Goings on in the South Room

The plush component in my room at present is dangerously near to capacity, with some moderately amusing stuff going on.

First, Twilby is in here helping me with my dissertation, which is dangerously near to its deadline.  He's here because he's good with doctoral students (having advised many in his time) and my advisor refuses to see me.  (Really.  He has an official policy of not seeing me; he thinks it will make me write faster.)  Right now, Twilby is asleep on a pile of books on my desk with his little feet in the air and one of his wings splayed out.  My dissertation is wearing him out too.

Also, Sir Tristan and Lady Faraday came in here to get some alone time.  Right now they're actually having some.  When they first came in, Lady Faraday was totally fascinated by Sleepyhead, and she decided she just had to figure out what the deal was.  She ended up hanging out watching Sleepyhead while Sir Tristan had conversations with Seal, Seymour, and Casper and took naps.  I think he felt neglected.

Then Sleepyhead somehow ended up asleep on one of my bookcases, on the third shelf from the floor.  I'm not really sure how he got up there, although he appears to be content enough.  Sir Tristan, therefore, is happily cuddling with his lady.  It's not clear whether or not this is suspicious.  If it were Magick rather than Sir Tristan, I'd say it was definitely suspicious.

Meanwhile, Gilly and Beppe have discovered the shelf below that one, which has most of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time novels.  They haven't budged since.  Gilly's reading the first one to Beppe right now - there are lots of wolves, so Beppe is enthralled - and when he feels like his throat is getting sore from all the reading, they stare eagerly at the books instead.  This is great, because it means Beppe is kept out of trouble; he typically has enough energy for an entire litter of puppies.  Gilly is also young, but more responsible.  He can be trusted not to eat the book - and not to let Beppe eat it either.

The Perils of Online Gaming

The board game Dominion can be played online.  This is both a blessing and a curse: a blessing, because I like playing Dominion, and a curse, because it's rather addictive.  AJD and WMPT and I have taken to spending far too much time playing it together in various combinations.  I am proud to say that I've so far managed to avoid it during working hours; AJD can't say the same, but of course he's getting much better than I am because of all the practice.

This evening, we discovered that the Dominion vice has spread further:

We expect that Sir Theo is probably very good at Dominion, as his career as a diplomat has honed his  strategic thinking to a razor-sharp edge.  He doesn't have his own username, though; he apparently borrows AJD's because he thinks that he might not find any competitors should he be outed as a lynx.

How Pedro Got Leaf Coneybear's Autograph

One of the theatre groups at Penn put on The Twenty-fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee this weekend, so AJD and I went to see it.  He had actually seen it once before, when it was on (or possibly off) Broadway; I hadn't.  So of course we had to take Pedro.*

Fact: if you go for a walk with a capybara buttoned inside your coat, people will give you very strange looks. I had to put him in my coat, though.  He's Amazonian, so he really suffers in cold weather like this.

Pedro's experience at the theatre was quite a success.  He enjoyed the play tremendously - it was, in fact, one of the better shows I've seen at Penn, and extremely well-cast - from beginning to end, although naturally his favourite part was the reference to capybaras.  And he was something of a hit himself.  AJD knows a few of the people in the show, thanks to his history with Penn theatre, so after the show we went and talked to them a bit, and they all appreciated Pedro's presence.  A lot of them were quite impressed to find that plush capybaras actually exist.  (I will own that Pedro is one of the jewels in my collection.)

The biggest success of the evening, of course, was getting the autograph of the actor playing Leaf Coneybear (for those who haven't seen the show, he's the character who gets "capybara").  See it up there?  It's really too bad we didn't bring a camera and get a picture of Pedro with Leaf Coneybear, but unfortunately this did not occur to us until it was too late.

The other animals are varying combinations of impressed and jealous of Pedro's evening on the town, though most concede that a hard-working physician such as himself is probably due a reward.  Barry is particularly jealous.

I leave you with another picture of Pedro; in this one his species is more obvious.

* Pedro is in fact entitled to be called both Sir and Dr, and consequently prefers not to be called by either.

A Charming Tale of Friendship and Romance

Once upon a time, some years ago, a new class of students began their tenure at the most venerable and exclusive public boys' school in the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy.  Among the class were two young cats who could not possibly be more different.  One of them was the eldest son of an ocelot baronet; he was dutiful, responsible, and impeccably well-mannered for one so young.  The other was the eldest son of the eldest son of a panther marquess and clearly destined for a life of trouble, even at such a young age.  When their classmates started teasing the baronet's son for his overly proper mien, they fully expected the marquess's grandson to join in, but he surprised them by taking the baronet's side.  And so began the highly unlikely friendship of Tristan Rivers (Sir Tristan, upon the death of his father) and Ruthven Jet Shadewater, later Lord Ebonwood, known to his schoolmates as "Magick".

