DEFINITIONS OF ROMANCE


For those of you who aren’t familiar with the romance genre (like, say, all the guys on the blog), here are some definitions to consider, if you wish, in the BET ME discussion. They should help you to figure out, for example, why Pride and Prejudice is a romance novel and Gone with the Wind isn’t.

1. From the Romance Writers of America website:

Romance fiction is smart, fresh and diverse. Whether you enjoy contemporary dialogue, historical settings, mystery, thrillers or any number of other themes, there's a romance novel waiting for you!Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally-satisfying and optimistic ending.

A Central Love Story — In a romance novel, the main plot centers around two individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as he/she wants as long as the relationship conflict is the main focus of the story.

An Emotionally-Satisfying and Optimistic Ending — Romance novels are based on the idea of an innate emotional justice—the notion that good people in the world are rewarded and evil people are punished. In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.Once the central love story and optimistic-ending criteria are met, a romance novel can be set anywhere and involve any number of plot elements. These settings and distinctions of plot create specific subgenres within romance fiction.

Click here to better understand the subgenres within romance.

2. In A Natural History of the Romance Novel, scholar Pamela Regis offers a slightly more elaborate structural definition of the romance novel. Writes Regis:

The romance novel is a work of prose fiction that tells the story of the courtship and betrothal of one or more heroines. All romance novels contain eight narrative elements:

A definition of society, always corrupt, that the romance novel will reform;

The meeting between the heroine and hero;

An account of their attraction for each other;

The barrier between them;

The point of ritual death (i.e., when all seems lost and they will never get together);

The recognition that fells the barrier (new information or the like);

The declaration of the heroine and hero that they love each other;

Their betrothal.

As Regis writes elsewhere, in a post to the RomanceScholar listserv, "These can occur in any order, each can be doubled or multiplied almost endlessly, each can occur 'off' and be reported rather than dramatized."

3. Here is a link to Teach Me Tonight, academics blogging on romance, in which Eric Selinger summarizes and glosses what Northrop Frye had to say on the subject:

http://teachmetonight.blogspot.com/2006/06/frye-on-romance.html

When Frye talks about “romance,” he is thinking primarily of medieval romance and its near relatives: the likes of the Arthurian legends, The Faerie Queene, and William Morris. (I would add in Tolkien.) In his theory, each mode has six elements, and three of them overlap with the next genre before and after. Romance overlaps with myth and fantasy on one side, and comedy on the other. He also considers it an aristocratic genre, which explains why the heroines of historical romance novels always wind up married to dukes and earls and the heroines of Harlequin Romances get billionaires and sheikhs. If one examines the definitions of the romance novel, most of them fit Frye’s framework very nicely.

4. And finally, here is a comment from Mercedes Lackey, who writes fantasy which usually contains a romance element, from the preface to her latest novel The Snow Queen, one of a fairy-tale themed series published by Luna, the fantasy/SF line of Harlequin Books. She is talking about fairy tales and fantasy, but her remarks apply equally aptly to romance novels. After commenting on the fact that the past year had not been a good one for her, with an assortment of losses and injuries, she continues:

Soldiering on, the one thing I kept telling myself was that in all of this, I would get affirmations that people needed fantasy. When their lives were horrible, they always had a happily-ever-after to curl up with and make the world go away for a while. Heaven knows I certainly did. And I would hear that over and over from others—sitting in hospital waiting rooms or in hospital beds themselves, hiding in their bedrooms, finding a spot in the dorm where they could get away from roommates, in between job interviews…they would tell me they read to get away.

Dorothy L. Sayers used to say that mystery stories were the only moral fiction of the modern world—because in a mystery, you were guaranteed to see that the bad got punished, the good got rewarded and in the end all was made right.

I’d like to think that fantasy does the same thing. It reminds us that this is how it should be; and maybe if we all put our minds to it a little more, this is how it will be. The good will be rewarded. The bad will be punished. Sins will be forgiven.

And they will live happily ever after.

While this blog is intended primarily for those intending to participate in the Bet Me discussion on Evil Editor’s blog, anyone is welcome to comment.

HEA? No Way, José!

I have been spending a lot of time lately on blogs and forums for romance novels, and I find it often mentioned, as we all no doubt have already noticed, that they frequently take their themes from fairy tales--Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast being probably the most frequent inspirations. But it is my theory that there are three stories which, as given, CANNOT POSSIBLY have a Happy Ever After ending. I intend to discuss them, and you can, too. In order to keep people reading, I'm going to do it as a series.

1. Rumpelstiltskin

We all know the story, but here's a refresher, with helpful notes: http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/rumpelstiltskin/index.html
Whether the instigator of the spinning challenge is a boastful miller, a boastful miller's daughter, or an embarrassed miller lying about his lazy daughter's domestic skills, the rest of the setup is the same: the king puts her in ever-larger rooms full of straw, telling her to spin gold or die; the little man helps her, demanding her first-born as payment; she marries the king, the little man demands the baby, the name-guessing game, and the end of Rumpelstiltskin. A regular fairy tale, right?

No. Consider that from the very beginning, the king threatens her with death, not because she's done something wrong but if she can't do something that no one else can do, either. And he marries her only because of the gold, not for love or her virtue or her beauty or any similar traditional fairy-tale motive.

This is NOT the recipe for Happy-Ever-After. She must be scared spitless of him. Even after marriage, she must dread the moment when he says, "Darling, we're running short of gold again...." Even in the version where she's lazy, she'd have to be dead stupid not to see that it's NOT good to be the Queen when the King is a homicidal miser.

I have seen a few versions in which there is a believable happy ending. Vivian Vande Velde has a whole volume of Rumpelstiltskin stories with various takes on the tale. The happy endings I've seen all, without exception, involve changing the premises of the story in some way. The most common is to have the Rumpelstiltskin figure turn out to be an elven prince in disguise, or a magician of some sort, and the girl dumps the King and goes off with him instead. In a few, she just runs off before she can be forced to marry the King. Sometimes it turns out he was under an evil spell and didn't want to kill her at all. And in one of Vande Velde's, the test was made up by the king to scare off females pursuing him and never intended to be used at all.

The only bridegroom I can think of that's worse than this is Scheherazade's, who is already a serial killer by the time she marries him.

