Nothing says “Thank Kali it’s Friday” like a music vid straight out of art school from an over-beautiful band. So here’s one in honor of Mitt Romney’s calculated animal cruelty.

In 90 degree heat, I need a full wardrobe of dresses that touch me on my shoulders and nowhere else. And speaking of bad touching:

Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family’s hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon’s roof rack. He’d built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog. Then Romney put his boys on notice: He would be making predetermined stops for gas, and that was it.

The ride was largely what you’d expect with five brothers, ages 13 and under, packed into a wagon they called the “white whale.”

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. “Dad!” he yelled. “Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

As comedian Paula Poundstone said, “Sometimes, you can be proud of the wrong thing.”

Topaz, quirky Topaz.

This morning, I roused just after sunrise to find cuddly Drusy nestled into my left side, which was lovely. The real surprise was finding mercurial Topaz nestled into my right. Drusy loves me with a drenching pre-teen passion. She climbs on me often and kisses me sweetly. Topaz, prisoner of peer pressure, brushes against me for attention only when Drusy’s not looking. I scratch lovely Topaz below her left ear, where she likes scratching best. Drusy always appears after a minute. Topaz only has eyes for Drusy.

Drusy, relocated to the pillow and poodle blanket so I could work.

I’m a terrible photographer. I’ve deleted dozens of blurry images of fractions of pussycats. When the kittens hear the whirr of camera noise, they split into a large number of small cat pieces and relocate the mewling herd. I’ve developed clever tricks like turning on the camera in another room. The kittens respond by refusing to reflect light when I return to the room. They’re around somewhere, but two camera-shy, six-pound kittens possess a mastery of the laws of physics unknown to humans. Topaz is the brains of the operation. I await the day she threatens me with a Teamster-style wildcat strike.

My apartment used to be quiet and spotless. Now it is always inches from a disaster area declaration. I fully expect to see aerial images of my bathroom on CNN and Jim Cantore staring wide-eyed at the destruction. This week, Topaz’s favorite toy is parsley. She races me to the fridge and climbs halfway in. I resist thinking about those paws in the cat box and tear her off a few sprigs, which she chases across the kitchen. Then she plays with them to bits. Later, when they’re little more than compost, I sacrifice them to the garbage gods. Still later, they return from the dead to haunt the kitchen.

I meant to buy a garbage can this past weekend. I really did.

Long-legged, fearless Drusy has a crush on me. It’s sweet. It’s beyond sweet. I couldn’t love her more. Often, when I’m reclining on the couch, working on PIC or the second job, twiggy Drusy prances half-way up my leg before I notice and scoop her up into my arms. Though about seven months old and rangy, in my lap Drusy is just a baby, her face pressed against mine, her paw touching my cheek. She withdraws the paw. She places it against my nose, gazing into my eyes. Drusy nestles into my breast and leans this way, turns over and leans that until she finds a cozy spot. Her eyelids droop. She kisses me often and falls asleep in my arms, as babies will. When she does, with her paws around my neck or touching my face, I try not to think of poop I just scooped with pawprints in it.

The other night, Darla and I were gabbing about something shocking the kittens had done to protect me from the forces of balled yarn. Or something. Darla mentioned a time when she’d put a roll of toilet paper in her office and returned to find Squidge killing it, really hard.

Well, then. I sleep better knowing my indoor predators stand guard against aggressive paper products.

Last night, I couldn’t get Blogger to preview or import images. This perturbed me a bunch. I take lots of pictures of these frenetic kittens but seldom get anything decent. If they’re doing something cool in the living room, after the seconds it takes to turn on the digital camera, the kittens are now fighting on top of the dryer. So imagine how thrilled I was to see Drusy’s paw in this picture of scheming Topaz. You can almost hear her adorable predatory purr.

I’m doomed!

“The Committee finds your activities counterrevolutionary. As punishment, you must buy the Committee new cat toys and feed the Committee members wet food with big chunks and more gravy. The Committee enjoys gravy.”

Topaz and Drusy go a little crazy over just about any event or noise, so it comes as no surprise that when I get on the floor, kittens go mad! Every morning, I lie on the living room floor and do crunches. Then I get up, freshly toothmarked. Apparently, they’re taste-testing me.

Five cuddly pounds of adorable Eeeeevil.

Lovely Topaz is sweet and mysterious and reminds me of that friend everyone in college towns has who speaks with a heavy accent but you can never tell from where. Oh how marvelous it must be to know all exotic Topaz knows! Oh how weary is the kitten who has seen so much we would never understand! Note her triumph over the forces of yarn and roundness. We can only yearn for her love.

