An Expansion of the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy Presence in Greater New Jersey

The ambassadorial delegation from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy has just been enriched by the arrival of not one, but two new delegates, apparently by direct order of the Monarch.  This has been the cause of great celebration for the members of the delegation already present, as the newcomers are not merely not strangers, but old friends.  So it gives me great pleasure to announce the happy arrival of Sir Winidavefred and Lady Artemisia Lapis-Lyme.

Those who read this blog are probably quite familiar with the heroic saga of Angel Joe and his withstanding of dire torture at the hands of the evil Ebenezer Popcorn, dictator of the Wild Fascist Dictatorship.  You will recall that Angel Joe and his partner in the field, Winidavefred the badger, daringly penetrated the enemy stronghold in order to steal back vital documents which, had they remained in enemy hands, would have put the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy in gravest peril.  But they were unable to both sneak away undetected, so Angel Joe bravely allowed himself to be captured so that Winidavefred could escape with the documents, and underwent all sorts of grim torture until the Monarchy's best agents could recover him.

Well, now Angel Joe and Winidavefred are on leave from active duty, to allow them to recover from their harrowing experience, and they've both been knighted for their heroism, and... as of last night, they have been happily reunited with each other, as it was decided that since they were both on leave anyway, they might as well be posted together.

So Winidavefred the badger has joined us here in the Greater New Jersey chapter of the Wild Republic.  He's not on medical leave - technically I think he's on "personal" leave - and will apparently be helping Nicodemus, the official Administrative Liaison, from time to time, but primarily he's here to hang out with Angel Joe.  They'd been partners in the field for so long, and trusted each other so implicitly, that they'd really missed each other.

You might ask why, given that Angel Joe has perked up considerably since Winidavefred got here, the Monarchy didn't think of this before; but actually they had good reason.  Winidavefred, you see, felt absolutely terrible about having to leave his friend behind - in fact, he would have much rather preferred being the one to stay and take the torture.  They had to draw straws to determine who would go, because both of them felt this way.  So it was incredibly hard for him to see Angel Joe at the height of his infirmity.  For his part, Angel Joe felt a lot of conflicting emotions: genuine gratitude, because by all accounts Winidavefred moved hell to get his friend rescued as soon as possible; relief that he had spared Winidavefred the same treatment; and yet some understandable anger.  It seemed best to separate them until they'd both recovered a bit from their ordeal.

Now they're doing much better, and they feel only relief in seeing each other again.  Their reunion was incredibly poignant; I know I wasn't the only one with tears in my eyes watching it.  (Sithri was so overcome by emotion that she fainted, but of course she's an opera diva and she does that sort of thing a lot, when she's not inhaling Skandar.)

They're probably going to spend the next few days alone catching up, and everyone agrees that this is important and that the kittens and baby polar bears and Beppe need to be kept away from them if possible, despite the clear curiosity Beppe in particular feels towards this new hero.  This is likely to be successful in the case of the kittens, at least, thanks to the identity of the other new arrival.

Lady Artemisia Lapis-Lyme has not previously been mentioned on this blog, but she is best described as "something else."  She is a caracal, and she has been Lady Faraday's best friend ever since they were roommates at school; this could and perhaps should have gone horribly wrong, as Lady Faraday was clearly intended to be the Good Influence on Lady Artemisia, who was something of a hellion.  But in fact they got on swimmingly, even if Lady Faraday was always having to bail her friend out of some sort of ridiculous scrape or other.

Like Lady Faraday, Lady Artemisia is the daughter of an earl, in her case the Earl of Kereswicke.  The Earls of Kereswicke are the highest-ranked noble caracal family in the entire Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, so she is an august personage indeed.  On her mother's side, she's descended from the Tarragon family; the Tarragon family isn't noble, but they're very wealthy and very influential. 

In many respects, Lady Artemisia is to Lady Faraday what Magick is to Sir Tristan: she's the one prone to getting into trouble, and she's the one who has clearly been around the block a few times.  You can tell just by looking at her that she is one tough cat.  By all accounts, she's quite brilliant - Lady Faraday once told me that the only reason Lady Artemisia wasn't expelled from their school (the way she had been from no less than six others) was that the headmistress was impressed by her genuine intellectual curiosity and became convinced she was just too intelligent for her intellect to go to waste.  (Apparently, Lady Artemisia is particularly gifted in mathematics.)  And, again like Magick, it's not really quite clear what she is doing here.  She is known to work for the Foreign Office, but the capacity of her employment is unclear, particularly as this is her first non-domestic posting - unlike Magick.  And, again unlike Magick, her arrival does not correspond to any sort of Unfortunate Incident; she has a reputation for being a hellion, but not for being particularly scandalous otherwise, and she doesn't seem to have been sent here for disciplinary reasons.