I have a definite bias towards stories with a moral, where virtue is rewarded and evil soundly punished--or at least reformed. There is no moral here at all--the girl does nothing to deserve to become Queen, and the King is not reformed or in any way made to feel that his death threats were wrong. In many fairy tales there is a fairy or animal helper, who rewards the protagonist for his or her kindness in rescuing or in some other way helping it--the bird caught in a snare, the ants whose anthill is about to be flooded, and so on. Sometimes they simply appear because of her goodness, or because of some supernatural protector, like the animals in the various versions of Cinderella. The moral here is that goodness is rewarded by goodness. Rumpelstiltskin is not a kindly helper but has his own agenda: getting hold of the baby prince. And the Queen, once she knows she'll win the guessing game, toys with him by guessing wrong at first. Rumpelstiltskin/Tom Tit Tot is often interpreted as a demonic creature, not a real dwarf in the sense of an earth elemental type or a different species, like Snow White's dwarves. Nobody in this story comes off well, and the baby will probably grow up to be Jack the Ripper, like Prince Albert Victor.

So, have you seen, or can you imagine, any played-straight version of Rumpelstiltskin that has a believable happy ending?

The Cats Respond to the Rules

1. Gourmet cat food is not an entitlement.

Oh, yeah? Talk to the paw.

2. It's MY bed. You are not entitled to more than half of it, no matter how much you can stretch out.

All comfy flat surfaces are the property of cats. This is a law of nature and of nations. Move your feet.

3. Synchronized washing of one another's faces is cute. Synchronized hacking up of hairballs is not.

How about synchronized jumping from the top of the bureau onto the human’s bad knee? How about THAT, huh? What have you got to say to that, two-legs?

4. Wait till the human's back is turned before you lick your sister's butt.

Why? It’s a spectator sport. And we don’t understand why you won’t participate.

5. My food is not for cats. My drink is not for cats. My meds are not for cats.

Anything we can get our greedy little paws on is by definition “for cats.” Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to get hold of it, right? Law of nature again, pal.

6. Don't make nice when the cat from next door comes to the back window. He's a homosexual rapist.

He doesn’t live there any more. We now spend our time staring out the window at StalkerCat.

7. Stop being nicer to Bruce than you are to me, just because he's the one who delivers the bags of cat food.

Hey, we like guys! We like James, too. And what have YOU done for us lately?

8. Plaintive Siamese meows are just plain distracting. Please print your messages, on one side of the paper only, if you have something you must say.

Again, talk to the paw. Or read the memos we leave on the computer when you’re out of the room.

9. Stop staring at me when I'm on the john. I don't come and stare at you when you're in the litter box.

Yeah, but you’re funny-looking. And now that Aliera has learned how to lock herself in the bathroom, it’s the only entertainment going on in there.

10. GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WASTEBASKET!

If you don’t want the stuff any more, why SHOULDN’T we help ourselves to it? Mean old human-in-the-manger!

11. When I am trying to take a nap, or deeply asleep, it is not the time for cat rugby, feet-eating, or “I’m going to yowl at you till you toss the toy for me.”

We took a vote on this. You lost, two to one.

12. Honestly, it really IS possible to play with a toy without ripping all the feathers off it and chewing them to bits.

Sure—but this way we get more new toys.

13. I appreciate the sentiment, really I do; but it is unnecessary to deposit any more Styrofoam pellets on my bed. If I wanted to sleep among Styrofoam pellets, I’d be living in a cardboard box.

Humans have no concept of the appropriate interior décor for a household run by cats. We are doing our best to educate you.

14. You might try exerting yourself occasionally to CATCH the bug, instead of just staring at it in a bemused manner.

Only if you can guarantee that it tastes like a Sheba duck dinner.

15. If you keep making phone calls by stepping on the speakerphone button, you’re going to have to pay for them yourselves.

Hah! Little do you know that we have your AT&T credit card…and we know how to use it.

16. When you yowl for people food like chicken or cheese, and I give you some, you do NOT walk away and leave it crudding up the dish.

We’re female and have the inalienable right to change our minds about anything and everything.

17. Don't go after the people food while the people are still eating it!

But once we take it away from you, you’re not eating it anymore. So what’s the problem?

18. The yard guy and the pool guy are not your long-lost relatives and do not need to be greeted as such. They are outdoor people; you are indoor cats.

We are going to make it out there one of these days, and we’ll need allies against the other neighborhood cats. And, as we’ve said before, we like men.

19. If you’re going to make yourself comfortable on the desk in front of the monitor, LIE DOWN! I need to be able to see what I’m writing.

Shut up and pet us.

20. To quote an old cartoon, never, never, never think outside the box.

No answer—just cats rolling around on the floor laughing their asses off.

THE RULES FOR CATS

THE RULES FOR CATS

I wrote to a vet friend of mine from an online language forum: “I need for you to write a letter to my cats, on official stationery, with all your degrees and honors listed, to set out the Rules for Cats, because they won't listen to me.”

He didn’t comply, just posted a few jokes, so I’ll have to do it myself:

1. Gourmet cat food is not an entitlement.

2. It's MY bed. You are not entitled to more than half of it, no matter how much you can stretch out.

3. Synchronized washing of one another's faces is cute. Synchronized hacking up of hairballs is not.

4. Wait till the human's back is turned before you lick your sister's butt.

5. My food is not for cats. My drink is not for cats. My meds are not for cats.

6. Don't make nice when the cat from next door comes to the back window. He's a homosexual rapist.

7. Stop being nicer to Bruce than you are to me, just because he's the one who delivers the bags of cat food.

8. Plaintive Siamese meows are just plain distracting.
Please print your messages, on one side of the paper only, if you have something you must say.

9. Stop staring at me when I'm on the john. I don't come and stare at you when you're in the litter box.

10. GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WASTEBASKET!

11. When I am trying to take a nap, or deeply asleep, it is not the time for cat rugby, feet-eating, or “I’m going to yowl at you till you toss the toy for me.”

12. Honestly, it really IS possible to play with a toy without ripping all the feathers off it and chewing them to bits.

13. I appreciate the sentiment, really I do; but it is unnecessary to deposit any more Styrofoam pellets on my bed. If I wanted to sleep among Styrofoam pellets, I’d be living in a cardboard box.

