Doubles

I'm a full fool, double "l", double "o".

Usually it's JJ who likes more, please, but somehow today despite the shiny sunrays my paws hurt, maybe from too much cool dirt. The vaulted ceilings and cool tiles are attractive features and fine selling points when it's 90 degrees out, but stay awhile and chill with me and then we'll see...

Harry Potter's on my mind, still obsessing about curious parallels and odd couplings/doublings/deja vu things...

The CHAMBER OF SECRETS is both a cave far beneath Hogwarts, possibly the Lake, and one's mind (Riddle's and HP's, actually).

Huh! That just made me think: Riddle's mind holds the answers to the Horcrux riddles, but Harry's mind holds the answers to the Godric's Hollow riddle that is driving me personally crazy... and DD's mind seemed to positively teem with secrets, so much so that he needed to use the pensieve regularly to sift through them all, besides which DD clearly spent much time wading through the chambers of other people's minds mining their secrets in search of the answers to TR's secrets... I think I'm chasing my tail, but it's fun: Wheeeeee!

Both Bellatrix and McMonagall, the two female right hands of the two most awe-inspiring wizards alive, consider the possibility that their respective leaders may have been mistaken about Snape...

The HALF-BLOOD PRINCE is both Snape, half the son of Eileen Prince and half the son of a Muggle, and Tom Riddle, if we see him as the half-blood last uncrowned heir to Slytherin and aspirant to world dictatorship.

In the second chapter, "Spinners End", Snape protects Narcissa from the eavesdropping Wormtail. In the twenty-seventh chapter, he protects Harry from himself. As Dumbledore has been, so is Snape: a guide, a counselor, but not a confidante...

Must ponder more...

Cool Pain

I press my nose against the cool pane
Fog lingers today
My paws burn with cold upon the tile
Cool pain throbs
I gather my legs into a ball and tuck my head
Hug elusive warmth
Familiar comfort seems almost foreign
Half-held memories
Sensory input almost lost in recent waves of heat
I search dreams
Voices echo tight and hollow beating upon my ears
Who's there?
I jog double-time as panic clutches shut my throat
Fear startles stifles

And then I wake
And press my nose against the cool pane
To feel the pain of cold creeping painfully permeating

Responsibility Is Freedom

All my life I've wanted to have the freedom to control my own choices, but now I find that such choices are the greatest restraints I have ever encountered. Once external restrictions are lifted, there is no one left to blame for things not being exactly as one wants... except oneself. Against whom or what can one rail if all choices are one's own?

Dumbledore has repeatedly told Harry that life is about choices and that one is what one has chosen. Without the Dursleys to constrain Harry, without school rules to restrict him, without Dumbledore to guide him or withhold information from him, on whom will he foist blame when things go wrong? There is no one but himself to hold accountable for his actions, at which point Hermione will need to tell him not to blame himself (when she isn't trying to deal with the overgrown infant that is Ron).

Adulthood is about stepping up and accepting responsibility for the consequences of all those choices one makes in life, whether to act or not to act. Arrested development in early adulthood does not absolve one of such responsibility, though perhaps at the other end of life it should...

Thoroughly Warmed House

Wednesday night Aunty Carol came
Since then nothing has been the same
She filled the guest room with her things
Ran JJ ragged chasing strings
Shopped and chopped and fried and baked
Pureed vegetables and tidbits staked

Saturday dawned bright and clear
Heat sooned permeated and started to sear
Everything and everyone
Until sunset when began the fun
People came and rang the front doorbell
Laughed and talked about what I won't tell
Ate and drank well into the night
Till the road home was a blurry sight

Sunday morning brought more of the same
Sunshine waking before anyone called my name
All too soon the humans went out
Across the Bay while I stayed to pout
Came back late that night all fagged
Carrying shopping trophies bagged
Stayed up late again to pack
Cuz Aunty Carol had to go back

Monday dawned finally bringing fog
But I slept on like a log
Car was loaded and Aunty went away
Though JJ wanted her to stay
Human came back and joined me in bed
Meant to work but slept instead

In Search of a Muse (Ment)

It's a fuzzy furry day
I got nothing much to say
My bro's been cut
He hurts somewhat
The sky's all grey all day

