! Strip the bed! Rinse out the mattress topper in the bathtub! Take a shower! Put the soaked bedding in the washer! Hurry, hurry, hurry!

So that's why the foam topper is out in the backyard killing the grass and theoretically getting dry. It'll be awhile, so I'll be bunking in the Kitten Room until future notice.

Free Range Kittens

The kennel I borrowed from my friends Hannah* and Steve* (which they borrowed from his parents) is a handy thing to have. It keeps the kitten paraphrenalia--food and water bowls, sleeping baskets, and litter box-- in one convenient spot.

But that doesn't mean the kittens needs to be kept in there.

So for the past few days I've left the kennel door open and they have free run of the bedroom. They do like hiding under the bed: stands to reason, they haven't totally gotten used to being here yet. But when I come in, in a second or two Rhys(?) will venture out, and after a minute or so more, there is Gwenith.

And let the games begin!