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.

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.

Romance in the Wild Republic; or I Am Slightly Pathetic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Bit of Demographics

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

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

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

Members of the inactive set:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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