That's My Plouball

The mystery of why Plouie chose the Jingo over the window has been resolved.

I took him downstairs with me to get the mail, just for the heck of it, and when we were on our way back upstairs, he started telling AJD about how it had snowed.

Yes, somehow he hadn't noticed the snow.  At all.  Despite... like, everything.

On the plus side, he was very excited.

The Wild Republic Reacts to the Season's First Snowpocalypse

This is a very special post for me: it's the first one to include pictures.  (AJD is the one to thank, because it's his camera.  But I'm the one who took them, so he's not responsible for their obvious lack of photographic expertise.  Photography is not one of my talents.)

Over the weekend, we were treated to our very first major snowstorm of the winter, about a foot in all.  The snow appears to have stopped, but the wind continues to be very impressive; we're scheduled for gusts of up to 40 mph all day, maybe into Wednesday.  Apparently this is the first time in a century that we've had so much snow in a strong La Nina.  Last year we had like four or five big storms like this (though less windy), which led AJD to coin the term "snowpocalypse".  We have decided to stay inside and not go anywhere for a few days.

Naturally, with animals from so many diverse climates, opinions in the Wild Republic are sharply divided over whether the snowpocalypse is good or not: the animals from warm climates are horrified, but the animals from cold climates are delighted.

Last year, we ended up putting all of the cold-climate animals in the windows downstairs so that they could look out at the shovelled walks (which make the piles of snow seem higher) and feel at home.  We haven't moved them downstairs yet, although we still might, but they made a beeline for the windows in AJD's room as soon as the snow started to get serious.

Here you can see Murchison, Flurry, and Vim staring happily down at the snow-swept sidewalk.

The Ice Age animals had a similar idea, but they picked a different window, the one that is partially covered with ice on the bottom.  That's Mimsy, the mammoth, on the left; Gus, the glyptodon, is on the right, but you can't see him so well.  (Mammoths tend to unintentionally take up a lot of space.)

The rest of the animals decided that the thing to do, when faced with a blizzard, was to have a Jingo.  What, you ask, is a Jingo?  Basically, it's a sort of party that warm-climate Wild Republicans throw to distract themselves from the snow.  The idea is very simple: you run around and around in circles, get massively overheated so that you don't notice how cold it is, and then pass out from exhaustion and sleep for a while.  I suspect alcohol may also be involved.

Between the winds and the Jingo, poor AJD didn't get any sleep last night at all.  He's been awake for almost twenty-four hours now.

The aftermath of a Jingo resembles a massacre.  To give you an idea, I have pictures from two different angles.

It looks kind of like a massacre, right?  Or maybe an orgy?  But no, it's a Jingo.

If you suspect you may have spotted a walrus in these pictures (and hey, isn't that an upside-down penguin?), and you're wondering why Humphrey isn't in the window, well, yeah, some of the cold-climate animals did opt for the Jingo over the window.  In Tibby's case, it was probably the excitement; he's an inquisitive little chap and he probably wanted to see what these warm-weather sorts were getting up to.  Humphrey... well, remember I said I suspected alcohol was involved?  Humphrey's involvement is one of the reasons behind this suspicion.  As to Plouie, well, who knows about Plouie.

Two warm-weather creatures did not participate in the Jingo.  Reggie is in my room for south room duty this week, so he spent the night bonding with Seal (as you might imagine, sea lions and river otters have stuff in common) and being perplexed with Sleepyhead (frisky otters do not know what to make of narcoleptics).  Meanwhile, Cami decided that the thing to do was simply sit on the floor by AJD's radiator, thus simultaneously a) placing himself in the warmest place in the room and b) placing himself where he can't see the horrible white stuff outside.

Doesn't he look cute (and cold)?

The Lion Has a Name!

So, AJD and I have acquired two additional pieces of knowledge.  First, the lion is named Judah Navarre Androcles.  Second, leonine onomastics are reaaaalllly screwed up.  The second fact evidently contributed to our delay in discovering the first.

Apparently all lions have three names.  The third name is the name of their lineage.  Navarre's is particularly august: his family are direct descendants of the lion saved by Androcles, and to show their gratitude (and, further, to satisfy an obscure point of honour which I, frankly, do not understand), they replaced their original lineage name with his name.  Navarre doesn't know what his family's name was before the Androcles episode; it's not clear this is because he's quite young or because it's been forgotten.

The astute reader may be wondering why I am referring to our lion as Navarre rather than Judah?  This is the part where leonine onomastics get rather peculiar: all male lions of the clan to which the Androcles lineage belongs have Judah as their first name.  Every single last one of them.  Just as the lion was the symbol for the tribe of Judah (you know, the Lion of Judah), so the tribe of Judah is evidently the symbol for the lions of Navarre's clan.  Judah of the Lions.  I have no idea where this tradition comes from - neither does Navarre - but there you go.

Lionesses do not take the clan of Judah as their mascot.  They have their own: the Egyptian lion goddess Sekhmet.  Accordingly, all lionesses of Navarre's clan have the first name of Sekhmet.  I will not pretend to understand the rationale, but it makes marginally more sense to me than the male lions using Judah.

So our lion's name-name, the one he actually uses, is his second name, Navarre.  Which is a nature name, kind of sort of.  Apparently lions often use the names of specific geographic features as their given names, and by extension started using the names of regions as well, particularly regions associated with lions.  I told Navarre that this was cheating, which he took as something of an affront; he said that the tradition exists because lions are all uniformly the same colour and it's hard to get many different names out of that and most of the ones that exist are considered feminine.  So they do this funny thing with named geographical features and regions instead.  They do use real nature names, sometimes, though: his own mother's name is Goldenrod, and Sandy, Tawny, and Honey perpetually top the most popular names for lionesses.

