vertical world

thursday, september 28, 2000

The kittens are eight weeks old today. There is a certain slenderness about their shoulders that suggests that they are cats.

Charlie is expanding into his big white catcher's mitts. He's twice the size of the others and like his namesake will always be given to running to fat (there's already a little swinging blubber bag underneath). Long-necked Nosegay stilts around on giraffe legs like his mother, who could practically step over a cow's fence. He seems to grow taller by the minute like a little white sedan rising on a mechanic's lift. Snooples, she is becoming shapely, like a ripe little Bosc. Her round head is finally growing into scale with those ridiculous bat ears ~ for weeks this enormous pair of triangular satellite dishes has collected popular tunes from passing galaxies, and I fear her head is now full of clichés from around the Universe. Ah well... And Chessie, tiny and perfect, is looking more and more like Pinky in Pinky and the Brain. She might be a little frustrated by her small size, for she gets beside herself when cat toys dangle out of reach and she starts to squeak like an agitated hummingbird chick.

They have discovered the Vertical World. They shinny up our pant legs and our shirtsleeves as though we are birches. They scrabble onto the windowsills to ogle stinkbugs. They gallop across the room and fling themselves onto the wall-mounted scratching post, sticking to it like Velcro.

And like an aviatrix, Chessie has overcome her diminutiveness by taking to the altitudes. Yesterday morning I discovered her triangular face way above eye level; she had nested high on a closet shelf in Edsel's sweaters.

Image: Chessie and Me

More about Chessie...