Feline Foibles: Case of the Royal Pest

More than any other domestic pet, cats have foibles. They are quirky.

Her Majesty Princess Ziah, our extremely emotionally needy house cat, greeted me one morning as always, whining for food. I looked her in the eye and said, “I am the King of this house and I am going to eat my breakfast and drink my coffee before you get fed.” Like any spoiled royal cat, she treated me with disdain, and began crying again. What did I do? What any spoiled royal King would do. I ate my breakfast, drank my coffee, and regally ignored the whining royal pest.

What is it about cats, especially female felines?

Ziah, and our other two rescued cats, are taken very good care of by my royal wife. They get fed better than any of the neighbor’s cats. How do I know? Because all the neighbor’s cats migrate to our house hoping to get in on the surplus.

When my wife is not around, I stand in her place as the Joseph of Egypt, carefully parceling out food to the hungry. They may have been emaciated looking at one point in their lives but no one can accuse our Kingdom of leaving cats to starve. 

So why all the whining? Why all the selfish cries in the morning?

It seems cats are like some sales people, you show a little interest and they purr and act like a long-lost friend. The minute you walk away, they trail after you, lamenting their desperate plight.

There is a mystery in all this. Not every wayfarer was openly grateful to Pharaoh’s noble servant for their few precious measures of grain.  It wasn’t kosher. It was too plain. There just wasn’t enough.

After Joseph gave relief to the famished, he returned to serve Pharaoh’s household. I wonder how many royal felines he fed each day? I can’t imagine even Joseph setting aside his morning meal to cater to the outbursts of regal snobbery.

Cats are eccentric. All of them are pesky sometimes. The fat ones can be royal pests…”What’s that Ziah? Food again?”

What is your experience with cats? Pests or grateful pets? Would love to hear your comments below.

Some of My Best Friends are Books

I love books, and I love reading them. Many authors have become my friends, even though I have never met them personally. Some of them have become family.

Reading has been on the decline for many years. More people are influenced by images than the printed word. That’s not true for me. Okay, I cannot deny that I am quite taken by visual information at times but I always prefer to read than watch. My love for the printed word has increased dramatically over the years. I literally read all the time.

I didn’t always love to read. I was an active kid, and I chose outdoor activities over any motionless dream-state that resulted from having your nose in a book. Not only that, I was a slow reader, which made me think I was a bad reader. I never developed a complex over this, just shunned reading because it was more work than pleasure.

That all changed when I was seventeen years old. I’m not sure why it was so dramatic and why a particular book captured my imagination so. It may have been because of a few things. Both my mother and my aunt loved to read. I could tell it was fun for them. I would sometimes find my mother either crying or laughing out loud when reading to herself.

The other reason is that I was very consumed with wanting to be a veterinarian in those days, and the number one book on the New York Times Bestseller list was written by a practicing veterinarian. I also was working for an animal doctor, and that made me want to hear the details of the life of someone I had hoped to be in the future.

When my mother finished reading James Herriot’s, All Creatures Great and Small, She loaned it to me. It wasn’t very far into the first chapter that I found myself laughing out loud. Next thing I knew, I was at the point of tears. The whole book captured my emotions and my imagination more than anything I had ever read before. And the most amazing thing to me was that I felt that I knew James Herriot. If he had driven his beat up car to the front of my house, I would have recognized him and invited him in for a long visit.

That was over thirty-five years ago. I eventually read everything James Herriot wrote, and then went on to many other stories by many other strangers-turned-friends. Every morning now, I wake up and have a cup of coffee in their presence. They return my hello from the shelves of my bookcases. Some are my teachers, many are my mentors, all are my dear friends.

Question: Are you a reader? If so, what has captured your imagination in a book? You can write a comment below.

Finding Humor in the Final Weeks of School

There is only one time of the year more difficult to teach in than the week before Winter Break, and that is the last two weeks of school. My colleagues and I look for as much humor as we can to counter-balance the challenges we face in a public school classroom. After 25 years at it, I have my share of funny stories. Today I am appealing to all the teachers in the trenches to offer up one of their favorite humorous tales to lift our weary hearts this day.

Question: What favorite funny story do you remember best? You can leave a comment below.