I did say that leonine onomastics were pretty crazy, right?

Another thing lions like to do is give all siblings names starting with the same phoneme.  Navarre, for instance, has two older sisters; the elder is Nemea, who is artistic and Goth, and the younger is Nittany (a popular name in the current generation), who talks on the phone a lot and is always whining to their mother about something gross her baby brother has done.  (I asked Navarre if she were telling the truth when she went whining and he ran away and pounced on Flurry, from which I conclude that even really Boy Scout lion cubs aren't above being pesky little brothers.)

All three of them have names associated with lions, sometimes tangentially.  The lion Heracles fought was from Nemea; the Nittany lion is the mascot of Penn State (yes, wrong kind of lion, but we've already noted that they're not very picky about this); and Richard the Lionheart was married to Berengaria of Navarre.  One of Navarre's aunts is named Macedonia, birthplace of Alexander, the new Heracles.  His father's name is Kilimanjaro, which I think is associated with lions only insofar as both lions and Mount Kilimanjaro are African.

So, there you go: they might take their royal responsibilities seriously, but lions aren't above bending rules when it suits them, and they're not above being weirdly pretentious on occasion, either.

Opposing Archetypes Collide! Epic Struggle Ensues!

Every now and then, implacable foes meet each other and fight for ultimate dominance.  Light and dark.  Good and evil.  Fire and ice.  Matter and anti-matter.  Lions and tigers.

Obviously, this post is about the last one.

Lions and tigers are each completely convinced that they are the most important, biggest, and most bad-ass cats around.  Each of them has a legitimate claim: lions are generally acknowledged to be the kings of beasts, but tigers are larger.  Both groups take the rivalry equally seriously, although in different ways.  There is no room for compromise, and they get a bit annoyed if you try to remain neutral.

Lions obtained their title because they're of generally steadier and more serious temperaments; they're also more social, and their internal cohesion does give them a bit of an advantage.  Tigers are scrappier and wilder, as well as larger, which means that they're less disciplined even though they're a bit more aggressive.  They're also largely solitary, except in mating season.  To use a handy D&D metaphor, lions are lawful and tigers are chaotic.  One suspects that this is as much a part of their enmity as the whole status thing.  Even if jaguars were bigger, lions and tigers would probably still hate each other's guts on principle.

Since we acquired the new lion, the feud has been introduced to our chapter of the Wild Republic.  Rusty and the lion are more or less the same age, which is probably for the best; it means they're equals, and if one or the other ends up dominant, it will be on the basis of merit.  So far it doesn't seem that either of them has an edge; we've seen them wrestling a few times, and they're pretty equally matched.  The wrestling matches tend to end with the two of them lying on their backs side by side with their feet in the air, which is kind of adorable.

Our lion and tiger are pretty representative of the Epic Feud as a whole, so they make a useful case study.  Rusty is kind of a bully, sad to say.  He's very aggressive - he even likes to chew on us sometimes, and he's always pouncing on people, just for the hell of it.  He really wants everyone to acknowledge him as the top cat, and he's totally convinced that tigers really ought to be the kings of beasts instead of silly boring old lions.  Rusty is rather endearing in his own way, but it's kind of in spite of himself.  Skandar (the white tiger) is not dissimilar, although he's mature enough that he's more likely to mouth off to people than randomly pounce on them.  If you provoke Skandar, though, he'll go after you.  Tigers are hot-heads.  Casper, the older tiger, is more of a gentleman (I think he's a different sub-species from the other two), but he's still pretty snarky even if he's more genteel about it, and I bet he was a lot different in his younger years.  Tigers are bad boys.

Our lion, on the other hand, is a law-abiding fellow who is cheerfully planning to go to grad school (never mind that he's not yet in middle school) in order to make himself as educated and informed as possible when it's his turn to lead a pride.  He's a solemn, earnest little fellow, kind of a gentle giant.  Last night we discovered that he's learning Yiddish (I'm sure Desmond is delighted), not because he's Jewish (he's Buddhist, of course) but because it will add to his experience and make him a better lion.  You see what I mean?  He's basically an overachieving boy scout, except when his anti-tiger instincts kick in.

It kind of reminds me of The Outsiders, you know?  Or something like that.

Personally, I kind of think lions deserve their royal status, because they're much more aware of the responsibilities placed upon them.  Nothing worse than a negligent, entitled royal, right?  But I've always kind of had a thing for tigers.  It's partly because they're stripy and partly because I have a major weakness for bad boys.

If you're a wild feline who is neither a lion nor a tiger, one of the truths you're taught very early on is that choosing sides in this epic battle is not really a good idea, all things considered.  Naturally some of them do have obvious preferences.  Cami, being both shy and intellectually inclined, gets on much better with the lion; their personalities are more alike, and the lion is less likely to randomly pounce on him.  Sir Tristan rather prefers lions on a general principle, mostly because he's from the Wild Parlimentary Monarchy.  But they're both careful to remain as officially neutral as possible, even though lions and tigers have little patience with this.