Her arrival, therefore, raises some interesting questions.  Why is she here?  Does her presence here have anything to do with Magick's? Did they really send Winidavefred just for Angel Joe's sake, or is something else afoot?  Why is Murchison taking a particular interest in this new arrival?  I really have no idea.  I mean, I still haven't figured out what Magick is doing here, and apparently the plot is already thickening.

So... the other thing is, we now have a female feline with us who is not affiliated with any of the males.  Gasp.  There is so much potential for disaster here.  Lady Faraday keeps trying to stop herself from smirking, and I can't say I really blame her.  I'm actually not so worried about Magick - he and Lady Artemisia have known each other forever and are good friends, and if they get up to anything, I suspect no one will get hurt by it.  But... then there's all the others.  Who knows what will happen.

But anyway, the local chapter is now happily enriched by two individuals who are old friends of someone or other, and while there is some potential for complications, on the whole everything seems to be pretty good.

Monarchic Nemesis Revealed

Sir Angel Joe is writing his memoirs.  He's become quite a popular hero back in the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy; apparently one of the reasons he was attached to this particular delegation rather than given a posting on his home soil was that he was very unnerved by the attention he was receiving.  The poor chap couldn't walk down the street without being recognised.  Complete strangers wanted to come up and touch him.  You can see how this would have interacted badly with Angel Joe's already fractured nerves.

But now that he's been away for a while, and is feeling a bit better, he's decided to write his memoirs.  He's hoping that people will stop asking him questions if his memoirs have been published, especially if they're published while he's still away from home.  All the details of his heroic mission will be there in the public record, but he won't be around for interviews, so (he hopes) everyone will just read his memoirs, and by the time he returns he'll be uninteresting and everyone will leave him alone.

Consequently, he's been talking a bit more about his mission. Angel Joe finds it difficult to express himself in prose, so he came up with the idea of dictating his story to himself on a digital recorder, and then he takes his own dictation.  He does a lot of wandering around muttering to himself (so does Zebulon, but Angel Joe isn't crazy), and sometimes he tries telling bits of his story to someone first, so that if he skips over something or is somehow unclear, his audience will tell him.

So we've learned where Angel Joe and Winidavefred the badger were sent on their mission.  This is something AJD and I had been wondering about.  We knew that the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy and the Wild Republic are on good terms, so it didn't make sense to us that the Wild Republic would have stolen sensitive documents from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy; but we didn't know whether there were any other candidates for the Wild Parlimentary Monarchy's natural enemy.

Now we know: the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy is the sworn enemy of the Wild Fascist Dictatorship, which is governed by a tyrannical, power-mad sheep named Ebenezer Popcorn, whose bloodthirsty ambition is equalled only by his personal insanity.  If you're thinking a sheep could not possibly be that convincing a dictator, and that a carnivore would be a more likely candidate, think again.  Carnivores have to be very careful, you see, lest they make herbivores uncomfortable.  Herbivores have rather more laxity and sometimes feel like they have something to prove.  Ebenezer Popcorn is just such a sheep.  He carries a spiky staff and has a habit of randomly slamming into anyone unfortunate enough to be in his immediate vicinity.  He's also very paranoid, frequently spontaneously deciding that those closest to him are conspiring against him and then thinking of creative ways of executing them.

You do not want to get taken prisoner by Ebenezer Popcorn.  Angel Joe's torture sessions were overseen by the infamous Popcorn himself, and he is one of the few to live to tell about it.  No wonder his country holds him in such awe.

The Investiture; or I Hereby Dub Thee Sir Angel Joe

Ever since the arrival of the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, there have been rumours afoot that Angel Joe was going to be knighted for his service to the Crown - that same service that left him severely traumatised and permanently if only slightly disfigured.  These rumours were confirmed earlier this week, when a special medal for Distinguished Service arrived.  The official ceremony of investiture was held this afternoon, and naturally we took pictures of the entire thing.  So many pictures.

