Exciting Handmade Fleece Wolf Coat!

Mojo has done many things, gone many places and pursued many interests in her checkered past. Instead of taking a ton of pictures and/or buying t-shirts and other mementos, she has a tendency to store memories in her prodigiously large (aka "swelled") head. People occasionally take pictures and send copies to her under the mistaken impression she will treasure them forever, but what really happens is, she throws them in a box. Sure, she means someday to arrange them in a photo album and has even purchased some photo albums to do this, but she really can't be bothered. Hence her box o' photos sits there, and occasionally--if she leaves a picture out too long--the cat tries to lick the gelatin off of it.

Mojo does not know why she has no incredible interest in mementos. She just doesn't. She's not one to wear her heart on her sleeve, that's for sure. If, for example, she was a fan of a particular sports team--which she is not, most assuredly--she would hide her fandom and act like a normal person at all times. She would certainly NOT wear anything purchased at the team's gift shop. She sees no purpose in this. And should someone else buy her a t-shirt or a sweat shirt, she will only wear it as lounge wear or sleepwear or yardwork rags, since she herself has no pressing desire to become a walking advertisement for some team or place or product.

And yet there are people in her life who are sadly convinced that--should she own something or do something or go somewhere--it can only mean that she is absolutely BONKERS about that thing. Take, for example, her cat. Mojo has always had cats, pretty much her whole life. Currently she owns an ex-stray named Ratty Cat, so named because when he was a stray he was indeed quite ratty. Before Ratty, her last cat--Mookie, short for "Monjamook"--lived to be 18 before elderly incontinence finally took its toll.

(Mojo likes cats about as well as she likes any creature that does not actively try to draw blood from her. That tends to be her only criteria. She is not really a "cat person" nor a "dog person" nor a "snake person". So long as her skin is not violently pierced she can appreciate just about any living thing. Her boundless love for all of God's creatures is a frequent theme on the Craptacular.)

Some people in Mojo's life, a few years ago during the Mookie years, assumed her tender care (well, at least tolerance for incontinence) for an elderly cat must imply some sort of irrational devotion to cats. All of her Christmas presents that year revolved around this "cat" theme. She received a cat calendar chock-a-block full of cute little kittens popping out of old shoes. She received "I Heart My Cat" keychains and refrigerator magnets and velcro wallets. She received a sweatshirt depicting kittens watching from a window as chickadees frolic among snow-covered pine branches. She received a very lovely compilation book of insane cat-lover stories about how "Mister Boots adopted us one cold wintery Christmas morning" or how "Fluffy saved our lives when the house was afire".

(Rest assured Ratty Cat has no intention whatsoever of saving my life. I have an old wood stove that takes forever to light, so I often light it and close the door and go back into the house for a while. One day I forgot about it for an hour or two and when I opened the door to see how it was going I found smoke pouring from every crack and the entire room filled. And there Ratty sat on the hearth rug, calmly watching the smoke ceiling descend to only a foot or so above his head, not a care in the world. So you just KNOW if that happens at night I am dead as a doornail. That cat will not so much as lift a PAW to raise the alarm.)

Again, while I do not MIND cats, I'm not so totally ga-ga over my pets as some people. So getting these cutsie little cat trinkets confused me until I made the connection. These people evidently mistook responsible pet ownership for ga-ga crazy Mrs-Pumphrey-and-Tricki-Woo-of-the-James-Herriot-books style obsession.

Now, this item has NOTHING to do with cats, but with yet another obscure reference to my past. You see, AGES ago, in the early Eighties, when I was in college, I was taping a documentary and spent a great deal of time hanging out at what is called the Wild Canid Survival and Research Center in Eureka, MO. In short, I was hanging out with somewhere between thirty and fifty wild-caught red wolves, Persian wolves, Mexican wolves and North American grey wolves, most of whom (well, the greys were the "display pack" to show visitors) were being bred for reintroduction into the wild.

Admittedly, it was pretty cool. This was well before wolves were considered "cool" by the New Agers or Native American wannabes (one Native American person I know refers to them as wah-NAH-bees, which I think is kinda funny), so they were still rather misunderstood and feared instead of starring on calendars and keychains and posters and dream catchers and whatnot like they are now.

These wolves were kept in these HUGE fenced enclosures to keep them from getting socialized with humans. They were so shy the only way I could really see them was to sit down in a corner with my video camera and wait for several hours for them to get used to me. It was a good early lesson in me not trying to impose my will on Mother Nature. But I digress.

This was over twenty years ago, and while I'll always be rather fond and respectful of wolves I'm just not the ga-ga type. Early on people would give me wolf t-shirts and things and I'd just kinda go "okay, thanks" and be grateful they weren't advertising something stupid. After a few years my family realized I was indeed not ga-ga, and the wolf-themed presents dried up. Until YEARS later, when suddenly THIS came along.

"Mojo, you like wolves, don't you?" the gift giver asked.

"Um, I guess so," I shrugged, being VERY CAREFUL not to project any sort of ga-ga. "I used to work with them. Years ago."

"I THOUGHT so!" they then gushed. "Oh my God, you are going to SO LOVE this!!! It's HANDMADE!!!!"

Whereupon they handed me a package containing this coat. And I had to put it on and pretend I liked it. And after six months or so of not wearing it and them occasionally asking, "Hey, why aren't you wearing your coat?" they stopped asking. Now years later it's been sitting totally unused and unworn in my closet, and I think it's safe to take it out and quietly give it to someone else.

It's a woman's coat, I guess, although if you're male and you wear a medium this will probably fit, since men's mediums seem to fit me. I tend to wear a woman's large, or a woman's size 12 or 14 (I like longer arm lengths, so it depends on the arms), and it seems to fit me okay. I am NOT modeling it, so you're out of luck there. It's a mid-thigh sort of coat, made of fleece and tapestry and patterned velvet. It has wolves on it, as you can see. If you know someone who is completely ga-ga over wolves they will probably enjoy wearing it. It's just not me. The person who bought it for me reiterated several times that it was very expensive and handmade and all that stuff to try to guilt me into wearing it, but I am impervious to such arguments once I get my mind made up.

Anyway, there ya go. You get the Certificate of Craptacularity with this coat, along with the knowledge that you have something truly unique in your wardrobe. If you're happy, I'm happy. And that's what the Craptacular is all about.