The others are either more evenly split or less invested.  Flurry really doesn't care; he's too young.  Mahler, older than both of them, professes not to care, but has a slight inclination towards Rusty as a fellow Asian cat. Khamsin's stance is the most nuanced and interesting: he's inclined towards the lion, since they're both Africans and have a certain ancestral affinity; but he's also inclined towards Rusty, because tigers are more physical, and cheetahs are the most athletic of all the cat species.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.  The adults have very little patience with the lion/tiger feud, and as far as they're concerned, the main reason a baby lion and tiger were both sent here was to foster mutual tolerance within the Republic.  They're likely to try to get Rusty and the lion to cooperate with each other, or even become friends.  Apparently it's not unheard of for odd love-hate friendships to crop up between lions and tigers in this way.  It's far too soon to tell whether this will be the case for our chapter, but Alfredo is not one to underestimate.

Plouie's Aliiiiiiive and the Arctic Animals Are Eating the Iceberg

Yesterday AJD discovered that the Brothers Chap had finally posted a new cartoon after a very long hiatus.  We watched it together, and since the cartoon featured Senor Cardgage, Plouie watched it too: AJD wanted to see whether Plouie would have an affinity with him or not.  Apparently not, sadly.  The cartoon featured lots of snow, which made Plouie quite excited, but the plot was completely over his head.

Afterwards we discovered that Plouie loses you if he's not looking at you, even if he's actually standing on you.  I was wearing a sweater, which excited him because sweaters remind him of snow, so AJD put him down on my shoulder, but he wasn't facing me, and as a result he was looking all over for me until we directed him to turn around.  Then he did it again a few minutes later.  Plouie doesn't have much in the way of longterm memory.

It's definitely nice to see him moving about and bouncing again.  He'd been very quiet for some time; he spent most of last month lying on his back and staring fixedly at the ceiling.  I was getting worried that he'd blown his circuits for good, but it must have just been a longer cycle than usual.  Plouie sort of has phases, like the moon, only less regular: periods of hyperactivity followed by catatonia and then back again.

Returning to the subject of snow, the arctic animals are currently trying to eat the iceberg.

AJD used to have a desktop Mac, but about eighteen months ago he replaced it with a laptop because it was ancient and slow.  It's now sitting on the floor about a foot from my side of the bed.  Since it's large and white, the animals with snow affinity have concluded it's an iceberg, and they often take turns perching on it.  Similarly, his duvet is blue, and the animals with water affinity sometimes treat it like water.  They know it's not; it's a purely nostalgic phenomenon.  We're less clear on whether the iceberg is nostalgia or not, or whether it depends.  (Plouie almost certainly takes it for a real iceberg.)

I went into AJD's room this morning to ask him some questions about Yiddish, and in the process noticed that Vim (the polar bear) and Murchison (the Arctic fox) were both lying on the floor near the iceberg.  They're either licking it or trying to eat it.  We have no explanation for this bizarre phenomenon; they've certainly never done this before.  And while Vim is young, and therefore can be expected to do odd things, Murchison is an adult, and a very canny one at that.  Maybe they're anxious for it to snow now that's winter?  Or maybe there's something about the psyche of snow animals that we don't understand? 

A few minutes later, I noticed that Cami was entangled in the shoelaces of one of AJD's shoes, but that seems like typical feline behaviour.

One might think that one has complete control over the antics of one's plush menagerie, such that one will never be surprised at their antics.  This is totally false.  They have a remarkable capacity for doing cute things with no help from us at all.

Nocturnal Events (sort of)

Sleepyhead has become more lively of late.  I don't mean to suggest he's been awake more than in the past - as far as I can tell, he hasn't - but that he's started sleepwalking.  Yesterday I looked over and saw that he was on the floor, on his feet, about three inches from the mattress, staring blankly at the bookcase.  Totally asleep.

These hijinks, such as they were, were sufficient to alarm Parsley, who, by the time I went to bed, was utterly convinced he'd somehow lost him.  He was hanging off the head of the bed, frantically searching for Sleepyhead.  Since my mattress is actually on the floor, a quick glance must have told him Sleepyhead wasn't there, but Parsley was concerned enough not to notice.  Then he fell off entirely.  He was extremely relieved when I returned Sleepyhead to the bed safe and sound.

Today, Sleepyhead didn't do any sleepwalking.  Parsley is sort of hovering over him; I can't tell whether that's a factor or not.

The River Otter Has Revealed His Name!

It's official: the river otter has revealed his name.  It's Reginald Button, but he goes by Reggie.

Apparently river otters all have vaguely Wodehouse-ian names.  Reggie, like Bertie Wooster, got off pretty easy, as these things go.  To give you some idea of the escape he had, his nephew's name is Barmy Button.  (Apparently it suits him.  We're wondering if this will mean Reggie has insights into Plouie - although Barmy is not so extreme a case.)  This is all to the good; he's an older otter, albeit still very playful, so he deserves a name on the dignified end of the otter spectrum. 

Now, if only we can learn the lion's name before the new delegation from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy gets here...

Plouie Reacts to Publicity

The other day, AJD told Plouie that I'd written on the blog about the Blue Penguin of Happiness, and later last night, we got to witness his reaction to it.  We came upstairs from watching Jeopardy! to find him sitting eagerly on AJD's laptop, wanting to see the part about the Blue Penguin.  He can't actually read, though, so AJD pointed to the relevant sentences.  That was enough to excite him; he started jumping up and down like a mouse in a washing machine and everything.  Would that everyone could be content with so little!

We haven't actually announced to the Wild Republic about this blog's existence; we're not sure whether we should.  If we did, Cami might become so stricken with stage fright that we never see him again, and Rusty would almost certainly do everything in his power to get me to post about him frequently.

South Room Duty

AJD and I have different circadian rhythms: he's a night owl and I'm a lark.  We've learned the hard way that we have a tendency to screw up each other's sleep cycles, so during the week I usually end up sleeping in my room rather than his.  Every Sunday, when I migrate back to my room, one or two of the Wild Republicans come with me.

I never choose who is going to be posted for duty in my room for that week, because I'm not capable of choosing between my animals.  Ask me which of them is my favourite, and I will reply that I don't have a favourite, but I have a special soft spot for Sleepyhead and Plouie and Cami and Mahler and Seleucus and... before long I will have produced a litany of the entire populace.  My favourite animal is whichever one I happen to be holding at the time.

The reasons behind the assignments are not entirely clear to me.  Sometimes, AJD asserts, the animal with south room duty volunteers simply because he likes me.  This was the case with Parsley (the okapi), who is on duty this week.  Other times there seems to be more to it than that.  For the young ones, south room duty seems to be a break from study (for them), with an additional bonus in some cases as an opportunity for the adults to have one less rambunctious youngster around.  For the adults, it's sometimes a sort of working vacation, and sometimes a bit more.

Alfredo and Beppe had south room duty together last week, and this was both an opportunity for them to re-bond after their separation and a chance for Alfredo to get a bit of a break before throwing himself into preparations for the arrival of the delegation from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy; as leader, most of the work falls to him.  Alfredo tends to use south room duty as a chance to confer with Seal about stuff - what, I'm not privy to.  Conferring with Seal, and sometimes even the private citizens, is apparently part of the point at least some of the time.

Sometimes Murchison is posted here, which is particularly intriguing.  He's a secret agent of some sort, and he doesn't believe in time off, so whenever south room duty falls to Murchison, one has to suspect something is up.

Sleepyhead has permanent south room duty.  I don't think this was planned; I think that initially the idea was that he'd be in here until his jet lag wore off.  Since he's been here almost six months and is just as jet-lagged as he was at first, I've taken his presence here as permanent; it's a good thing Seal has a certain fondness for him.  The other animals vary dramatically in their reactions to Sleepyhead.  Khamsin thinks he's really boring; Vim thinks he's confusing; Cami is worried about him; Tibby thinks he's unusually enlightened; Seleucus returned from his last south room duty feeling like his sense of reality had been warped; some of the others just ignore him; and so on.

Parsley hadn't had south room duty in a very long time - long enough that I don't think he'd met Sleepyhead before.  He clearly falls into the "Sleepyhead is good for cuddling" camp, which is good, because Sleepyhead took an immediate shine to him.  I conjecture that south room duty for Parsley - this time, at least - is going to be purely a mission of R&R.

Religion in the Wild Republic

AJD and I are both Jewish.  If this factoid led you to assume that the Wild Republic is essentially Jewish, you would be wrong.  Diversity is one of the hallmarks of the Wild Republic, and religion is no exception.

That's not to say that none of the animals are Jewish.  Desmond (the manatee) is very Jewish.  As a matter of fact, Desmond is currently studying to become a rabbi.  His studies aren't progressing as quickly as they could be, because his Wild Republic duties take up enough time that he's only a half-time studentt; he was a rabbinical student before he ever got here, and he still has a way to go.  I quite respect his ability to multi-task.  But Desmond is the sort of fellow who believes in doing many things and all of them well, so the dual vocation will probably work out for him in the end.

Some of the animals are of uncertain religious affiliations, by which I don't mean they're necessarily areligious, but that they don't talk about it.  Sleepyhead (the panda), for instance.  We haven't even been able to get his name, let alone his religious preferences.  Murchison (the Arctic fox) is another.  He's a consummate professional, and his profession happens to involve espionage, so he's pretty closed-mouthed about anything pertaining to his personal life.

Sir Tristan, of course, is a member of the Church of the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, or "Church of WPM".  At least, he's nominally a member.  He seems to be the sort who enjoys elaborate liturgies but doesn't follow the Church's official stance on much of anything.  I'm not totally clear on the theological or social positions of the Church of WPM (it's not even clear to me whether they're Christians - as you'd assume from the name - or something else), but I'm given to understand that Sir Tristan's attitudes are very typical of its parishioners, so possibly the details don't really matter all that much.

Seleucus, on the other hand, is a bona fide hard-core Zoroastrian.  This is because he's a Bactrian camel.  Actually, he's not just any Bactrian camel; he's a royal Bactrian camel, and apparently the royal family takes their continued adherence to Zoroastrianism very seriously.  Heritage is very important to royal Bactrian camels.

Then there's the situation with the cats (with the exception of Sir Tristan).  They're all Buddhists. Three of them - Mahler, Flurry, and Rusty - are from Asia, so geographically speaking it makes sense that they'd be Buddhists, but Khamsin and the lion are African, and Cami's Mesoamerican, so given the general areal distribution of human Buddhists, one might expect they'd be something else.  Apparently, though, Buddhism spread like wildfire amongst felines of all types, so now they're all Buddhists wherever you go, outside the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy.  This seems rather improbable to me, given that, well, they're all carnivores, but there you are.  Apparently the doctrine of Feline Buddhism is extremely complicated.  Cami has tried several times to explain it to me, but I think you have to be a cat yourself to understand how it works.