Now, under ordinary circumstances, a knighthood of merit would be conveyed by the Monarch, but in this case the honoured recipient is away from home on another assignment, and so the Monarch is unable to be present and the ranking members of the delegation are officiating in the Monarch's stead.  The Wild Republic has graciously allowed the use of their facilities on this solemn and august occasion.

This was taken shortly before the ceremony, once the audience had all been seated.  I don't know if you can tell, but a great deal of attention went into the seating arrangement here.  

They're more or less seated by rank.  In the upper left corner by the dais are the members of the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy who are not participating in the investiture; on the other side are the ranking members of the Wild Republic, many of whom have not previously been featured in pictures on this blog.  After them come the ordinary members of the WR, in approximate order of rank, and then the young ones are all grouped at the bottom.  Alcindarias, the griffin, kept himself a bit aloof, as is typical.  He's a member of the Wild Free Alliance of Mythical Beasts, not the Wild Republic.

Here, look how attentive they all are.

Here are the ranking members of the Wild Republic.  You don't hear as much about them because they're largely retired.

Seal in front there is the highest-ranked Wild Republican in our local chapter; the Fox, to his left, is also of very high rank.  Behind them you can see Casper and Seymour, who are retired.

Now the procession is underway.  Alfredo, as the head of the local Wild Republic chapter, is the official host for the occasion, so he's leading the procession, followed by Lord Twilby, the only peer present.  Note that Beppe managed not to call out to his father as Alfredo went by.

Now that Alfredo and Lord Twilby are in position (Twilby is on the side where the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy delegates are seated), the officiating officers, Sir Theo and Lady Faraday, are making their way to the dais.

Angel Joe, of course, entered last.  Sir Theo seems to have given him a few words of support when he reached the dais.

The ceremony was opened by Alfredo, as the official host.  He didn't really have much to say, so we didn't take a picture.  The first real speech was Sir Theo's, and it wasn't really all that interesting.  Actually, it wasn't interesting at all, although it was very inspiring.  It was all about honour and valour and rigour and other virtues of that nature - not Angel Joe's specifically, you understand, just sort of in the abstract.

Beppe got bored.  He was really only interested in his father's speech anyway, so once Alfredo was done, he decided to take off.  No one stopped him, partly because he was at the back and partly because the adults were all just a little bit worried that he'd try to join his father on the dais or something and cause an International Incident.  Averting an International Incident was much more important than having Beppe at the ceremony.

Now, to be fair, Beppe wasn't the only one of the kids who got a bit bored.  You can see in this picture that Vim and Flurry are having some sort of conversation, Khamsin is doing... something (actually, I'm not sure quite what he's doing), and Rebus has fallen asleep facedown.  Tibby, though, despite his youth, is paying rapt attention.  Imperial penguins love ceremonies; it's in their blood.

But then it was time for Lady Faraday to give her speech, and everything suddenly got more interesting.  She is less long-winded than Sir Theo, and she got the better material: her job was to relate the stirring story of Angel Joe's heroism to all present.  The only creature present not paying attention was Alfredo, who was wondering where his son had got to.

It turns out that Angel Joe had been on a very serious and highly dangerous mission to recover some vital stolen documents from enemy headquarters.  The documents were encoded, but they contained state secrets, and if the enemy had had them long enough to decipher them, they would have learned the identities and code names of all of the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy secret agents, among other highly classified information.  Angel Joe, along with his partner (a badger named Winidavefred who, like Angel Joe, is no longer a field agent), was tasked with their perilous retrieval.  They successfully snuck into enemy headquarters and stole the documents, but they were unable to sneak back out without attracting attention, so Angel Joe bravely created a diversion to enable Winidavefred to escape with the documents safely.  As part of the diversion, he arranged his own capture and was held as a prisoner of war.  Winidavefred, fortunately, made a safe escape, and reported to his superiors the fate of Angel Joe.  The Wild Parliamentary Monarchy sent some of their best agents to raid enemy headquarters and recover Angel Joe.  He was still alive, but had been subjected to terrible torture in an effort to get him to reveal state secrets; however, he had refused to talk.  Upon his return home, Angel Joe retired from active field duty and became some sort of cultural attache instead.  He has recovered from most of his physical wounds; his whiskers had been taped to his face, and although Pedro was able to successfully free them, the tape cannot be removed and will mark him for the rest of his days.  In addition, he suffers from severe PTSD and has lost the ability to shift his coat with the seasons.

