The Wild Republic Hits the World Wide Web

Quixley, as previously mentioned, was sent here to force the local chapter into the computer age.  He spent the first month or so of his tenure just fixing up the machines themselves, which were old and slow and riddled with spyware.  After he managed to get everything in place, he started giving the others tutorials.  Some of them were a bit hesitant, and Leprosy still grumbles about everything, but his efforts are starting to see results.  Consequently, Quixley's job is much more laid-back these days.  I thought I should share with you a few of these results.

First of all, Parsley has developed a massive crush on Sandra Day Okapi, one of the justices on the Zoo-preme Court.  Parsley caught on to the whole web-browsing concept pretty easily, and it occurred to him to look up how Day Okapi was doing on the court.  He's never met her, but he has a lot of species pride, and she is his people's hero.  She's also apparently pretty hot, if okapis are your type.

He's taken to doing a lot of soulful pining in front of the computer like this, gazing on the image of his goddess.  At least it's not porn?

Gilly, unfortunately but unsurprisingly, has discovered online shopping.  Here he is at his favourite site.

Since we have remained staunch in our refusal to give him a credit card, Gilly can't do more than look, but he looks a lot.  He even has a wishlist.  He also has a really irritating habit of leaving the site up when he's ended his browsing session; we assume this is a new tactic intended to guilt us into giving him what he wants.

The website that has been the biggest hit around here is LiveJournal, despite LJ's recent issues.  Every last member of the local chapter, including all of the foreigners, has opened an LJ account, friending all of the others.  Here, for instance, you can see Omri writing in his journal; the text reads, 'Hey everyone, my next dancing bear show will be on Wednesday night.  I'm playing the dancing bear!'

This is kind of cool, but also logistically problematic, because there's only one computer between them all (except for Murchison and Magick, who have iPhones).  So someone is always on LJ, and there's always a queue of others waiting for their turn at LJ.  Here is the queue behind Omri while he was taking his turn:

You see the problem, right?  Someone posts something, and then everyone else wants to check their friends-list so that they can read it and leave comments, not to mention posting something of their own; but there's only the one computer, so they're always in the queue, and then sometimes someone spoils the folk still in the queue on what was posted and those who haven't had a chance to read it yet get angry.  It's kind of unfortunate.  Meanwhile, Gilly and Sir Theo are annoyed because they have less time to play Dominion now that everyone else wants computer time.

The juveniles have things a bit better, because they have periods of time when they can be on the computer while the adults are still working - although they do still have to contend with each other.

But this means that the adults boot them off when they're done working, so their computer time is restricted in other ways.  The kittens have complained to Jasper about this, but he hasn't been very sympathetic.

Facebook has been much less successful around here.  About half of the animals have joined it.  They seem to find it overly complicated or something.  Here's Quixley giving Humphrey and Seleucus a Facebook tutorial; Quixley said afterwards that no matter how many times he went over how to "like" things and Facebook walls, they didn't seem to catch on.

Over all, Quixley's done a good job of introducing computers to the local chapter of the Republic.  He's been less successful lobbying for a bigger budget, even with Alfredo's support.  Quixley thinks they need at least five machines, preferably ten, but the bureaucracy won't give him more money for this unless he can show that the computers are being used primarily for work, which he can't, because with only one computer, no single individual can get significant work done.

Magick's Fan Club

Jasper's arrival was a huge relief to the entire local chapter, because it effectively put an end to the kittens' running about wrecking havoc because no one was looking after them.  Several residents were, as I have mentioned, particularly relieved.  Alfredo is relieved because he needn't be quite so worried about them causing great offence.  Stal is relieved because he felt like it was his fault they were so unruly even though it wasn't.  Lady Faraday is relieved because she can do her real job without feeling an urge to intervene.  All of this I've mentioned before.  What I hadn't mentioned before is that there is one other highly relieved party, namely Magick.

One can't really blame the kittens for idolising Magick.  He's what all young male cats want to grow up to be: dangerous, suave, brilliant, successful with the ladies, you name it.  So it's not really surprising that immediately upon his arrival, they started hounding him.

