PROFESSOR FURPANTS IS FOURTEEN YEARS OLD

Hee hee hee! He is as old as I am, times a bajillion jillion! So old and fuzzy. Here is a picture of him being old and fuzzy. He was funny-looking when he was small like me but that was millionbajillionjillion years ago. I love Professor!


Human Overlord wants to have a PARTY for Professor, and she made invitations and people replied. There may be cake but I don't know if I like cake. If HO eats it, it must be good for me, right? She wouldn't eat anything I couldn't eat.

I am so smrt! See me conquer the screen behind the stripey curtains!!
HO says party is August 20 at 1 pm. There will be pictures. And maybe cake!!

I am so smrt.

The Princess' First Independent Project

The Professor is very fond, as I have said, of the independent spirit. Nothing makes him happier than an intern that takes initiative.

The Princess definitely has initiative. And she lurves to climb. Everything. All the time. There are no surfaces in the mountain lair too high for her to reach, no objet d'art too precious that it can't be knocked over (as a side note, the mountain lair got rid of all its Ming vases many years ago, as the Professor was fond of climbing in his youth).


To the right, the Princess on a shelf 170 cm (67 inches) above the floor. Atop that shelf and visible: my 25th Anniversary Cabbage Patch Doll; my Swan Jun "Cool Girl" doll; my Kisaragi Honey "Cool Girl" doll; my Cutey Honey "Cool Girl" doll... What's that? You can't see Cutey Honey? Oh, she's there, flat on her face. Jun's taken a dive off the shelf a couple of times herself. Honey has so far managed to escape this fate... so far. To the far left (way out of the camera's view) are some SD Gundam kits that the Princess thought were fun to knock over as well.






After an evening of scaring the you know what out of the HO, the Princess was pretty tired, and sought the Professor for permission to put the remainder of the project on hold for a bit.






He gave her the next day off as well. He's generous that way.

On Rest (or the lack thereof)

Since the intern's arrival, the Professor has suffered from a lack of rest. He rarely gets a chance to take even half his eighteen daily naps, and when he does the Princess is apt to jump on him - no doubt out of some misguided attempt to express comfortable companionship - which results in a lot of noisy squabbles.

It's not all yowls and hissing, however.

Sometimes they manage to share space quietly. You'll note that they're both sort of hanging out the sides of the sleepybed; but sometimes they do cuddle closer.

Not often.

The Professor is a fan of independence, and wishes that the Princess would go amuse herself and let him sleep.




Unlike the Professor, the Princess can never hide what she feels; I put this down to her youth and lack of experience. She wears her heart on her furry little sleeve.

Sometimes she actually does let him sleep.



In other news, the Princess has had a few forays out on the balcony:


Jungle cat!

Princess McSwifferpants

First of all, my apologies for that last post; one can hardly fault her enthusiasm.

So the intern has settled in quite nicely, chewing on cables and fingers and anything she can get into her mouth (and sometimes things she can't). Speaking of chewing, and since she did promise on my behalf, here is the first stage of the Princess' first project, to wit, the subjugation of the stripey curtains:






In addition I believe she promised a photo of Fred, who is a disturbingly crooked-faced toy dog that I bought in anticipation of her arrival. To the left, Fred, being taunted by the Princess, who adores him and carries him around the room.








She's extremely helpful; you can see her here, assisting my latest sewing project (by pulling things out of the boxes and playing with them).




And last of all (but not at all least), she has proven her stealth tactics to be beyond reproach:

so fuzzy

HO takes many pictures but does not post them here so I take some and post them here. Hee hee hee! Me and Professor. He gets annoyed at so many pictures. See how fuzzy I am! So fuzzy. Not as fuzzy as Fred. HO says she will post picture of Fred. I love Fred. Not as much as I love Professor! Professor bites me. So fun!


More picture!



Hee hee hee! My legs are short so I have to be close to take a picture. So fuzzy!

HO says this is not a proper post and Professor disapproves but it is my first post. HO says my post is all right but she will post better pictures soon. It is a promise! Even in better pictures I am so fuzzy.

First project: subdue stripey curtains. Picture when HO makes a post! Hee hee!

On Adjustment

Intern Squeaky "Grasshopper" McSwifferpants arrived on Friday night. Initially quite shy and homesick, she was prepared for a miserable evening, but a welcoming environment that had been arranged for her seemed to help. After a two-hour nap curled up in my hands she was refreshed and energised, and spent the rest of the evening exploring and acquainting herself with the Professor.




For his part, the Professor was typically aloof, preferring to watch the proceedings from a distance. Squeaky's determination to get to know him combined with her own anxiety about him led to some interesting (and very amusing, from an outside viewpoint) interactions.



The rest of the weekend was increasingly comfortable as the Professor and Squeaky settled into certain routines. There is still some disagreement as to who gets to eat whose food, and who gets to sleep in the Prof's sleepy-bed beside the computer (there is, as yet, no sharing). There seems to have been some sort of accord regarding who gets to sleep where at night; we shall see how long that holds.