One of the complicating factors is that many cats aren't only Buddhists; they're Buddhists plus something else.  Cami himself, for instance, is a Buddhist and a Jaguar Agnostic.  Jaguars, as you probably know, were considered sacred in Mesoamerica and South America, which put the jaguars in an odd position: they were being worshipped, but they weren't really clear on why, given that they didn't see themselves as divine and felt kind of weird about the whole thing.  Had they been lions or tigers, they probably would have just drank it up, but jaguars are both less full of their own consequence and a lot more given to philosophic speculations.  Rather than enjoy their perceived divinity, they developed a bit of theological insecurity, and this eventually led to a mass conclusion that they couldn't know whether gods existed or not.  I'm given to understand that this somehow made them more receptive to Buddhism, but again Buddhism didn't supersede the local agnostic movement.

Not all of the animals are averse to self-worship.  Take Tibby, for instance.  Don't let his name fool you: he's an imperial penguin, after all, and "Tibby" is short for "Tiberius Claudius Pingo".  Like the human Claudian emperors, the Claudian penguins are more than happy to see themselves as divine, and their religion is more or less identical to the pre-Christian emperor cult of the Roman empire, modulo the fact that all their divinities are penguins.  It's easy to forget about this; Tibby's a modest little chap, and pretty matter-of-fact about the whole divinity thing.  One does wonder if it contributes to his cheerful self-confidence, though.

Most of the other animals either adhere to the native faith of their species or mix it with a dash of the religion of the nearest human population.  I'll use the wolves (Alfredo and Beppe) as an example, both because there are two of them and because their theology is possibly the most complex of all.  Our wolves are Italian wolves, and their religion is a tangled mixture of the human polytheism of ancient Italy (before the emergence of the emperor cult) and the native lupine tribal beliefs, with a pinch of Catholicism thrown in for good measure.  We haven't really got a good grasp of how it works just yet, because we've had wolves here less than six months.

No discussion on this topic would be complete without explaining Plouie's take on theology.  Plouie believes in the Blue Penguin of Happiness.  We're not really quite sure if this is an Adelie penguin thing or something he came up with on his own after listening to us reading too many faery tales out loud, or some odd combination thereof, but whichever it is, he's quite earnest about it.  He even remembers it from one day to the next, which is really impressive by Plouie standards.  We don't have too many details about the Blue Penguin, but our working hypothesis is that it's some sort of Santa Claus/Easter Bunny/Tooth Faery figure.  Beyond that it's hard to tell.  Plouie's end of all of our attempted conversations on the subject consists primarily of "The Blue Penguin of Happiness!  The Blue Penguin of Happiness!", accompanied by increasingly fervent jumping up and down until he passes out.  It makes him pretty happy, though.

The Advent of an Owl

Sir Tristan's imminent reunion with his beloved is not the only reason to anticipate the arrival of the new delgation from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy.  Another member of the delegation is causing some excitement: an owl.  The owl will be our very first-non penguin bird.

I'm certainly very excited, because I've always really liked owls, and this owl is a snowy owl, which is totally my favourite kind of owl.  But this blog isn't about me.  It's much more interesting to note the way the penguins are reacting, because it's quite characteristic of them.

We have two penguins with us at the moment, and they could not be more different if they tried, I kid thee not.  Tibby is a baby emperor penguin, and he's an absolute darling.  Very bright, very inquisitive, earnest... clearly the little guy has a big future ahead of him in the Wild Republic.  He's a real pleasure to have around.  Plouie, though, is kind of on another planet, in more ways than one.  Don't get me wrong, I adore Plouie.  But he's... somewhat challenging, and somewhat challenged.  His IQ is in negative digits and he's totally crazy.  We've asked Tibby whether all Adelie penguins are like this, but he doesn't know any others either.

Tibby could not be more excited about the arrival of our owl.  For one thing, he's really looking forward to having another native speaker of Birdic around.  It's not that he minds speaking Common Mammalian - he's totally fluent - but it's always nice to have someone to speak your native language with.  (Plouie doesn't really count.  Sure, he's a native speaker of Birdic, but conversations with him are not exactly inspiring, at least not in the usual sense of the word.)  Also, Tibby has never met a bird who wasn't a penguin before, and he's looking forward to learning what they're like; he's even spent the last week or so making lists of questions to ask.  He's particularly excited that it's an owl.  Imagine a human child who has just been told that Santa is going to be his new roommate and you'll have an idea of how excited Tibby is.

Plouie has never met a bird who wasn't a penguin either.  The difference between him and Tibby is that Plouie actually cannot imagine a non-penguin bird: his feeble little brain just cannot stretch that far.  For him, a penguin is the prototypical bird.  Read him a story with birds in it and Plouie will visualise penguins, even if they're flying.  This has had hilarious if disastrous consequences, in that Plouie sort of thinks he ought to be able to fly too, since the birds in books do it and of course they're penguins.  Of course he can't fly, but you have to admire his persistence, because it doesn't stop him from trying.  He flies sort of like a cannonball: he launches himself into the air and then comes right back down.  We suspect the head injuries exacerbate all his problems.

It's always hard to understand what Plouie is talking about, so we can't be totally sure what he's thinking about the new owl, but the little we do understand creates a picture of characteristic confusion: he seems to be envisioning a large, white, nocturnal, flying penguin.  We have absolutely no idea what will happen when Plouie actually meets the owl.  It will probably explode his brain, figuratively speaking - this happens to him remarkably often anyway - but a shock of this size is bound to have other consequences we can't even fathom just yet.

Just so we're totally clear about these things: no, I did not specifically request an owl just to see how Plouie would react to it.  Really.  Don't look at me like that.