This is such a typical moment, I can't tell you. Mahler, Navarre, and Rusty are the most persistent; Cami, being the shyest, hangs back a lot.  Mahler gets close to him, mimic his every movement and manner of speech (down to the accent, I'm afraid), and try to show just how cool and impressive he is; Khamsin pesters him with questions; Rusty and Navarre alternate between behaving like Mahler and behaving like Khamsin; Flurry just sort of rubs against him a lot and makes excited noises; and Cami stares at him shyly with mute hero-worship in his eyes.

Magick is actually rather fond of them, but it's rather hard to conduct one's business - particularly when a large portion of said business involves being mysterious - with a pack of kittens shadowing you around everywhere.  He's much too well-bred to be rude to them, but they're kind of hard to discourage, and the whole experience was extremely embarrassing.  A lot of the time Magick would be reduced to pacing around the room with his entourage in tow until another of the adults took pity on him and swooped in with something else for the kittens to do.  

So quite possibly Magick is the person most relieved by Jasper's arrival.  He certainly made a point of befriending Jasper from the start.  Of course, they're both leopards, both intelligent, and both good at sparring, so they'd probably have been friends anyway; but Magick's gratitude at Jasper's existence helped break the ice.  Magick's a great guy, but he's not normally quite so gregarious.

Wild Republic Deathmatch

Summer is a slow time for the government in the Wild Republic.   It's the time when the legislative bodies adjourn and everyone else takes turns having vacations so that they can go home and hang out with their own species for a while.  This is less true in local chapters like ours; everyone gets a bit of vacation, but not at once, and the chapter is expected to stay open and operating as usual nevertheless.  With so many government employees on vacation elsewhere, though, this makes things a bit dull for the local chapters.  This means that everyone has more time to themselves; but it also means that they get a bit bored.

I think this is why they decided to have a local Deathmatch.  Apparently it was Mimsy's idea.

By the time AJD and I got wind of this, they'd already more or less worked out how it would go.  They had the tournament brackets all set up, so everyone knew who their first opponent would be.  Everyone was supposed to participate, including the youngsters and visiting diplomats.  Even level-headed types you'd expect to raise objections to this scheme - like Leprosy and Lady Faraday - were really into the whole idea.  (It must be noted that Leprosy was scheduled to fight Plouie, and therefore may have had an ulterior motive.  Lady Faraday was going to fight Rochester and has no such excuse.)  Let this be a lesson to you: civilisation only takes you so far.

Before anyone reading this gets too excited: no, this didn't end up happening.  It was called off at the eleventh hour.  Mind you, it wasn't called off because everyone came to their senses; or at least, not exactly.  It was called off because Desmond suddenly pointed out that Magick was going to win.

I don't think that the fact that Desmond, a manatee and rabbinical student, was scheduled to fight Murchison, an arctic fox and special agent, should detract from the wisdom and perspicacity of this observation.

Anyway, that was kind of the end of it.  Of course Magick was going to win.  It was blatantly obvious in retrospect.  So much so that it was agreed that they didn't need to go to all the trouble of having the fights to determine the winner.  Magick has been proclaimed the Official Champion of Wild Republic Deathmatch and everyone settled down to have a party.  I mean, parties are good too.

Magick suggested a poker game, but no one took him up on it.

Despite all the excitement that had been brewing over the cancelled event, there was surprisingly little disappointment in the group.  I guess they really were mostly bored.  In fact, there were only two disappointed personages: Rusty and Navarre.

My understanding is that the initial match-ups were the result of chance; Quixley wrote some sort of script that randomised them.  Therefore, perhaps no one should be blamed for an unfortunate oversight produced by the script.  Rusty's first match was to have been with Laszlo and Navarre's with Cami.  The winners of these two matches, however, were to fight each other; and Rusty and Navarre were grimly excited for this.  Each of them was dead certain that they'd win the first match, and then they would have a completely sanctioned reason to beat the shit out of each other, as they've been longing to do for months.  (I think they may be underestimating Laszlo, but never mind that.)  Now, with the golden opportunity snatched away just hours before, they were pretty devastated.

So one Deathmatch match did actually happen.  While everyone else was imbibing various spirits and telling stories, Rusty and Navarre snuck into the corner and succeeded in beating the shit out of each other.  The match ended in a draw.  Here they are; somehow in the excitement no one noticed what they were up to until it was over.

