I feel good! I knew that I would!

 Imp.  Little, tiny baby Imp.  The cutest little black and white kitten.  My neighbor and friend across the street was in love with him.  There was no denying it...he was a tiny ball of adorableness. 

I was not so enamored of his personality.  For an itty bitty kitty, he had a huge presence. First one to the food tray, everybody watch out!!!  I walked out one evening to feed what was then a rather large pile of cats (8 to 10) and I was greeted with hopeful little faces and one in particular loud, ear piercing wail. Like Pavorotti in the aria of Il Pagliacco...it reverberated, echoed and expanded throughout the piazzetta  ad alta voce.  "Mamma mia!!!"...I looked up and my neighbor was on her balcony laughing.  The little black and white, urging me to hurry.  He wanted the food, he wanted it first, he wanted it!!!!  That's when he started climbing my leg.  !!!!!

Ok, he likely weighed less than a pound, but I could feel the little pricks in my skin as he ascended.  He was small enough that I could grab and remove him with one hand so I could then make my way to my destination and deposit the food trays.

THAT is why I called him "Demon."

Five or six months later this little "demon" came to our courtyard to die.  He had not grown like his litter mates, he had a terrible cough and he had stopped eating. 

 I brought him in and with TLC, good nutrition and medications, he lived and eventually thrived.  He caught up with his siblings in growth.  

Now I have to tell you that when my dog, Harry, was alive, I cooked for him.  As his condition got worse, the only food he would accept was fresh cooked chicken.  Cooking chicken became a regular habit, with he clown brigade at the ready for their share of the bounty.  Only the boys.  The girls are not at all interested. "Get that away from me! I'm not eating that!"  I could offer it on a silver platter and they would look at me with disgust. 

It's been a while since I cooked any...we rarely eat meat...but I decided it was going to be "fajita" night, so there I was, cooking chicken post-Harry.  The clowns were all sleeping but eventually, one by one, they made their way to the kitchen.  Scruff first, then Lupo, Percy (the most vocal... ma maoh?  ma maoh?), Imp and Calzini.

They were cutlets and I had to transfer them to a cutting board so I could slice them into strips for fajitas.  As I was doing so, I suddenly felt a searing, acute pain.....Imp, now a healthy, sturdy, stocky 10 pound boy, had leapt onto my side.....did he climb my legs, like the "old days" or did he leap directly to about hip height (I am short)??? I can't say for sure, it was sudden and extremely painful.  I haven't checked yet to see what damage there was, or if there was bleeding, although I am betting there was. While my brain thought "What the bloody hell?" the words did not translate to tongue in the heat of the moment, so I let out a "Peanuts" style "AAARRRGGGGGHHH!"

I caught a fleeting glimpse of black and white extricating itself from my side, and, much like depictions of the "the Big Bang" I also fleetingly saw small, furry bodies, legs and tails exiting at warp speed in all directions.  

Little by little, one by one, the chicken craving clowns returned.  And I was able to give them all two rounds of what is now a rare and exotic treat. 

Lupo was so grateful he spent the next 10 minutes "kneading" me and sucking my index finger.  Meanwhile, Scruff did body gyrations on the floor, with occasional furtive side glances, in an effort to get me to pet him. Imp had enough sense to stay away for a while.

He approached me about an hour later.  "You forgives me, Mamma?"  Well, just look at that face....what choice do I have?

I'm on the highway to hell, no stop signs...speed limit

 Ahhhh.,,,,the awful, oppressive heat of the summer has passed and the days are cool, breezy, blue sky gorgeous days once again.  Sleeping like a baby....unless someone decides to "love" me with his murder mitts in the middle of night.....or certain other clowns get into mischief.

So, there I was, blissfully asleep...having a dream with lots of ocean water and strange celebrities.....and "SPLINK!!"  What the hell was that???  It's barely daylight....sounded sort of like glass (please, god, no) and I do not have my "land legs" which at my age and with both kinds of arthritis sometimes require more than just a little bit of time to find, so I go ...leaping?  stumbling?  lurching? from bed to see what in freaking tarnation they have broken.

It was only a plastic pill cutter.  One of the three plastic pill cutters I keep perpetually on the kitchen table since four of the clowns have asthma sometimes severe enough to require medication.  Scruff gets daily medication.  Imp gets every other day meds.  Sometimes Lupo.....it all depends....I don't want drug addict cats but I also want them to breathe. 

Alright, I picked up the cheap little pill cutter...it happened to be the one that lost a piece all by itself soon after I purchased it, so I was not upset.  The pill cutter is a piece of shit anyway.  Snort.

Back to bed and more dreams.

My husband is one of those...ugh..."morning" type people.  I am not.  He tends to get up a couple of hours earlier than I do.  He makes coffee for himself and does I don't know what else....it's freaking morning...sometimes he empties the dishwasher, sometimes he doesn't.  He has to go across the street presently because our friends and neighbors who live there are in Bulgaria and he is taking care of their thousands of plants until they return.  Thousands.  Every window, every ledge, every balcony...inside, outside...thousands of plants. But....I digress.

Somewhere around nine or so (that's not so bad, is it???...beats the damned crack of dawn!) I rouse myself as gently as I can into the day. Sometimes I am rewarded with the ringing of distant bells.  Sometimes the birds serenade me.  Sometimes one or two of the clowns show up to pretend they love me but what they really want is breakfast.

I go bleary eyed into the bathroom and wash the sleep from my eyes, get dressed, for what that's worth nowadays, and venture into the world. 

First, I get whatever medications needed ready.  I check the dishwasher.  Then I have to get the dirty cat bowls from the night before, rinse and load into the dishwasher.  Get my tea water ready.  My own medications,,,and a mighty load they are!   Fresh water for kitties..two bowls in the back room and the two big bowls that were my sweet Harry's bowls...and are now water bowls for the clowns.

Harry, my now deceased dog....had a "neater feeder"...a raised up feeder that held two bowls, one for food, one for water, for better neck and digestive health.  Now it is just for cat water.

I was just about ready to open the cans for clown car breakfast when out of the blue, like the proverbial bat out of hell, Percy came tearing down the hallway and slammed all thirteen pounds of himself into the "neater feeder" with full and extreme force.  Water went flying.  Cats went flying.  And my mouth went flying off with every expletive I could possibly think of at maximum volume. 

All windows open due to lovely weather, so I guess it's a good thing my neighbors don't speak English because I let loose with a long and loud string of four letter words that would have made George Carlin proud.  Somehow I doubt that much translation was necessary. I'm sure whoever heard me got my drift.

First I retrieved the sloshing bowls, then I cleaned up the floor, sopped up the excess water in the lower half of the "neater feeder" then cleaned up the top half and put them both together again.  As I was bent over, struggling...please refer back to advanced age and arthritis...my husband walked in.  "What are you trying to do?"  What am I trying to do?  What kind of question is that?  How about..."What happened?"  What I am trying to do is not lose my temper again over a stupid question.  What I am trying to do is restore order where there was chaos.  What I am trying to do is stand back up straight without wincing or crying out.  I am trying to freaking feed the damned freaking cats!!!

Percy must be sniffing too much Feliway, because he did it again....went tearing around at warp speed, that is...and nearly knocked a lamp off a table.  (Cheap wooden lamp bought for just such an occasion!)

Or perhaps it was just the sudden change in the weather.  Today he is an angel, of sorts....a fat, fluffy orange angel.