Expansion!

Our local chapter of the Wild Republic has just been enlarged by five.  All of them are adults, which I'm quite pleased about; I love the young ones (they're so cute!), but I was afraid the balance was tipping too far in the juvenile direction.

Alfredo is particularly relieved.  He'd been requesting some reinforcements from his superiors for some time, and the bureaucracy finally decided to grant his requests.  This had more than a little to do with that incident a bit ago, the one where the kittens somehow managed to get illicit bubble gum on Leprosy's tail.  Alfredo had been telling his superiors for months that he needed someone sent here specifically to handle the kittens: it's all well and good that our chapter was chosen to train young felines, but without anyone actually in charge of them, they were getting out of hand.  I'll explain more about this in a later post.  But anyway, his superiors finally admitted that they really should have been listening to him all along, and they found someone to deal with the kittens.  They also agreed that, with such a large foreign delegation stationed here permanently, and with some of the members of the local chapter being more than slightly eccentric and unpredictable (*cough* Plouie *cough*), Alfredo was correct that he could use some permanent legal counsel on staff.

So here they are, our five newest denizens of the Wild Republic:

In the front row, left-to-right, we have Jasper, the leopard, who is here to look after the kittens; Quixley, the zebra, whose exact responsibilities are not yet clear to me; the aye-aye, who has not yet gifted us with his name, and who is the promised legal counsel; and the sloth bear, whose exact role is not yet clear either.  Behind them all we have Meph, the bat, who is from the Ministry of Transportation and who intends to reform the local postal service (i.e. Plouie).  ("Meph" is not his full name; apparently bats are fond of giving each other very long names.)

Yesterday was a long day, full of meetings between various old and new residents.  Alfredo was particularly busy getting everyone settled in.  He's really delighted that we have Jasper now, as you can imagine (so is everyone), but he's not sure quite what to make of the aye-aye.

Father's Day Romping

Yesterday was a big day for Alfredo - I'll explain why in my next post - but he still took time out to spend some quality time with Beppe. 

Here they are playing the time-honoured game of Chase Your Father's Tail.  This is the sort of game that is more or less exactly what it says on the label; there aren't any rules as far as we can tell.  Nor is there a winner or loser; Beppe was very happy whenever he caught the tail, but so was Alfredo.

It's just a bit tricky to work out what is going on in these two tail-chasing pictures, because Alfredo and Beppe are the same colour and Beppe is essentially composed entirely of fluffy.  Any picture we have ever taken of Beppe makes him look like a ball of fur with ears.  So keep your eye on the black spot.  That's the tip of Alfredo's tail.

Alfredo worries a lot about not being a good parent.  He's always worried that he's not spending enough time with his son because he has so many responsibilities and takes them all so seriously.  Although he almost never mentions his wife, you kind of know he's thinking that if she were only here, Beppe would be much happier.  He's really afraid of screwing Beppe up forever; he's never sure whether he's being too strict with him or too lax, and he's sure that if Laura were here, he'd do a better job.  Alfredo sometimes lies awake at night with visions of poor Beppe needing lots of therapy because he lost his mother and his father didn't know what he was doing.  This is very Alfredo.

It's true that Beppe's got an excessive amount of energy and is prone to do silly things, but he's very very young and he's also a puppy, and that's par for the course.  As far as we can tell, Alfredo's doing just fine. 

Sir Theo is a Bed Hog

Sir Theo has been hanging out in the south room with me the last week or so.  Ordinarily, this is great: he's so big that snuggling with him is like snuggling a pillow with feet and ears.  The problem is that my mattress is quite small, and after a week or so spent sharing it with me, Sir Theo seems to be feeling a bit cramped.  He kept stealing the space.

This happened two or three times last night: not exaggerating.  I would wake up on the very edge of my mattress, almost against the bookcases on the left side, with a large body blocking any attempt to move further right.  'That's funny,' I would say to myself, 'I don't remember sleeping with someone.'  Then, 'Oh, Sir Theeee-oooo,' and I'd do my best to roll over, slide my arms around him, and move us both further to the right.  This solution proved temporary.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised.  Cats are like this, after all.  The cat we had growing up was less than half Sir Theo's size, and she could take up an entire bed easily.  (Once I even woke up on the floor to find her sleeping contentedly in the middle of the bed.)  So at least Sir Theo wasn't dumping me out onto the floor.  And I love Sir Theo dearly and will not hold this against him.  But hell!

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.

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.

Mimsy Pulls the Cord

Mimsy's behaviour is sometimes rather difficult to suss out, because he's a bit mad.  So let me present to you a puzzle: what is he thinking in this picture?

We think he was trying to turn it on (which clearly was not going to end well), but what made him choose this particular misguided approach?  Is it his own idea?  Did someone else put him up to it?  Is it a prank or part of a larger scheme?  If the latter, what was the overall plan, and has the scheme been abandoned or not?  Or are we on the wrong track entirely, and Mimsy was trying to do something completely different?  He was singularly unforthcoming when we asked him; his exact words were, 'I have no comment,' which is something he's picked up from Magick or Murchison or someone. 

And Now For Something Completely Aesthetic

As you may recall, I really like black-and-white contrasts.  AJD spotted another good one the other day.

In addition to its aesthetic value, this picture adds to the perpetual mystery of exactly what is going on between Murchison and Magick.  Magick looks like he's bodily trying to keep Murchison away from something here, and we've been unable to determine what that may have been.  Both of them, of course, played innocent and dumb when queried.  They made up some story about Magick politely grooming Murchison's back as cats are wont to do.  Slickly told - they're both professionals - but we're not sure we buy it, given the source.