Silly Creatures, One and All

"I find myself saying bad things about his ancestors... and I'm his ancestor!!!" -- Me, on the last "Teething Tuesday"




The good news is that Josh is back on his schedule...the bad news is that he's now waking up at five thirty every day. I have decided to curtail any attempts by my progeny to watch anything Steve McQueen related. He has already mastered the "Great Escape"... On one side of the living room is the Kiddie-Jail (Josh's playpen) and a box of his toys. On the other side is a loveseat, and three couch cushions piled high. All of these blockades are major obstacles for Jon and I, as we bounce from one foot to the other with less than the greatest of ease, attempting to leapfrog over them while valiantly hoping we won't land on the numerous little, rolly toys Josh has obtained in his travels.

Josh couldn't care less. He charges over the cushions like a drooling Hannibal, pausing just long enough to land on his head and twist his legs under him before crawling madly to the kitchen, totally unfazed. Even the Russian judges give him great scores.


The house is slowly coming together. Jon finally got his much anticipated television, and we've been rearranging nearly every room in our tiny abode to make room for the new arrival. He figures that I got "my baby", he should have "his". (Remember, the milkman/mailman still seems to be getting half-cred for Josh). I have been finding clothing I didn't know we had...ok, I have been finding clothing I didn't know I had. Jon contends that if I would just go through and clear some of it out, we wouldn't have move
ANYTHING to make room for his television. I glared at him, but he wasn't impressed. So much for a Mommy's authority.







( <--Josh helping me fold our clothes)






The first night was the worst, after a valiant effort to dig our way out from under all of my books, everything was more or less where it was going to be, but we were shot...Josh was fussy, and apparently he was getting all set to pop two more teeth. Once again, I was slow on the uptake and had no sense of humor about a small, energetic creature wanting to be up and rolling from twelve a.m. to three a.m. -- and so I did not win any congeniality awards that night. (In fact, I growled and groused so much that night that I probably took myself out of the running for the next several award attempts.) Finally, blessedly, after several false starts and raised hopes, the boy was really and truly down for the count. I crawled into bed, ceased my snarly behavior, and waited for sleep. It came....until five-thirty in the morning, when I was awakened by the sudden insistant beep of our carbon monoxide detector as its batteries prepared to breathe their last. ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! I got up, stomped to the alarm, stomped to the kitchen, shoved in new batteries with brute force, and stomped back to bed, but not before stomping and connecting the toes of my right foot with a table leg. Poor Jon was on the losing end of all of this. From eleven-thirty on, I had been making many stompy trips back and forth from our bedroom. He not only got to hear my verbal impression of a merchant marine, which was getting louder and more imaginative with each trip, but we have a wooden floor with two boards that go off like a gunshot if you hit them right. For months, I could bounce on that spot without so much as a squeak, but wouldn't you know it, that night, every time I stomped, I hit that spot and it sounded like a cannon in the night. He officially had to drag his boiled-bat self out and off to work at six-thirty. Josh "slept in" until seven...and then Tim and Rhonda offered to take him for an hour or two, and I nearly kissed their feet. By the time Jon came home, I had a real bath, and a lovely nap...and I was human again...but after that night, Jon had to be scraped out of the car just to get his exhausted body into the house. He looked horrible, and he felt horrible, and I felt like my head should be turning into one of those "HEEL" symbols from the old cartoons.

You would think that a much needed jaunt into town (and OUT OF the house) would help matters, but no. Heidi M. threw Josh and I into her car and we buzzed out for lunch. Josh ate the applesauce, but he really wanted some of the calamari and broccoli that we were munching on. I unhooked my car keys from my purse and handed them over to the Roo, who jangled them delightedly...we had a pleasant meal and headed home again. Two days later, I was ticked at myself. I remembered placing my brand new cellphone "somewhere stupid and odd...and between two things." Yes, this is actually how I remembered it, and how I phrased it to a rather flustered Jon. Only after we completely tore apart the very recently settled-house in an effort to find the dippy phone did I think that I would try to retrace my steps. Heidi didn't have the phone. Ok. So I tried the restaurant, all the while thinking that I had left the phone on one of our many bookshelves, wedged under a couple of paperbacks. Yes, by golly, the restaurant had my phone. Apparently, I forgot that to unhook my keys from my purse, I also had to unhook my phone from my keys. It had indeed been left somewhere "stupid and odd" ...on the table, in between the salt and the pepper shakers. Jon stood in the midst of the newly created chaos and just looked at me. "Um, they have my phone." Still looking at me. "Um, I should go get it now." Still looking at me, but you could tell he was wanted to throw heavy things at my head. Many, many heavy things. At. My. Head. I beat a hasty retreat...