Since the fight was no longer sanctioned, technically they needed to be punished.  Discipline was left to Jasper, who decided that they really couldn't be blamed that much, given the oversight.  Offering a lion and a tiger a likely chance to duke it out and then snatching it away?  Not a great idea.  Feeling some degree of responsibility in the whole affair, and also noting that they'd already done a damn good job of punishing each other, Jasper decided to put them in detention together for the next twenty-four hours, where they proceeded to ignore each other.

 

This is as far apart as they can get until they're out of detention.

Jasper's opinion is that when they emerge from detention, they'll either have found a new common ground, or they'll pretend that the whole shameful episode never occurred.  His money is on the second.  The first, in his view, is not improbable, but he thinks they have a lot more fights to get through before they make it there.

A Mound o'Cat

I include this picture exclusively because it is cute.

Discipline Arrives At Last

So you may recall that a month or so ago, there was an Unfortunate Incident involving the kittens putting bubble gum - which they should not have even had - on Leprosy's tail.  This created a huge uproar, and left the kittens grounded until further notice.  The situation was pretty dire.  Leprosy was threatening to resign, and he's sufficiently high-ranked that this would have caused massive problems, not merely in our local chapter, but in the Republic as a whole.  So the Republic did something that Alfredo had been asking them to do for ages: they agreed to send a full-time headmaster to take charge of the kittens.

The traditional method for training up young animals within the Republic is a sort of fosterage system.  The idea is simple: promising young animals are sent to some chapter of the Wild Republic to learn from their elders, all of whom teach occasional series of classes on their respective areas of expertise.  It's all relatively informal.  None of the adults is specifically responsible for the young ones, but they're all expected to keep an eye out.

Under ordinary circumstances, this works pretty well.  It probably would even have worked well here; think about Tibby, for instance: he is a perfect model of how this tutelage system is supposed to work.  The problem is that our Local Chapter includes six kittens.  

I'm sure this is the result of some brilliant idea someone had, possibly upon realising that this chapter already had an adolescent clouded leopard and a baby snow leopard.  Why not station a bunch of kittens from different species in a single chapter, in order to foster interspecies harmony?  Especially if the bunch includes a lion and a tiger, with enough non-lions and -tigers to provide a bit of a buffer for the inevitable dischord?

Well, our local chapter gives you the answer.  Put six kittens together without anyone officially in charge of them, and all of that natural energy will feed on itself until it mushrooms into something exponentially greater than the sum of its parts.  You will get chaos.  And shenanigans.  And bubble gum on the tails of crotchety elite citizens.

It's not that they didn't try to rein in the kittens, but the fact that all of them had other jobs meant that they didn't do a great job of it.  Alfredo is supposed to be running the local chapter, not keeping a constant eye on the kittens.  Lady Faraday, bless her, did what she could, but she's a high-ranked visiting diplomat; she has her own job to do, an extremely important one, and it does not extend to baby-sitting foreign kittens.  Stal is a poet first and a tutor second; he's not trained for any more than that.  He's felt very guilty about it, but it's not his fault that he was thrown into a job for which he's neither prepared nor well-suited.

Alfredo has sent a number of impassioned pleas to his superiors, begging them to send someone, anyone, to take charge of the kittens; but all of his pleas were brushed aside because they failed to sufficiently appreciate the situation.  Until the Leprosy incident.  After that went down, Alfredo's superiors belatedly moved heaven and earth to find a suitable candidate.  Poor Alfredo was gritting his teeth at all the 'Why didn't you tell us how serious the situation was?' shit he was getting from his superiors.

And so they sent us Jasper.

Jasper has credentials.  He has a master's in education and was the headmaster at an exclusive all-boys school for kittens for several years, after serving first as a physics teacher at the same school.  He's also the eldest of many litters and is a world-ranked kick boxer.  If anyone is qualified to take charge of the kittens, it's Jasper.

I'm not sure who was more relieved by Jasper's advent, Alfredo or Stal.  The day the new arrivals got here, immediately after the initial formalities were taken care of and before he had even started unpacking, Jasper had a long conversation with Alfredo about what his approach would be, how he would structure the kittens' lives, and so on.  Look how relieved Alfredo looks.