Aunty Carol's come to town
We're gonna get down
Gonna get locked up
Like an untrained mutt
Gotta make something brown

Doggerel's all this cat's got to say
Cuz nobody's letting him out to play
The sunlight's gone
From my lawn
Human's goin' across the Bay

HBP's great, Melissa said
So I sat down and got it read
Draco's a goof
Trying to be aloof
And Dumbledore's dead

But DD's a phoenix buried on the land
And JKR's interview tips her hand
Her silence suggests false lines of thought
Over which there'll be many hours fought
And a few irate posters banned

But I'm just a cool cat locked in a house
With nothing to pounce except my toy mouse
So I'll sit and sleep and dream of meat
Then prowl about and smell some feet
Until I hear my human grouse

Ramblings

It's hard, so hard to resist spending the whole day here at the computer thinking and talking about J.K. Rowling's most recent publication, The Half-Blood Prince, but things are moving and shaking in preparation for the House Warming party this weekend. The first guest is arriving tomorrow night from home, so the mad scramble is on.

I need to get all the rest I can while my human terrorizes JJ and tears around our new abode. Hiding from strange, invading humans can be such hard work, don't you know.

My fog blanket followed my human home across the Bay last evening and now I snuggle down, comfortably ensconced in, on, under, around my favorite beds. Later, when I am more rested (and done reading this HBP under my covers), I will be ready to discuss it with you, if you like.

Weird Weekend

What a weekend! I can't believe my human thought it was for reading! Well, we cleared up that misunderstanding, didn't we? All right, I had to enlist JJ to help me, but that's the kind of insanity that prevailed. It took doubleteaming to clarify what should have been a self-evident truth: the human belongs to me... er, us.

Friday night is when it all began. My human has been staying up past the designated bedtime, so at first I didn't think anything of it. Then, however, two hours after everything should have settled down for the evening, the first oddity occurred: My human got up, got dressed, and slipped out. At that hour!?!? Of course I was perplexed.

When the human came back forty minutes later, instead of coming to bed, another strange thing occurred. My human went to the opposite side of the house, turned on the lights, and began reading. Naturally I was upset. How are we supposed to assume our sleeping spots until the human is settled? So I did what I had to do: I climbed, I curled, I purred, I rumbled, I even sat on the newly opened pages. All this did get my human's attention and I did get a lovely rub. Satisfied, I curled up in the book and went to sleep. It must have been an hour later when I awoke, found that the human was still reading, and finally gave up and went to bed myself, leaving JJ to do what he could.

Sometime before dawn my human and JJ finally came to bed. While I was relieved, I was also a little peeved that JJ had evidently succeeded where I had not. It didn't matter, though, because the human finally settled down and went to sleep.

All too soon it was time for breakfast. I fully expected my human to be a reluctant riser after that late night, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was not the case. Breakfast, however, was followed by more couch-sitting and reading. JJ and I arranged shifts, prepared to spend a long day trying to disrupt the human. (We're more accustomed to blocking the computer screen...)

Our human, however, fooled us and went out, returning hours later with large, mysterious boxes that turned out to be furniture from IKEA. We were subjected to more banging and clanging, but at least that was interesting. After dark mysterious flickering lights appeared in the courtyard, but we were not allowed out to explore.

After all that activity, I was sure this would be an early night, but I was wrong. My human settled onto the couch again for another evening of late-night reading! I did what I could, but it seemed a hopeless task. Finally I gave up and went to bed. JJ joined me around midnight. Sometime in the early morning hours before dawn my human finally joined us.

And still my human's mind was seething, still focusing on that book. It made sleeping quite impossible. Sunday came and with it the usual hubbub of activity. My human went out early and did not return until nearly dark. There was more construction, followed by more reading, again, past midnight.

Finally, however, I sensed that my human had moved back from the couch to the computer. I could sense that this madness was over, at least for now. Who is this "Harry Potter" anyway? Grrr...

Lazy Daze

See, now this is how summer is supposed to be spent: lazing about, occasionally moving between the bed of ferns and mosses in the courtyard and the bed my human tries to appropriate at night.