This story was a big hit with the audience, naturally, but the most exciting part of the ceremony was the investiture itself, which was also performed by Lady Faraday.

After the investiture, everyone cheered long and hard.  They cheered so long and so hard, in fact, that they scared Plouie and he fainted.  This was probably to the good: it eliminated the other potential for an International Incident.

Unfortunately for the audience, this was not the end of the ceremony: Lord Twilby had yet to give his speech, which was all the historical importance of this momentous occasion.  Here you can see the audience already getting restless and Twilby is still in the middle of his opening remarks (which are about how he is going to keep his remarks brief).  See how the kittens and baby polar bears are starting to creep away? 

Twilby went on speaking for like forty-five minutes (I asked Lady Faraday afterwards if that really was "brief" for him, and she winced and said yes it was).  He looks awfully cute, though.  I really like Twilby's "I'm Being Rhetorical Here" pose.

Here the youngest animals are all sneaking off, except for Mahler (who is old enough to feel he needs to stay put), Navarre (who feels he must stay for the honour of lions, and is also too far front to sneak out inobtrusively), and Tibby (who is totally eating this up; he's paying attention to Twilby every bit as closely as he did to Lady Faraday).  Poor Navarre; he looks so bored and woebegone.  The younger animals are not the only bored audience members here, though.  Hrithik, next to Navarre, was listing state capitals in his head the whole time.

Here's the other side of the aisle, with the tail end of the exodus of the younger generation.  Cami, like Mahler and Navarre, felt he had to stick out. 

He's actually paying better attention than the adult members nearby.  Barry and Gilly are busily whispering anagrams of everyone's names to each other, while Parsley tries to figure out what on earth they're talking about.

But Twilby's speech didn't actually last forever (only forty-five minutes), and eventually the ceremony ended with a very dignified recessional march.  You'll note that the audience is conspicuously smaller than it was at the beginning of the ceremony, and that Plouie is still unconscious.

Now Angel Joe - or rather Sir Angel Joe - has this awesome medal.  It says Avag Co Bepsig and everything.

Afterwards, there was a reception for everyone.  Well, not quite actually.  The younger animals who left the ceremony early didn't realise there was a reception, so they weren't there, and Plouie sort of never woke up. He's kinda still there.

But everyone else certainly went to the reception, which was a great success.  The main hors d'oeurves were field mice, at Sir Angel Joe's request.  Here the other attendees of rank are congratulating him while everyone else mills about.  The Ice Age animals are sticking together and kvetching about how different these things were in their day (more bonfires, more spears, less speeches) and the three remaining younger cats are trying to eat as many field mice as possible.  Good times.

I don't know how well you can see this, but there are some poker chips over there under the papa-san, sort of by Nicodemus's hind quarters and Leprosy's snout.  When the reception was dwindling, and Angel Joe had been whisked off to a special dinner with various high-ranking individuals, Magick and a few of the others decided to put those poker chips to good use.  I'll tell you all about how that went later.

Comforting Pats

If all goes well, I will be submitting my dissertation tomorrow afternoon - a very daunting proposition.  I defended it (successfully!) not quite two weeks ago, and the time since has been a race to get the introduction and conclusion and proofreading and various formatting things taken care of.  It's not exactly difficult, but it's frequently tedious and also remarkably psychologically demanding.

This is why Sir Theo has been sleeping in the south room with me the last few weeks.

Sir Theo is essentially a pillow with ears and feet.  He's just so large and so snuggly.  You take him to bed with you and you can just sort of curl up around him; it's quite an experience. 

But that's not the only reason having him around is useful.  He's a soothing presence independently of his size.  There's this perpetual look of gentle benign avuncular sympathy in his eyes that is remarkably calming.  In addition, Sir Theo is a renowed master of the Comforting Pat.  He'll just reach out put his paw on you, and you just melt.  Or you can lie on your back and put him on your chest with one paw on each shoulder and feel that someone has your back (or, at least, your shoulders). 

For demonstration, here's Sir Theo giving Angel Joe a Comforting Pat.  

Angel Joe is perpetually in need of Comforting Pats, so I feel moderately guilty about depriving him of Sir Theo for so long, but he says he understands.

The Wild Republic Meets the New Delegation

On Wednesday night, while the Thundersnowstorm raged in the background, the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy was formally introduced to the Wild Republic.  They'd been staying in the south room until they'd had a chance to recover from jet lag and Alfredo and Sir Theo had had an opportunity to confer for a few days, but now everything was in place for their visit.  We made certain to document this historic event.