Then he had a similar conversation with Stal, who feels as though a huge burden has been lifted from his shoulders.  Now he can work on his epic and some odes without feeling guilty about it.

While this was going on, the kittens were roughhousing over on the "water" in their classic style.  Rusty was doing rather well for himself, as you can see.  I really like this picture of him, actually.

Jasper watched them for a while to get a feel for his new charges.

Then Alfredo officially introduced Jasper to the kittens, and really laid down the law.  The kittens were duly chastened; they'd been aware for weeks that they were going to get it.

Jasper isn't cruel or anything.  He's not keeping the kittens chained to their desks or scrubbing floors all day.  He's a cat, and he knows that kittens will be kittens.  But he's not letting them get away with anything, either, and they know it.  Rusty and Navarre made a token effort to get the better of him and learned immediately that this would not be tolerated, and they've been remarkably well-behaved ever since.  He's always at least three steps ahead of them.

We haven't learned much about Jasper the private individual yet, in part because he jumped to work immediately and in part because, well, he is a very private individual.  We know that he's a bachelor with a lot of brothers and sisters, and that he and Alfredo really hit it off right from the start, and that he likes singing baritone in barbershop quartets.  We know about the barbershop quartets because he's trying to get people together to form a new one here.  Alfredo's in; he is, as you know, a world-famous wolf tenor.  (It's not clear whether he'll sing lead or high tenor; he's by far the best singer we have, so he'll sing wherever he's most needed.)  Barry wants to be in, but he'd have to sing bass rather than baritone and he's a little miffed about that.  I'm sure there will be pictures at some point.

My Lemur Won Jeopardy! and I Will Never Sleep Again

In order to explain exactly why my life has taken a turn for the insomniac, I need to give you two pieces of background information.

AJD and I habitually watch Jeopardy! in the evenings, and usually we have company when we do it.  A number of the animals have watched an episode or two, but the really die-hard Jeopardy! fans among the Wild Republicans are Hrithik and Gilly, although it's worth noting that Zebulon seems to have similar predilections.  Gilly watches because he likes puzzles and games, and also likes commercials.  Hrithik watches because he really wants to win.

Now, by "win" I don't mean "win" in the usual sense; I should make that clear.  For Hrithik, the win conditions are as follows: you win if your species is mentioned in a Jeopardy! clue.  Since Hrithik is nothing if not patriotic, he also wins if Madagascar is mentioned.  Winning the usual way is easier, believe it or not.  Until very very recently, Hrithy had won exactly once in several years, and that was with a mention of Madagascar rather than ring-tailed lemurs.

The second thing that you need to know is that Hrithik has recently taken up meditation.  I think he started about four months ago.  The meditating Hrithik looks pretty adorable.

It looks very cute, right?  Well, it's markedly less cute if you're in the same room.  I always thought that meditators, if they made any noise at all, made peaceful, restful noises.  Like, you know, 'Ommmmmm' or something.  Hrithik does not do this.  No, no, the noise Hrithik makes sounds like nothing more than a particularly obnoxious car alarm.  It goes something like this: 

'WAAAAAAaaaaaaaaWAAAAAAaaaaaaaaWAAAAAAaaaaaaaaWAAAAAAaaaaaaaa....'

Why?  I don't know!  It's not clear to me whether this is some sort of traditional lemur form of mediation or whether it's something he somehow came up with on his own.  I'm inclined towards the latter, given that I've known him for years and he's only just started this nonsense, and also given that he's a bit touchy about the whole thing.  But either way, it sucks!  His favourite time for meditation is night, because he is nocturnal, and... well... do you think you could sleep with that car alarm noise going off in your room for hours every night?  I didn't think so!  And the worst part is, he's been getting more and more enthusiastic about it as time passes.

In fact, he's become so enthusiastic about it that he's started proselytising.  Oh yeah.  I'm not kidding.  Look at this:

He taught the kittens to meditate!  The kittens!  And of course they loved it, perverse little creatures that they are.  Stal has to work his ass off to get them to pay attention to their Archaic Feline lessons, but Hrithik gets it in his head to teach them car-alarm meditation (it ought to be boring, given that they're kittens with the attention span of gnats, right?) and they just eat it up.  One moment the north room was a haven of slightly-bizarre tranquility and the next minute there are five kittens and one ring-tailed lemur shrieking their heads off zenfully.  'WAAAAAAaaaaaaaWAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaWAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaWAAAAAAaaaaaa...'  Gaa!