The sounds of construction have become commonplace, as have the sounds of my human fumbling about, banging and clanging, occasionally dropping things, letting things drip, and generally puttering about. JJ has his game again and I am only occasionally disturbed by the sense of focused thought, though that is an admittedly rare event. Life is good.

Though the fog seems to have lifted, the daze lingers on, a pleasant, peaceful atmosphere of tranquility perpetuated . . . or is that perpetrated?

I hear a bird calling, a wasp buzzing, life taunting me in all its fullness and challenge. What am I doing just sitting here licking my balls, I mean paws?

Catspaw -- Interruption Over: Life Goes On

Going out
Is no big deal
It's just another room
That's for real
Four walls three doors
Nothing to see
Don't know why I was trippin'
Guess that's just me
Nothing to see
Nowhere to go
Just green grass
They expect me to mow
Or chew up faster
Than I can consume
I'm not JJ
Who eats then zoom
He sits there hacking
Up everything he's eaten
While I patiently wait
Knowing he's beaten
I'll pounce him daily
Make no mistake
He's my little brother
Just a little cupcake
I own that Boy
And I'll make him rue
The day he decided
To stick to me like glue
He follows me in
He follows me out
But I'm so slick
Without a doubt
I own this place
Now we've moved here
I'll make them pay
And that right dear
You think you can
Transplant me somehow
Without me
Making you kowtow
I chose you
You belong to me
With companionship comes
My personal fee

My Human's Lament

Much as I wanted the heavy lifting to end
I knew that worse was just around the bend
Now that I've sorted things into each room
Shuffling paper is my new doom

Out in the courtyard the sun blazes bright
Wind rustles the grass and everything seems right
Sounds of splashing and laughter invite me out
But I stay here sorting and try not to pout

I've surfed the net and chatted with friends
Waiting for tomorrow when the HP suspense finally ends
Music wafts on the air as does a barbecue scent
But I sit here sorting because of time ill-spent

The capellini is cooked, the meatballs are done
Please let me out into the westering sun
I promise to play with you all day long
If only this sorting doesn't go wrong

Paper is fun to cover with ink;
Why can't I just file with a simple link?
Why must these folders get in my way,
Trapping me here sorting all day?

Why did someone scramble these files
And tangle these cords that go on for miles?
I just want to sit in the shade with a drink
And not have to worry and wonder and think

Where are those records, those jackets, those sleeves?
Why do I care what anyone believes?
So what if I get audited down the road
By some puny governmental I.R.S. toad?

I didn't say that, I didn't mean it
Don't take my house, just wait a bit
At least let me finish unpacking my things
Before you send me leaping through your paper trail rings

I'm just a nobody, nobody special
Ask me anything: I'm really quite dull
I'll be quiet and get back to my sorting
You won't find me running about and cavorting

My furry sons are the ones who like to leap
At all kinds of insects when they're not asleep
I'll just sit here filing until I'm all done
Wading through boxes that weigh half a ton

Unexpected Chaos

I was resting on my bed this morning after a moderately strenuous workout terrorizing JJ, (it's my job and I'm quite good at it,) when the peace was abruptly shattered by the sounds of power tools outside every window. I raced around the house, trying to determine the source of all the madness, (seeking refuge at the same time, I admit it,) to no avail. The noise was everywhere, escape nowhere. I thought my world was ending; when it didn't, I would go mad.

Hours later, (it seemed like eternity,) the noise finally stopped. My human suggested a lunch break, and so I've spent the afternoon in mortal dread of the chaos resuming. Fortunately, however, except for the dread sounds of sweeping, the madness seems to have ended. Somehow it seems to have taken with it my mad desire to mount JJ (don't ask).

Now we lie, JJ and I, in companionable rest and mutual comfort here on the couch, confident that our human will protect us, or at least keep us company, should the madness begin again. And yet, the unidentified terror lurks just outside, waiting for us, for me to let down my guard again. CONSTANT VIGILANCE: I dare not become complacent again in this strange place that is evidently now my home, at least for now. CONSTANT VIGILANCE: a healthy paranoia is not so high a price to pay for security... is it?

