Almost Daily Cat Haiku

This is Aries. Aries is a funny looking cat. But it’s ok to be a funny looking cat, especially if you are as adorable as Aries. He and my sibling rescued each other a couple years ago, and he declared ownership of the couch the day he moved in. He is such a lap cat.

I am really struggling on these blurbles as of late. The randomness just doesn’t seem to be flowing like it used to. I’m not sure how to remedy that. Maybe more sleep? Or a healthy diet? Exercise? Psychedelic mushrooms?

Probably the shrooms.

But seriously, I was hoping to fill these vast blank spaces beneath my Haikus with captivating prose. Short stories, essays, bits of fiction, fragmented scraps of my subconsciousness. There are a couple scattered throughout my previous entries. But not enough. Where are all my words?!? The available reservoir should be multitudinous. But so frequently, I just can’t find them. They burrow away into the musty basements and cupboards within my skull. Hiding between neurons. Evading synaptic searchlights. I can hear them crawling behind my eyeballs, likes rats scurrying between the walls of dilapidated split-level in some cookie cutter suburb. The words are watching me flounder. They mock me. They laugh at my suffering incapacitaties.

But I refuse to let this stand as defeat. The wonderful words, the verbose vernacular, the innovative ingenuity of English may elude me. But I am not mute. There may be tales I cannot tell, if only because I cannot find them. But I can ramble with at least a modicum of coherence. That remains in arms reach. And as long as my fingertips still graze against the soft edges of cognition, I will clutter these barren swaths with my blurbleage.

Soon I must ready myself for work. Wish me well in my journey, and I will do the same for you and yours. Ta-ta for now, my friends and family.

Marmalade likes to play hide & seek. It appears she is not very good at it.

However. Comma.

She only hides like this when she’s playing hide & seek. If she’s half behind the bottom fringe of a sheer curtain, all four feet and a tail hanging out, her vivid orange fur glaring through the transparent fabric; it’s a game. When you actually need her, she steps behind a molecule of air and slips into a parallel universe. If there is medication to be administered, or the cat-carrier is presented, she can vanish. Like a fart in the wind. Poof. She’ll blend in, dissappear, you’ll never see her again. With any luck, she’s got the grail already. 

This picture is not an example of her inability to hide. This is a reflection of her opinion of us as seekers. She “hides” like this because we suck at the game. We are, in Marmalade’s judgment, really, really, bad hunters. Less capable than kittens. She is coddling us because we are special needs cats.

So, as the mondayness of your schedule wears on, and reality steals away any shred of enjoyment; just remember you are a horribly inept cat. And smile.

I actually understand the mysteries of “how is that comfortable” better than most, at least in a general sense. I am not claiming to understand cats. Only that I too can sleep pretty much anywhere at anytime. I do, however, envy the cats for the universal permissions they are granted when it comes to napping. While I have the ability to nod off at a moment’s notice, I am rarely afforded any grace for the moment.

As far back as I can remember, sleeping is only permitted during specific times. Catching a few Zs outside the socially acceptable parameters is often met with almost violent opposition.  From grade school teachers yelling from the head of a classroom, to the incessant horns of the cars behind me when the light turns green; I am denied every fluttering second of peace behind my own eyelids.

As my years accumulate, I have taken to rising extra early on some mornings, just so I can sit in a quiet armchair and doze. But that makes no sense, you’re thinking. Perhaps not. Perhaps the proverbial Peter has been robbed to reimburse Mary. But even an  illusionary nap will suffice a time of great need.

I don’t expect you to understand this. I don’t even understand it. Maybe I’m not explaining it well. I am a little tired. I’ll try again after a nap.

There is a piece of cat hair stuck in my eye. It has been there for an excruciating length of time. I have splashed water into my face multiple times. I have drained about half a bottle of Visine® into it. I watched the first eleven minutes of ‘Up’ on repeat until I ran out of tears to flush this stubborn bit of fur out of my god stomping eyeball. But it persists. I have begun to doubt the simplicity of this situation. This is cannot be just cat fur in my eye. There is something sinister at work here. Only one explanation can rationally be deduced. My government issued microchip has been activated, and I am becoming a cyborg.