You know what it is?  They're Buddhists.  I really think that's it.  The kittens are Buddhists and therefore they're naturally predisposed to meditation.  Which is a problem, because it's hard to tell them not to meditate without stepping on their religious rights.  Fortunately they're not as diligent about their meditative practices as Hrithik is.  They're still doing it, though.

So I imagine you're wondering what on earth Hrithik's inner peace has to do with Jeopardy!, and after all the point of this post is not to complain about his influence on the kittens.  Here's what happened.

About two weeks ago, AJD knocked on my door to announce that it was time for Jeopardy!.  As is my usual wont, I asked Hrithik if he meant to come along, and he replied that no, this time he was going to stay in my room and meditate to see if it helped his game.  I shrugged and relayed this information to AJD as we settled down to watch the game.

And would you believe, he won?  Ring-tailed lemurs were one of the clues!  They even showed a picture of two of them.

We thought that Hrithik would be sad for having missed his big win - but we were wrong.  No, no, he was delighted.  Clearly, he explained, this is a sign that he's meditating properly.  He's reaching that higher state of consciousness.  He's doing something right and he must keep doing it!

*headdesk*

But it gets worse, you see.  Now that Hrithik is spending many Jeopardy! evenings meditating rather than watching the show, suddenly everyone in the Wild Republic is winning Jeopardy!.  Not everyone, really, but tons of people.  In the last week, Rochester has won, Parsley has won, the wolves have come close (the actual answer was "red wolf"), and Gus had an honorable mention a few days ago (one of the contestants has a son of that name) and then won yesterday (because of his name, not his species).  And today... well, today everything snowballed.  Humphrey won, Gilly won (because there was a G&S category), and Team Malagasy won (that is, Hrithik and Zebulon).  All with Hrithik meditating upstairs.

So not only has Hrithik himself won twice in as many weeks, but he's engineered wins for half a dozen of the others as well.

This means, unfortunately, that he is a lemur inspired.  He is unstoppable now.  He meditates longer and longer each night, and he's utterly convinced that he's doing it right, and there's nothing you can say to dissuade him really.  I cannot sleep.  None of us in the south room can sleep, except of course for Sleepyhead.  And what's going to happen once the kittens find out about this?  Then no one in the entire Republic will be able to sleep.

Jeopardy! is a destroyer of domestic peace, I'm telling you.  The only positive to all this cacophony is that when AJD finally makes it on the show - and he will one of these years, mark my words - he's going to have one hell of an anecdote.  I will admit that this is small consolation to me now.  At least he's cute.

A Tail Inspection

We noticed Alfredo perfoming an inspection of Leprosy's tail the other night.

This was a singular occasion on two counts: one doesn't normally see Alfredo performing such inspections, and Leprosy is such a stickler for details and conventions that you'd not expect him to give anyone cause.  It turned out, though, that the kittens had put bubble gum on Leprosy's tail and Alfredo had to get it off with peanut butter.  Neither Leprosy nor Alfredo was pleased - the kittens aren't even supposed to have bubble gum - and the word is that disciplinary actions are underway.  No word yet on their nature, though.

Lady Faraday Teaches Yahtzee

After Angel Joe's investiture was over, and the reception was coming to a natural end, Magick asked whether anyone else wanted to play poker, and found a few takers.  Lady Faraday did not want the younger denizens of the Wild Republic getting too interesting in this poker game, as she could see that this would undoubtedly lead to some sort of disaster, so she decided to distract them by teaching them all how to play Yahtzee, and that is precisely what she did.

In the end, her pupils were just the kittens and Tibby; the polar bears and Beppe were already having a blast doing something else, and Beppe is still too young anyway.  This still left six players, and Lady Faraday thought that the game would be too long with six, especially since none of them had ever played before, so she decided that only four players would start, and then had them all roll dice to see who would be in the first game.  That's what they're doing in this first picture.

Flurry, Rusty, Cami, and Khamsin won, which left Navarre and Tibby to watch.  They were intrigued enough by the game that they only minded a little bit.  It took Lady Faraday a while to explain the rules, though, because Flurry is young enough that he found them tricky to understand.