Sunshine and Shade

Be wary of what you desire:
I sought warmth but found fire
The blanket of fog
That starts each day
Is burnt off too easily
On this side of the Bay
The flies I would chase
Keep a sluggish pace
But the heat puts me to sleep
And chasing will have to keep
Until blessed dark returns
To ease the concrete burns
The lines of rhyme
I would have alternate
Are dead from this heat
And cannot wait
So my rhyme scheme
Is not what I dream
Just as world events
Heard of from overseas
Tell of trouble
That a normal person flees
So dreams of glory and terror alike
May prove both less and more
Than the average viewer/listener/reader
May actually look for
We'd best deal with what is at hand
In our own lives
For tomorrow brings new tidings
And terror drives
Sense before fear
And courage before threat
Unless we cease wailing
And put forth our best efforts yet
For all we can do
Is meet each new day
Leave tomorrow's worries
And deal with today's play

Carpe Diem

On this day of great consternation and distress each person faces the same challenge: to go on with life obliviously, to wring hands helplessly, or to seize this opportunity and all others that present themselves to move forward.

Tony Blair said this is an opportunity for the English people in general and Londoners in particular to show the world their character. As their elders did during WWII, so the present generation has a chance to bear down and move forward or to bow down under the crushing weight of terror.

One may question which way forward is, but surely there is honor in standing firm and not being stampeded by what in boxing parlance would be considered a feint. The flip side of that, of course, is that the potential for worse clearly exists as well.

Life's Too Short

The sun was shining on the yard
Shining with all its might
I wondered if it felt as hard
As it was glowing bright

JJ and I were sitting at ease
Convinced that the doors would stay shut
When suddenly, as if to tease,
The screen opened; but on what?

Hesitant at first,
Soon bolder I grew
With curiosity I'd burst
Exploring so much new

Some of these plants
I'd swear I know
There's every chance
I've watched them grow

Then there were trees
That I'd never before seen
New insects to tease
And fresh grown grass so green

The sun was so hot
The ground so cool
And many a new pot
With which to fool

All too soon it ended;
The hose came out
The fun was suspended
Amidst a rout

JJ remained, unable to get back
While the hose splashed his fur
As he dodged the attack
Before ducking around a corner

The screen slammed shut
He was safely in the house
JJ sat and licked his butt
Too excited to grouse

Another Sunny Day

It's another sunny day
Seems here it's always that way
So why aren't we allowed to go out
And check out what that courtyard is all about?
Why can I only scale my human?
Am I no longer the favored son?
Why does that roof beckon so invitingly there?
Why will the human this great outdoors not share?

This place is so silent and still
Except when I run;
Then there are sounds to disturb my fun...

Sounds I hear that make me start:
The sound of my human making a fart
The sound of a child racing a cart
The sound of an auto dropping a part
The sound of the nearby transbay B.A.R.T
The sound of a speeding feathered dart
The sound of the oven baking a tart
The sound of my own pitterpattering heart

Celebrations

Today the United States demonstrates in truly ostentatious fashion that we as a citizenry have money to burn as we celebrate the official birthday of our nation. From the most bombastic publicly sanctioned aerial displays to the seemingly innocuous sparklers twirled by timid children of all ages, people gather together to raise the air pollution quotient, challenge sound limitations, and generally "rock the house". Is there anything more American than doing all we can to defy the boundaries we otherwise enforce on others in an ironic attempt to dictate to the world what is best for the global majority?

Today an acquaintance/friend invited a select group over for the standard American barbecue that included a moment of silence as we raised glasses to the memory of a mother who passed on just one year ago today. As with this country, the daughter with difficulty attempted to articulate the love/hate relationship that is now too late to mend.

Inherent in such relationships is the vague understanding that the person has been loved though the actions could not be approved. So it is with the United States. Today in particular voicing disapproval or dissatisfaction with the leadership seems heretical, yet at the very heart of this nation's founding lie the right and the responsibility to do just that when the leadership seems misguided.

And yet, our national experiences with Vietnam have made so many so wary of criticizing those who lay their lives on the line, even as we wonder what those in charge must be thinking, or even if they are...

So as we celebrate the birth of our nation amidst the sounds and sights that can revive memories of shellshock and do, in fact, evoke decades of memories of asthma and sinus challenges, are we in fact celebrating the ongoing opportunities for capitalistic exploitation, or dare we recall with impunity our civic rights and responsibilites so eloquently articulated centuries ago, paid for in blood, leeching away today with but a whimper in the name of "security"?