14. You might try exerting yourself occasionally to CATCH the bug, instead of just staring at it in a bemused manner.

15. If you keep making phone calls by stepping on the speakerphone button, you’re going to have to pay for them yourselves.

16. When you yowl for people food like chicken or cheese, and I give you some, you do NOT walk away and leave it crudding up the dish.

17. Don't go after the people food while the people are still eating it!

18. The yard guy and the pool guy are not your long-lost relatives and do not need to be greeted as such. They are outdoor people; you are indoor cats.

19. If you’re going to make yourself comfortable on the desk in front of the monitor, LIE DOWN! I need to be able to see what I’m writing.

20. To quote an old cartoon, never, never, never think outside the box.

Dueling Felines

Dueling Felines

My cats fought a duel last night on the foot of my bed.

I don’t know what else you’d call it. It certainly wasn’t a real catfight; nobody yowled, hissed, or growled; and as far as I could tell (which wasn’t very), nobody’s fur stood on end. Aliera didn’t even have her ears laid back, though Sethra did. Everything was very formal, almost ritualistic.

It started with Aliera lying down, and Sethra sitting in front of her. Sethra raised her paw, very slowly and tentatively, then slapped Aliera in the face. Aliera retaliated with a double-pawed cheek slap (I think there’s a name for this in pro wrestling). This was repeated about three times; then Sethra hurled herself on top of Aliera and things got a lot rougher—though, as I said before, nobody screamed, so I gather the hind claws didn’t come out, despite the biting. They rolled around for a bit, and then both flung themselves off the bed in opposite directions. Usually Aliera is the winner of these little encounters, but this time she ran off. Sethra returned to the bed, but by invitation; I coaxed her.

I really don’t understand these guys. Very occasionally they cuddle together (usually in cold weather). Most of the time they tend to ignore each other, except for the occasional perfunctory duel, and fairly frequent mutual or combat washing; earlier the same day, Sethra had been licking Aliera’s face while Aliera licked Sethra’s paws. Aliera also licks Sethra’s butt; I don’t know if this signifies anything like what it would signify for a human, or if it’s just little sister making nice with big sister.

I hope someday Bruce blogs about the relationships and interactions of the six cats over there—it’s much more interesting and complex, as none of them are contemporaries, there are three males and three females, two have been outdoor cats, and only one still has claws. I’m sure the situation is worthy of a sociological study and makes my mere sibling rivalry look simple by comparison.

Little Cat Feetnotes

Little Cat Feetnotes

I combed the fluffy cat last night, and got enough loose fur to knit a small kitten.

Ever since I started leaving the bathroom door open all the time, because otherwise there’s no air circulation in there and it’s like an oven, the cats like to hang out in there. Unlike most cats, they show little or no interest in curling up in the sink. They much prefer the stack of clean underwear I keep on a shelf so I can get partially dressed before doing things to my face and hair, then finish the job without getting makeup on my blouse/dress. I just hope I don’t get hit by a bus, because I don’t know what the ER personnel would make of furry underwear.

The most disconcerting thing is that they like to stare at me when I’m on the loo. This is just not right. After all, I don’t come and stare at them when they are using the litter box, do I?

Now that it’s so hot (112° today, a new record), Aliera prefers to nap on top of the filing cabinet in the office closet. I don’t know where Sethra naps—she seems to be able to dematerialize at will, a skill I envy her. Where DO cats go when they walk through walls? And why do they have to take my good sunglasses with them?

On one of my discussion boards, we are talking about our favorite Discworld characters. I had named the Patrician of Ankh-Morporkh as mine, but it’s a very close tie with Death, and I may change my vote. Especially since although he doesn’t like people much, Death is very fond of cats. In The Last Hero, which has so many illustrations it’s practically a graphic novel, there’s a wonderful picture of him with a kitten on his skeletal lap, and another of the same kitten chasing the Death of Rats, an equally skeletal rat.

I have a new catalogue from Drs. Foster and Smith, and the cats are going to make out like bandits. Cat toys, cat treats, and a laser-pointer toy for under ten bucks!

Wonder when they are going to present ME with anything? Other than hairballs, that is.

Domestication

Domestication

Felis domesticus isn’t all that domestic, really, despite the scientific classification. Cats aren’t domesticated in the sense that livestock, or even dogs, which also live with us, are. I’m sure that if asked, they would deny they are domestic animals, or even pets—they’d probably go for some term like “independent contractor” or even “unindicted co-conspirator.”

It’s no mystery how cats and people got together. It happened in ancient Egypt, one of the places humans first invented agriculture, which meant that they grew more than they needed for immediate consumption. Which meant that they had to invent grain storage. Which meant that they had a rodent problem.

Meanwhile, Felis silvestris lybica was lurking in the bushes, wondering where its next meal was coming from.

It didn’t take long for F. lybica, the African desert cat, to realize that hanging around the granaries and barns and stables was a good career move. And the Ancient Egyptian, being no fool, was quick to note that these rather pretty little critters, which were no trouble, really, and didn’t make that good eating, were damned useful in getting rid of the rats and mice.

So no doubt they lived in a state of mutual tolerance and pretense of ignoring each other’s existence, much like people in a crowded elevator: Ancient Egyptian going off to the fields, nodding politely as F. lybica trotted by with a mouse in its jaws. As they got used to being tolerated, even welcome, the cats came to live near humans, not just hunt there. Perhaps the humans even put out scraps and offal for them, to encourage them to hang around.

And then, one day, an Ancient Egyptian—probably a child, around seven years old, old enough to be curious and too young to be afraid—came across a nest of kittens, most likely in a barn or stable. Maybe she was playing, maybe she was gathering eggs. And here were these adorable, cuddly little creatures, making soft, sweet, squeaking sounds.

Of course she petted them. Who wouldn’t? And the kittens, being still in the socialization stage of young cats, didn’t object. And one of the great discoveries of history was made: Not only do people like to pet cats, but CATS LIKE TO BE PETTED BY PEOPLE.