Kittens are curious!

We observe a morning ritual: I climb out of the shower and the kittens leap in. Sometimes they are together, but not always. This time, Topaz got to the still dripping faucet first as Drusy looks on from a discreet distance. Please note that my tub is about 900 years old and has been scrubbed over the years beyond its intended point of cleanliness, which ironically makes the tub look very dirty. Note the footprints. I had just cleaned that.

Topaz is gentle, eats too much and schemes to take over the world. I look into her orange eyes and know my days are numbered. She seldom lets me scratch her head and if I pick her up: it’s war! Topaz’s fur feels different from her long-legged cohort’s, softer somehow. Drusy, who I sometimes locate by listening for kitty bathing noises, is crazy for me. I so want to scoop up Topaz and love her up but I expect I’d lose an eye.
Though I am not a girlie girl, that shower curtain is indeed a color between pink and lilac usually found on cheap toys made in illegal Asian factories. Siobhan and I were tooling around Target with cash burning holes in our pockets when this thing appeared before our eyes. When we were laughing so hard we couldn’t stand up straight this regrettable decor choice had to come home with me. This morning, I was wrapped in a towel, taking pictures of cats in a wet tub, when the gorgeous kittens heard some signal inaudible to my ear. Faster than you could say You better work! Topaz and Drusy switched places and were gorgeous – for Science!

Left to right: Druzy, Topaz, Ta.

The first morning I woke up in Dad’s house, I was wearing this pair of pants. They were 2/$7.99 at Costco. I sat on the edge of his bed while he was still sleeping. The house was silent. Darla slept fitfully on the futon behind me. I watched him breathe, wondering how he could be dying. How could it be? His face was full. His skin, long oddly pink from heart medication, was turning a healthy olive. He looked like himself. It was just the first of many mornings where I’d creep in and watch him sleep, saving up these tiny moments for the time ahead when he’d be gone. I’d need them. I still had the luxury of thinking nothing made sense. This particular morning, as I was sitting there, he opened his eyes, spied the cut-rate loungewear –

Dad: Those pants clash with themselves.

– and fell asleep. I burst out laughing but he didn’t stir.

Topaz and Drusy wrestle, then there’s a bathing emergency.

About 3 this morning, rain pounded against my bedroom windows, one of which was open. I got up and closed it, and while I was up, opened my bedroom door. Kittens, staging World War III on top of me, had been banished to the rest of the apartment. Now they padded back to bed with me and curled up around my legs. For a moment, all was bliss.

Then Alexis said, “Blake will always love me, you trailer trash whore” and Krystal slapped Alexis across the face and Alexis grabbed a handful of bleach-blonde hair and they wrestled and both fell in the swimming pool…

Thing 2, left, is actually the smaller and pricklier of the kittens. When I take out a camera, Thing 2 usually makes herself scarce. This time, Thing 1 heard the whirr of camera start up and started to bolt. A second later, the larger, friendlier cat, the one on the right, was off in a cloud of dust.

Things are not always as they appear. Or are they?

Man Shot By Puppy Arrested On Animal Cruelty Charge

You may feel a little pressure. I know I do.

PENSACOLA, FL (AP) – An animal cruelty charge was filed against a man who shot himself when one of the puppies he was preparing to shoot made the gun discharge, deputies said. Jerry Allen Bradford, 37, of Pensacola, was arrested Friday and held on $1,500 bond, the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office said.

Hell, I didn’t even know we were arming puppies. I feel so out of the loop!

Bradford was holding two puppies, trying to shoot them in the head with a .38-caliber revolver on Sept. 8 when one wiggled, sending a bullet into Bradford’s wrist, deputies said. Bradford had shot and killed three puppies before he was wounded. Bradford said he decided to shoot the 3-month-old puppies because he couldn’t find another home for the shepherd-mix dogs, the sheriff’s office said.

Deputies found three of the puppies in a shallow grave outside Bradford’s home. The other four appeared to be in good health and were taken by Escambia County Animal Control.

Now I’m sorry I’m not arming puppies. There’s one last thing:

The shepherd-mix pup that “fired” the bullet was renamed Trigger.

Good doggy! Bad human! Can we talk now about getting Mom fixed?

Thing Two.

It’s raining. The northeast is in the grip of a nor’easter. Siobhan and I intended to go schmatta shopping but postponed. The kittens are sleeping. I’m thinking of dressing up reasonably rainproof and going out for a hike in the wilds of wet suburbia. Or maybe not: Jacques Pepin is on at 2, and it’s always possible I might learn something.