Flora et Fauna

Like showy people, I intensely dislike showy flowers. They're large, smelly, messy, and ephemeral; and yet, I cannot help but notice the color they have added amidst the quieter, cooler greens that have been brought here from my former home. They provide counterpoints of interest among the sometimes all too familiar, more somber shades of green to which I am accustomed. They disturb my sense of balance even as they intrigue me with their foreignness. Their leaves have different shapes, their flowers are so much more vivid and attention-demanding. Birds, bees, and insects swarm around them, eager to be about some unknown business with these colorful characters. How's a fellow to concentrate with so much going on? Hm... maybe I should look into these things myself...

Escape from Stepford

On the road again
Exploring new places
Seeing new faces
Making connections
Chancing rejections
Trying different food
According to mood

Examining buildings and juxtaposed spaces
Imagining long-lost traces
Of people and things and events long ago
When friend stood by friend against common foe
In a windswept street
Packed down by feet
Of thousands of laborers seeking a future
Only to be treated like some mangy cur

Thoughts go off wandering as a train rolls by
The novelty causes imagination to fly
Until attention deficiency causes a U-turn
As impatient riders the wait do spurn
And the need for speed
Leads to a more modern deed
Racing troopers
Those roadway poopers
Pure folly that

Space

Space has been described as the final frontier, but frontier days are a thing of the past, in this country and in this new dwelling place.

Too much space leaves one feeling isolated, alone, abandoned, at risk. Small spaces, on the other hand, provide definition, familiarity, comfort. Then there is lack of space, which is what is rapidly being achieved in the small, defined spaces initially available and comforting. Be wary of what you desire...

There is an open space filled with plants, bounded by doors and walls, that has been enticing me since our arrival here a week ago today. Today, however, my human somehow caused rain to fall through the sunshine, splashing the plants, the ground, the windows, the walls; it was startling. Fortunately, I could see that my human was causing it, so my concern was (marginally) less than it might otherwise have been.

The day's events were topped by curious booming sounds at twilight. I'm not sure what caused those sounds, but there is a sense in the air that they were but the first of more to come. What is happening? I must mount guard over this new space and be alert in the coming days...

Back and Back

A back is a more fragile thing than one would normally imagine. I assume, for instance, that my human's back was designed specifically for me as my personal saddle and, generally speaking, that is true. Recently, however, things have been changing. That back on which I depend has begun to get quite bumpy and has developed a disquieting habit of straightening to a vertical position well before I am ready to dismount. Now what, I ask you, is up with that?

My human, normally so reliable and attentive, has been sadly neglecting both JJ and me. Evidently it has not been enough to uproot us from our home of three years. For the past several weeks we have been abandoned early and late, left to our own devices in this strange though admittedly fascinating new place. When the human has returned, there have been familiar smells mixed with disconcerting amounts of dust and dirt, all rolled together with the new smells to which we are gradually becoming accustomed. The worst of it, of course, is that the arms in front of that slackening back have become similarly untrustworthy, buckling prematurely and even unexpectedly.

On the positive side, there are new bookshelves of varying heights across which I am able to travel around a room. Better yet, JJ cannot reach them... There are hallways, too, down which to race, and corners around which to pounce. The pouncing here is particularly fine, though not as much fun without the human to witness... If only the human would stay with us more, perhaps I would not be so eager to return home, though I do miss the cool fog that so often blankets my world.

So there's my human's back and there's no going back, or so it seems. I wait and I watch, but the dreaded "Kitty Eater" arrived today, a strong indication that this is meant to be a stay of some duration. In fact, almost everything from home seems to be here, everything but my beloved fog.

And yet, there is an enticing garden courtyard here. Once I managed to get out into it, but the human became so concerned that I returned to the confines of the building. Someday, if I am well-behaved, I expect to be able to explore that sun-dappled pavement encircled with a tantalizing mixture of familiar and unfamiliar plants, a veritable jungle over twice the space to which I am accustomed. Then there is the lure of all the grassy knolls outside the many windows here. Yes, there is much to explore, much to stimulate and keep me awake after my long hazy nap in my comforting fog.