Temporary Digs

So we made it to NYC.

I don't have a real apartment yet; I'm just subletting a place for about two weeks.  It doesn't have furniture, which is kind of interesting.  Turns out that the building I'm in is an official historic landmark, because Duke Ellington used to live here.  There's a plaque on the front of the building and everything, although you can't really make out the words in this picture.

Barry's going to be really jealous.  He loves jazz, and he's a particular fan of Duke Ellington; but he stayed behind in the Southern Domicile.

Mimsy and Khamsin are NYC natives, so they're pretty happy to be back.  Khamsin really wants me to take the kittens to Central Park.  When he and Mimsy were still living in the museum, Khamsin used to peek out the window and the park and fantasise about sneaking out late at night and scampering around without anyone being the wiser, but he could never figure out how to handle the locks, so it didn't happen.

The very first thing we did once we had moved everything into my temporary room was open all the boxes.  Much as they all like each other, we figured they'd probably had enough of each other in close quarters for a while.  They were pretty eager to get out of there and explore the new place.  Here they are emerging from their boxes.

The box captains immediately held a meeting to confer about how the trip had gone.  

Consensus appears to be that everything went about as well as could be expected.  The kittens were rather fractious; Beppe yipped the whole time; Zebulon was apparently convinced that they were travelling through a wormhole and gave a long discourse about how the physics worked; Plouie kept forgetting that they were travelling in boxes and freaking out all over again; Magick and Murchison had a confusing conversation that no one else in their box could follow and which was presumably in code.  Pretty much business as usual.

Meanwhile, everyone else was exploring.  The kittens, Beppe, and a bunch of others immediately ran all over the living room.

You can just make out Hrithik preparing to climb up on the radiator back there; it was the highest point he could see.  He's currently settled on the shelf in my closet.  Cami and the polar bears were really interested in the Internet cables.  Rusty and Navarre took advantage of the newfound space and adult distraction to start whaling on each other again.

Not everyone went quite so far afield.  Gilly, of course, immediately laid claim to the air mattress that AM left in here for me.  That's an iPod he's got there; he was quite adamant that there was no room for it on the bed. 

At first, Gilly was convinced that I'd made his dream come true, and given him his own mattress; he was crushed when I explained that it was meant to be mine.  Then he was newly encouraged to see how empty the place is - surely, he said, now is the time to invest in dozens of mattresses - and disappointed when I told him that this place isn't really ours and that the actual tenants would probably be kind of freaked if they came and found we'd flooded it with mattresses.  He tried to convince me to agree to flood our eventual place with mattresses, but I fobbed him off with a story about how NYC has really tough mattress regulations.  Please do not tell him that I made this up.

Zebulon and Nicodemus checked out the view from my bedroom; it's a pretty nice one, although you can't see much of it in this picture.

Nicky is so excited to be here.  Like, he's beside himself.  He's always wanted to see NYC, and this is like his dream come true.  Apparently the whole way over he was pestering Seleucus about whether or not they make 'I <3 NYC' shirts in goat sizes.  Seleucus, who has never been to NYC and really doesn't care much about it (or any city that isn't in Bactria), told him rather shortly that they don't, but Nicky was apparently undeterred because he asked me the same question.  And he keeps announcing 'I AM SO HAPPY!!!!!!' like out of the blue.

Not everyone took advantage of the chance to explore.  When the box captains were meeting, Jasper realised, upon saying that Sleepyhead had slept the whole time (such a surprise...), that he hadn't seen Sleepyhead leave the box, and sure enough, he was still asleep in there, curled up with the electronic equipment.  Jasper tried to get him to come out and eventually gave up.

You wouldn't think electronics would be so cuddly.  I fell asleep trying to cuddle my laptop once, and it left a dent in my forehead.

Plouie was pretty excited about the whole thing.  He was hopping around and making squee noises and stuff.  But what had him excited wasn't quite what you'd think.  Check it out:

He comes all the way to a new apartment in a new city, and what interests him is my vegetable steamer.  I'm like, 'Plouie, seriously, it's the same one we had in the old apartment,' but it didn't get through.  After this picture was taken, he started flippering through the rest of the box of equally familiar items.  I wonder whether he'll ever notice the rest of the place at all.