No, really. It could happen.

Playing on Daddy’s cookbooks. Yes, I put away the cookbooks and gave them the box.

Darla is very excited about new cats. In my family, they constitute “grandkitties.” This afternoon:

Darla: Did they tell you their names yet?
Tata: Not yet. It’s tempting to go ahead and name them in relation to one another but they’re so different it’d be a mistake.
Darla: You might do that anyway. Like what?
Tata: Harriet and Sojourner. Krystal and Alexis. Joan and Jackie. Lena and Dorothy. Billie and Dinah. I thought for a while we could be Josie and the Pussycats if I could be Val, the smart one. Daria suggested Cirrus and Nimbus.
Darla: They’d have to be white and fluffy!
Tata: I said Igneous and Sedimentary.
Darla: Rock and Hard Place.
Tata: Scylla and Charybdis. Pride and Prejudice.
Darla: But not Sense and Sensibility!
Tata: Heavens, no! They’re much too young for that!

Thing One surveys the landscape.

Darla and I talk often. Yesterday:

Tata: How about Demeter and Hecate?
Darla: Demeter and who?
Tata: Hecate. It’s got a great beat!
Darla: Agggggggh! That’s a terrible pun! When I made puns, your Dad would say, “That’s awful! Leave the room! One more like that and it’s back to Canada with you!”
Tata: I made a joke like that one day and he was annoyed I’d reached for the easy punchline. He said, “It’s time for you to go home now!” I said, “I know the rule, Daddy: Use a pun. Go to jail.”

Being the kitten is exhausting!

Thing One, left, likes to rub her tiny face against mine and put her paws around my neck. She likes to kiss me, but she doesn’t like when Thing Two comes anywhere near me. I have to go to Thing Two and scritch her. This afternoon, between phone calls back and forth regarding the funeral home’s most recent fuck up, I lay on my bed so the cats could climb on me. Thing One lay across my neck, purring sweetly. Thing Two I could hear prowling around the room but couldn’t see until I had occasion to look at the floor near my head. Finally, she lay down at my feet, but by then, I was so pissed at the hillbilly attempt at extortion, I had to get up. Thing Two opened her eyes for a moment when I took the picture, but they’re both sleeping again. This is a relief because it demonstrates the kittens are relaxing into being here, together and with me. I’ll worry less about going to work all day tomorrow and leaving them alone.

No, come to think of it, I’ll worry about them just because I can, and that’s nice.

Do you know why I am so happy I can barely speak in a register audible to the human ear?

KITTENS!

They came with doofy Catholic school girl names I can’t stand.

I’m pretty sure they’ll tell me their names.

In the meantime, let’s call this impetuous gal Thing One.

She’s very affectionate. She licked my nose.

Thing One!

She has blue-green eyes. It doesn’t look that way, but I’m not much of a photographer.

It took her mere moments to warm up to me, if by “moments” I mean about an hour.

At the time of this picture, the kittens were walking all over my apartments, in every direction, looking at everything.

Black kittens on a brothel-red couch: ooh la la!

This is Thing One, deciding I might be okay to play with. Maybe.

Note the papers for the vet. Both kittens are already fixed.

Thing One bears a striking resemblance to Larry, the Little Black Cat Once Bent On Stealing Your Soul.

Meet Thing Two.

Her eyes really are that amazing, intense orange color.

I introduced her to all she could see outside the bedroom and living room windows.

She took a little longer to warm up to new kitten toys, the new apartment and the new human.

Their personalities are quite different.

Thing Two!

It’s a beautiful day and the squirrels nibble, bound and chase one another.

Thing Two, I was warned, would scarf down all wet food I put out for both pussycats.

She doesn’t like to be picked up.

While lovely Thing Two monitored the local fauna –

– equally lovely Thing One subdued me.

These girls are tall and lanky. They weigh so little I hardly know what to make of them.

When she walked all over me, I hardly felt it. When she decided to lie on my head, I couldn’t object.

Couldn’t breathe much, either. Didn’t mind.

As I write this, a kitten is falling asleep on my lap.

As for the superstitious SHHHHHH! of yesterday, an explanation: whenever I tell people what my favorite show is, that show gets canceled. It’s funny, right? Yeah, sure. It’s funny. While I was in Virginia, I discussed my favorite show with Darla’s parents. Last weekend, I noticed it wasn’t on the schedule anymore.

I also say that when I talk about things in the works they don’t happen.

I really needed this to happen. And now it has.

Thank you. I am so far beyond happy I had to share.