News Items:

The Rapture Takes Two

(I've suspected that something like this would happen for sometime...)

and in other news (!)

Marcia successfully defended her dissertation! She's now Dr. Marcia!

Still Not Cat People

So yesterday as I was sitting in the sunshine, Jaelyn and Addison happily digging to the bottom of the sandbox, and petting Liam, the formerly male cat, I thought to myself:

How does this happen?

How does someone who makes cheap jokes at the expense of cat lovers? Someone who says he's NOT a cat person? Someone who swears vows that he will not own a pet, not even a dog, which he loves, until his children NEEED a pet to survive...?

How does that guy end up with a purring pregnant, formerly male cat on his lap, petting the cat in the sunshine?

...

We named our first cat ( the first one that found us, that is ): Emma.

Because that is the name of Jaelyn's Beloved Cousin.


(this is Emma)

Jaelyn names all dolls Emma, all stuffed animals are Emma, there's a magical land named Emma somewhere over the rainbow, and she herself pretends to be called Emma sometimes.

Was there any surprise when the stubby-tailed cat who nuzzled and purred and loved to be picked up by over-eager five year old hands was named Emma? Not really.


(this is emma, the cat)

The only dark side of paradise was that Emma started to become Jaelyn's cat in the minds of everyone. Addison was a little bit scared to touch her. She was a she, and gender norming is a powerful thing in our culture. So Addison started to say each time Emma and Jaelyn embraced:

I wish *I* had a Liam.



(this is Liam)

This is Addison's cousin Liam who is the brother of Emma

and this...

...unexplicably as if an answer to Addison's informal prayer...

...is Liam, too.



(Liam the cat, that is)

...

There was a point at which I thought I was living in a nightmare populated by feline ill will. Not, mind you because these are mean cats. They're great cats. They treat you like a person, not an annoyance. They like to be petted and touched and they aren't too pushy. So why a nightmare?

Because not long after Emma and Liam arrived. Their MOTHER arrived. WE didn't take pictures, because we tried to discourage her arrival.

...

Now we get to the gender bending part of the story.

One night while I was holding Liam, I noticed that his ...er...equipment was a little off.

I came inside.

"You'll never guess what I just found out," I said, "Liam is a girl."

Addison looked at me confused.

"Our cousin?"



....

I imagine there will be a day someday in the future when parents send out gender re-assignment announcements, covered in a gentle transclucent paper, complete with a braided blue and pink ribbons tying the transcluscent veil over the ink jet printed digital photo,

but...just for the record ...this was not that day.

Liam our nephew has *not* become our niece.

*But* Liam our cat has since become Snowflake -- or more often -- Liam/Snowflake.

.....

Gender Bender Part Two

During the same week, Jaelyn Burst Into the house!

Mommy, Daddy! Liam's Mom keeps jumping on to his back and STEPPING on him. And She won't get off.

hmmm.

So Liam become Snowflake and his mommy became her daddy. And hopefully not even her daddy...or is that sort of thing acceptable amongst barn cats.

......

So how do people that are NOT cat people come to be so fond of a gender bending, profoundly preggers cat?

I suppose the same way that we live with all the rest of the contradictions that sew our lives together...

How do you continue to love the people whose annoying quirks you understand the best? How do you manage to hold onto your idealism once you realize that there are no niches of the world untouched by the corruption of politicking and bueracracy and power-hungry elitism?

......

hope you're at peace with the cats in your life~

Weekend Update

The whole fam spent Easter Weekend with Cliff, Mary & Jack in Nashville, Tennessee.

We held a Passover Seder on an Alabama Cotton Farm, had stimulating conversations about life, the universe and everything, drove one night into a strange rainy fog reminiscent of a twilight zone, watched Born into Brothels and devoured one of Cliff's delightful pans of FIAP.



Here's me standing in front of the ORIGINAL Whitt's Barbecue. This is some good stuff. I love profoundly local food. (Right, right, I know. Who am I kidding. I love *all* food.)



Here's Mary & Lynn, running partners, friends & impressively strong women -- both of whom I'm proud to call friends. They both have an astonishing ability to balance their deeply pragmatic personalities with an interest and awareness of abstract ideas and theoretical knowledge.



Jaelyn's dying eggs in this picture and Addison and Walton, best friends as of one hour before this picture was taken (when they met), have already stripped to half naked Lord-of-the-flies-style-wildness, transferred an entire muddy sandbox from one container to another, and will spill the purple dye across both of their pants moments after this photo is taken...



Here's Cliff and his sister Carole Ann. These two are these super-brilliant-intellectual-Ph.D.s who *aren't* the type at all. When you have a conversation with them, you have this amazing sense of how interested they are in you or your story or the whole world. By the time you get through with the conversation, you have just hints of how broad and deep their knowledge is, but after knowing them for years. You're just friggin astonished.

*thanks to Cliff for the brilliant picture taking. Most of these are his doing. Which should just whet your whistle to want to see some of his documentary films -- Sawyerville and another, yet [untitled], currently in production and the intriguing Immaterial John.