It was almost certainly this way. It’s very difficult to tame an adult feral cat, and it’s a small wild animal that even a child would be wary of approaching when it arched and hissed. The first cat-human bond was almost certainly a child and one or more kittens, and it was a tamed kitten that undoubtedly became the first house cat. And Man made another discovery: Cats can keep the house free of pests, too. And they curl up on your lap and make this wonderful buzzing sound that really makes a house feel like a home.

From this “domestication” of F. lybica came all the other domestic cats in the world, as far as we know. And F. domesticus remains pretty much unchanged from its ancestor, and can still interbreed with it. Consider the vast differences humans have induced in other domestic animals by selective breeding; dogs, if Konrad Lorenz is correct, all originated either from the wolf or the yellow jackal, yet today the breeds vary from Chihuahua to mastiff. Look at fancy chickens—you won’t believe what you see. Even horses and cattle and sheep come in considerable variety. But cats are pretty much cats—some bigger, some smaller; some furry, some unfortunate ones hairless. But they can still interbreed with each other (which is how I come to have a couple of meezer mixes).

And they still pretty much go their own way, even if they share our homes. Now they tend to be more dependent on us for food (except for working farm cats), though even the most pampered house cat may catch the occasional mouse. They are easily housebroken, but that’s because it’s their nature to be clean and neat, not because they wish to please us.

I think that their independence is a major part of their charm. Cats are beautiful, graceful creatures (except Sethra when she’s falling off the furniture). We enjoy playing with them. We still like to pet them, and they still like to be petted by us. But woe betide the human who tries petting when the cat doesn’t feel like being petted! It is their independence, their lack of a desire to please us, that makes one feel so privileged when a cat displays affection. Perhaps it’s really some atavistic manner of assuring the food supply, but it feels like love. And holding a cat—that small, vital, somehow both immensely strong and unbearably fragile little body—cuddling it, hearing it purr, is pure uncovenanted bliss.

I think I’ve figured out just who has domesticated whom.

Is My Cat Really an

Is My Cat Really an Alien?

I am getting very suspicious of Aliera.

She has been tearing around the house in what I consider a sinister manner, because there is no apparent reason for it. No catnip, no substance abuse of any kind, no stimulating activities. She’s gone from a typical cat who sleeps for 22 hours a day to a small tornado running an indoor marathon. And she keeps biting me.

I think she’s taking samples.

Sethra’s collar has somehow disappeared, too. I originally thought that she got it caught in the blinds, which she gets hung up in on a regular basis; but now I’m wondering if Aliera has sent it back to the mother ship for analysis and replication, so that the hordes of little furry aliens planning to invade us will have perfect disguises as ordinary house cats.

I’m not sure what they want, exactly, but it’s not Friskies Ocean Fish with Salmon Paté, that’s for sure. I got a batch of this flavor (or rather Michele, who was shopping for me, got them) because a vet on one of my forums said salmon was a very good food for cats; but I forgot that they’d earlier shown disdain for the paté-style cat food, and apparently that was the only one she found that had salmon. With each succeeding offering they’ve eaten less and less of it, and last night they simply turned up their noses without taking a single bite.

Maybe I’m onto something here. Remember Anthony Boucher’s short story “Nine-Finger Jack”? The narrator found he was married to an alien, an advance scout for an invasion force, and there was only one substance that could destroy them….

Literary note: Bruce and I went to Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer’s book signing for their new collaboration, Don’t Look Down. Bruce wrote a bit about it in his blog. (Hilde didn’t feel like coming.) I was a bit frustrated because my copy of the book hadn’t arrived yet, but I printed out a copy of the ad for the book for them to sign, and will paste it into the book. I have now read it, and can recommend it. A surprisingly high number of people on amazon.com have given it bad reviews, and I’m not sure why. The book does have flaws, but I’ve read so many MUCH worse novels that I can easily overlook them; on the other hand, its virtues—wit, good dialogue, very likeable characters, lots of action—make it a definite keeper for me. Crusie writes the female PoV and Mayer the male, and they blend together seamlessly IMHO. She’s a director called in to film the end of a movie after the previous director dropped dead; he’s a Green Beret on leave hired on as advisor and stunt double by the clueless male star. Then we get stolen pre-Columbian jade phalluses, the CIA, multiple treacheries, a precocious five-year-old, and a one-eyed alligator who doesn’t know that eating people is wrong, and the fun just never stops.

Summer in Arizona is here. It was 99 degrees today, and is due to hit triple digits tomorrow. My furnace is dead and my A/C and swamp cooler are both in a state of desuetude, so I’m due to spend a fortune replacing the whole schmeer.

And the season for letting cats sleep on top of me—especially the fluffy one—is definitely over.

What Part of Not for

What Part of “Not for Cats” Don’t You Understand?
or
Did I Ask for a Face Full of Cat Butt?

People often tell my friend Hilde that they’d like to come back as one of her cats in their next life, because she indulges them so much.

This same Hilde thinks I spoil MY cats.

Honest, Hilde, I didn’t—they came that way! As I’ve said before, their motto is “I’ll have what you’re having!” and for Sethra, at least, that means “before you’ve finished it.” I have never encountered a cat with such an overwhelming sense of entitlement; and if you know cats, you know that’s saying quite a lot. I often like to have cold meat, all by itself (no bread) as a bedtime snack, because that’s a good protein snack for a diabetic. They will not just pounce on the bag; they will keep coming after it and coming after it as I’m eating it. And Sethra, with her most demanding “MEOW!” will try to put her paw, or even her face, right into my mouth to help herself.

I’ve mentioned before that she is very imperative about having her toy tossed when she wants to retrieve. Her favorite toy at the moment is Aliera’s old SafeCat collar, discarded when it became too small. She drags it around with her, hides it in the bed, and will stand on top of me and yowl till I throw it for her. They also go after the small plastic cup in which I keep my nightly allotment of pills while taking them. I don’t think they are drug addicts so much as “small round things I can bat across the bed with my paw” addicts. And they think it socially acceptable behavior to stand there with their butts in my face while they do so, or even while they are simply investigating the pillows and bookcase headboard to see if I have stashed anything interesting or edible (or, perhaps, if they want to read anything I’m reading).

I know that sniffing one another’s butts is an important method of feline communication. What I haven’t figured out yet is how to explain to them that as feline-to-human communication, it’s a non-starter. It’s not that the cats are odoriferous; I use a very good odor-eating litter. And they are constantly engaged in combat washing. It’s just that it’s…so…GROSS!