First of all, we got a group picture of the eight members of the delegation from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy.

Back row, left to right: Lady Faraday, Viscount Twilby.
Middle row, left to right: Lord Ebonwood (Magick), Nicodemus, Sir Tristan.
Front row, left to right: Sir Theo, Dr Pedro, Angel Joe.

It's really hard to photograph Magick so that he doesn't look like a void of darkness; it's probably highly symbolic.

The leaders of the various factions had a small summit meeting while the rest of the groups were getting to know each other.  Here you can see Sir Theo, Alfredo, and the Fox.

Neither of the canines is particularly small; Sir Theo really is that enormous.  He's about the size of a pillow.   In addition, he's incredibly wise; you can see it in his face.  This combination makes him approximately the cuddliest creature in all of the cosmos.  Holding Sir Theo and having him put his giant paws on your chest or face is guaranteed to make you feel better about life.

Nicodemus was delighted to discover that he's not the only ungulate around.  He really hit it off with Parsley, in particular; they spent quite a while chatting.  Then he met Rochester, and discovered he'd found a friend for life.  Rochester is, in some respects, not particularly sophisticated: he has this thing for head-butting.  It's a sign of affection with him, actually.  So far we've been unable to train him out of it in even a tiny way; we haven't even been able to convince him not to terrify the more sensitive members of the group, like Cami.  He doesn't understand how anyone would fail to understand how affectionate he's being if he head-butts you.  Nicodemus also really likes head-butting, however, so the two of them will doubtless have numerous happy hours together.  This might take the pressure off the members of the group less keen on this particular bonding activity... or it might make it worse.  Too soon to tell.

Here's Nicodemus and Rochester, demonstrating their newfound friendship.  You can see Laszlo in the background (Nicodemus was very impressed with his equipment); Laszlo's okay with head-butting, but doesn't show the same marked enthusiasm for it as the other two.

 The one we're really worried about, of course, is poor Angel Joe.  We've worked out a bit why he's here, and what happened to him: he was on some sort of highly dangerous secret mission, in the course of which he was captured and tortured and left seriously traumatised.  He is to be knighted for his service, although the official ceremony is still some time away.  AJD, with the assistance of Pedro, was able to successfully extract his whiskers from their confinement, but the tape will remain forever, unfortunately.  And the psychological damage is much worse.  The Wild Parliamentary Monarchy has been very solicitous of Angel Joe since his rescue, appropriately so; they sent him here on an easy assignment in hopes that he might have a chance to heal.  He'd been kept in isolation for a while, but they don't want him to spend the rest of his life cowering in a room alone.

The fact that Angel Joe is willing to go along with this plan when he is clearly mortally terrified speaks highly of his intrinsic bravery.  To put it bluntly, the poor fellow is afraid of his own shadow, and being surrounded by lots of cats and wolves and the like is a major strain on his nerves.  He's particularly afraid of Lord Ebonwood, which is really quite sensible of him, because Magick is pretty scary.  Magick tries to keep away from him for fear of scaring him and tries to look out for him (he might be scary, but he's a fundamentally decent individual), but Angel Joe still cowers whenever they get too close.  Lady Faraday and Pedro are particularly protective of him.

We were very worried at how Angel Joe would react to the Wild Republicans, since a lot of them are kind of larger than life and/or possessed of bizarre quirks.  Fortunately, he quickly found two good friends.  Butterfinger, being a teddy bear, will probably be very good for him; and Cami is as sensitive a creature as one is likely to meet.  He isn't a trauma victim, but he's shy himself.  We suspect their friendship will be good for both of them, as well as being aesthetically pleasing, as you can see here:

Of course, the single most-anticipated meeting was that between Viscount Twilby and the two penguins, and this did not disappoint. Tibby was just so excited to meet a real live owl.  He was jumping up and down, flapping his little wings, and talking a mile a minute in Birdish - such a delight to finally get to speak his native tongue again!  Twilby, for his part, was delighted to meet such an intelligent and earnest little fellow and promptly took him under his wing (...ouch... pun not intended, I swear); he's offered to be Tibby's primary tutor.

As predicted, Plouie went into palpitations upon meeting Twilby; he was so confused that he fell over, and when we picked him up and put him on the iceberg, he promptly fell off and landed on his head.  Being a responsible doctor, Pedro immediately dashed over to him to ascertain whether he was all right. His primary mode of examination involves sniffing you at warp speed, which made Plouie twitch a lot.  Pedro eventually concluded that Plouie was all right, but he's not really sure why Plouie is all right; you could almost see him writing an article for a medical journal.

Twilby took Tibby for a flight around the room, to their mutual enjoyment.  Plouie was not similarly favoured because of the near-certainty that he would start wiggling around in mid-air and fall on his head again.  We didn't get a picture of the flight, but we do have a picture of the birds together.

Left to right: Tibby, Twilby, Plouie.  They've all hit very characteristic poses here, which is kind of neat.

I mustn't forget the cats, since the delegation contains four cats, three of them new, and the Wild Republic already has a healthy feline population.  Much of the local feline population is on the juvenile side, and consequently all three of the new cats were going to produce strong reactions in them: Sir Theo is intimidatingly enormous; Magick is intimidatingly bad-ass; and Lady Faraday is... a girl.  They reacted to these three revelations exactly as predicted.

First, they're all kind of terrified of Sir Theo.  Well, except for Flurry.  Flurry's the youngest animal we have, and he has the fearlessness of some young creatures before they're old enough to know better.  He just thinks Sir Theo is Awesome.  Which he is, of course, but the others are too intimidated yet to realise how essentially avuncular he is.  Sir Theo knew the correct address for lions, which Navarre appreciated - although then he sort of passed out in terror.  He handled Rusty with proper respect for tigers without any deference. 

They also all have a massive case of hero worship for Magick.  You can't blame them, really: he's a confident, mysterious, clearly dangerous panther with a reputation for getting himself into dangerous situations and ladies' bedrooms.  Mahler, being a teenager, is particularly obsequious, but Rusty, who wants to be just like that when he's bigger, is more obnoxious about it.  Magick is basically a good guy; he sees a bit of himself in both of them and this makes him somewhat sympathetic, although he's not inclined to give quarter.  Khamsin he finds more interesting, but the one he seems most inclined to like is Cami, although Cami, being the shyest, has so far kept his distance and conducted his hero-worship remotely.

And then, of course, there's Lady Faraday.  Most of the cats are too young for her presence to be a serious distraction; all of them adore her, but not in a way likely to be annoying.  They're just sweet.  Cami's old enough to have a crush on her, but he's Cami, so he's mostly just sweet too.  The ones likely to be problems are Mahler, who has hormones out the wazoo, and Rusty, who is younger but somewhat precocious.  Fortunately, Lady Faraday knows how to handle these things, and she has both Sir Tristan and Magick to intimidate them into leaving her alone.

Speaking of Magick and ladies, AJD has a little grey cat named Skwidjit who lives on his windowsill.  She's not part of the Wild Republic and doesn't really pay them much attention, although Mahler's had a crush on her for ages.  Magick's already taken notice of her.  She's not his type, but she's the only available female feline around and we're talking about Magick.  He took far too much notice of Sithri when he was in the south room, too.  Sithri's too in love with Skandar to fall for him, but she's a little diva and she's not above generating drama, so I was kind of glad when Magick relocated.

Here we have all of our cats, except the ones who live in my room.  Once again, you get a sense of just how huge Sir Theo really is.

Back row, left to right: Flurry, Rusty, Navarre.

Front row, left to right: Mahler, Sir Theo, Lady Faraday, Cami, Sir Tristan, Khamsin, Lord Ebonwood.

Minor dramas involving cats and fainting Plouies aside, everything seems to be working out well so far.  Here's Twilby in rapt conversation with Tibby, Lady Faraday, and Sir Tristan.

And here's Sir Theo clowning around with, of all individuals, Leprosy:

Leprosy is not the clowning-around sort; think Sam the Eagle from The Muppet Show, and you'll have a fair idea of what he's like.  But he approves of Sir Theo, and apparently this inspired him to chill out for a bit.

Here's one of Sir Theo and Twilby together, celebrating the initial success of their mission.  These two are old friends; they've known each other since their days at university.

Finally, here you can see more or less everybody (the "less" are the Ice and Snow animals, who by this point were all gathering at the windows) all mingling and getting to know each other.  I think they were probably preparing for a Jingo by this point, too.

Thundersnow &c.