I do not know to what extent this transformation will proceed. For the moment it seems localized to the portside ocular orifice. This does, at least, permit me to retain my seated status, for which Bruni is thankful.

I also do not know what new capabilities this portion of my robotualization will imbue. Perhaps a telephoto zoom. Or spectral analysis. X-ray vision. Laser beams. There are many exciting possibilities. Eh…. who am I kidding, it’s probably just advertising space.

I need to cut this blurble short in order to attend to some Cat Haiku Administrative work.  If you care not for the tedium of clerical toils, you may leave now and carry on your day as you se fit. For all others, in the interest of full disclosure:

Today’s Haiku, more specifically the picture that hosts it, features digital manipulation that may or may not constitute ‘AI creation’. An editing tool was used to remove an item in the background and replace it with an appropriate filler.

I am selective in what photos I Haiku, I have criteria to which each picture must adhere. Among my many unwritten rules of publication, I try to avoid obvious human incursions. I frequently crop the pictures to eliminate an offending arm or forehead or whathaveyou, but sometimes proximities prevent such edits. When a picture cannot be sanitized to my liking, the picture is not Haikued and is discarded. In this case, Mr. Bruni’s face was entirely too perfect to discard the photo, and the moment fleeting enough to where retakes were not an option.  As such, drastic measures were employed.

I don’t believe this subtracts from the authentic creativity otherwise presented, but I nonetheless felt this technological reliance should be revealed and explained.

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

I woke up late, and did not have time for Haikuing, so unfortunately you get a recycled Haiku. This was posted in a previous incarnation of the ADCH, so if you are a newer friend or family you likely have not seen it. And even if you have seen it before, there’s a good chance you don’t remember it. There is also a chance I filed it incorrectly and this same Haiku is posted here. But I don’t remember and I’m not going to go back and look. Why not? Because I woke up late and I don’t have time. Pay attention.

Now I need to consume calories and caffeine. And then, of course, I will spend time with one or more cats. And after that, maybe I’ll do something productive.

Find something to smile at, even if you are at work today.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, a lovely lady was bringing up three very lovely girls. For more than a year, ominous rumours had been privately circulating among high-level western leaders, please sir, I want some more.  We were somewhere around Barstow when the drugs began to take hold, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. If you really want to hear about it, then first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born: far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy, in a hole, in the ground. Three billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997, the man in black fled across the desert. Let me tell you what ‘Like a Virgin’ is about: Rosebud.

The first fragment doesn’t count because there are far too many possibilities, and Disney probably has it trademarked anyway. But if you can name the the other 13 references, I’ll give you a cookie. No cheating.

It’s Thursday. Water the plants. Take the garbage out.

This is not Ron Perlman. This is a picture of a cat.

From what I have read, Mr Perlman does not like being compared to mainecoon cats.  So please don’t tell him I wrote this. And Ron, if you happen across this on your own, it’s not my fault. The internet made me do it.

I woke up adequately rested, and I have clean socks and coffee. And that’s not a bad way to start a Wednesday. I hope you all have similar successes today.

My head is full of odd socks and soggy shredded wheat. It makes braining difficult. When the grey stuff doesn’t do the thinking thing, I not word good.

I do wish I had some blurbleage for you all. Sentient dust bunnies, or warring garden gnomes, or killer marigolds from outer space, or something. But unfortunately all I can manage is whining about my headache. Don’t worry, we will get through this rough patch together and you will soon be basking in a showery cascade of creative silliness and delusional of grandeur. Until then, I recommend we all take some time today to curl up on a favorite blanket and take a nap.

Blurble… blurble…

And that’s all the time I have for today.

Bye.

I still can’t word.

My right eyeball is trying to leap out of my skull. This is a reoccurring intraocular effort. I do not endorse the activity, nor do I enjoy it. In fact, to use the proper medical terminology, it sucks.

I will take drugs. And once I become drugulated, I will follow Mr Popo’s astounding example and nap.

That is all for now. Enjoy the final fleeting moments of this period of relaxation. The mandates of consumerism reinitiate on the morrow.