You'll notice that the Mini Republic is nowhere in evidence.  That's because they're having a slightly different adventure.  A bigger one, in fact.  They're all staying a luxury hotel for a month or so, and should have great stories to tell when we're reunited.  Gyork is really excited.  He's from NYC too, like Mimsy and Khamsin, and he's looking forward to showing everyone his favourite places: The Gempire State Building, the Statue of Gliberty, the Gbronx...  He wants me to take everyone to see the Gnicks play once basketball season starts, and the Gyankees of course.  The temporary place is actually quite near Yankee Stadium, as it happens, although I doubt I'll make it there.

Anyway, so we made it here, although we won't be in this specific "here" for very long.  Further updates will follow, although I no longer have access to a camera (the camera we use is AJD's), so there might not be many photos for a while.

An Epidemic of Falling Ungulates

For some reason there's been a recent trend of ungulates falling down the stairs.

It started when AJD and I watched Dirty Dancing with Parsley.  Parsley was really taken by the scene where Baby and Johnny are practising dancing on a log, and he wanted to try it too.  Having four legs made this a tricky proposition, so he settled for hanging out on the upstairs railing on his stomach, with his feet on either side, and wiggling around.  He seemed pretty happy there like that, so we let him stay there for a few days.  But Parsley's foray into dancing was cut short when he fell off the railing and tumbled all the way down the stairs.

I have fallen down these stairs myself, twice in fact, and I can attest that it is not a particularly pleasant experience.  Parsley insists that he's fine, and he did return to his usual self quite quickly, despite being banged up.  Pedro agreed that he is essentially fine, but ordered him to rest for a while just in case.  Gilly stayed with him.  His tail is a great boon to an invalid.

Then this morning Nicodemus, who had fainted on the bar (as displayed in my previous post), also took a tumble.  Nicky was luckier, in that he only fell to the ground on the second floor; he didn't really fall down the stairs.  He was very stoic about the whole thing.  Pedro says that Nicodemus is also fine, but he prescribed the same treatment (complete with Gilly and his marvelous tail) just in case.

Parsley has been energetically advocating falling completely down the stairs ever since.  He claims that the inexperience is just not complete if you don't tumble down the stairs and that it's great fun and worth trying.  AJD and I think Pedro should re-evaluate Parsley for a possible head injury.

Fainting Goats

Did you know that they make fainting goats?  Apparently there's a sub-species of goat that has the interesting property of fainting when excited.  It's remarkably adorable.  Here's a video, courtesy of my friend IS, who alerted me to the phenomenon.

Amazing Fainting Goats

AJD showed the video to Nicodemus, who had never heard of fainting goats before.  Nicky was so shocked that he... fainted.

Goats

IS sent me links to three adorable pictures of baby goats.  They were sufficiently adorable that we decided to smuggle Nicodemus in past the chupacabra to look at them.  This was accomplished by AJD singing 'Granada!' while I slunk by with Nicodemus, keeping my back to the chupacabra.

Here you are, three adorable pictures of baby goats - with bonuses!

This one is asserting its natural position: dominance over sheep:

And this one comes with a bonus Archbishop of Georgia.

I told IS that there should be a rule that all bishops (arch or otherwise) have a baby goat.


Nicodemus enjoyed the goats, but then I made the mistake of casually referring to how it was worth smuggling him past the chupacabra, and he got twitchy.  Really, really twitchy.  So we smuggled him out again.  This time we were singing the opening song from Curtains.

The Royal Seal; or, In Honour of March

Navarre and Nicodemus have recently developed an interest in AJD's computer.  More specifically, they've developed an interest in watching AJD and Sir Theo playing online Dominion, which has been generalised into an interest in the computer.  We've been encouraging this interest in Nicki's case because it keeps him from eating things.

When Navarre and Nicodemus frame AJD's laptop, they look kind of like the Royal Seal of Great Britain.  Here, I'll show you:

The alternative title of this photograph is In like a lion, out like a lamb, in honour of the old adage, 'March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb,' which is extremely relevant because we are in fact at the beginning of March.

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.