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.

Zzzzzzzzzz

I'm not really sure why AJD wanted to take this picture of me and Alfredo, but he did, so here it is.

My Little Gilly Monster

Gilly and I have this rather silly game we like to play with each other.  It consists of him pretending to eat me, and it goes something like this: we'll be hanging out, often cuddling a bit, and then he kind of starts gnawing on me a little bit.  He likes gnawing on me, for some reason, although he doesn't eat me very much.  Red pandas aren't that carnivorous - they eat mostly bamboo - but they do eat birds and insects and small mammals.  I'm not, from Gilly's perspective, a very small mammal, and part of the game is that I have to remind him of this.

When I remind him that he's probably not supposed to eat me, he puts on this dramatic display of innocence - Gilly does a very good dramatic display of innocence - and then I scratch behind his ears and call him my little Gilly-monster, and then he nibbles me a little in good monster fashion and then the game is over.  There's also a shorter variation we play sometimes, if I refer to him as my little Gilly-monster without him first attempting to eat me.

...I never said it was a particularly thrilling game, but we rather enjoy it.  Especially him, because he's not the one getting eaten.

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.

It's still a new record

Okay, the fun's over.  Sleepyhead has fallen back to sleep, and Seal is upright again (he says he has a pounding headache).  It's still not clear whether Sleepyhead's unusual wakefulness was the result of Pedro's examination or not, but either way he appears to have reverted back to normal.  He stayed awake for a good forty-seven minutes, though - very impressive by his standards.

Out of Character

Hmm.  It seems that Pedro's examination had an unexpected result: Sleepyhead is awake right now.  He's been awake for all of fifteen minutes!  Look at this.  He stayed awake long enough for the event to be captured on camera.

You may be wondering what exactly Seal is doing upside down like that.  He says he's trying to encourage Sleepyhead to stay awake by being particularly entertaining.  I'd say I hope Sleepyhead appreciates how many creatures have inverted themselves for him lately, but I know he doesn't.

To be fair, this may not be a direct result of Pedro's efforts at all.  Sleepyhead didn't actually wake up while he was being examined, so it may have been coincidence.

Pedro's Working Vacation

Pedro recently took his turn in the south room, having earned a bit of respite from kittenish antics.  It proved to be a working vacation, but I would like to stress that this was entirely Pedro's own idea; no one pushed him to work while he was off.

This was Pedro's first tour of south room duty, which meant that it was his first encounter with Sleepyhead.  All of Pedro's medical instincts went into red alert when he realised just how much sleeping Sleepyhead does on a typical day.  'No healthy panda ought to sleep this much,' he informed me, and immediately set about trying to get to the bottom of this.

Sleepyhead, however, is not a particularly cooperative patient.  He'd apparently decided that he wanted to sleep on the floor between my mattress and the nearest bookcase, and he had himself wedged in there pretty good, with the result that there was no room for Pedro to really get in there with him.  Pedro's principal technique in diagnosis involves judicious sniffing; he requires close proximity to his patients.  Naturally there was no chance that Sleepyhead would come out on his own, either, and Pedro is too small to move him around if he's not helping.  Magick was on south room duty too, but he refused to get involved, although he watched the proceedings with something suspiciously akin to amusement.

So, after grilling Seal for about twenty minutes for a full description of Sleepyhead's habits (which Seal tolerated very good-naturedly), Pedro sort of hung himself upside down over the edge of the mattress and went to work.  This must be a terribly awkward position in which to conduct medical examinations, so he deserves commendation for his devotion to his medical calling.

This is an unusually good picture of Magick.  Usually attempts to photograph him just result in a sort of Shapeless Black Void, because his fur is so very black, but this picture does a pretty good job of showing his silhouette.  A Black Void in Silhouette is much more demonstrative than a Shapeless Black Void, don't you think?

Anyway, I'm sorry to report that Pedro's efforts were largely for nothing, as he was unable to find any signs that Sleepyhead's persistent somnolence is the result of a medical condition; in fact, Pedro pronounced himself completely baffled.  His recommendation is that Sleepyhead consult a psychiatrist.  Sleepyhead, who seems perfectly satisfied with his life, is rather unlikely to do so of his own accord; but Alfredo has been lobbying for an on-site mental health professional, so if his campaign is successful, Pedro might get his way.