Since the old LitterMaid automatic litter box stopped working, I have just purchased a new and very expensive one that is a much superior version: it does everything but lick their little butts clean when they’ve finished. This seems to have cured the crapping-on-the-rug problem, as long as I remember to top up the litter when needed and empty it in a timely manner, which works out to about every four days. I was going to get them a new water dispenser (the one they have is water-cooler style, but there’s something green growing inside), but I think I can clean the old one properly now that I’ve found my bottle brush, so they can still have fresh water. I give them filtered water, the kind I drink myself. They are getting so spoiled that last Cat Food Night they left half the Choice Ocean Fish in their dishes. And they hadn’t had any gourmet moist food for a while, as I’d cancelled the previous Cat Food Night because of the wickedness of Sethra. I can only conclude that they’d filled up on kibble just before dinner. Just like kids.

They are very strange about food. They will start yowling when I get out a can of chicken or tuna for myself even before it’s open; can they read the labels? (It’s not just the can-opener Pavlovian thing, either, as they aren’t fed canned food but foil-packet food.) Yet last night, when I fixed chicken and noodles with mushrooms, I put down the empty chicken can with quite a bit of licking-worthy remnants in it, and they couldn’t seem to find it. Or perhaps they’ve become so spoiled and arrogant that they think that I should eat THEIR leftovers!

I think that what annoys me the most is Sethra’s rudeness. She speaks to me in a bloody arrogant “I am Siamese, if you please” tone of voice that just makes me want to smack her. Tonight I watched NANNY 911, as I sometimes do when DR. PHIL is a rerun; and for only the second time, the nanny didn’t fully succeed in taming the family. (The first time, the problem was with the marriage, and the episode wound up with a marriage-counseling spin-off.) The stepfather did his best with the three young children, but it must have been really relaxing when he went off to his job as a prison guard because the environment would be so much more civilized. The mother spent her time sitting on the couch, eating junk food, and verbally abusing her kids. The woman was in total denial about her kids’ behavior and her own; in fact, I think she was psychopathic. The kids were totally out of control. The younger boy (couldn’t have been more than six or seven at most) swore at Nanny Stella, hit and kicked her, and even spat in her face. Ironically enough, in the course of the program (later on), she was the only one shown as giving the kids any affection. The father learned something from the week with the nanny, but right up to the end the woman simply refused to believe even the evidence of the recordings of her behavior and that of the kids. I really feel sorry for them. I can’t imagine the marriage lasting much longer, especially as she didn’t bother much with how she looked and her husband was a real babe. If they do split up, of course she’ll get the kids since he’s not their natural father. Tragedy in the making.

Come to think about it, I guess the cats aren’t that bad, after all. Come here, my darlings, for a group hug….

Cat Olympics

Cat Olympics

Now that the Winter Olympics are almost upon us, I thought I’d publish the schedule for the Cat Olympics:

Opening Ceremonies: Featuring performances by Country Joe and the Fish, Cats Laughing, and the Mouseketeers

Day One:  Kitten Events
          Napping
          Chasing string
          Sleeping
          Looking cute
          Washing
          Crashing into walls
          Looking even cuter
          Eating
          Washing
          Sleeping (marathon event)

Day Two:  Adult Cat Events

     Sleeping
     Eating
     Yowling to go outside
     Yowling to come back in
     Napping
     Washing
     Chasing each other
     Washing each other
     Fighting
     Sleeping
     Yowling to go outside
     Yowling to come back in
     Sleeping (marathon event)

Day Three: Adult Cat Events

     Waking humans up
     Washing
     Eating
     Yowling to go outside
     Yowling to come back in
     Napping
     Cuddling with humans
     Sleeping
     Washing
     Napping
     Staring out window at nothing in particular
     Purring (marathon event)
     Eating
     Washing
     Sleeping
     Grooming each other
     Napping
     Cuddling with humans
     Sleeping

Closing ceremonies: Speeches by Garfield, Morris, and Miss Kitty

Tis the Season

‘Tis the Season

Lighting of community Christmas trees, carols in the mall, chestnuts roasting….

And Sethra is stealing ribbons again.

I am really lousy at gift-wrapping, so I buy as much pre-prepared Christmas packaging as possible—ready-tied stick-on bows, ready-to-assemble gift boxes, and stretchy-loop ribbons.

Sethra LOVES the stretchy-loop ribbons. For some reason, she is absolutely addicted to them. When I had them put away in a cardboard carton on the top shelf of the closet, she’d climb up the bookshelf, clamber onto the carton, fish one out, and carry her prize around the house till she’d finally gnawed it into pieces too small and insignificant to be worthy of being cat toys. And of course, once they are out on the desk, and wrapping begins, it’s open season on everything in the way of small decorations.

I have a bunch of packages of small stick-on bows that I got by mail order, and I put the box on my desk. I had another box on top of it, hoping to block attempted feline felonious abductions. When I came back into the office this evening, I found a trail of packets of bows in the living room and down the hall—fortunately, she hadn’t managed to open them.

Last Christmas, I was online when I suddenly noticed a suspicious silence from the cat. I looked over and saw that Sethra had a gold stretchy loop in her jaws. This really annoyed me, because the gold ones are MY favorites too—they go with every color of giftwrap—and it was the last one. So I grabbed for it and pulled.

Sethra pulled back.

I kept pulling.

She kept pulling, even as she began to slide backwards off the side of the desk as the loop stretched.

She pulled. I pulled. Finally, as she descended slowly down the side of the desk, she let go, and I triumphantly claimed the stretchy loop, more than a little the worse for wear.

Of course, she totally ignored the catnip toy I got her as a Christmas gift. What’s the fun in playing with something you are SUPPOSED to play with?

Gentle readers, what are you giving your cats for Christmas? Mine are getting this.