The good news is that I have my phone back, and gosh, doesn't the house look swell now!


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If you were to ask anyone else how they knew that the person they chose to marry was THE ONE, you'll come back with answers like, "I just knew." or "There was just this amazing connection." (or "Her daddy let me drive his wallet..." etc.) Speaking only for myself, I did "just
know", and "there was an amazing connection"...but more than that, I can honestly say that the one thing that gave me the courage to take on this relationship was that my cat told me to. That's right. My cat told me to go for it, and it was the best advice I ever could have taken.

Fancy was a ball of fluff with sea green eyes, and a history as a rescued cat that had left her badly battered, older than her years, and deeply, deeply fearful of all things male. Nicknamed the "Ghost Cat" because I was the only one who could see her, she became my constant companion. No one else could even get close. I do not know why she picked me, I only know that she was unswerving in her loyalty, and had no interest in anyone else. It took many years for her to get used to the other members in my family, and even then she was reluctant to come out of the woodwork to be social with them. I learned that she was an excellant judge of character, and her reactions to my dates tended to jibe exceptionally well with what I knew or learned in my contact with guys over the years. When one guy came to our house, Fancy was nowhere to be seen...in fact, it took me three weeks to coax her out of the attic. He turned out to be a complete @$$. Everyone, even my cat, figured this out before I did.

When another fellow came over, one that I was thinking of getting serious about, she grudgingly came down and checked him over. She even, eventually, submitted to some petting and ear scratching...but you could tell her heart wasn't in it...This one was a nice guy, and certainly a much better guy...but not the guy. He was just "Ok" on the Fancy-rating-scale.

For almost nine years, she was my cat...my constant companion...the one who licked my popcorn of all its butter and salt and left the sad, soggy, drippy remains on my blankets for me to finish. For almost nine years, I was her "Only Person", and she would help me read my books by chewing on the corners of the pages, or hurling herself outright into the center of the book if I hadn't caught on to her subtle hints. For almost nine years, she was mine alone. And then, one night, Jon came to visit me at my parents' house for the very first time, and that little grey heathen ditched me like I was last week's garbage. She not only came down to see Jon within the first fifteen minutes of his visit, she leapt into his lap, hurled herself against his chest and began purring so loudly that you could hear her two rooms away. The stars had aligned. All was right with her world. She had finally found "Her Boy" and it was love at fuzzy-cat-first-drool. My mother, as a joke, had once registered Fancy with the name "Silken Hussy"...and from the moment she met Jon, she lived up to that particular moniker with a zest that was just this side of embarassing. If Jon had only had whiskers and a tail, there would have been no stopping her, but I was left with a very simple truth. If I ever wanted to see my cat again, I was just going to have to marry Jonathan Stickrath...because from that moment on, keeping the two of them apart was not going to be an option.

Fancy spent the next six years living in our little home, morphing overnight from Ghost cat to the reigning Diva who kept the rest of us in line, and who graciously allowed us all to live in our own house. When I feared that Koda, a younger cat in our household, would pose a problem, she solved it by watching him walk past her, and smacking him in the head with her claw-less paws. Koda gave her a confused look (he's very good at confused looks) and an odd sibling-relationship was formed. For the first time in her life, Fancy had come into her own.

When Josh came home from the hospital, Fancy viewed him as a deformed kitten, and adored him with a passion that could even rival that of the Greats and Grands...she couldn't have been more proud of him if he had been her own, and she was very careful to be near at hand when I nursed or bathed (or really, had any kind of interaction with) him...so that I knew I had to do it properly. If he cried or fussed, she would glare at me for causing problems. Sometimes when he slept, she nuzzled close and licked his hair.

She was the heart of our household for six years, and if her little body had only been as strong as her spirit, she would have been keeping us in line for the next twenty.

There will be those who will not understand the depth of our sorrow for what can only be termed a silly cat. She certainly was that...but she was so much more to us. For Jon, it was the first time he had fallen in love with an animal, and the first time an animal had fallen in love with him...it was another opportunity for him to bloom under the love of another creature, and it was wonderful to watch it happen. For me, she was like a little, fuzzy angel...who offered approval and honesty...and who had allowed me the greatest gift...that of earning and rebuilding her trust. She was only a little cat...but for us, she was our matchmaker, our confidant, and our greatest friend. She believed in us before we believed in ourselves...and that has made all of the difference.

In Loving Memory of Fancy,
born March 13, 1992...died September 2, 2006 ... 8:30 P.M.