Romance in the Wild Republic; or I Am Slightly Pathetic

There's not much in the way of romance in our particular chapter of the Wild Republic.  This is partly because the denizens of our chapter are predominantly male (by which I actually mean that they're all male), and partly because I am not a furry, and therefore I'm not particularly inclined to speculate about the sex lives of my stuffed animals.  It just seems wrong.

This is not to say that there is no romance at all.  I mean, Skandar (the white tiger) and Sithri (the Siamese cat) have been together ever since I brought Sithri home four years ago, and they've barely come up for air since.  But their romance just sort of made sense to me.  Skandar's this tough, scrappy, bad-ass tiger, and Sithri's this pampered, blue-blooded, opera diva Siamese, and I just sort of knew they were made for each other.  It was all very Lady and the Tramp, and I've always loved that movie.

Also, I've always kind of suspected there was something going on between Casper and Seymour, but since Casper and Seymour are both highly reserved, private individuals, as well as consummate gentlemen, I've never been entirely sure, and it seemed impolite to ask.

But these four are all private citizens, not citizens of the Wild Republic.  There hasn't really been any romance in the Wild Republic proper.  Not here, anyway.  However, there have been two offstage romances, so to speak, and both of them have recently borne fruit.  I'll almost certainly devote an entire post to both of them at some point, so I won't go into any details now, but I should at least allude to their existence.

First, there is the tragic romance in Alfredo's past.  Alfredo is the leader of the local chapter of the Wild Republic, which is appropriate because he is an alpha wolf.  He's also a widower.  His wife, Laura, died tragically and heroically in the line of duty a few months before Alfredo was sent to us, and he's still grieving because they were very much in love.  Wolves are devoted to their mates that way.  He'll probably never love again.

I felt so guilty about doing this to Alfredo that I went to great lengths to reunite him with his son, Giuseppe, whom everyone calls Beppe.  Beppe arrived here exactly a week ago, having spent the last few months competing in some highly prestigious singing competitions.  He has his mother's eyes.  It's very sad.  But Alfredo is much happier now that his son is here.

The second romance involves Sir Tristan, the emissary from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy.  See, he has a girlfriend - she's a serval - who is also highly ranked in the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, and so when he was posted here about a year and a half ago, she couldn't come with him because she had an important job of her own to do.  They do write lots of letters to each other, which sometimes goes horribly awry because Plouie is still postmaster general.  Sir Tristan has missed her terribly.

But all will soon be well, because I felt almost as guilty about separating Sir Tristan from his beloved as I did about Laura's death.  In other words, the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, delighted with the success of Sir Tristan's mission, has decided to send some of his colleagues to join him, and - hurrah! - Sir Tristan's girlfriend will be among them.  So they will be reunited before too long, and hopefully everything will be happy.

"Hopefully" is apropos, because of course she will be the only female member of the active set, and I'm not sure what this will do to the group dynamics, particularly among the adolescent cats.  Also, two of the other members of the new delegation are adult male felines. One of them is Sir Tristan's best friend, but the other is an unknown quantity, and I'm not sure what either of their relationships to her are like.  I hope there's no rivalry involved, genteel or otherwise, because I'd rather the romantic elements of my animals' lives remained low-key.

But yes, I worry so much about my stuffed animals not being happy enough that I shell out money to bring other animals in to make them happy.  I know.  You don't have to say it.

Feline Onomastics

AJD and I don't really name our animals.  It's more like we wait for them to reveal their names to us.  In some cases, particularly in the earlier days, an animal went without revealing its name for months.   My little white seal has never told me her name; when I was younger, I was always changing it, which I take to be a sign that she's chosen to be very private with her name and I like to respect personal boundaries.   

I'm not going to write a post about the sources for all of the animals' names.  At some point, probably after we figure out how to take pictures of these guys, I'm intending to start doing features on this animal and that one, and I'll include how we found the animal's name there.  And, in the future, whenever an animal reveals its name to us, I'll do a post about that.

However, there's one aspect of Republican onomastics that I probably should do as a separate post, because otherwise I'll end up having to do it over and over again.  This has to do with the names we give the cats.

The modern Wild Republic has its roots in a trip to Washington DC over the 4th of July weekend three years ago, when I found Leprosy, Parsley, and the three cats of small stature in the gift shop at the Smithsonian.  The three cats all have Sanskrit names: the cheetah is Suraj ("sun"), the snow leopard Chandra ("moon"), and the black jaguar Chaya ("shadow").  (Yes: Chaya's name is Sanskrit, not Hebrew; the pronunciation is different.)  But they don't just all have Sanskrit names; they have Sanskrit nature names.  Therein lay madness, except I didn't realise it at the time.

None of the cats who found me before I became hostess of a Wild Republic chapter have nature names.  There's Casper, Seymour, Skandar, and Sithri: not a nature name in the batch.  But then AJD and I went to the zoo, where we met Flurry and Mahler, who are a snow leopard and clouded leopard respectively, and I thought, hey, snow leopards and clouded leopards could have nature names too... and there we are, the monster was born.  All felines must now have nature names.

Now, the astute reader will undoubtedly be objecting to himself that Mahler is not exactly a nature name, and the astute reader will of course be entirely correct.  But the astute reader should remind himself that Mahler is a surname, not a given name.  His full name is Cirrus Mahler, and Cirrus is of course an impeccable nature name.