I'm not sure quite what it was that Flurry had so much trouble understanding; I think it had something to do with the stuff on the bottom half.  Lady Faraday thought it would be best if he sat next to her so he could watch her keep score. 

Finally the game got underway.  Here, Rusty has rolled a large straight.  He was very pleased with himself.

A little bit later, the first Yahtzee of the game was rolled, by Flurry, which made everyone tremendously excited, although Rusty was a little sore about it because he'd wanted to get the first one.

Flurry was happy that it was fives rather than some lower number; he never did quite understand that a Yahtzee is a Yahtzee is a Yahtzee.  Tibby's keeping score now, as you can see, with Lady Faraday's help.

Almost immediately after Flurry's Yahtzee, Khamsin rolled one too.  It was sixes!  Flurry was so very impressed.  Rusty was getting kind of anxious about everyone else getting Yahtzees.

Sadly, Rusty never got his Yahtzee, and Cami never got one either.  But the rest of the game was not without excitement, albeit of a rather different kind.  Beppe, who had been hanging out with the polar bears, got bored of doing that and came to see what the kittens were up to.  He burst right into the thick of things and ran off with two of the dice.

Cheetahs are really useful to have around when these sorts of thing happen.  You can see in the picture above that Khamsin is already in hot pursuit; he was able to successfully overtake and pounce on Beppe before the puppy got too far.  I suspect he rather enjoyed it.  He didn't let Beppe up in a hurry, either; he held him down long enough for Lady Faraday to arrive and reclaim the dice.

After that episode, the rest of the game was almost anticlimactic; as I said, no one else got a Yahtzee.  Flurry won, which made him very happy.  It almost makes up for him causing his team to lose the Izit-Football match.  Here everyone is congratulating him, except Rusty, who was a bit sore about losing.

One might think that losing would make Rusty disinclined to play again, but in fact the opposite was true: losing whetted his appetite for a win, and he insisted that everyone keep playing.  The others had had a good time anyway - and Navarre and Tibby were eager for a chance to play - and so they kept playing Yahtzee quite happily until it was time for them to go to bed, and Lady Faraday was able to leave them to it with a clear conscience.

Speaking of clear consciences, Alfredo insisted that Beppe apologise to her for interrupting the game, muttering darkly about how he is being negligent in his duties as a parent and wishes his wife were alive because she would do so much better.  I'm not sure Beppe was exactly sorry, but he certainly was contrite.  You can tell by his subjugated posture.  She accepted his apology very graciously, of course.  Lady Faraday is always gracious.

The poker game was still going on, by the way.  It went on well into the night, long after the kittens had fallen asleep.  But I'll tell you about that later.

Izit-Football

AJD is away this weekend for the twentieth-anniversary reunion show of the showtunes singing group he was in at college.  Upon learning of this, the kittens decided to take over the bed for a soccer game.   They were so excited about the prospect that they didn't even wait for him to leave. The game was predictably adorable, and also very typical of the personalities involved, so we thought we'd share it with you.

The adults, needless to say, were having none of this kitten silliness and decided to get as far away from the fracas as possible.  I'm not quite sure what they were talking about because they got very quiet whenever I came near.  Not all the adults decided to hang out, though.  Stal isn't with them because he decided to sequester himself in the closet and work on his epic; Alfredo was off doing paperwork; the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy had some sort of board meeting; and so on.

So here the kittens are, choosing teams.

 

Mahler and Rusty got to be captains this time.  Rusty won the toss for first pick, and naturally he chose Khamsin.  Khamsin always gets picked first for athletic events, of course, because he's a cheetah, and everyone knows that cheetahs are the best at everything.  The annual Feline Games are very strict about cheetahs because of this; they're barred from competing in individual events and species-team events, and there are restrictions on the number of cheetahs per team in mixed-species team events.  If you want to see cheetahs compete, you have to go to the annual Cheetah Games instead.  (Most felines do, because they're awesome.)