All in all, a most successful integration. And Squeaky has already begun her research, which makes the Professor happy:

Spring Has Sprung

Sunshiny days make the Professor happy, and he loves to hang out on the balcony, checking out all the growing things. He seems particularly fond of my cypress, and tries periodically to climb up into the pot to rub his face against it. Fortunately (for both of us), his advancing years have made him a little more cautious about where he'll jump, and so far he hasn't taken a header off the balcony.

Touch wood.




Spring days leave the Professor very energetic at night, and he loves to tear into things, including my messenger bag (pictured here) and his beloved crocheted T. rex (partly visible at the bottom left). I was able to snap a half-decent photo of him without the flash, so you can see that he doesn't always have his eyes shut.


The new intern should be arriving by the end of May (we are hoping to have her installed on the last weekend of the month). Naturally photos will be taken for identification purposes. Her current foster-mother has indicated that she is very mild-tempered. Her tortie sister and orange tabby brother are extremely shy; and her black-and-white brother, who has an appetite bigger than himself, is slobberingly affectionate and desperate for attention. It should be an interesting transition for her, and for those of us in the Mountain Lair. The Professor refuses to comment on the situation except to indicate that she had better not interfere with the thesis. I have refrained from reminding him that it will be her job to assist him on it. He doesn't like to be corrected.

ARE YOU CAT ENOUGH?

Professor Furpants already has an intern, Bobby, who logs in remotely to submit his course work. However, the Professor is interested in having a second intern, one closer to home. One more readily available for abuse. And so I was sent off in search of someone. Someone young and with an untouched mind. Someone who could be molded into the Professor's (figurative) image (see above).

Someone who will put up with this:


Ha ha! That's a crocheted T-Rex, made out of nice sage-coloured merino wool and stuffed with hypoallergenic polyfill, much of which has come out due to the Prof's "busy claws". The crufty stuff you see on its surface is gooooood catnip.

So, in my search, I discovered several potential candidates. Keep in mind that none of these replace intern Bobby; the new one will merely be a supplement. And suffer more at the Prof's cranky paws.

Here are the contenders:


They are all equally qualified. On the Professor's behalf, however, I have decided that the most likely candidate will be the calico-coated girl at the top of the pile. She clearly rises above the rest. Ha ha!

[insert predictable but obsolete catchphrase here]

The Professor doesn't like having his photo taken. When he hears the camera turning on he immediately turns his head away, or gets up and stalks to another part of the room. Sometimes I catch him chilled out, though, and he'll tolerate a shot or two. Even if it's fuzzy, I'll take it.








Sometimes I just take what I can get, even if it's his behind sticking out from behind stripey curtains on a rare sunny morning. Ha ha!





The Prof is ambivalent about spring. On the one hand it means open windows, and squirrels and birds coming to perch tantalisingly close on the balcony, where he can sing to them ("Oh small creature, please come closer that I may eat you!"). On the other hand, it means open windows and squirrels and birds coming to perch tantalisingly close on the balcony, which distracts him from work on his thesis. But what are ya gonna do? Spring Has Sprung.

Vice--and a Treat

My dad used to grow, uh, herbs for the Professor and his mentor. Good stuff--strong, sweet, very effective. One of the temporary roomies (whose own HO resides here) was very fond of the, uh, herbs, and would actually perform feats that defied all laws of physics, in order to reach the bag where I had hidden it--where I, in fact, had to get up on a stepstool to reach it.

The Professor and his mentor loved it too. The mentor would daintily nibble a few leaves and then spend the afternoon purring contentedly in a sunbeam (she was otherwise a most cool and indifferent girl). The Prof would dive right in, rolling about and generally preventing anyone from getting more than a sniff at it.

Well, my dad stopped growing the stuff when I went overseas to work, because he had no reason to do so (the Prof and his mentor, recall, went to a couple of temporary homes during this time, staying with people my dad didn't know). Since my return to my Home And Native Land, I have sought high and low for an herb of similar strength. Most of what I have found has smelled like mint, for some reason; and the Prof has turned his nose up at every single sample.

Until today.

Today I picked up a packet of Imperial Cat, whose tagline is "Enhance Your Cat's Life". Oh, yes indeedy. This stuff has the grassy smell I recall from my dad's homegrown stash, and it's actually leafy--most of the stuff I've found has been crushed to almost a powder.

So, I sprinkled a bit on the kitchen floor (you can see specks of it on the Prof's coat in the photo above), and watched him go to town. It's been a while since the Prof has been able to unwind like that, and I was happy to watch him do it.

And oh yes, I promised you a treat, did I not? Forty seconds of blurry, soundless video (hey, my camera's almost as old as Professor Furpants. The Professor, not the blog!):

Oh, yeah. That's the stuff. I just wish you could hear him snuffling it.