The problem, of course, is that sometimes it's easy to come up with a suitable nature name, and sometimes it's not, especially when we're agreed in not wanting any of the animals to have names that are too obvious.

Khamsin's name was pretty easy to learn.  A khamsin is a particularly fierce sandstorm wind in the Sahara, which is suitable for a lightning-fast African feline.  AJD discovered Rusty's name within a day; his fur is redder than many tigers'.  Rust is an element of nature, right?  Rusty's actually only a nickname, but his full name - Marco Sequoyah - has a reference to nature also, and we learned it not long after we learned the nickname.  We decided that a nature-ish nickname and a nature surname ought to be sufficient.

Cami, as a black jaguar, took us rather longer.  This is partly because Cami is our shyest Wild Republican, and he was reluctant to tell us his full name.  "Cami" is a nickname, and it suits him well because his lovely black-on-black fur looks sort of like camouflage.  It is, however, not a suitable nature name.  Gaaa.  Eventually we worked out that his real name is Chalcedony.  Apparently "Cami" is the usual abbreviation of "Chalcedony" among black jaguars.  If you think this is weird, well, "Jack" is a nickname for "John" in English, so I don't think English-speakers are entitled to complain about the opacity of black jaguar pet names.

Then there was Sir Tristan, the ocelot.  He's a member of the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, and the "sir" is inherited because he's a baronet as well as a knight.  Just try to find a nature name that is a) fitting for an ocelot and b) doesn't sound ridiculous when combined with "sir".  We discovered that the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, felines tend to have nature surnames rather than nature names; Sir Tristan's full name is Sir Tristan Rivers.  Ocelots like to swim, you know. 

We're currently faced with what is probably our toughest case yet: our new baby lion.  He's not been all that forthcoming so far; he's been too busy fighting with Rusty over which of them gets to be the Top Baby Cat.  (Ancient tiger-lion rivalry, you see.)  The problem with lions is that they're a uniform tawny colour, which doesn't really lend itself to many good nature names.  Also, they're consciously of their own dignity, so our lion must have at least two names, and our boy hasn't given us any of them so far.

Meanwhile, there will soon be more feline names to discover, as the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy was so delighted with Sir Tristan's successes here that they've sent a delegation of his colleagues to join him.  This delegation includes three more cats.  Fortunately, they'll only need nature surnames, which are a bit easier to learn.

A Bit of Demographics

Before I start writing about what specific animals are up to, I should probably try to explain who they are, and what their general living situation is like, even though this is markedly less interesting than a lot of the other things I could be talking about.  The first thing I should probably explain, for instance, is the general structure of the plush population.  They fall more or less neatly into a few different groups, in a conveniently hierarchical fashion.

The coarsest distinction is that between what one might label the "active" set and the "inactive" set.  The latter tend to stay more or less in the same position, while the former often change locations.  I could have called them the "bookcase" set and the "bed" set, because all of the members of the inactive set live on one of my bookshelves (I have even more books than I do plush animals - addictive personality, remember?), except that one of the members of the active set spends most of his time on top of one of my bookcases anyway, because he's a lemur and he prefers to be in a treelike environment.

Anyway.  The "inactive" set consists of two types of animals: animals who have lived with me since before I started officially collecting (some of them I've had for decades, others only a few years), and animals who are particularly small, with some overlap.  They're probably not going to figure prominently in these posts, because they're not spending much time interacting with the others, but I might write a bit about them now and then.

Members of the inactive set:

Those of long or longish tenure: Casper (tiger); Seymour (cougar); Sithri (Siamese cat); Skandar (white tiger)

Those of small stature: Amos (ferret); Chandra (snow leopard); Chaya (black jaguar); Dante (Tasmanian Devil); Henri (giraffe); the Snark (anteater); Suraj (cheetah); Zorri (skunk)

Those of long tenure and small stature: Silver (seal); Winslow (beluga whale); and another seal and chameleon who have never seen fit to reveal their names

The "active" set has more subdivisions, with the most basic one being membership in the Wild Republic.

This is actually really important, because it's potentially confusing, in that the term "Wild Republic" actually refers to two different things.  It's a particular line of plush animals that one frequently encounters in the gift shops of zoos and museums, and it has a great deal of variety and animals one is less likely to find in plush.  The majority of my animals - including the small members of the inactive set - are from this line.  When I use the term "Wild Republic", though, I'm usually going to be referring to a particular subset of the animals who associate with AJD and me, which includes most, but not all, of the active set, and which is comprised mostly, but not entirely, of animals from the Wild Republic line.

I have no idea if I have explained this coherently, but let's pretend I did.

So the active set basically amounts to three categories: the Wild Republic, AJD's teddy bear Butterfinger (who is too much a teddy bear to be a member of the Wild Republic, but who hangs out with them a lot), and Sir Tristan, the ocelot.  Sir Tristan is an ambassador from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy who has been sent to our chapter of the Wild Republic to build good diplomatic relations.  [A year and a half ago, I decided I really wanted an ocelot, and the only potential vendor I found for plush ocelots is based in the UK.]

Now we're down to the Wild Republic itself, which is good.  The population of the Wild Republic essentially falls into five groups, although some of the members in each group have slightly special status.

The first group has exactly two members: the Fox, who has been AJD's companion longer than I've known him, and Seal, who has been with me even longer.  (Since I was three years old, to be precise; in fact, he was the first thing I ever bought with my own money.)  I should confess right away that Seal is not actually a seal, but a sea lion (see the previous parenthetical about how I was three at the time).  Be assured that the Fox is in fact a fox, a lovely red fox.

