Forgery League

Week of personal turmoil for a lot of people, it seems to me. Spring fever? War twitchiness? Who knows? Folks are moody or manic or both. At least three bands we’re friends with have undergone drastic lineup shifts or split altogether. Four, if you include me switching to bass. :>

In cat news, M and I independently came to the same conclusion about Sean: when he’s in a kitty-fawning trance with Spot on his lap, he gets this Look on his face just like Elijah Wood-as-Frodo being hypnotized by the Ring. Scariness.

Tarquin ate string this morning. Had to follow him around with scissors and a wad of kleenex. >.<

Can’t use the bathroom. Spot is spending some Alone Time in there after she had a freakout on Tarquin and subsequently on Sean. She’s taking over the place. Tarquin is hiding, poor guy.

A friend came to visit for a day after spending a month in silent meditation at a Buddhist retreat north of town. While showing her around, we discovered a neat health food store and bought fearsome hot sauce from a guy at a sidewalk table. Later, she performed a tea ceremony in our living room… wild to see how she adapted the space and the ritual to suit one another, and to realize that it was possible to create such a quiet, comfortable space within the place we already have.

Got to cook for guests, too, my new favorite thing. J and M are over all the time now (especially since her office moved to a new building a block away from us), which provides me with plenty of opportunities to do it. Jeez, we’re turning into a vegan support group. :D I think I’ll sign up with one of those services that deliver a box of organic produce every week.

Must work on music today… must finish CD. *gasp*

Lotsa work-like stuff this week - little odd jobs mostly, like business cards and ads and cleaning up horrendously noisy voice-over audio. Almost done the recording of “Searchlights”, and another song is on the way…

The cat situation has stabilized. Spot and Tarquin aren’t pals, but they tolerate each other. Tarq has now become the bratty little brother (despite being twice her weight), following her around, wanting to do everything she does and so on. This also means they both try to sleep on the bed. We need a bigger bed. >.<

So our friend Karen’s hair salon and makeup supply outlet is now open, with the logo I designed turned into a fancy schmancy metal and acrylic sign. There’s certainly something fun about seeing something you did rendered so physical and visible… I won’t say “satisfying”, because hey, it’s all ephemeral in the end, isn’t it? And that’s cool too. The satisfaction for me is in the work itself, and handing it off at the end.

Well, we had a fine time out in Maine. And we brought home Spot.

Unfortunately, Tarquin is jealous as all hell. He’s just like a spoilt four-year-old whose parents have had another baby (except that this baby is six years his senior). This is the biggest down side to living in the loft: we have no rooms to separate them, aside from the bathroom. So the bathroom has been turned into the quarantine room. Showering has become ridiculously complicated.

And I won’t even tell you about the horrible mess Tarquin made of his litter while we were away. I think our designated cat-feeder ran away in horror.

Argh. More updates to come.

Puttering about with a digital camera lately… There’s a neat little program out there called Panorama Factory, which I used to put together this panorama of our place.

See if you can spot Tarquin.

Tarq, Kittybit, Catsy, Mister Pussycat, Buddy, Kittybins, Binsie, Crazy, Moodle (from “Moodles”, Stereolab song title), Oo, Arf, Eee, Wao (onomatopoeic), Turkey, Buster, Tat (as in Puddy), Stinky, Pookins, Kittybreath, Sir, Woob, Baddie, Bebbycat.

I don’t know what this says about me. I think I pick up names and permute them almost obsessively. Sean does something similar - it runs in his family, as does the strange husky-falsetto “cat language” they all speak. But the only things I remember Sean calling our cat are “Tarqm Man” and “Crazy”.

Mum calls her Tarquin “Tarkers”. Grandma calls him “Neko-san”.

Ours has the personality of a spoilt but mostly well-behaved child. Or at least, he has been very well behaved until now, but is starting to get bored and dangerously curious. I have successfully taught him to tug/push open the bathroom door if it’s unlatched, rather than endure his endless mewling while I shower. Thankfully it’s the only interior door in the place.

Catnip mouse on elastic = spectacular acrobatics. Tarq displays a reckless disregard for his own safety while playing. I can’t believe he hasn’t brained himself yet.

He remains completely uncuddly (when Sean picks him up and fusses over him, he does a beautiful impersonation of one of Pepe le Pew’s love interests), but has taken to sleeping on our bed on occasion - perhaps for company, more likely for warmth. The place is freezing until about 1 pm.

We have a cat now, named Tarquin. As my parents already have a cat named Tarquin, we may have to append epithets such as “The Grey” or “The Black”. Ours is The Black. He’s about a year and a half old, and a darling. Clever, too - he plays incessantly, to the point of dragging his Cat Dancer toy (a wire with little bits of chewable cardboard at either end) onto the bed at night and playing with it right on top of us. We’re never going to sleep again. He’s almost used to the new place, although he was rather distraught at the change, not the least of which was missing his playmate Casey.

His first exposure to catnip came yesterday: Sean sprinkled some on his scratching post to encourage him to use it. Tarq went a bit loopy and began tearing bits of the carpet out and eating them. We eventually had to hide the scratching post - not an easy task in a loft…

Pictures will come soon, I’m sure.

I’m off to check out a cat we may be adopting through the Annex Cat Rescue… his name is Tarquin, which by an odd coincidence is also the name of my parents’ cat. He’s tested positive for FIP, which means that, although he may never get the disease, he has to be kept away from other cats. His folks are moving to Italy in August, so he’s been needing a new home. By all accounts he’s a total sweetheart.