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.

Our Lovely Photographer

ML's reward for taking the group photo (not an easy task, considering that the subjects involved unruly kittens and Plouie) was to have her picture taken with whichever creatures she wanted.  So here she is with Leprosy and Plouie.

Thanks again, ML!

Our Post Office Will Never Be the Same (and Thank Goodness)

There's this stereotype of the bat as a dark, dangerous, sinister creature who strikes terror in the hearts of men and whose morals are suspect at best.  You know, all creepy, like this:

Those who buy into this stereotype have clearly never met our new bat, Meph.  Meph is unrelentingly upbeat and absolutely delighted to be alive and a bat.

His name, moreover, is short for "Mephibosheth", not "Mephistopheles".  Bats apparently have a penchant for long and awesome Hebrew names.

We've never had a bat before, so many of the long-time residents find Meph very intriguing.  Here he is with Murchison and the Fox, with whom he shares a certain foxy affinity.  He's telling them all about what it's like to fly.

Look at that wingspan.  Isn't that awesome?  Meph's wingspan is even more impressive than Lord Twilby's.  Twilby's not jealous, though; he and Meph are getting on quite well.

Meph comes to us from the Ministry of Transportation.  There's been some internal reorganisation in the Wild Republican bureaucracy of late, and as a result, the postal services are now under the province of the Ministry of Transportation rather than the Ministry of the Interior, as it was previously.  As is so often the case with reorganisations, this bureaucratic move is accompanied by a desire for reforms and improvement, including clearing up any odd irregularities.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

The mail delivery in our local chapter has never been any better than "irregular".  This is what happens when you make Plouie postmaster.  He is very enthusiastic about his job, but he really sucks at it.  Outgoing mail tends to arrive at its destination water-logged, because Plouie cannot comprehend that not all species send waterproof messages.  This is when the mail is delivered at all.

Plouie was almost single-handedly responsible for breaking up Sir Tristan and Lady Faraday.  While Lady Faraday was still stationed elsewhere, she and Sir Tristan used to write each other letters every week.  At one point, Plouie proudly presented Sir Tristan with a bundle of his own letters, lovingly tied together with a green-striped ribbon, and Sir Tristan realised that his last two months of correspondence to his beloved had never been delivered.  He panicked and sent Lady Faraday the following telegram (Parsley, not Plouie, is in charge of the telegraph system).

CRAZY PENGUIN IN CHARGE OF MAIL HERE STOP MY LETTERS NOT SENT STOP VERY VERY SORRY STOP I LOVE YOU STOP DON'T BREAK UP WITH ME PLEASE STOP LOVE TRIS

 This telegram was sent just in the nick of time.  Lady Faraday, no shrinking violet, had every intention of buying a plane ticket and demanding to know in person the reason behind her beloved's sudden and uncharacteristic silence.  She had to wait until she had a moment of leave, or she'd have left already.  Fortunately, she is eminently reasonable, and upon learning what had happened, she put the blame where it belonged.  So, in addition to nearly destroying a relationship, Plouie's incompetence very nearly sparked an International Incident.

Sir Tristan and Lady Faraday were not the only ones affected.  Reggie's nephew Barmy has received some pretty strange mail over the last year, everything from coded messages from Murchison to letters of a *cough* delicate nature intended for one of Magick's ladies, because there was this period in which Plouie, pleased with himself for working out how to send mail to Barmy, proceeded to send all outgoing mail to that same address.  A letter from Magick to one of his ladies was mistakenly sent to another, causing no end of trouble for him; Navarre's letter to his parents was accidentally sent to Rusty's parents, and you can imagine how well that went over, given that said letter was full of complaints about a certain obnoxious tiger.  And any number of messages have been lost entirely, or eaten, or God knows what, under Plouie's watch.

And to think, they'd made him postmaster because they wanted to give him a job that wouldn't have dire consequences.  Sigh.

So there's some room for improvement in the local postal service, and that is one of the reasons Meph was sent here.

Meph's first meeting with Plouie went about the way you'd expect it to, but not the way Meph had expected it to.  Poor Meph.  He had wanted to talk business, but Plouie was unable to get past the part about Meph being birdlike but conspicuously not a bird.  First he was startled.

And then he passed out, to Meph's astonishment, and hasn't woken up since. 

Par for the course, really, but Meph's not used to doing business this way, and he's not sure what to do now.  He can't really reform Plouie's role in the post office while the penguin in question is passed out in a box.  Speaking of that box, I'm not sure you can see it well, but remember how Omri was looking for Seleucus's stationery a while ago?  It's under Plouie.  I'd say that this is why Omri hadn't managed to find it, except that Plouie and the box are on the opposite side of the room from the radiator where he was looking, so he really wasn't all that close.

It's a Very Tempting Tail

We can now add Gilly's tail to the list of things that fascinate Plouie.

This is an understandable fascination: Gilly does, in fact, have a singularly first-rate tail.  The real surprise here is that it took Plouie six months to notice.