Anyway, so Rusty chose Khamsin.  Mahler had the next pick, and he chose Navarre.  This left Cami and Flurry, and so of course Rusty chose Cami, because Flurry really doesn't understand the game yet.  Mahler decided to have Navarre be goalie; clearly having Flurry as goalie would be a really bad idea,  but he's not great on the field either, and since Mahler is older, he's a more experienced player than Navarre and probably better at picking up the slack.  On the other team, Cami got to be goalie, which he was really trepidatious about, although he's actually a good goalie.  He's just really concerned about letting his team down.

Now, before I start showing you actual pictures of the game, I should explain about the ball.

The kittens weren't really playing soccer, exactly.  They were playing Izit-Football.  It's exactly like soccer, except that the ball is an Izit.  This is the Izit in its usual habitat on AJD's desk.  It likes Czechoslovakian glass.

See that string between the Izit's eyes?  It's girded for battle.  You wouldn't think it to look at them, because they're balls of fluff with eyes, but Izits are actually a Proud Warrior Race.  Initiated adults are expected to always be ready to enter combat at a moment's notice.  Part of their training, as it happens, involves being a soccer ball, so when the kittens started making noise about having a soccer game, the Izit volunteered to be their ball.  The kitttens were delighted; none of them had ever played with a Battle-Girded Izit before, but they'd always wanted to.  (Except Flurry, because he's so young.)

Here we are, the match underway.

Khamsin has the Izit, and he's trying to get a pass off to Rusty, but he's going to have to get it through Mahler first.  Navarre is ready at the goal, just in case.  Cami's doing likewise; he's looking pretty nervous, although I'm not sure you can tell.  Flurry is basically trying to figure out what he should be doing.

Now, Mahler may not be as good as Khamsin, but he's a good player all the same, so he managed to intercept Khamsin's pass to Rusty.

Here's the view from behind Navarre's goal.  You can see Mahler driving the Battle-Girded Izit down towards the other goal.  Cami's looking increasingly nervous.  Fortunately for him, Khamsin, being Khamsin, is already there defending (yes, he really is that fast), and Rusty's on his way.  Also fortunately for Cami, Mahler's kind of stymied here.  He wants to pass to Flurry, but Flurry is looking beseechingly at Navarre for instructions and isn't paying attention.

Navarre, fortunately, had the presence of mind to tell Flurry to look at Mahler, and Mahler managed to pass him the Izit.

Cami is really sweating now.  But his teammates are behind him: Khamsin is in place at the goal, and Rusty is closing in on the other side.  Flurry has the Izit, and he's really excited about it.  He's so excited that he has absolutely no clue what to do.  Mahler is trying to get him to either try to score or pass it back.  Now, Flurry had worked out that Navarre doesn't really seem to have much to do in this game, so he had decided that whenever he wasn't certain what he himself should be doing, he would look to Navarre for help, since Mahler was (rather obviously) trying to do the work of two kittens.

So naturally Flurry misguidedly attempted to pass the Izit to Navarre.  This might have still worked out okay, except that his aim is... kind of terrible.

Flurry's pass went completely wild.  This is where Khamsin really got to shine. If you compare his position in the last picture to his position in this picture, you'll see just how fast he is (and why he's always chosen first): even though Mahler and Rusty were both closer to where the Izit ended up, Khamsin still managed to get there first.

Rusty was anticipating a pass, so he moved into position on Navarre's blind side while Navarre covered the goal to prevent Khamsin from rushing in and scoring, which he's entirely capable of doing.  Mahler, meanwhile, grimly made his way down the field.  Flurry was closer, and really should have been rushing in for defence, but he was too busy trying to get Navarre to give him instructions, which Navarre rather obviously couldn't do, because it was all down to him.  Here's the same scene from another angle:

You get a better sense of the spatial confiigurations in the second photo.  As you can see, if Flurry would move in, Khamsin wouldn't have so many options; he'd have to try to score before Mahler got closer.  With Flurry staying away, though, Khamsin could take his pick.

Had Khamsin been Rusty, or possibly even Navarre or Mahler, he might have tried to score, for the personal glory.  He'd have had a good chance, too, because he's so fast.  But Khamsin isn't all that egotistical.  He's really bloody good and he knows it, so he doesn't feel the urge to prove it all the time.  For him, athletic games are just fun, and worth playing purely for their own sake.  This is, of course, one of the things that make him good: his judgement is never clouded by his ego.

