I don’t know about you, but I don’t travel with my cats loose in the car. Some folks do, including the mother-daughter team of Lisa and Rachel.
Don’t worry. Smokey the Siamese cat wasn’t miserable, she was emoting for Rachel. Dig those crazy blue eyes.
The dark side of Claire Trevor:
Here’s my kitty’s namesake cuddling with a Maine coon kitten in the 1952 movie, My Man and I.
Next, a picture of Claire’s hand with Nikki, the same cat from the same movie:
One of young Claire Trevor’s many quirks is the way she stretches before leaving her ottoman. It took awhile for Dr. A to capture this phenomenon. The resulting picture makes her green eyes look blue. I think it’s the rug, which is mostly blue.
The post title is a play on Crystal Gayle’s hit song Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue. She gets the last word.
Dr. A and I just finished binging the fabulous British TV show, Vera. We’ve fallen under the spell of Brenda Blethyn and use several of her catchphrases when addressing Claire Trevor. That’s why we call her the Wee Bairn, which is a Northern English and Scottish expression for a baby and a wee one at that. Beats the hell outta calling her the Terror of Tiny Town.
I’m surprised that I’m so upset over a pretty minor thing, but it’s bugging me, so I’m going to write about it. I’m really upset about how the media is covering the Biden dogs, and especially Major and his ongoing issues.
Here’s the thing: rescue animals have problems. Even the most well-adjusted rescue pet has had to deal with the trauma of being taken from where they were and placed in the shelter or rescue facility. When you disrupt their daily lives, those issues are going to come back into play.
A few years ago, in the span of 6 weeks, we lost our pair of tabby cat brothers, Connor and Liam, to old age. Liam was a few months shy of his 19th birthday, and Connor was only 10 days from his 19th birthday. They were rescues only in the sense that they came from the vet once they were weaned (their mother cat died giving birth to the litter) and then raised by my husband. They were 6 years old when I first met them, and I grew really attached to them and was devastated when we lost them both so close to each other.
In time I returned as a volunteer to the shelter I like to support and resumed socializing young cats and adult cats with behavioral issues. When I went into “the kitten room” the first kitten I met was Finn, then known as Iggy. He was so large that at first I thought he was a momma cat that needed to be kept near her delicate kittens. I also met his sister Rey, then known as Sissy, because she parked herself next to me on the bench and kept poking me whenever I stopped petting her.
We don’t really know what happened to them before they came to the shelter as they were left in a carrier tied to the fence around the facility. That road hosts a lot of tractor trailer traffic, so you can draw your own conclusions as to how they react to noise now. From the note in their carrier we know they were abandoned by a breeder and it’s easy to see why they were abandoned—Finn has a white spot on his belly and Rey was clearly the runt of the litter: very small, little coordination, and definitely behind in her progress. Finn is a Russian Blue and Rey is a Russian Black. His white spot and her slow progress meant no one would breed or pay an exorbitant price for either of them–which is why you should adopt, not shop.
In addition, Finn was easily overstimulated, which was characterized as his having a bad temper. He was just a super-loving kitty who loves to be petted, but back then could not actually handle a lot of petting. In the shelter setting this meant he swiped at people who gave him the attention he craved. I had been a volunteer there long enough to know that he’d never get adopted with that behavior, and if he never left the shelter, his shy and struggling sister wouldn’t either. So I brought my husband in to meet them. Rey immediately jumped in his lap. We brought them home a few days later.
Rey has since filled out, gained confidence and strength, and is a lively, loving kitty who will nip you if you make too much noise. Finn is now a cat you can pay a ton of attention to without fear of getting scratched. It took a good bit of time to redirect his energy from being focused on you and what he wanted from you to do for him right now, to being focused on a toy, and then on toys he could entertain himself with. He’s learned to use his tail to signal to us that he’s growing agitated with how we’re petting him, and if we forget he doesn’t like it if you put your arm across him while he’s lying on his side, he gently pushes your arm away with his back feet instead of scratching you. He’s so sweet now that he climbs under the covers and sleeps with me on cold nights, only occasionally poking me with a claw if I roll over too far.
