I’ve recently been covered in fur.

I took my cats the to vet. When cats are stressed they shed. ALOT.

I, and I would imagine most caretakers, try to comfort the stressed cat at the vet by petting and cuddling it. This transfers all the fur on their body onto your body.

I did it twice because Bijou, her calico highness, has deep and unnatural hatred for the carrier and I think she would probably rip poor little passive Tim into a bloody pillow if I took them together. Particularly since I only have one carrier. It’s a bigger carrier, and it would hold them both if required, but I decided it wasn’t required.

Bijou hates the cage so to her the actual exam room was not terrible. She explored it thoroughly while we waited and clearly developed an escape plan. She didn’t hide from me when I picked her up and put her on the table and submitted with dignity to all the indignities they did to her.

Tim, however, doesn’t think the carrier is a cage of horrors. So he had to be pulled out the carrier and then glued himself into me, hiding his little face in the crook of my elbow. There is very little as pathetic and endearing as a cat burying its face into you for safety. He did not see the exam room as an interesting place to explore. Which is upsetting because he’s going back next week for his neutering. When I turned away from him to get my purse he jumped off and hid in a corner under the chair.

When we finally let him back into the carrier he scrambled in like it was home sweet home and settled in the back.

People who don’t have cats probably think of them as a monolithic sort of detached personality. But they are not. Like humans they come in a huge spectrum of personalities and a trip to the vet is a great place to see that.

Particularly this vet because they have a big orange office cat who helps the receptionists. He likes to lay across the keyboards and get in their way as much as possible. He has no fear of the barking, and meowing going on in the waiting room. He thinks all animals are inferior to him. It’s written so clearly in his attitude.

There was a whining pit bull in the waiting room. His pathetic cowering noises made my Tim look brave. Office Cat looked at that dog like he would not have bothered to bury him after he took him down in any fight he cared to enter into. And despite the odds, I think I would have taken Office Cat in that fight. But office cat didn’t even growl at him, just looked disdainful and walked away. He’s wise and generous. He let the dog live and didn’t jeopardize the good life he’s leading as Official Office Cat.

Anyway we all survived and Tim will be deballed next Friday.

Growing a Kitten

They mostly grow on their own, but they do need a lot of food.

When you get a young kitten it is a delicate fragile ball of bravado. They walk around, with the tiny brush tails sticking straight up and act like NOTHING can hurt them.

But just picking them up makes you utterly aware of how they are just fragile bones covered in fur with a tiny buddha belly if they’ve been eating properly.

Then they grow. They stretch out in all directions and look mostly starved, like lanky teenagers often do. They hold onto that fragile feeling because all the major muscles that bind together cats and make them such tangibly tough animals haven’t quite caught up with the growth.

So you pick them up, expecting to hold something solid with weight and instead you get a floaty bundle of fur. Which sounds more romantic and relaxing than it is, because it’s actually a spastic floaty bundle and so you have try not to break the fragile spastic kitten that refuses to sit still while you hold it.

And then their muscles catch up. And one day you pick up a kitten, thinking it will be floaty fragile flotsam and it’s a solid chunk.

I love the solidity of cats. The fact that they can be given a good solid patting and it sort of rings on their body. And what is most fun is that cats seem to like a good solid patting. I call it banging on the kitty. I mostly do it on their back leg or their back. But it can’t be done to a fragile kitten.

Rebel Tim has just started to get his solid muscles. And so I gave him some bangs and he loved it. You would think cats would hate that sort of thing. But I’ve never had a cat that didn’t love it. Often it riles them up and they end up running around like maniacs. Unsurprisingly this is how it worked on Tim.

Tim is going to be one of those long lanky cats that are mostly just sleek fur over defined muscle, unlike Mrs. Fluffbutt, Her Highness Bijou. Who is mostly thick fluff pasted to muscle and a bit of rounding out fat. She is an exceptionally comfortable cat to hold as a result. Just soft in all the ways. Until she wants down. Which is mostly immediately because she doesn’t enjoy being held. She wants cuddles on her terms. But every evening she condescends to allowing me pick her up for a good hug. And doesn’t even complain. bijou and tim

The evolution of a word

Today I wrote a comment on a blog that was just the word “Gorgeous!”.

And I realized as a typed it that it has the word ‘gorge’ in it. How odd. They seems such distinct meanings. So I looked it up.

According to Eymonline:

gorgeous (adj.)
c. 1500, “splendid, showy, sumptuously adorned” (of clothing), from Middle French gorgias “elegant, fashionable,” of unknown origin; perhaps a special use of gorgias “necklace” (and thus “fond of or resembling jewelry”), from Old French gorge “throat,” also “something adorning the throat” (see gorge (n.)). A connection to the Greek proper name Gorgias (supposedly in reference to a notorious sophist) also has been proposed.

Gorge is from the word throat in old french. Which I can also feel the relationship to our present use of the word related to canyon in English, even if it is quite remote.

Which is the thing – so often one can FEEL the roots of a word. It’s tenuous relationship to the old word is so thready and knotted but it somehow got transmitted in meaning enough that I hear the etymology and can say – OK. Yeah. I can get that.

Words evolve. Sometimes very quickly and bizarrely. Imagine how oddly someone from the 15th century would feel about how we use the word “cool” today. We still hold onto the meaning they understand but it’s far more common use has no real relationship they can understand to the word.

cool (adj.)
Applied since 1728 to large sums of money to give emphasis to amount. Meaning “calmly audacious” is from 1825. Slang use for “fashionable” is 1933, originally African-American vernacular; modern use as a general term of approval is from late 1940s, probably from bop talk and originally in reference to a style of jazz; said to have been popularized in jazz circles by tenor saxophonist Lester Young.

All the slang meanings have intertwined in my mind. Each of them bringing a nuance to the various ways I use the word cool. In fact I can think of another meaning that is not mentioned here. It is often used as an agreement word. I can also feel how the slang meanings are still related to its traditional meaning of chilly. But those complexity of meanings are very hard to express, except by saying the word. All of its complexity is so neatly wrapped in one small word.

And now it’s being morphed again into kewl!

Language pedants often criticize people for their “wrong” use of words. But this is just the nature of language. It gets used and it evolves in it’s use until over time it’s a whole new meaning. This is why humans, who all evolved from one group are now using thousands of different languages. Because language evolves, just like humans, but much faster. A thousand years ago people spoke English. But we probably wouldn’t understand much of it.