Words of Wisdom:

The motto of all the mongoose family is, ‘Run and find out.’ ---Rudyard Kipling

The motto of all the domestic cat family is ‘I’ll have what you’re having.’ –--Me

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and a happy, healthy, and successful New Year.
---Mole and Meezers

The Dreams of an Everyday Housecat

The Dreams of an Everyday Housecat

     The basic dream of every indoor cat is to become an outdoor cat.  I can remember Shadow-cat sitting for hours by the patio door, gazing out, obviously fantasizing about hunting small game—or possibly even large game, being an ambitious cat.  My two like to do the same, or to perch atop the bureau, gazing out the window, perhaps imagining that the swimming pool is actually a koi pond teeming with fat carp.

     But lately they have been doing something about it.

     Since the weather has turned cooler, the outdoors holds even more appeal for them.  For some reason they don’t try to go out the patio door—perhaps because free-roaming neighborhood cats have marked it for their own—but they’ve been making a dash for it out the front door whenever possible.   When I am trying to manage my cane, an armload of mail,  trash going out, or groceries coming in, they have both time and space to pop out the door before I can grab them.  They have even taken to tag-teaming me; Sethra dashes out; and when I grab her and open the door to pop her back in, Aliera pops out.

     But I have finally outwitted them.  Yes, I am proud to proclaim that I am smarter than two cats put together.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, they are fascinated with the bathroom; so all I have to do is to leave the door open and Sethra strolls in.  (Since Aliera perches atop a box by the front door when planning her dash for freedom, she’s easier to block; as long as Sethra is confined, I can manage her.)  I then close the door and go for the mail, groceries, trash, whatever.    It works perfectly, as long as I don’t grab a fluffy tail by mistake for the Charmin, and I remember to let her out again.

     Perhaps as a form of protest, Aliera has decided to live more or less permanently under my bed.  This is trickier than it sounds, because I have a captain’s bed, with drawers underneath, so there isn’t much space under there.  I don’t know how a full-grown cat fits—perhaps she just hangs out under the headboard.  I also have one of those SelectComfort inflatable Sleep Number mattresses, which means it rests directly on the board on top of the drawers, with no separate box spring.  This in turn means that it tends to slide sideways—I am a restless sleeper—leaving a cat-sized gap in the right-hand top corner.  When I look down there, I see this sweet little face peering out.  Every so often she emerges for refreshments, a petting session, and (I devoutly hope) a visit to the litter box.   Sethra occasionally drops by to poke her head and forepaws in to whop her sister a few times.

     I imagine that she lives a very active fantasy life down there.  Perhaps she imagines she’s a cloistered nun—a Little Sister of St. Bast Beneath-the-Bed—praying devoutly for world peace and fresh tuna.  Perhaps she sees herself as someone more adventurous, from a Dumas novel—the Cat in the Iron Mask, or even the Cat of Monte Cristo—to emerge one day (when it’s warmer) to get revenge on all her foes (i.e., Sethra and me).

     As for Sethra, I don’t think she has that much imagination, being the bimbo cat.  And the only reading matter I plan to provide for her is a manual on Proper Tail Maintenance for Fluffy Cats.

     

So Much for Folk Wisdom; or, Aesop Was a Lackey of the Imperialists

(Proving to Bruce that I can too write something literary)

One of the books I remember reading over and over in my early childhood was Aesop's Fables. I remember the pictures, and the little stories; but I'm a bit weaker on the moral lessons.

Which may be just as well.

On looking at some of them again recently, I begin to wonder about the morality of some of these little life lessons.

Take the best known of the tales, "The Fox and the Grapes" , of which the moral is " It is easy to despise what you cannot get." As a five-year-old, I bought it; but as an adult, I've come to agree with the fox. What's wrong with convincing yourself you don't really want something you can't get? Of course, you should be sure that it is in fact inaccessible, and not just hard to come by, or unfairly forbidden to you because of your race, gender, religion, previous condition of servitude, or whatever. For example, as a less-than-sylphlike sexagenarian with coordination and balance problems, it would be futile for me to yearn for a career as a prima ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet. (Besides, I can't speak Russian.) But it would be quite reasonable for me to hope to write and sell a novel. The fox made a decent effort, found obtaining the grapes to be beyond his capacity, and very sensibly went off--probably to catch a fat rabbit.

The one fable I've always hated is "The Ass and the Lapdog," with its rather cruel moral, "To be satisfied with one's lot is better than to desire something which one is not fitted to receive." This version is rather different from the one in my childhood Aesop, as it emphasizes the ass's desire for a life of ease. In my book, the ass was contrasting the affection and petting received by the lapdog with the blows and curses he received despite his hard work. I've always thought it unfair; certainly it was ridiculous for the ass to behave like a lapdog, but Aesop seems quite comfortable with the idea that no matter how hard-working and well-behaved the ass is, he can't hope for treats and petting. (Imagine how jealous he would have been if his master had had a cat instead of a lapdog!)

These fables have in common the theme of accepting one's lot in life, with the ass being condemned for aspiring to something better and the fox for not accepting that it was his own fault he couldn't get it, apparently. I wonder if this attitude derives from the fact that Aesop was a slave, and may well have been telling his stories to other slaves. Like the comments of Paul addressed to slaves in the Epistles, the moral seems to be "shut up and don't make waves." (I think both Nietzsche and Shaw criticized Christianity as a slave morality.)

Contrast this with another childhood favorite, the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris, which were ultimately derived from African folktales told by slaves in the South. The hero here is Br'er Rabbit, the trickster, who manages to outwit the powerful predator figures, Br'er Fox and Br'er Wolf, every time. The stories are comic, but the message is subversive. Uncle Remus has been criticized by modern Black Studies scholars as an Uncle Tom, and of course the Disney version made the whole thing terminally cute; but I think if I had the misfortune to be a slave, I'd rather listen to Uncle Remus's stories than to Aesop's.

Life in a Cat House

1. Everything--and I do mean EVERYTHING--is covered in soft fluffy fur--including your toothbrush.

And your teeth.

2. At four thirty a.m., you become a playing field for cat rugby. They hurtle down onto you from a great height (the top of the bureau).

3. A love triangle is you, a sausage biscuit, and a cat.

4. You can't so much as get a cold drink in the kitchen without being assaulted by a plump creature crying piteously that she hasn't been fed since 1893.

5. The bras you've tossed into the laundry basket get reclassified as cat toys and dragged into the middle of the living room.

