“There are people who reshape the world by force or argument, but the cat just lies there, dozing, and the world quietly reshapes itself to suit his comfort and convenience.”

— Allen and Ivy Dodd

[Grendel]

A day rarely goes by when I fail to ponder what The Kids have seen.  By that, I do not just mean what casual passing they have observed, what playful tussles they have watched, and what dark worlds they have envisioned through slowly closing eyelids.

Nay, what I consider is far more extravagant than that.

I wonder precisely what magical realms they have studied with their godlike eyes.  What phenomena, invisible to clumsy and weak human eyes, have these five cats seen that I would not—could not—have noticed?

To see through their eyes on but one occasion would be to comprehend finally what the Egyptians worshiped lo these many eons ago.  It would be to comprehend in the briefest and most limited of ways how marvelously powerful these creatures are, to see what we fail to see, to notice the most minuscule thing that otherwise would pass by our primate eyes without worry.

So I ask, Grendel, what wonders do you behold?

As you can see, Grendel has the right idea.  I’m pretty tired.  I just don’t have it in me to offer more than this.  And I still have to configure my work laptop and test VPN… if I can find the will, which I’m not betting on.  And that on top of several other to-do items I would like to get done, and several to-do items I must get done.

So I’m taking Grendel’s queue and calling it a night for blogging.  Let’s try this again tomorrow.

Who needs television when you have cats?

— Lori Spigelmyer

A few weeks ago I said, “I’ve already given up television in its entirety.  Cable is gone.  I’ve not watched programming of that nature for more than a month.  The only thing that has caused me to turn on the boob tube is the rare desire to put a movie in and enjoy some DVD entertainment.”

That statement is still true, yet I never realized until after I’d stopped watching TV that The Kids draw from a reservoir of entertainment that constantly baffles and amazes me—not to mention tickles me.

That’s not to say I’ve been oblivious to them.  Ha!  That’s laughable at best.

One need only view the overwhelming number of photos and read the prodigious number of stories I’ve posted about them to realize how closely I pay attention to their activities, how much of their everyday lives I experience vicariously, and how little of our interaction goes unnoticed by me.

Yet not being distracted by the boob tube has offered a newfound venue of time in which their mayhem and nonsense becomes irrepressibly blatant.  Now the smallest of things catches my attention.  It has offered me a plethora of opportunities in which to take special notice of something quirky, something stunning, something beautiful, something amazing, or something that gives rise to uproarious laughter time and again.  And this happens as long as I’m awake and at home.

I find myself thankful for giving up the nonsense broadcasts that fill too many homes.  What little I want and wanted to see can be seen on DVD.  I’ll simply wait for them to be released.

Otherwise, my home is already full of the best entertainment options available.  So who needs television?

[Grendel, and that’s Vazra lying on the bed behind him; since you can’t see much of him, I don’t think it warrants including this as a photo of him]

[Grendel]