Presents from Santy Claws

I wasn't sure about this Santa Clause thing. He sees me when I'm sleeping? He knows when I'm awake?! He knows if I've been bad or good?!? This is supposed to be exciting?! Sounds pretty scary to me. O.o

I was getting all worried, but Dante told me not to because Santa only comes down chimneys and we don't have one. I had to take his word for it 'cause I don't know what a chimney is.

But I LOVE getting presents! I thought you all might like getting presents too. So here's some links to funny pet things and the three of us all dressed for the holidays!

Cat vs. Printer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSK1D3bZhRs

Dogs are silly (not like good kitties)
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html

Spanky


Dante


and Me!

The Trouble with Humans

So I imagine you're all wondering what my person has been up to since we last posted. The answer is "the usual." Big surprise there. She reads. She keeps letting TGWWGA hang around. She scratches my ears. But it wouldn't be "the usual" if she didn't find some way to be incredibly dorky. She may have managed to out do herself this time, too. She found out that the author of "The Trouble with Tribbles" was going to be in town for a talk and a book signing. Yay.

Since you probably have a life, you probably don't know what tribbles are or why they'd be trouble. I know I didn't. I still wish I didn't. Spanky says I have to tell you, though, or the post won't make any sense. Anyway, "The Trouble with Tribbles" is an episode of the show Star Trek. It's about a bunch of humans that travel around the galaxy. This sounded like it could be pretty cool at first. There are aliens! And laser pistol things! And space battles! BUT the show's from the 1960s which was forever ago and even with the laser pistol things it's mostly about peace and harmony and making new friends. Only nerds would want to watch something so old and boring.

Oh, and tribbles are these little alien things that pretty much purr. They don't have eyes or do anything. Just purr. And they don't like Klingons. I'm not explaining Klingons no matter what Spanky says.

Despite the obvious nerdiness, my person was ridiculously excited when she heard that this guy was going to be in town. She was so excited that she dropped what she was doing for the day (scratching my ears) so she could go. She says it was a really interesting and he talked about his writing, and that silly space show, and lots of nerds were there. Some of the nerds even dressed up like characters from the show. ><

The talk was at a museum that had a whole exhibit about the space show. A. Whole. Exhibit. Apparently, there are enough nerds to support this kind of thing. They had props and costumes from the show, too. This was very exciting for my person. She told me all about it when she got home. I tried to pretend to be asleep. It did not work.

After the talk, there was a reception that had food and drink like in the show. Spanky says "Ale" is a type of alcohol but my person says that there wasn't any alcohol in the drinks there. Any potential coolness this event might've had just went out the window. Again, my person thought it was exciting and took a picture of it with her friend's stuffed tribble. That's it at the top of the post. The grey thing is a tribble. I guess it looks okay. It could be fun to play with and gnaw on. Oh, now I'm being told it's not a cat toy (even though it looks like a cat toy) because the author signed it. He signed a toy. >< And this made it not a toy.

Oh, and TGWWGA says to tell you all that the sign next to the blue drink should read "Romulan Ale." I didn't think my opinion of him could get any lower, but it just did.

Mission at San Juan Capistrano

So what do you think of the new look? We decided it was time for a change so we asked Jennifer to show us some options. Edmund wanted one with birds in flight but I thought this one fit more with our blog's theme. Dante pretended not to be interested but I spied him peeking around the corner more than once. The young always think they are so clever!

However, I did not begin this post to tell you that our blog has a new background. I imagine you've already determined that for yourselves. I believe I have mentioned previously that Jennifer has a rather large number of relatives. They are forever getting underfoot. In any event, they all decided to come for a visit and the entire group went on numerous adventurers in the surrounding area. My feline compatriots have already written about a few of these and I shall be adding another one to the list: namely, the Mission at San Juan Capistrano.

The Mission at San Juan Capistrano was founded by a group of Franciscans in the late 1700's. It has been through many changes since then and most, if not all, of the original Mission buildings are no longer visible. The architectural of the remaining structures is quite beautiful, as you can see.

The grounds have been beautifully landscaped as well and feature native and non-native plants.

Although the Mission is now largely a living museum, mass is still held in its Serra Chapel. Jennifer did not wish to use flash photography in a church, so I am afraid there are no usable pictures of it for me to post. However, she did take a lovely shot of a side alter dedicated to Saint Peregrine.

