It seems that the combination of being very happy and very busy makes days fly by much faster than normal, and then when I look up at the post date of my last blog post, I learn that it's been a week and I hardly knew it. Of course, the fact that I don't have internet at my house yet and thus have to squirrel away some time at school to write (and not during school hours, obviously) does tend to limit the spontaneous bloggage. (That word sounds vaguely unpleasant, doesn't it?)

Miss Kitty Fantastico is thriving, you'll be happy to learn. She is getting a bit more meat on her bones and becoming much more at home...uh, at home. Which leads to occasional destruction of property and occasional unsafe behaviors. (In the last five minutes, she's taken two flying leaps off my desk here at school and just missed her mark both times. Undeterred, she heads off in search of other chasms to cross.

Speaking of cats, I have a story:
This weekend I spent up at the ACSI conference in Portland, attending various seminars and assemblies with the other teachers I work with. Afterwards, on Friday night, I met up with some friends (let's call them "C" and "E" and I'll let you curious little kittens deduce their identities) and headed over to the Keller to see Sweet Charity. Since Molly Ringwold was starring in it and E was a big fan, we stood in the line of people by the stage door afterwards, hoping to get an autograph. While we were waiting, the subject of Miss Kitty Fantastico came up (I can't imagine how!) and E turned to me and said, "Well, you don't want to know what I did to a cat the other day."

"Lower you voice when you talk about that!" said C. "That could get you lynched around here, you know."

Intrigued, I leaned forward to hear the story.

"The people I used to live with had this cat," began E, "but they never cleaned up after it. It was crawling with fleas and it was mean. I hated that cat.

"So one morning, I got up reeeeeally early... like five. I put the evil cat in his little carrier and took him for a loooong drive. I found a nice field by a nice little farmhouse and shooed the cat out there, bid him 'adieu,' and drove home."

Me, laughing hysterically at this (you know how I feel about people who don't deserve to have pets, such as, say, pit bulls), finally calmed down and asked what had happened when the pet's owners found out.

"Well," said E, "They noticed he was gone, but I just said, 'Gee, I don't know where he went...' and then moved out a week later."

About that time, the janitor came out to tell us that Ms. Ringwold must have gone out another way because she was no longer in the building, so we gathered up our stuff to head home. Before we could head down the street, however, one of the girls standing in front of us (all of the drama-club variety) turned around, walked up to E and said, with earnest eyes peeking out from beneath her long bangs, "I'm sorry, but I just have to say something. You know, you could have taken that cat to the Humane Society. That's what they're there for, after all, to take in cats nobody wants. You should really think about that next time."

"Uh, ok," said E, and we all three scurried down the street as fast as we could, feeling the gazes of the cat savior and her friends behind us. We had gotten no farther than a block, when we realized we had gone in the opposite direction of our parking garage and needed to backtrack.

Waiting at the corner were the cat savior and her two friends. "I told you to keep your voice down. I warned you," whispered C. "Now we're in for it."

Sure enough, as soon as they saw us returning, the girls rounded on us. "That was not right what you did to that cat," said one with pink hair. "You should have turned it in. You know she has a cat shelter," gesturing to a third friend, a short girl with a buzz cut. (Think of it, in all of Portland, we tell our cat abandonment story in the vicinity of someone who has started a cat shelter!)

"Oh, it's probably all right," said E, laughing nervously. "There was a farmhouse nearby..."

"No," said Buzz, "it's dead. It's coyote food." (Why the coyote has less of a right to life than a mean cat, I can't imagine. Maybe because it's not cute. Now if it were a coyote puppy...)

"You never know, it could be living out a happy life, following the call of the wild..." said E, in a last ditch effort, beginning to inch away.

"No, it's lying in a ditch somewhere," said Pink Hair.

"Just...pray about it next time," said Bangs, looking into E's eyes and starting to tear up. "I know you'll do the right thing."

"Uh, ok," said E, and C and I, knowing we were only going to be able to keep straight faces for a few seconds more, grabbed her elbows and hurried her down the street and out of the danger zone. Behind us, the drama girls resumed their circle, whispering angrily and stealing looks over their shoulders as the moral equivalent of the pet nazis retreated down the street, possibly to go perform experiments on rats and test shampoo on Dachshund puppies.

Labels: MKF

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Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Meet Miss Kitty Fantastico