The Care and Feeding of Your...

I'm quite sure I ordered the Fancy Feast over easy NOT scrambled!

Good King Rocco

Stress monster.

Every day. Every motherfucking day there’s some new heinousness out of the Dimwitted Racist in Chief and his treacherous, double-dealing and utterly corrupt Republican party.

What's a rational, reality based person to do in the face of daily blindingly dangerous insanity? There’s all the marching, writing letters, calling, signing petitions, unifying and VOTING – sure. What about peace of mind though? That’s molto importante in these endless days of ugly, perilous idiocy. Amirite or amirite? You know I am!

What have I been doing to chill out?

The TAB/Coco attack team

Y time, of course. Exercise is a fab destressifying endorphin machine. I could totes stand to do a hell of a lot more of it too.

Work, escaping into comical, campy books and thought provoking yet fun movies, dinner with chums, travel but, maybe more than anything, CATS.

I love all the cat pics, tips and vids that show up on my ShoutyFace feed. Each one is like a little shot of Xanax right to my poor burdened bean. I’m no speciesist here – I’m way keen on all the happy animal vids. I think my fave series is Odd Couples from The Dodo. There are snips with dogs and kittens being all adorably chummy, piglets and dogs, lambs and cats, chickens and puppies, lions and tigers (but no bears), raccoons and dogs – they all put a big fat smile on my face. If animals can get along, why can't we? Yes, yezzzz, I know that was dreadfully simplistic of me but, HEY, a stressed out babe can dream. Ya know?

The Amazing Bob and Rotten Ralf

I check out all the cat care sites too but The Amazing Bob taught me a LOT about the care and feeding of our feline overlords. Where’d he learn? He just knew. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you wasn’t just a Sunday School slogan for him – it was the core of his being, his natural, central operating system, it's how he rolled.

BOP (AKA Big Orange Pumpkin)

Wisdom like:

•  let a new-to-you cat approach you first
• offer your hand to her, knuckles first
• always, when holding a cat, support their feet – don’t hold them by the waist, leaving their feets dangling. Why not? How would YOU like to be held like that. TAB said it makes them feel unstable, in possible danger. I get it.
• put their food bowls in a different room from their litter box. Cats are fastidiously tidy beasties. Go with that – would you want dinner served to you in the bathroom, right by the toilet? I think not!

The one thing that he prolly shouldn't have done was sneak sniblets of his dinner to our succession of wee furry roommates (Rotten Ralf, BOP, Rocco and Coco).

When TAB was chemo-izing and had NO appetite, I found myself regularly misquoting Olympia Dukakis from one of our fave flicks, Moonlighting:

"Old man, you give those cats another piece of my food and I'm gonna kick ya' till ya' dead."

It didn't stop him BUT it always made him smile. I lived for that smile.