Peregrine, as you may know, is the patron saint of cancer sufferers. Why, exactly, the Mission features a prayer room dedicated to this particular saint was not made clear to me.

I could not post about San Capistrano without mentioning the annual arrival of the swallows every March who build nests under the eves of the Mission buildings. As Jennifer neglected to take a single photograph of either a swallow or its nest, I am forced to post one from an Internet source.

This is the first time in the history of this blog that we have used someone else's photograph. The dear girl really must learn to be more observant.

She did, however, capture some lovely pictures of the fish in the Mission's fountains. There was a sign that forbade putting one's hands in the water as it might harm the fish and aquatic plants. It said nothing about paws, however.

Here fishy, fishy, fishy...

Look it how big that fish is! And that's just it's back! Whoa! I like to eat fishies, especially the kind that comes in a can, but I think maybe this fish could eat me. O.o

Spanky says that it isn't a fish. He says it's a whale and it most definitely does not eat kitties. I don't know, though. It lives in the water and has fins and a tail and last time I checked that's what fishies have. Also, it has to eat something. It's not going to live off of little flakes like the goldfish we had did. Dante just told me that I don't have to worry cause we're too far away from the water to worry about any fish that doesn't come in a can. Yay! Tuna fish! :D

Oh right. I'm supposed to be posting about the not-fish.

So, to see the big not-fish, Mommy and her family had to go on the ocean in a boat. I don't know why they wanted to go near that much water but sometimes humans are strange like that (even my Mommy). They wanted to see a whale but whales don't always tell people where they are going to be. You just have to be lucky enough to catch them.

They saw all sorts of cool stuff! Like dolphins!

Spanky says those are also not fish even if they look like fish. They are different not-fish than whales. So confusing! Why can't I just call them all fish? It would make things easier.

And then they saw a whale. Right by the boat!

Even though it's gray like me, it's called a blue whale. Blue whales are the biggest not-fish of all! Spanky says that they're the biggest mammals, too. When I asked him what a mammal was he told me that I was a mammal and so was Mommy and so was the Monster. Which is just silly. I don't look anything like the Monster! Also, I do not have fins like the not-fish (but I do have a tail).

Mommy also took some video of the whales and the dolphins. Since she was on the water, the camera goes up and down a lot but it's still pretty cool. You might also want to turn off the sound unless you want to hear Mommy and her sister talk about if the camera is on or not.

Dolphins!


Whale!

Lions and Tigers and Other Cool Cats

The cool cat would be me. *nod nod*

So lots of my person's family came to visit us this summer. They weren't really visiting us specifically, more like visiting Southern California. Which is good because we don't have room for that many people and I hate giving up my room. While they were here, they went on all sorts of adventures. Finally! Usually more of my person's relatives means more dorkiness but this time they actually did cool stuff. My person says that there's enough stories that us three have to share. Whatever. Edmund is ridiculously excited about his post. Something about a really big fish.

Anyway, one of their adventures was going to the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Usually, I don't like these types of things because they're educational, but this place was pretty cool. There's the usual stuff like lions:

I totally got my napping technique from them. My person also has this thing about ugly birds.

Apparently, these are super-endangered or something.

But the hands-down coolest part was a bus trip through this big open-air exhibit. The animals aren't in cages. They're just roaming with around each other like animals are supposed to. They do keep the eaters separate from the eaten, which is probably a good idea. This guy is a great big rhino and he's totally letting a antelope looking thing push him around!

Edmund tries to do that sometimes with our food bowl and I just ignore him. Dude! You're like four times his size! You can take him!

There was lots of other cool stuff, too! Like gorillas with wigs:

And baby elephants. My person thought they were adorable. I think they're funny looking.

So, way less lame than usual. She'll probably spend the next three months inside just to make up for it. *rolls eyes*

Dude! She did it again!!!

We've only posted like twice in the last couple of months and both posts were by Edmund. Edmund is cool and all but he's not the only cat here. I tried to tell her so I could post too, but oh no, she had papers to write and essays to grade and TGWWGA kept wanting to talk to her. Sheesh! What about us, huh? What about our blog?!?

Anyway, she's mostly done with school now. She still has some essays to grade and I'm doing my best to help her with them so that summer break can start (party!). Every time she opens the grade sheet, I hit some buttons for her. What student wouldn't want an R? Or maybe a Q? Everyone else want A's and B's and who wants to be like everyone else? Posers, that's who. She says the professor she's working for this quarter won't go for that kind of creativity but I don't know. Any guy who has his students watch Edward Scissorhands, Metropolis, and Akira sounds like someone who thinks outside the box to me.