I think about Finn when I read about Major Biden. Major is a good dog. He doesn’t have a temper—he has a problem with being overstimulated. And there are too many unfamiliar people around him and he doesn’t have his own Person to look after him during the day. When Finn was a crazy kitten, I made a point to cuddle up with him every day—to pet him and handle him to make up for the months of socialization he didn’t have during his long shelter transition—so he knew he had me to come to when he was scared or thinking about acting out.
Instead of using Major’s issues as a teaching moment for people who don’t understand dogs, the press is using them to bash the Bidens. On Wednesday the big news was that one of the dogs pooped on a floor in the White House. (Remember the furor when President Obama’s dogs did the same thing? You don’t? I wonder why that is.)
On Tuesday, Lester Holt accepted the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award and said this:
I really don’t know if our media wants to do the work to drop the “both sides” nonsense. The same media that spent years trying to normalize the previous president* is both-sidesing the increasingly-popular Biden by trying to paint him as a bad pet parent with dire implications for the future of this nation. I can train a problem cat. I have no idea how to fix our broken news media.
I’ll let Norah Jones take it from here.
We brought a new to us piece of furniture home last weekend. Claire Trevor has already staked her claim.
Claire Trevor is still obsessed with her nutty walnut box. I’m still obsessed with her green, green eyes.
Cue theme song:
Here’s Claire Trevor looking regal:
The devil eye picture is a family tradition. Here’s Claire Trevor’s first:
The last word goes to the Guess Who:
I wish I could say this was a Life Imitates The Sopranos moment but it’s just Claire Trevor in a walnut box. Besides, Paulie Walnuts hated cats. There’s no accounting for taste.
Cocktails by Archibald Motley.
The cold weather is gone for now. We haven’t run the heater for a few days. Yay. I shudder to think what our next utility bill will be, but it won’t be like the budget-busters in unregulated Texas; at least I hope not. Freedom, man.
I’m feeling cautiously optimistic on the COVID front. But some people are already getting carried away. That’s been the pattern and it’s a lethal one. I’m keeping my guard up even after I get vaccinated, which should be in the next few weeks. Let’s be careful out there.
The featured image is by Archibald Motley who was a Jazz Age modernist active during the Harlem Renaissance. The image is of well-dressed Black ladies having cocktails. I’d call them flappers but that could cause a flap, Jack…
This week’s theme song was written by Peter Frampton for his 1973 semi-solo, semi-band album Frampton’s Camel. It’s the ultimate rock hangover song.
An edited version of a live version from the monster hit album, Frampton Comes Alive later became a hit single. How’s that for a version diversion? I hope it was diverting.
We have two versions (there’s that word again) of Do You Feel Like We Do for your listening pleasure: the studio original and a 2000 live performance.
We’ll have more about Peter Frampton after the break. We might as well go now.
Claire Trevor is a typical cat: she likes cold weather. She loves this red blanket almost as much as the space heater.
The last word goes to Split Enz:
For some reason, Claire Trevor resisted boxes until I put a bag in one. Go figure.
Our old pal Milo is back. His human, Stephanie, took this swell picture. I like how the chair back mimics Milo’s ears. Well done, human.
Claire Trevor is one of those cats who gets into everything. Unfortunately, there’s never a camera handy when she tries to climb into the dishwasher or walk across the dinner table. We’ll just have to settle for a picture of her on Dr. A’s purse:
PS: I know what a purser is. It has nothing to do with a calico cat on a purse. But when could I ever resist a pun?
My friends Tess and Charlie left New Orleans a few years ago. But they still have the Carnival spirit as you can see from their cat Whiskey’s interaction with some seasonal decorations.
The title is, of course, sarcastic. Dr. A laid out some clothes for her work day and Claire Trevor promptly sat on them. Typical.
Claire Trevor may have been a movie star but she made the odd teevee appearance. Here is one of *my* Claire Trevor’s odder teevee appearances:
Here’s something I said to her last night: Are you going to be a good kitty or yourself? The jury is still out.
It’s only been 5 months since PD passed away. He’s been much on my mind since his gotcha day was Twelfth Night, 2018. This is one of my favorite pictures of the giant cow cat:
