I’VE OWNED SIX FUNNY CATS

I laughed so hard this morning that I almost choked on my tea and chocolate chip cookie. In a pet bed, intended for my six pound cat, was also my fourteen pound cat. they were so smushed together that they looked like one twenty pound creature. And the big guy was hanging a bit over the sides.

The little cat, Sweetie, is a calico, so she is gold, white and black. The big one, Cinnamon, is gold and white. They are color coordinated and blend as one.

Sweetie was a tiny thing when she was heard mewing outside our kitchen door. When we opened it to see what was going on, she rushed in and hasn’t left since. We couldn’t find an owner. The pads on her paws are about the size of a dime. She is very sweet but she rules over Cinnamon.

We’ve had two fifteen pound cats before Cinnamon. The first cat we ever had came with the house we rented. His name was Brau. He was not “fixed” and so he ruled the neighborhood and had a lot of fights. The couple who owned him before us said they would give him to us if we would not neuter him. We finally had to beg them to let us do it because he was at the vet a lot. He didn’t win every fight.

Our second fifteen pounder, Armstrong, looked nearly identical to Brau. they were both almost all grey with white markings. In photos we can’t tell them apart.

Armstrong was the funniest cat we have ever had. He was Mr. Personality. Our entryway was dark grey slate, about the same color as Armstrong. He was suppose to be a house cat but he would sneak out all the time. When we had the door open and talking with someone, out he’d go and we wouldn’t even see him. However he never went farther than the house next door. And, he would come back if we clanked the tin top of a Vaseline jar on the jar because he loved Vaseline.

Our house had the old-fashioned louver glass windows that were in so many California homes. Armstrong could pull the lever that opened the glass plates and wiggle his big body through the small slots. But, there were screens outside and he ended up between the screen and glass, unable to figure out how to reverse the procedure. I could tell a jillion other stories about him and may do so one day.

We had two other cats at the same time Armstrong allowed us to live in his house. One cat was his girlfriend. Her name was Lovey and she was the classic scaredy cat. The other cat was Luna. (This was the time of the moon landing, hence Armstrong for Neil Armstrong, the first man to step on the moon, and Luna, another word for the moon.)

Luna was a little looney. For one thing, she never made a sound for a year or so until we went off on a three week vacation and left her behind. When we got back, she couldn’t stop fussing at us. She was strictly my cat until I took her to be “fixed,” and after I picked her up, she became my husband’s cat. She wouldn’t have anything to do with me for several years. She picked fights with Armstrong who was twice her size but he was always so shocked at her behavior that he didn’t fight back.

One of the musings in my “Ticked Off And Tickled About It” book is about our three cats who lived together. It’s called “Meow and Yeow.”

Do you have pets who run your life? Love to hear about them.

COMING NEXT: Don’t Let Your Cookie Crumble

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EAT COOKIES, EXERCISE AND KEEP ON LAUGHING

Hello again.  Thanks for coming back.  The hot tea is in the pot and the chocolate chip cookies are on the plate.  So let’s have our second conversation.

Getting right to the point–why are all the foods we really enjoy on that list of those Not Good For You?  Of course I am thinking specifically of the cookies right now.

The word other than cookies that I mention a lot in my book, “Ticked Off And Tickled About It,” are the words “mother and/or mom.”  And mine fits right into our little chat here about foods that are not on the food triangle or circle or whatever shape the food police have come up with lately.

Mom lived to be ninety-eight years old.  She did that in spite of the fact that she loved sweets and ate a lot of them.  She hated vegetables and ate as few of them as she could get away with.  Exercise should only be walking, was her idea, and it should only be conducted if you needed to get from one place to another.  She also liked a glass of wine now and then.  However, what got her in the end was that she smoked up until the last eight years of her life.  So she ended up on oxygen.  The woman was otherwise so healthy that she probably would have lived to at least 100.

Anyway, it was most likely that those good ole genes (not the blue ones) kept her alive together with the fact that she nearly always had a very positive outlook.  She also had a great sense of humor.  She couldn’t remember how to tell a joke, but she was always making people laugh without half trying.

Since writing my book, I have learned so many interesting facts about laughter.  I knew of course that it has been called “the best medicine” though I don’t know who first said that.  Not only are there websites and blogs and books about how much laughing can keep you healthy, but I even found out that there are many Laughter Clubs connected to Yoga all over the world.

Personally, Pilates has always been my exercise choice, besides a daily half hour walk.  When I was in my thirties and forties, I ice and roller skated a lot.

The great thing about exercise, if you want to keep your weight down, is that it burns off the calories you gain by treating yourself to a chocolate chip cookie at the end of your workout.  Works for me.

Now it’s your time to comment.  I can’t wait to see what you have to tell me.

COMING NEXT:  I Love To Watch Kids Laugh

The Laugh’s In You

Welcome to my first blog.  I am celebrating because after six years of working on my book, “Ticked Off and Tickled About it,” you can now find it on Amazon as a paperback or on Kindle.  In Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I live, it’s on the shelf at Collected Works Bookstore.  The book contains forty humorous essays about everyday problems.  The key word here is “humorous.”

Here you’ll find blogs about all kinds of everyday happenings.  No religion.  No politics.  No bad language.  Just fun stuff.  I’m hoping you’ll want to join in by enjoying a cup of tea and a chocolate chip cookie and leaving comments.  I’m planning to offer a new blog a couple of times a week.

The laugh is in you, at least that’s what I’m hoping.  The book and the blog are pretty much about looking inside yourself to find the humor in otherwise frustrating events that might make you angry.  It’s about seeing things in a new way that makes you grin, giggle, guffaw or just plain laugh.  Read an essay and a blog every morning with your tea and cookie and you’ll begin the day in a happier mood.

The thing is, you can’t have Ellen or Tina or Oprah beside you every minute to keep you laughing.  You need to learn how to create your own reasons to laugh.  When you see how I do it, you’ll be doing it, too.

Seriously, we need to laugh more.  Do you know that the medical community has now found that laughing helps keep you healthy?  Of course, a lot of us have heard that for years but sometimes the docs are a little reluctant to latch onto an idea that doesn’t require a pill or surgery.  After all, who hasn’t heard that “laughter is the best medicine?”

I’m hoping you’ll want to get acquainted and tell me some of your life stories.

Well, we don’t know each other that well yet so I won’t keep you.  Hope you have a chocolate chip cookie a day.  Chocolate helps mellow you.  Just consider it good medicine.  And anyway, it’s so doggone delicious.

COMING NEXT–Eat Cookies, Exercise and Keep On Laughing