Oh, I'm supposed to tell you that she's done taking classes. Apparently, she's not done with school just with the going to school part. Weird, I know, but that's what she says. It sounds like she'll be spending a lot more time around here for the next year studying for a big test. On one hand, that means she can scratch my ears more often and maybe I'll finally get to post more than once every few months. On the other hand, I'm not sure if less getting out of the house is what she needs. I'm pretty sure normal people go places.

Speaking of how weird my person is, last quarter she abandoned us to go to a science fiction conference. So what is she doing at the end of this quarter? Staying home and paying attention to me? No. Getting a life? Of course not. She's going to ANOTHER science fiction conference. That's right, two get-together's with other nerds in three months. There's really is no hope for her, is there?

At least she's taking TGWWGA with her this time. Wait, does that mean he's not TGWWGA anymore since he's going away? Whatever. I'm not changing the name now.

I'm ready for my close up!

I'm a movie star! No, really! Look!

That's me!

When we very first came to California, we stayed with Mommy's aunt and uncle. I don't really remember much cause I spent a lot of time hiding in the corner. I'd been trapped in a car with the Monster for four days! I was traumatized!

Anyway, the reason Mommy's aunt and uncle live in California is cause her aunt works for Dreamworks. She was so impressed by me and my frolicking (and hiding) that she asked Mommy to send her pictures and videos of me for a project her company was working on. I did my best to be adorable.

It had a very silly name- Shrek: The Final Chapter. What kind of a name is Shrek? Maybe it's a type of food? I wonder if it's yummy?

O.o Dante just said that Shrek is a monster. And not a sometimes-okay monster like our Monster but a real one! Eeek!

*peeks out from around the corner* Is it safe to come out now?

The Shrek movies all have a really cool cat character. He has boots! And a hat! And a Spanish accent! So cool! Why don't they name the movie after him instead of the monster? Who wants to go see a movie about a big, green ogre? Cats are much nicer and less scary. *nod nod nod*

For the new movie, the Dreamworks people wanted there to be even more of Puss in Boots to love. Just like me! And now he's on movie posters and commercials and the Internet and I'm famous! The first time Mommy saw the movie trailer on the television she picked me up so I could see it, too. He even has to roll around before he gets up like I do!

Mommy says that we're not sure how much of the stuff we sent they actually used and we didn't really send that much. They probably had pictures and stuff of other cats, too. But I don't care. Without me he would not be nearly as awesome. I'm a movie star!

I didn't go the premier cause Mommy said they wouldn't let her smuggle me in. But she wouldn't have had to smuggle me! Just hold me up next to the poster and they'd realize I was in the movie. I didn't know about the monster part, though, so maybe it's a good thing I didn't go. I would've been too scared. But you should all go! It may have a monster but it also has a cat with sword and boots and looks like me!

Eeeek!

This time Mommy left us but she didn't take the Monster with her. Instead she left us home alone with HIM!!! I hid under the bed a lot.

Even though I totally would've fit in Mommy's suitcase (she didn't need all those clothes, anyway), it's probably a good thing I didn't go. I thought she was just going to go to a nice hotel and meet nice people and have a nice time. She did that too, but while she was there she went with some of her friends to some place called Gatorland. Why?! Look at those teeth! They're huge!

Dante says that isn't really a gator, it's just a pretend gator mouth. But still! Big pointy teeth! I'm staying under the bed.

Anyway, I guess Gatorland has been around for like 50 years as a place where people come see alligators (gators is another word for alligator). 50 years is a long time! That's like a million years in cat years!

And it's full of alligators! Look!

Don't let those birds standing right by the gator fool you into thinking it's safe. Birds have wings. Kitties do not. Also, gators like water. They practically live in it! That's a bad sign right there.

There are even little bitty gators there. I might be able to beat up one of them (I have claws!), but there's like a million of them with a gazillion sharp little teeth!

While they were there, Mommy and her friends saw an alligator wrestling show. That's right. People actually wrestle alligators. Why would you do something like that?!? Mommy was smart and stayed on the other side of a railing and took pictures.

This just proves that Monsters are crazy. I don't care what Spanky says. They even taught the gators to jump up out of the water for food! O.o

This just has bad idea written all over it.