Plouie's Reactions to Stimuli Are Inherently Unpredictable

Yesterday afternoon I spent several hours happily rearranging my books.  This had some unanticipated consequences: a terrified chupacabra and a religiously inspired penguin.

Submitting my dissertation a few weeks ago necessitated returning all of my library books.  We're talking about sixty, seventy-odd books; an entire bookcase was devoted to holding them.  I acquire new books faster than I can read them, and I read very fast (as in, I've had complete strangers come up to me and comment on how fast I read), so that extra shelf space was sorely needed, let me tell you.  Now I actually have five empty shelves, which is a dangerous thing.

Since I had so many empty shelves, I decided to let the chupacabra have one.  It had been sitting with the books on mythology, but it had to be on the very edge, and I thought it might prefer a bit more space.  Plus, there are more people for it to talk to on the other side of the room.  We still can't communicate with it, but I'm hoping that if it's closer to a larger number of potential conversation partners, it might start picking up bits of English or Common.  So the chupacabra now shares a shelf with the Calling Cat and the Elegant Elephant.  You have not previously heard of the Calling Cat or the Elegant Elephant because neither of them is plush.

Seleucus, Rusty, Magick, and Plouie had been hanging out in the south room last week, but it was time for Seleucus and Rusty to go back to the north room, so AJD came to get them.  (This is just as well, because I don't really have capacity for more than two visitors.)  Seleucus was ready to go back of his own accord, but Rusty wanted to stay, especially with Magick in here.  He didn't have a choice in the matter, though: Alfredo was insistent that his brief vacation from lessons was over.  Rusty was only persuaded to go without being forcibly dragged when it was pointed out to him that he wouldn't have to put up with Plouie any more.  After that he was rather eager to leave.

Before they headed out, AJD asked how Plouie had reacted to the chupacabra, and I realised that he probably wasn't aware of it yet.  Plouie's observational skills are predictably minimal.  He wouldn't have noticed it from across the room, and the chupacabra's new shelf isn't particularly near the floor.  AJD admitted he was very curious to see what would happen when Plouie finally noticed the chupacabra, and pointed out that there's no telling how Plouie will react to anything.

We looked at each other.  The temptation became too strong to resist.  We had to introduce Plouie to the chupacabra immediately.

I moved the Calling Cat a bit so that there was room for Plouie to roost on the shelf.  The moment I plunked him down, Plouie all but pounced on the chupacabra and started hugging it.  I had to pull him off.  The chupacabra tried to disappear into its corner.  It was terrified, poor thing.  It's usually so inscrutable, too; I think this was the first identifiable reaction we've seen from it.  (We apologised, but I'm not sure it understood.)

Our first thought was that Plouie was in love with the chupacabra.  This was a reasonable conclusion, given the data.  ('Poor chupacabra,' AJD said.  'An amorous Plouie would scare anyone.')  But this turned out to be incorrect.  After I'd removed him from the shelf, Plouie turned around, looked up at the chupacabra, and started repeatedly bowing to it.  He was venerating it.

Naturally this confused us immensely.  After all, Plouie's thoughts on religion are very well-known around here, and the chupacabra is very clearly not a blue penguin.  

The only way to unravel this conundrum, unfortunately, was to ask Plouie himself, and this took a very long time, because Plouie is Plouie.  There wasn't an obvious way to ask him about his religion without mentioning the Blue Penguin of Happiness, and whenever you do that he gets very excited and starts jumping all over the place exclaiming 'The Blue Penguin of Happiness!' over and over and basically becomes even less coherent than he usually is.  But we were finally able to get an answer out of him: Plouie has concluded that the chupacabra is the Footman of the Blue Penguin of Happiness and therefore to be adored and venerated.

Apparently the Blue Penguin of Happiness has both a Footman and a Handmaiden.  Who knew Plouie was capable of such complicated cosmology?

Anyway, so Plouie thinks the chupacabra is some sort of divine avatar.  We need to explain this to the poor chupacabra (and also assure it that we're never going to let Plouie get that close to it again), which probably means we need to bring in Pedro.

Something Sweet

In the interest of offering decisive evidence that Plouie is capable of more than simply crazy freak-outs, here is a picture of him on snow-watch vigil with Vim. 

Plouie can actually be very sweet, when he's calmer.  (He is, after all, essentially a ball of cuddly fluff.)  One of the ways to get him calmer is to set him watching for snow.  The appearance of snow, whether it's falling or fallen, particularly calms him, but even if there's no snow on the horizon, just the prospect of potential snow does the trick.  There's no snow around here anymore, what with the warming weather (touch wood), but Plouie's still content to watch for it.  His attention span is short enough that he doesn't get distressed if it doesn't appear.

At first we were concerned that the snow would actually wind him up; like AJD pointed out, he's from the southern hemisphere, so he might not be expecting to see snow this time of year.  Things are different in Antarctica, though; he's probably used to seeing snow all year round, so maybe the time of year doesn't matter.  Besides, Plouie doesn't really have a concept of time anyhow.

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.

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.

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.

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.