There are two key elements holding Sir Tristan and Magick together.  The first is that, despite their many differences in opinion and character, they have rather a lot more in common than one might at first suspect.  They were, for instance, easily the two most intelligent members of their class, which meant that they found each other much more interesting company than the rest of their classmates; they also had interests in many of the same areas, from the arts to politics and diplomacy.  The second important factor in their friendship was that they complemented each other very well in a number of ways.  Sir Tristan was responsible for ensuring that Magick did not slack off on his studies and performed at the level at which he was capable, while Magick ensured that Sir Tristan had a bit of fun.  In short, they balanced each other very nicely and were intelligent enough to appreciate it rather than fear it. 

 The greatest test of their friendship came about after they had left university and had begun their training for a career in diplomacy.  Among the other newbies was a formidably brilliant young serval named Lady Faraday Pebble-Stone, the daughter of an important earl.  She was clearly destined for greatness every bit as much as the boys were, and the three of them swiftly became the best of friends.

(Left to right: Sir Tristan, Lady Faraday, Lord Ebonwood.)

The next phase of this drama, of course, is entirely predictable, given knowledge of the general character of the particulars.  Females, especially intelligent females, were already one of Magick's great weaknesses, so he, predictably, began pursuing Lady Faraday.  Since females tend to have a corresponding weakness  for Magick, and Lady Faraday was quite definitely female, as well as already very fond of her two new friends, she was quite susceptible.  Sir Tristan was terribly in love with Lady Faraday himself, but elected not to compete with his best friend, not least because he had far less experience with females and suspected that, being quieter and less flamboyant than his friend, he was unlikely to be successful with any female Magick already had his eye on.

Nevertheless, the relationship between Magick and Lady Faraday did not last all long, as they swiftly discovered that they were not particularly compatible as romantic partners.  They decided to return to simply being friends and cheerfully explained to Sir Tristan (and others) that they were rather confused about the whole affair.  Everything went back to the way it had been before.

Sir Tristan, of course, was still desperately in love with Lady Faraday, but he was too conditioned by the expectations of behaviour for a gentleman of his class and station to actually tell her about it.  Eventually Magick realised what the score was and started trying to coax his friend into revealing his feelings for her.  Being a rake rather than a gentleman, Magick found the situation rather exasperating, especially as he was coming to suspect that Lady Faraday was in love with Sir Tristan herself, although she, of course, being a lady, was much too genteel to show it. 

After a number of conversations with Sir Tristan explaining that, as Lady Faraday was a lady, he really did need to make the first move (these conversations were tremendously frustrating for both parties), Magick accepted an assignment in India.  Since the other two were still posted locally, they started spending more and more time in each other's company.  Even then, they might well have gone on pining for each other oh-so-politely, except that Sir Tristan accidentally dropped one of his (highly embarrassing) sonnets praising the intelligence and wit and beauty and talent of Lady Faraday, and she found it.

Exactly what happened next has never been revealed by either party, both of them being immensely proper and private individuals, but they've been together ever since.

Sir Tristan and Lady Faraday are difficult to photograph together because of their characteristic poses, but we did our best.

After a while, Sir Tristan was posted to the Wild Republic, which forced him and Lady Faraday to carry on their romance long-distance.  They wrote each other letters every week, (rumour has it that Sir Tristan's letters often contain sonnets, while Lady Faraday prefers haiku).  Nevertheless, the situation was less than ideal, particularly given that the Wild Republic had made Plouie Postmaster General to keep him out of trouble.  Every now and then Plouie would happily present Sir Tristan with a bundle of six or so of his own letters to Lady Faraday.

But when their superiors decided that Sir Tristan's mission had been so successful that a full diplomatic delegation should be sent to the Wild Republic, the lovers finally found themselves reunited.  Lady Faraday requested to be included in the delegation; she now is sufficiently high-ranked that she has a measure of choice over her assignments, and this one is suited to her rank and talents as well as advantageous to her personal life.  Magick somehow found himself attached to the delegation as well.  Thus the trio of best friends has been reunited, to their considerable satisfaction.

And, of course, Sir Tristan and Magick are still the very best of friends.

When Murchison Met Magick

Although we're understanding the institutional details of the Wild Republic more and more all the time, there are still a number of aspects of it that AJD and I don't really understand.  The arrival of the new delegation from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy has only highlighted some of these deficiencies in our understanding.

Near the top of our list is Murchison.

Murchison is an arctic fox and a secret agent of some sort; apparently most arctic foxes go into espionage.  When you think about it, this doesn't make all that much sense: how can your secret agents possibly be effective if everyone knows about them?  Murchison isn't undercover here, but surely he can't truly be undercover anywhere, right?  And what exactly is he doing, anyway?  We know he's up to something, something beyond merely being highly suspicious of Sir Tristan, but we haven't a clue as to what it is.