There's also a petting zoo at Gatorland that has deer and goats and stuff. I'm not sure if I like goats, but they seem nicer than gators. Less teeth. One of the deer did eat Mommy's friend's map, though. I didn't know maps were edible.

Mommy says she had fun, but I don't know. Wouldn't it have been even more fun to stay at the hotel and take a nap? Or even better, to stay at home and scratch my ears?

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar

Since we won't be able to post for awhile, I want to make sure I give a shout out to my friend Hammy. That's him in the picture. He stayed with us over Christmas Break while his people were out of town. It was pretty crazy having 4 cats in the house, but Hammy is cool so it was ok.

I wasn't sure at first if I was going to like him. He was a little too enthusiastic. I'm generally pretty easy going, but he came bounding up to me the first night and touched his nose to mine. Whoa! Too much, dude, too much. He was still pretty young, though, so it's understandable. I took him under my wing err.. paw and showed him the ropes and he settled down.

It took forever to get the others to like him. Edmund would just sit and meow at him. Edmund can meow really loud. Like hear him across the house loud. I think Edmund was worried that if me and Hammy were friends, I wouldn't be Edmund's friend anymore. Which was silly. But that's Edmund for you. Always worrying about stuff. I got him to see reason eventually and then we could all three play together.

Spanky never really warmed up to Hammy. Big surprise there. Spanky is so grumpy! He kept grumbling about "too many kittens" and "I'm not raising another whippersnapper." Srsly. Edmund and I aren't kittens! Anyway, Hammy learned to just avoid Spanky and it all was good.

Just to show you want a cool dude Hammy is, here he is on New Year's Eve in the liquor cabinet. I didn't even know my people had a liquor cabinet.


Even though it was New Year's Eve, we couldn't convince my person to give us any bubbly to ring in the new year. Lame! *eye roll*

P.S. My person picked out the title. She says it relates to Hammy's real name. Whatever. Hammy is a much cooler name than Hamlet.

It never ends!

My person has told me that this will probably the last time she can let us use the computer for awhile. Apparently, she has to write more papers or something. She just wrote papers! How can it be time to do it again?! Srsly not cool. Anyway, we did get to post some stuff. Not much, but it's better than the 4 months of nothing last time.

I would be more ok with this if it wasn't for her other reason for needing the computer. At the end of the term she's going to Orlando. At first I thought this was good because she's finally going on a real Spring Break. That would be so cool!

I shoulda known better.

She is going to Orlando for a conference on, get this, science fiction. Science fiction!!! What is wrong with her?!? Apparently, this is a big deal meeting for people who like to study science fiction. Why would you do that? Why get all the dorks together in once place? I mean, it gets them to leave the cool people alone, but all it really does is give them a chance to trade ideas on how to be even more dorky. Gargh!

*sighs* She is really excited about it, though. It means she's even more stressed out than usual, and I think it means we're going to get left with TGWWGA again. She says it will only be for a few days. I guess I can ignore him for that long if this trip is that important to her.

I am totally getting cat hair all over her stuff before she goes, though.

Umm...I don't think the floor is supposed to be squishy...

We've been having lots of adventures in California, but we didn't even have to leave the house for the last one! I love it when we stay here where my food dish is! Two weeks ago, Mommy came home and discovered that the living room and closet floor was all wet. A pipe had burst and was soaking everything! O.o

The Monster wasn't home so Mommy had to figure out how to turn off the water and move everything out of the way all by herself. I would've helped since I'm a good kitty, but my poor feet kept getting wet from all the water. Poor feet.

Apparently, to fix leaky pipes, you need to call lots and lots of other monsters. I'm glad they made the floor not squishy anymore, but I wish they hadn't been so scary. First, a monster came to fix the pipe. He said it would only be a few minutes but it took him two hours. That's a long time to hide under the bed! Meanwhile, another monster showed up to start drying the floor. He wasn't here long, but he left these great big fans behind. They were really loud and made the carpet move up and down. I did not like that all. The floor is supposed to stay still!

The fans had to stay on for days and days and once the floor was done, it was time to dry the walls. Apparently, there's something bad in our walls called asbestos so they had to take out all the wet parts instead of drying them. I wonder if asbestos is a type of monster? I was glad at first (no more fans!) but it turned out it meant that even more monsters had to come to our house. They sealed off the whole area with plastic and put on special suits and masks. Monsters are scary enough without masks!