Seal and the Fox have special status.  They're both clearly very high-ranked in the Wild Republic, but the exact nature of their rank is unclear.  Seal spends his time in my room, in my bed, apart from the main body of the group, who are based in AJD's room; the Fox lives in AJD's room, of course, but he holds himself a bit aloof from the others.

The second group of creatures are the Elder Statesmen.  Some of them are rather curmudgeonly (but no less cuddly for it).  These guys hold high rank and are either retired from active duties or old enough that retirement is probably not too far in their futures.  The fact that we were fortunate enough to be gifted with so many high-ranked Wild Republicans suggests that ours is a very important chapter, although the Wild Republicans themselves are closed-mouthed about their ultimate purpose for being with us.   

The Elder Statesmen: Desmond (manatee), Humphrey (walrus), Laszlo (moose); Leprosy (platypus), Rochester (bison); and a new river otter who has yet to reveal his name

Then we have the general populace: younger animals who are very much involved in active duty and hoping, in some cases, to move up in the ranks.  Many of them are clearly destined for high rank.

The General Populace: Alfredo (wolf); Gus (glyptodon); Hrithik (ring-tailed lemur); Mimsy (woolly mammoth); Murchison (Arctic fox); Parsley (okapi); Seleucus (Bactrian camel)

A couple of these deserve further comment.  You will have noticed that two of them (Gus and Mimsy) sound suspiciously extinct.  This is one of those things it's better not to mention in their hearing; they're understandably quite sensitive about it.  Also, Hrithik, as mentioned above, spends most of his time on top of one of my bookcases rather than in AJD's room, but he's still very much a part of this set and visits the other room on occasion.  (He's there right now, as a matter of fact.)

One may think, with all of these high-ranked and upwardly-mobile citizens, that our chapter of the Wild Republic must be a very solemn place to be, but in fact it's a frequently chaotic mess, because of the fourth segment of the population: the young ones.  We have a rather large number of baby animals [the "Wild Republic's baby animals" sub-line is OMG so cute] and they're all carnivores and most of them have a lot of energy.  This is another sign that our chapter is an important one: they've sent us a lot of animals to learn from the valuable, experienced, talented older members.  In theory, anyway.  The younger ones often seem to spend most of their time getting on their elders' nerves.

The Young Ones: Beppe (wolf); Cami (black jaguar); Flurry (snow leopard); Khamsin (cheetah); Mahler (clouded leopard); Rusty (tiger); Tibby (emperor penguin); Vim (polar bear); a panda bear known only as "Sleepyhead"; and a new lion who has yet to reveal his name

A few of these deserve further comment too.  Mahler and Cami are significantly older than the others; Mahler's an adolescent and Cami's only slightly younger.  [They're not actually part of the "baby animals" line, but they seemed younger to us.]  Khamsin's a little older than he pretends, too, though he's younger than Mahler and Cami.  And Sleepyhead... ah, Sleepyhead.  I'll explain about him later; for the moment, suffice to say that he spends all his time in my room, sleeping. 

I said there were five segments of the population.  The fifth segment consists of a single individual, namely Plouie the Adelie penguin, who belongs in a category of his own because he is... exceptional, in many respects.  Plouie, as far as we've been able to determine, was packed off by his relatives because they wanted to get rid of him.  He is, in short, totally bat-shit insane and remarkably unintelligent to boot.  The ranking members of our local chapter upon his arrival (this was before our leader came) made him postmaster general in hopes of keeping him out of trouble, but he sort of spends most of his time vibrating.  He's only got two settings: max and overloaded.  I'll explain more about Plouie later, too.

There!  That wasn't confusing at all, was it?

Mission Statement; or Hopefully the Most Boring Post on This Blog

I'm extremely allergic to cats, as is my boyfriend-cum-roommate, AJD.  It's very sad.  I mean, I really like cats, but I can't let myself get too near them, which means I can't adopt any, which means I can't post any adorable pictures of my cats or videos of them playing the piano or acting out Hamlet or anything.  Tragic, isn't it?  Everyone knows the Internet is designed to propagate a) porn and b) cute pictures/videos of cats.

On a daily basis, the absence of cats in my life is not a huge problem, because in addition to a cat allergy, I also have an addictive personality, which means that I collect specific species of stuff, one of which is non-canonical stuffed animals.  The official collection is about three years old, and I've managed to amass quite a herd in that time.  They're cute.  They're cuddly.  They're clean, too, and they never get sick, and once you've paid for the privilege of acquiring them, they're quite inexpensive.  (No food, or doctor's bills, or anything.)  Also, unlike cats, stuffed animals are very compliant.  They're whatever your imagination wants them to be.

In retrospect, it was a mere matter of time before it occurred to me that stuffed animals can also substitute for cats on the Internet.

Another large void in my life involves creative writing projects.  Before I left for college, I was always in the middle of one writing project or another, not that I ever finished any of them.  Since I started college, though, creative writing has been become "something I do in my free time".  I'm a graduate student.  I'm writing a dissertation.  I have very little free time, and far too much to do in it.  So I've largely neglected writing for the sake of writing for a large percentage of my life, and I've decided to do something about it.

Hence this blog: a perfect multiple-birds-with-one-stone solution to both my inability to fill the Internet with stories about my adorable cats and the lamentable absence of creative writing projects in my life. 

This is probably all I will ever have to say about myself here.  I'll let my plethora of plush darlings take centre stage from here on out.