6. You keep a spray bottle in every room for disciplinary purposes.

7. If you make the mistake of leaving the bathroom door open, you come back to chaos and a cat curled on the rug with an innocent smile on its sweet little face.

8. Your favorite comfy chair is usually pre-empted.

9. Flowers? Fergeddaboudit.

10. That lump in the bed that wakes you up when you roll over onto it is a cat toy.

11. You wake up to find something soft and warm and loving snuggled against you.

12. When you try to get up, it bites.

My Sister, My Dominatrix

My cats are sisters, so therefore should be about equal in dominance, right? It's true that Aliera was the runt of the litter, but that doesn't necessarily prove anything. When Hilde and I adopted sisters Bastet and Lilith, Lilith was the runt of the litter; in fact, we had to wait to get her till the next day because she'd only just gotten big enough to be neutered. When the lady from the adoption group brought her to us, she said the kitten would be groggy for a while, not to feed her, and not to disturb or excite her, just let her sleep.

She forgot to tell Lilith. The cat lady had barely gotten out the door before Lilith was climbing to the top of the cage (a five-foot cube we use when new cats are introduced) and yowling for attention. When food was put in the cage, she growled her sister away from the dish and ate it all. And she was super-cuddly and affectionate and curious.

I can't recall any contentions between them; they were more likely to cuddle up together, or take turns chasing each other down the hall. Probably part of this was because once they were out of the cage, which was all the time except feeding time once the adult cats had accepted their presence, Bastet spent her time in Hilde's room at night, Lilith in mine. The cage was only so that they could be fed there, and the grown cats couldn't snarf up the kitten food, which they preferred to their own.

Aliera, perhaps as a result of her runthood, is the feistier sister--very ready with teeth and claws. She is the one who usually tackles Sethra, and Sethra usually runs off. But if I put down a single dish of food, Sethra will hog it, even if it's big enough for two cats to eat simultaneously (as when I put down a steak bone). It may be simply that Aliera is less food-oriented; on Cat Food Nights, she usually leaves more than half of her portion, which Sethra is happy to finish. And she still hasn't figured out how to eat a treat: she just stares at it for a while, sniffs it, licks it--and at this point, Sethra appears and eats it.

I don't know enough about the significance of grooming behavior to interpret it; I do know that in some species, being groomed signifies dominance, while in others, it is grooming another. Mine tend to indulge in simultaneous pugnacious face-washing and other mutual grooming, which makes it hard to tell anyway, and explains why it is Aliera who gets the hairballs even though it is Sethra who is the fluffy cat.

In playing with toys, it is Sethra who is the more active and aggressive. She will not share the feather toy or the toy-on-a-stick, and she will play toss-and-fetch all night if I would cooperate.

On the whole, then, it would appear that Sethra is the dominant cat, even though Aliera is actually larger and heavier. (Sethra looks like more than a match for her because she is so fluffy.) I don't know what if anything it signifies, but Aliera is the one more likely to be friendly with neighbors and strangers and tries the hardest to get out the door. But she is the most aggressive in paw-to-paw combat, too. So the actual dominance situation between them remains a mystery.

When I awoke this morning, they were curled up in a ball together on the foot of my bed, snoozing happily.

Peace, it's wonderful.

Cat Chess and Other Gamesmanship

It's proverbial that whenever you get two Greeks together, you have three political parties. I don't know if that's true, but it's certainly true that whenever you get two or more cats together, you have some sort of contention for dominance. Cat Chess, a careful mix of positioning and staring, was first described in Terry Pratchett's The Unadulterated Cat, and Diane Duane gave accounts of a few games in her fantasy novels The Book of Night with Moon and To Visit the Queen (UK title: On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service). The rules are even available online.

When the cats actually live together, it can get complicated--and hairy, in every sense of the word. When I first went to stay with my friends next door, there were five cats in residence: Jo's cats--Ewas, a tiny, elderly, disabled Cornish Rex female; and Jasper, a magnificent male Bengal in his prime. Hilde and Bruce's cats--Tia and Gremlin; Kay's cat: Shadow-cat, The Most Dangerous Cat in Glendale (so called by me for his talent for blending into shadows and dark carpets and tripping one up at night; he is a dark charcoal gray).

At the time Ewas was the undisputed queen of the household. Jasper was her courtier and champion--not her mate, but her devoted attendant. He was very people-averse, and the only reason he later became attached to me was that Ewas sat on me all the time (the only available lap) and he hung around her. Jasper was the dominant male. Gremlin was a young male attempting to assert his dominance; Shadow was just emerging from catolescence; and Tia was of course a wimp.

Gremlin was the cause of most of the uproar, as he kept challenging the others (except Ewas; he wouldn't dare). He would tackle Tia whenever she emerged from her closet, whereupon she would hide under the nearest piece of furniture that had room for her, with her usual distressed-damsel cries of "Help! They're tying me to the railroad track again!" When he tackled Shadow, they'd usually roll around on the carpet for a while, with the battle ending in a draw.

Sometimes he'd jump Jasper. If Jasper felt like playing, they'd roll around until he tired of the game. But if he didn't feel like playing, he'd just stand there, with Gremlin trying ineffectually to wrestle him to the ground. But Jasper was too big, and too stable.

Jasper was a rather weird cat, but I liked him best of all of them. Sometimes when he felt like asserting dominance, he'd mount Shadow, who would just lie there with a disgusted look on his face until Jasper walked away. Then Shadow would do something to assert his machismo, like jumping up onto a forbidden counter.

Jasper would also wander around the house wailing for most of the night for some unknown reason. And he had an endearing habit of sleeping on his back in the middle of the living room rug, with his paws curled in the sea-otter position.

Things have changed next door. Jo has moved out, taking Ewas and Jasper with her. Ewas has had to be put to sleep. Bastet, sister to my lovely lost Lilith, has been added to the mix and is now top cat, rivaled only by Cassie, Kay's new cat. Her kitten Jakk was a member of the family briefly but has now found a new home of his own. (Cassie got into contention for top cat when she first arrived, even though she is small and younger than the rest, because at the time she was the only one not yet declawed. Also, she had been living feral for a while and was a pretty tough cookie with other cats, though loving and gentle with people.)

The next installment will deal with my two.