Now that the new delegation is here, we're even more intrigued, because the new delegation includes Magick, and Murchison is very clearly interested in Magick.

To be fair, everyone is interested in Magick.  Magick is an interesting character.  We're not certain, for instance, what exactly his role in this delegation is supposed to be.  He's a peer's heir and not precisely expendable, yet he's clearly known more than his fair share of danger; Pedro is apparently always having to patch up unusual and unexplained wounds for him.  Some of these are probably from duels (Magick's been in so many duels he's lost count) or from escaping from ladies' bedrooms (Magick's taste in women often runs towards the inappropriate), but he's definitely up to something and neither of us is certain what that is.  We suspect, from what Angel Joe has let slip, that Magick was given this assignment after a particularly ill-advised liaison with a married noblewoman necessitated sending him somewhere out of trouble (though Sir Tristan probably had a hand in that too), but that doesn't help to elucidate what his assignment actually is.  From his general attitude, one would be forgiven for thinking him primarily a bodyguard for Sir Theo and Lady Faraday, except that his rank precludes his accepting such a menial station.

We suspected that the meeting between Murchison and Magick would be epic.  Murchison, we know, has been rather bored here for some time; Magick is probably the answer to any number of his prayers.  Naturally he'd have heard of someone of Magick's storied reputation.  Nor were we disappointed, either; they met and promptly made it clear that they're going to be keeping an eye on each other.  Conceivably, this is evidence in favour of a theory making Magick Murchison's WPM equivalent.

Here they are, staring each other down.  They both wanted to make it clear that they are in no way intimidated by the other, and that even though Magick is here on a diplomatic mission, neither of them is letting down his guard.

I'm particularly fond of this picture for two reasons: I have always appreciated the aesthetic quality of a good black-and-white contrast; and this is the only picture we have of Magick that really shows him off, since photographing someone that black turns out to be hard.  Look at that gorgeous silhouette.

Here's the thing, though: we have reason to suspect that there's more to the relationship between Murchison and Magick than meets the eye.  We suspect, for instance, that this was not their first meeting, although it's difficult to articulate where this notion comes from.  We also wonder if they're less adversaries than they appear to be.  Consider this picture of the two of them in an unguarded moment:

Murchison appears to be whispering in Magick's ear.  Is he issuing a threat, or are the two of them in collusion over something?  Do they meet up in Bombay for friendly chess matches with lots of witty banter and then get back to being nemeses?  Are they secretly allies?  We'll have to keep an eye on them.

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.

Thundersnow &c.

Wednesday night we were hit by a truly impressive Thundersnowstorm.  The snow animals were absolutely delighted.  Here you can see Murchison, Flurry, Vim, and Plouie watching the storm with great enthusiasm.  Plouie actually calmed down a little for once.

At precisely 4.58 the following morning, I was awakened by an eerie, remarkably high-pitched alarm noise, which disappeared almost as soon as it had happened, along with our power.  For awhile the power company claimed the culprit was a tree, but the tree turned out to be mythical.  What had actually happened was a gas leak under the street, so that the power company couldn't fix the outage until the gas company had fixed the leak, which was a complicated endeavour what with all the cars and snow on the street.  The power was out for almost thirty-six hours, along with our heat.  Our heating is actually gas, so technically it was working (we did, for instance, have plenty of hot water), but the thermostat  is electric, so the gas didn't know it was supposed to turn on.  This meant our apartment became very cold, and we eventually elected to crash at the house of a friend of ours out in Upper Darby.

When we first established that the power was gone, AJD said, 'Uh oh, I'd better go make sure no one is telling Angel Joe ghost stories.'  Fortunately, everyone had better sense than that.  When we made the choice to evacuate, though, AJD realised we'd better check to make sure Angel Joe was in good company.  It turned out he was with Nicodemus.  'That's a terrible idea,' AJD exclaimed, so Angel Joe was relocated to Butterfinger's company.  Teddy bears are good for traumatised ermines.

Just as we were leaving, Vim decided he wanted to come too.  Barry and Gilly got to have adventures, he pointed out, and he thought possibly he might be useful for us.  So we smuggled him into my bag, and he got to ride the subway train (which he thought was great fun), spend the night in Upper Darby (likewise), ride the bus all the way to Center City (he was disappointed I made him stay concealed until I pointed out that the other passengers might be frightened if they knew he was aboard), and then go to work with me.  We proclaimed it Take Your Polar Bear to Work Day; I wonder if it will catch on.

So Vim had a great time, and has been regaling the others with the story ever since he returned; and no one told Angel Joe ghost stories; and we have both power and heat again; so all is well.