Mom and the Cat and the Cat Cat Cat

Last year, we had a visitor and this visitor became the permanent visitor.

We called her Meow or the Stupid Cat since she was really stupid. No one claimed responsibility or guardian  for her. It was not entirely unexpected because our house was the only one with no dogs and a lot of cats came for a shelter all the time. I’ve seen many generations of cats visiting to and fro at my house. Some of them stayed for a while and some of them stayed longer. But this particularly one was (and still is) the longest resident. She would never go anywhere. Sometimes she had gone for a day or two, but she was the ultimate homecoming. She expanded her territory and became dominant in the neighborhood. A few cat lovers stopped by and fed her at our front gate (again, she would not be going anywhere).

The right eye of the Stupid Cat seems to be badly functional. I don’t know if she can see through that eye. If so, it definitely doesn’t work well (maybe both eyes). The Stupid Cat never learn anything. Her learned behavior is obviously bad and doesn’t like other ordinary cats. Somehow she looks like having some mind problems. Good thing is she’s capable of cuteness sometimes. Fortunately! It’s the gift of every cat. If she can’t be cute, I don’t know why she was born to be a cat in the first place!

The bad thing is the Stupid Cat always has an issue with Mom.

Mom never declare herself as a pet lover. Let alone the fact that she is allergic to fur (me, too). The difference between she and I is that I never conceal my fondness for cats. It doesn’t mean I would be running and meowing with them. No. I respect every animal. But the Stupid Cat always makes many mistakes; ransack the place, keep getting into Mom’s way, keep meowing for attention, gnaw on every possible objects like a puppy, etc. But sometimes, Mom’s cat lover’s ability is cracked through her stone face. The conversation would be like this:

Mom: Feed your baby. Shut her up.

Me: What!? (Gosh! I’ve never been married! Let alone having a boyfriend!)

Mom: Your baby! There, it keeps moaning for hours.

Me: (Realizing whom she meant) Oh, she’s definitely not my baby although I kind of like her. Let’s see if we have something for her.

Mom: (Mumble) There is a can of Tuna in the fridge…

Me: Ok, that’d work… (Trying to hide my smile 😉 )

It’s always been like this with Mom and the Stupid Cat. Mom tried not to show any affection and the Stupid Cat kept showing its stupidity. Until…

We know which cat is their biological father, but like any male lions, the dad cat doesn’t even realize these kittens are his children and the mom cat has to protect them from him. At least, we know the Stupid Cat also contains cat instinct, anyway. The kittens, which we call the Meow Meow Meow or the Cat Cat Cat, have developed their personality in no time. Two of them are hissing all the time. One of them is hiding or running away every time someone comes close. The bravest girl is the grey back one…or she just inherits too many characteristics from the Stupid Cat. They cooperatively cause more commotion. I think Mom’s head is about to explode. But then, she cannot resist the temptation…

If you’re not used to kitten power yet, you should practice from now on. It’s very dangerous. No matter how mischievous they are, the kitten power usually turns on. Mom is one of their victims. She even gets the Stupid Cat more luxurious food. I guess it’s because she knows what mothers need to get through day and for their kids. Don’t get her wrong, she’s still hard on them, don’t want them to be spoiled. She was like that with us, too, as I recalled 😛 However, she never agreed when I wanted to buy some cat food until one day…

Ok, I just asked unexpectedly if she would like to buy some cat food when we passed the section. She surprised me by grabbing a big box of cat food. Big box. Not just cans or bags of a meal I usually bought. Wow, was that revolution day? She still (tried to) showed no affection until…

The next thing we know we might find ourselves get these kittens vaccines and a huge cat condo.

Why Am I Not So Professional?

Professional I always want to be.

But what does ‘professional’ mean exactly?

Recently, I find myself not so professional. I mean in term of business. I’ve got my job, a professional career (it’s meant to be professional, not that I have to be, though). However, it’s not that professional in my definition. It’s more materialism, more objective. When it comes to professional, I think of business people; economics, medical field, politics, and every field which needs competent and liable appearance. These people will walk in the outside world with such self-assertive confidence which I never have. Sometimes they almost feel they’re condescending.

As I hadn’t studied in those fields (I didn’t regret it. OK, maybe just a little), I happen to think if that has influenced what I become today. Of course, it is. If I had studied Accounting like my mother and big sister, I would definitely not have learnt the art of being impecunious independence as I am today. Or if I had studied Law as my mother had hopefully suggested, I would have been more eloquent. Or if I had studied Engineering as peer general trend at the time, I would have known how to have my inconsiderate laptop work. However, there were reasons why I did not take those courses.

The first reason happened since I was the sixth grader.

Can you believe that these symbolic significance of numeral and unidentified alphanumeric codes are for sixth graders? They are only eleven. I was only eleven! I was busy trying to survive peer pressure and learn how to live than comprehend these numerical force. And as if that’s not enough, look at the answer, 2+1=3!? Great, I learnt that in kindergarten, using my fingers and toes and friends’ head. What the necessity of complicating things? No wonder why I hated mathematics and algebra and could not force myself to learn it in university.

Note: I used to be like this in Physics class in high school, except that the teacher wrote ‘R.I.P.’ back on the paper with a meekly huge red zero under it.

Another rationale was the most overwhelming. It happened when I was senior in high school.