So Khamsin sent a quick pass to Rusty, still in position on Navarre's blind side.  Rusty (who, for the record, has the makings of a good player, even if he's not in Khamsin's class) promptly scored.

This picture, as you can see, was taken just after the goal, when Navarre had turned just a moment too slow.  Rusty, as you can imagine, was quite triumphant; not only had he scored, but he had scored against Navarre, which is the Accomplishment To End All Others in Rusty's book.  Khamsin and Cami are celebrating too.  Poor Mahler, who was essentially playing one-on-two, is staring banefully and dejectedly at Flurry.  And Flurry... is really excited because he's just so happy to be playing.

After the match was over, Lady Faraday gently suggested that perhaps the next time they play Izit-Football, the captain with second pick should get to choose two players rather than one, in hopes of evening things up a bit.  Khamsin could probably take on two other kittens with Flurry as his teammate and still have a decent shot at winning.

Another New Addition

I hereby present Stal, the newest member of the Wild Republic.

My brother ASD was visiting, as I mentioned earlier, and on Thursday we decided to go to the Academy of Natural Sciences.  Since museum gift shops are one of the best places to find new citizens, I insisted we check theirs on the way out.  They didn't have much, actually, which surprised me; Plouie and a couple of others came from there originally, and they'd had quite a selection at the time.  Most of what they had didn't interest me, either.  But they did have a lone smilodon who immediately stole my heart.  I've always liked saber-tooth cats, and there's something endearing about Stal's face.

"Stal" is not his real name, of course; it's short for "Stalactite", and it refers both to his dentition and to the era with which he is associated.  He's here because the Powers That Be apparently decided that not enough young felines are learning Archaic Feline these days, so they decided to make our chapter a sort of test case and have all the cats learn it.  Alfredo was kind of put out about this, because he feels like they're behind where they should be anyway, but there's not much he could do about it.  The cats from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy all learned Archaic Feline at school, of course, but they're ambassadors and not tutors.  So the Powers That Be decided to send our chapter a native speaker of Archaic Feline: Stal, naturally.  He's supposed to address the kittens only in Archaic Feline until his superiors give him permission to do otherwise.

Here he is talking to Mahler and Cami in Archaic Feline.

You'd think a saber-tooth tiger would be kind of brutish and scrappy, but actually Stal is the soulful poetic type.  I mean that he is actually a poet.  Here he is, looking pensive.  

He's written and published lots of odes and elegies and epics, all in Archaic Feline; he's in the rather unusual position of being one of the most renowed ancient feline poets despite writing in modern times.  The Ice Age are in kind of a weird niche anyway, what with their extinction and all.  One doesn't talk about the extinction, because they're very sensitive about it; for this reason, the Ice Age creatures really stick together.  Mimsy and Gus were delighted to have another Ice Age creature in their midst.

Gus insisted on demonstrating how effective his shell is against predators by having Stal attempt to bite him.  (Stal, being a lover rather than a fighter, required some convincing.)

Mimsy thought this was all pretty amusing.  He's a little odd that way; I think he's sort of hysterical. 

It's the Ice Age extinction complex, you see.  Takes them all differently.  Gus is probably the least affected of our three, and he's kind of erratic; Mimsy's a bit mad; Stal is melancholy.

Stal's presence increases the soap opera factor of our local chapter a bit, because he's a poet, so naturally he needs an object for his courtly affections, and the most obvious candidate is of course Lady Faraday.  Here Stal is, probably composing an ode to her in his head.

Lady Faraday is pretty used to this, though, so she doesn't really mind.  She gets this a lot.  And Stal isn't really serious, of course.  Look how impressive her posture is.  When she was a kitten, they made her practise pouncing for hours with a book on her head.

Plush Kittens Are Silly Too

Just to prove that plush kittens are every bit as capable of being adorably silly as live kittens, I present the following cat pyramid:

Top: Flurry

Medium, left to right: Khamsin, Navarre

Bottom, left to right: Cami, Mahler, Rusty

Flurry got to be on top because he's the youngest, and he was really excited about that.  Rusty kind of wanted to be on top, but then he realised that being on the bottom meant he was one of the strongest, and decided that this was even more awesome.

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.