Wednesday night we were hit by a truly impressive Thundersnowstorm.  The snow animals were absolutely delighted.  Here you can see Murchison, Flurry, Vim, and Plouie watching the storm with great enthusiasm.  Plouie actually calmed down a little for once.

At precisely 4.58 the following morning, I was awakened by an eerie, remarkably high-pitched alarm noise, which disappeared almost as soon as it had happened, along with our power.  For awhile the power company claimed the culprit was a tree, but the tree turned out to be mythical.  What had actually happened was a gas leak under the street, so that the power company couldn't fix the outage until the gas company had fixed the leak, which was a complicated endeavour what with all the cars and snow on the street.  The power was out for almost thirty-six hours, along with our heat.  Our heating is actually gas, so technically it was working (we did, for instance, have plenty of hot water), but the thermostat  is electric, so the gas didn't know it was supposed to turn on.  This meant our apartment became very cold, and we eventually elected to crash at the house of a friend of ours out in Upper Darby.

When we first established that the power was gone, AJD said, 'Uh oh, I'd better go make sure no one is telling Angel Joe ghost stories.'  Fortunately, everyone had better sense than that.  When we made the choice to evacuate, though, AJD realised we'd better check to make sure Angel Joe was in good company.  It turned out he was with Nicodemus.  'That's a terrible idea,' AJD exclaimed, so Angel Joe was relocated to Butterfinger's company.  Teddy bears are good for traumatised ermines.

Just as we were leaving, Vim decided he wanted to come too.  Barry and Gilly got to have adventures, he pointed out, and he thought possibly he might be useful for us.  So we smuggled him into my bag, and he got to ride the subway train (which he thought was great fun), spend the night in Upper Darby (likewise), ride the bus all the way to Center City (he was disappointed I made him stay concealed until I pointed out that the other passengers might be frightened if they knew he was aboard), and then go to work with me.  We proclaimed it Take Your Polar Bear to Work Day; I wonder if it will catch on.

So Vim had a great time, and has been regaling the others with the story ever since he returned; and no one told Angel Joe ghost stories; and we have both power and heat again; so all is well.

Wild Parliamentary Onomastics

It took some doing, but we finally figured out the names of all seven members of the new Wild Parliamentary Monarchy delegation.  I am particularly proud of us given that three of said members are felines and two of them also have titles.  

Some of these names are old news, of course, i.e.,

• The capybara is named Pedro, which is a reference to The Twenty-fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.
• The lynx is named Sir Theophilus Pearl, Bart., commonly called Sir Theo; the surname is a reference to the almost pearlescent quality of his fur.
• The ermine is, yes, named Angel Joe.  It came to me in a dream.  I don't know why.

 Others of them are not old news.

• The goat is named Nicodemus, probably because his nouveau riche parents were trying too hard.  My cousins had a black cat named Nicodemus, so it seemed like a good name for a white goat.  [This is not a complete reconstruction of my thought process, but it's kind of very close.]
• The owl is named Hrothgar Q. Hornbeam, Viscount Twilby.  Since he's a viscount, he'll typically be called Twilby, although Sir Theo addresses him as Hrothgar because they're old friends.  He has graciously given his permission to me to address him thus myself, which makes me very happy because I am uncommonly fond of the name Hrothgar, but I'll probably end up using both names.
• The serval is named Lady Faraday Pebble-Stone; the "lady" is due to her status as an earl's daughter.  Her surname is a reference to the markings on her coat, which look rather a lot like pebbles; we agreed that plain Pebble felt a bit too Flintstonian, and surely one of these guys would have a double-barrelled name.
• The panther is named Ruthven Jet Shadewater, Earl of Ebonwood, although his intimates (including Sir Tristan and Lady Faraday) call him Magick.  Coming up with a surname for him that was a) a reference to nature and b) a reference to black things and c) not a totally obvious reference to black things and d) vaguely plausible as English pseudo-aristocratic was remarkably hard.  I'm rather proud of both his title (by which most of the Wild Republic will be required to address him) and his nickname, which is a very indirect reference to blackness.

Everyone has a name now, which is a relief.  Tomorrow we're going to introduce the new delegation to the Wild Republic, who so far have met only Sir Theo, who has been in AJD's room to confer with Alfredo.  This promises to be memorable and we fully intend there to be photographic evidence.

Also at some point I really ought to tell everyone the story behind the Sir Tristan-Lady Faraday-Magick relationship, now that I've learned it.