Why you sometimes want to beat your little darlings to death with a stick

I was in the cats' office, making everything nice. As they sat there, side by side, watching me, I made sure that the water and kibble dispensers were full. And then I went to change the litterbox.

And they sat there side by side, watching me.

This is a chore that no one enjoys; it is the major downside of having cats. I have one of those automatic LitterMaid© boxes, so that I only have to change the disposable plastic liner every four or five days, and it's the work of a few minutes. I still hate it, because I have bad arthritis in my knees--but anything for my beloved pets. I changed the liner, and spent some time getting the amount of litter exactly right; too much, and the automatic sensor keeps going off, so the rake keeps on raking. Too little, and it doesn't provide sufficient comfort for their little behinds.

And they sat there side by side, watching me.

Then I turned to get the Renuzit spray for the carpet, so they wouldn't be tempted to crap on the rug.

And when I turned back, Aliera had crapped on the rug.

The Cat's Meow

...isn't the half of it; cats make all sorts of weird sounds. Gremlin, the Siamese bastard, has the true Siamese rusty-gate yowl, and no inhibitions about expressing his opinions. He adores Bruce and always runs to greet him when he comes home after work. Sometimes Bruce, who is a mail carrier, is so hot and sweaty and tired that he just wants to jump into the shower, so he goes into the bedroom and closes the door. Gremlin hurls himself at the door, yowling loud enough to be heard in Flagstaff. In fact, they had to put a new doorknob on the bedroom door because he learned how to open the old one.

The breeder of Siamese and Balinese cats whose cat chat list I belong to told of a neighbor two miles away who called on her, concerned because he'd heard a woman screaming at her place. Turns out it was her Balinese stud, Hairy Houdini, serenading the ladies in heat....

Sethra, half meezer, has a demanding cry, too short-lived to be called a yowl. She usually utters it while standing on me when I'm in bed, trying to read or sleep, and she wants me to throw her feather toy so she can fetch it. (A lot of people talk about how they've taught their cat to fetch--don't believe it. The truth of the matter is that the cat has taught its person how to toss. The proof: who gets to decide when the game is over?)

She and Aliera both yowl (and try to climb my legs) in the kitchen when they think there's a chance that it's Cat Food Night or that the corners of a slice of cheese are on offer. Cat Food Night happens about twice a week, when I split one of those foil packets of gourmet cat food between them. They have an automatic kibble dispenser for the rest of the time.

I told my British friend Catherine that I was going to put a sign on the door of the cats' office saying "GOURMET CAT FOOD IS NOT AN ENTITLEMENT." She remarked that the next day I'd probably find a little sign under it saying "WHY NOT?" I wouldn't put it past them.

None of the other cats makes particularly interesting noises, with one exception. (They purr, but I can't hear it; don't know if it's because of their too, too solid flesh, or if it's just my hearing loss.) Aliera, well, Aliera...beeps.

That's right. She usually greets me with a little trilling sound (all cat owners know what that is), but when feeling conversational, she makes a little beeping noise.

Do you suppose there's a twelve-step program for meezers who beep? "My name is Aliera, and I'm a beepaholic. It all started when I was a kitten....."

My Cat Sucks--I Mean Really Sucks!

My cat Sethra, like many other cats, has a habit of sucking on fabric--the fuzzier the better, while "making bread"--flexing her claws. This is a mimicking of the nursing behavior of kittens and usually signifies that the cat was weaned too early. (I don't know why this should be true of Sethra but not Aliera, especially since Aliera was the runt of the litter.) It can be endearing, but it can also be very wet. And it's really hard on the wardrobe and bedding.

What made it worse with Sethra is that her preferred position was on my chest or my shoulder, sucking on my nightgown and planting her paws on my face. This was the primary reason I decided to have my cats declawed--I was afraid she'd get me in the eye one night. She was really determined about this: when I tried moving her paws off my face, she simply put them back.

Does anyone out there know how to cure this behavior? The only advice I've ever gotten is "they grow out of it." Unfortunately, nobody has told Sethra this.

She still does the sucking thing, but no longer puts her paws on my face. Unfortunately, she has learned recreational biting from Aliera.

FluffyCatBabylon

So this is a blog

Everyone else I know seems to have one, so why not me? Or possibly I?

According to my friend and neighbor Bruce, who introduced me to the wonderful world of blogging, "It's not a blog unless you post pictures of your cats."

According to romance novelist and blogger extraordinaire Jennifer Crusie, in advice given to romance novelist and novice blogger Jayne Ann Krentz, to blog really well. you need
a victim. (Jenny has a guy named Bob.)

So, in the spirit of synthesis, I'm going to make my cats my blogging victims. (I'll also post pics, once I learn how.)

I have two cats, sisters (or possibly half-sisters; they don't look much alike and I think their mother got around), half Siamese ("meezer") and half passersby. Sethra is the fluffy one who gives this blog its title: she is a typical romance heroine--beautiful, intrepid, and thick as two planks. She is also known as Fluffbucket, Fluff, Seth, and GET DOWN FROM THERE!

Her sister Aliera (the names are from Steven Brust's Dragaera novels, which I highly recommend) is also known as TubeCat (because she is round, firm, and fully packed), "you rotten meezer," and STOP BITING! Both were very pale at birth but have darkened with age (they are now about two years old) to a sort of cappuccino color. Sethra has Siamese/Ragdoll-type markings--black mask, ears, tail, and legs, but with a white nose and feet. Aliera is stripey, with white spats. And sharp teeth. Many, many teeth.

I adopted them as kittens from a local rescue organization, after the tragic death of my first kitten, Lilith. I will probably write about her later; she was my first very own cat, and she was perfect.

Before I moved to my present house, I was staying for some time with my best friend Hilde (wife to Bruce the blogger) and their other housemates, who had a total of five cats for starters. Some have left (along with a housemate) and more have been added: their household now includes Tia (the wimp), Gremlin (the bastard lilac-point Siamese), Bastet (who looks like a better-groomed version of Steinlen's Le chat noir poster), Shadow (The Most Dangerous Cat in Glendale), and Cassie, the unwed mother. If I ever run out of material about my two, I'm sure they will provide me with more. If Bruce doesn't use it first.

Well, this is just to get me started. More to come eventually.