Now that they're gone, there are all these fun holes in the wall! I can walk right into the closet even if the door is shut. Mommy did block off the crawl space under the stairs. I don't know why, though, it looked like a pretty fun place to play.

The closet is pretty awesome, but what's even better is that I can join Mommy in the bathroom whenever she closes the door with me on the other side. She was so happy to see me when I popped out from underneath the sink the first time, she jumped!

Nothing was ruined because Mommy caught it in time but lots of stuff, including my food dish, is upstairs now. It's great! I don't have to go downstairs and leave Mommy to eat my dinner anymore. Soon, there will be even more of me to love!

Spanky says that there is still more work to do downstairs. More monsters will have to come fix the walls and the carpet. I don't see why they want to fix the walls. Frolicking in the coat closet is fun!

P.S. That last picture is a picture of Spanky, not me (you can see Dante and me in the background). Mommy says I need to learn to be cute when she has the camera ready.

Yes, but where are the plums?

During the winter holidays, Jason's delightful mother, Lynn, came to stay with us. It was so wonderful to reminisce with her about my youth and the joys of being permitted outside. Oddly, she seems quite fond of Jennifer (something about keeping Jason decently clothed and fed) and refused to discuss the merits of indoor-outdoor living for felines. I know that Jason can be quite a handful, but I fail to see how that should impact my comings and goings.

On a happier note, Lynn is a champion cook and she and Jennifer spent a few days preparing various holiday dishes. Apparently, it is a tradition in Jennifer's family to prepare plum pudding to serve with the holiday meal. I had no idea her background contained such a delightful treat. Ah, plum pudding. A dessert immortalized by the great writers of the Victorian era! It has even found it's way into the words of the popular Yuletide tune "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." Although many people have heard of the dish, few know much about it. As Jennifer was kind enough to take pictures of the process I thought I would share some of my vast store of knowledge on the subject.

One of the most difficult steps is acquiring all of the necessary ingredients. Jennifer had to travel to several stores over the course of a week to find all of the supplies. One of the most difficult to locate was also the most important: suet. Suet is rendered beef fat and is used in plum pudding in much the same way lard or butter is used in other dishes. Unfortunatly, Jennifer failed to take any pictures of it, despite the effort she expended finding it, so I am unable to share any with you.

She did remember her camera at other points, however. As you can see, the recipe requires quite a few items and they all must be chopped before they are added to the mixture. Surprisingly, there are no plums in plum pudding. "Plum" is a British slang term for raisins and this recipe calls for two different kinds.

Once the the batter is prepared, it is put is a small heat-proof container. Because Jennifer did not have a pudding steamer (silly, girl), she had to wing the next few steps. She covered the small container with tin foil and a plate and placed it on a trivet inside her largest pot- a turkey roaster in this case.

She then poured boiling water into the roasting pan, placed the lid on, and placed a brick on top (I told you she was winging it).

After three hours of simmering the water and thereby steaming the pudding, the dish was finished! As you can see, it is not a pudding at all but rather a very dense cake. Why humans insist on calling it pudding instead of cake is an issue for another day.

Traditionally, a quantity of brandy is poured on top of the pudding and then lit on fire just prior to serving. It was quite a spectacular show! Pale blue flames are not easily photographed, however, so you will have to take my word for it. Jennifer was so shocked at the flames that she dropped the match on the pudding itself!

As a finishing touch, the still-warm pudding is served with a cream and brandy sauce that is quite delightful. Unlike the brandy in the pudding (and on the pudding) the brandy in the sauce is not cooked and therefore retains its potency.

A very merry Christmas indeed!

O M G

I just checked the dates and we haven't posted since September 1st. September 1st!!! That's like...one...two...three...a lot of months! That's ridiculous! Esp. since my person and TGWWGA actually did stuff. Some of it was even cool! Well, sort of cool. As cool as they're ever gonna get. *sigh*

Well, to be totally honest, they did stuff until my person's quarter started. Apparently she took really hard classes and had a lot of work to do for school. I didn't believe her at first. What could be more important than paying attention to me? But look at all those books! There's like a million of them! She ran out of room on her bookcase and had to start stacking them on the floor. Some of those stacks are almost as big as me! And if that wasn't bad enough, she took over the computer too! Personally, I think her teachers would've understood if she'd scratched my ears instead of writing papers, but you know how humans can be about paperwork. *rolls eyes*

Anyway, my person has promised us that we will be able to post more this quarter. I told her if she doesn't, I will totally get Edmund to puke on the bed.