Can you imagine ‘things’ which are able to silence all twenty of the most boisterous and hyperactive teenage girls (I was in private girls’ school)? It was when the school held a tour to a medical institute in order to let us see what a medical student has to learn and inspire us. The consequence was counterproductive, at least for me. I saw all the horror for a life time in one particular day. There were unborn children (and never been born, unfortunately) arranged in every week of ages for us to see the development. I decided to leave it to the mother in duty. There were also bodies which each had been exhibited all the muscle tissues, both smooth and skeletal, internal organs, bits of skeletons, blood vessels, arteries, every part of brain (cut into pieces to see what inside was), every part of heart (same as brain), and every core and detail of human organism. There were human bodies with diseases. There was even a body which was not a body, but the literally practical nerves in a body been meticulously peeled out and injected the colors to see all the threads thoroughly. It was as if every eye and brain and cell were intensely staring at you, as if thousands of tiny needles were prickling your nerves. I appreciated the painstaking detail, though.

And there were also other things at that institute.

I felt as if my remained childhood innocence had been cruelly harassed when we entered the ‘objects’ section. It was worse than looking at those soulless bodies and none-bodies. It was the pain of memories they represented. The pain of how inhuman human was capable of doing to each other. The pain of innocence such as the little boy who had hidden in a large jar when there was fire. The jar was there, carrying the memory of the boy. And there was the real serial killer’s body over eight or nine decades ago. He had been small. Even though his body shrank from the process of stuffing, I could see he had not been a big man. How could he chop people alive and eat their guts?

When I got out of the heartbreaking building to the world of the living, the unsettling reminiscence was still knocking in the back of my head. I saw people as the merely containers of souls and cells, cutting the right nerve or vessel in their brains and they were gone for good, once and for all. I have NEVER thought of learning to be a doctor again.

That’s so overwhelming. Although I liked Biology, I found the plants’ cells were much more lovable than human and animals’ organs. And although I did well in Chemistry and was the creme de la creme in my class, I hated it. So what’s left? Ahh, art and languages, my inner supports! After those tragic catastrophe, what would soothe me best except a good piece of literature or a gentle art work or even a tinkling music? It reminds us how beautiful people’s minds still are. It reminds us human is not slicing other people all the time. Still, art and those medical investigation relate somehow. I cannot help wondering that doctors might be good artists, considering they know all the detail of bodies like that 😛

However, if I chose another way of life or another more professional way, I would not be the person I am today. I might have learnt to be a successful person, even a billionaire, but not a happy person. A busy bee I might have been but I also might have ended up finding no peace and committing kind of suicide by relentlessly banging my head on the wall with mind-numbing boredom eventually. That’s not good for me and people around me, so I guess what comes out now is already the best solution; being obscure and frivolous, doing things of my own volition, staying low-profile and languid, facing psychological breakdown sometimes. Isn’t that good enough?

DIY: Little twisted Kindle cover

This blog is going to be a mess…like my cooking..where I put every eatable thing in a pan. Now, this post, I come up with DIY. Not that I do it often. This is my first DIY, first handmade cover, without anyone’s help, blimey! And it’s really cheap for I use only what comfortable for me, the thing that’s just sitting there, waiting for someone to throw it into a bin. I bought some materials and superfluously calculate it out for only $10. Let’s see what I’ve done.

I’d got a new Kindle Touch for work about two weeks ago. I was looking up on Amazon.com for a cover because I didn’t want it to get a scratch. Well, the covers there were pretty, with those high-class looking Victorian pattern all over it, and the prices were pretty, too, at the cost of $35. I liked the lighted leather covers but they cost $60… It was not too expensive, but since the Office would be the one paying it and it needed tons of documents. And I hated documents and I just had a mood. So I decided to make a cover myself.

These are the materials.

First, of course, the Kindle, although I could buy a cute case of iPhone before buying the iPhone. The others are leather (I prefer tan brown but the shop has got only cherry red and baby blue, you cannot have everything), star pins, square pins (I bought them to remake my shirt months ago but never gained the mood to do it), a strip of elastic, a spool of thick dark brown thread, a needle (a little strong big one. The leather is not gentle with it at all), a plastic plate (I used a white plastic plate left when you buy a stack of document files. I was just roaming about and found it in the bottom drawer), and the other stuffs you need along the way such as a ruler or glue.

After you’ve got everything you want (or if you don’t know you want something, it’ll come up soon, don’t worry 😉 ). Here is the very simple way to make a cover.

1. Cut the plastic plate little bigger than the Kindle. Trim the corner. You don’t want a hole on your leather and ruin all your effort because of a sharp plastic corner.

2. Cut two pieces of the leather in appropriate and reasonable size. OK, the truth is I didn’t measure the exact size of it.

3. Glue them together. I used latex glue because it was there. It may need an extra time to dry but it still works well. You also have an extra time to play with glue you were not allowed 15 years ago.

4. When everything is in its place, snap little holes on the corners of the plastic plate to make room for elastic. It’s to contain the Kindle in place.

5. Decorate the cover on another piece of the leather.

6. Time to put them together! I sewed it slowly while watching TV series and doing other stuffs. It got out of the line sometimes but that was life!

Finish!!

It’s really simple, isn’t it? You can sew your own cover of any other things. Believe me, if I, whose laziness is the great burden, can do this, anyone can do it too. 🙂

Mini B&W Toons: The epic war between Mr.Cokky and I, part1

Or you could say that I was so scary that a cockroach could not stand…