I am going offline for a few days, but to make up for it I will now clutter the innertubes with an oldie but a goodie. Okay, so the lighting sucks bigtime (at one point in the raw footage I chastise my young subject for being "the Master of Backlighting" in a shrill and abusive fashion) but the content is sure to cause you diabetes. So I call it a wash.

So Mojo's been remiss regarding her blog. Because life has become quite busy, lately. First because we spent a week or so vacationing up in Maine, where poor Rosie was subjected to the cruelty of sea water for the first time. And then we came back to find the house--sans feline since Ratty's demise--a little too mouse-ridden for even Mojo's decidedly laid-back taste.

So Mojo started the Serious Campaign for a New Cat. Which wasn't all that hard, mind you, since the Favorite Husband, despite his insistence that he is indeed a macho cat-disliker, privately and secretly LIKES CATS, as indeed he (like Mojo) pretty much likes anything that doesn't try to actively draw blood from him. So he was okay with the idea of a cat, so long as Mojo got one who was "exactly like Ratty". Minus the yowling, of course, although the Favorite Husband has remarked more than once about how he misses the yowling.

And Rosie, for her vote, desperately wanted a cat. It would give her something new to chew on. Rosie LOVES cats, but in true cat-bewildering fashion she loves them and attempts to play dog games with them. Like "duck down suddenly and attempt to break your opponent's leg". She would attempt to play this game with Ratty, who didn't have a clue what the game entailed. She would suddenly duck down, lunge forward and grab one of the cat's forepaws. (Very gently.) And hold it. And Ratty, who was a very laid back cat who liked the dog right back, would stand there with his held paw up above his head in the dog's Jaws-o-Death and patiently await the release of his appendage. Sometimes they would stand there for a good five minutes, awaiting some resolution to this, uh, "game".  MORE Mojo! »

Now, you see, if Mojo ever thought ahead about such things, she'd have pictures. But we all know how pointless it is to wish Mojo would do things in a logical and rational fashion. So instead I will force you to rely on your imagination, which will either leave you with a total blank (thank you, television!) or with a picture far, far worse than an actual picture would convey.

Let us begin with Mojo noting that it is now Skunk Season in her neck of the woods. Not that people hunt skunks--not sane people, at any rate--but only that they are now oot and aboot. Since they are universally nocturnal (and Mojo is congenitally anosmic, as we all know by now) Mojo only knows this via her driving around and seeing the many dead skunks along the highways and byways of this great nation. Well, that, and the following:

Mojo's Favorite Older Sister has a yellow lab named Miles. Miles is about Rosie's age and they both share the same sunny, playful disposition. (I can't speak for my Favorite Older Sister, but OUR last dog, George, while he was a nice enough dog, lived totally in his resentful little concrete-filled head. He bore grudges like NOBODY'S BUSINESS. He was pleasant enough toward us, but he was NOT a happy dog, in the doofus-grinning sense. No, George was a snotty intellectual who spent most of his time resenting the limited rights dogs had compared to humans, and grumbling on his bed plotting revenge if he felt wronged. But again I digress.) Both Miles and Rosie enjoy playing with their respective cats--well, Rosie did until Ratty's recent demise, that is. And very recently, one evening Miles discovered a NEW feline friend behind the barn, and tried to entice it to play with him. A black and white one.  MORE Mojo! »

Yes, Mojo has not been blogging much lately, mostly 'cuz she's busy doing More Important Things, but also because she's had some of the air let out of her tires (or wind out of her sails, or whatever other form of windiness you might ascribe to her) with the recent demise of Ratty Cat, our big ol' stray Coon cat bruiser. Which actually happened some time ago, but we know how long it takes for things to sink in to Mojo's big ol' fat head sometimes.

Despite his formidable size, Ratty was one of the kindest and gentlest cats I've ever known, who never once laid a claw on me, nor my Favorite Husband, nor small children, nor the dog, even when the hyper beast maybe deserved it. In fact Ratty loved dogs, inexplicably so, as evidenced by the pictures below of him meeting Rosie for the first time.

Ratty came to us as a full-grown adult and we have no idea where he came from or how old he was. Searching the blog for pictures I found more than forty entries referring to him, usually complaining about how yowly he was. So it just sorta figures that THAT is what we are currently missing most around the house. The silence is deafening.

While Mojo is ordinarily not one to ruin your day with sad news, I must report that Mojo's Favorite Guinea Pig Friend, Mr. Brownie Black Whitecap, passed away this morning after a weekend-long illness.

He was a very sweet little guy, who was trained by his Nearly Nine-Year-Old Friend to run into his little carrier thingie when it was placed on the floor. He also played well with the dog and cats. And he never once bit Mojo. Never even tried. Not so much as a taste.

He will be missed. Mojo today is sad.

Mojo

So Mojo is one of those poor misinformed people who has never had the opportunity to see certain movie classics. Like Taxi Driver. Sure, I've seen enough clips and parodies you'd SWEAR I've seen it all the way through, but I haven't. (Ditto The Godfather until I was somewhere in my thirties.)

No, this isn't about seeing Taxi Driver, although that's on my to-do list. This is about another movie I've heard so much about most of my life, and I finally got the chance to see it. Midnight Express, the Turkish prison "horror" movie that pretty much everyone my age saw when it first came out and were traumatized for life by it, and then didn't have to have things Explained To Them when scenes were parodied in other movies or TV shows.

Anyway, after twenty years or so of people TALKING INCESSANTLY about it, I finally saw it this weekend.  MORE Mojo! »

Does the superiority of all things feline go without saying? Still I should say it. Publicly. And try to ignore the razor-sharp claws at my neck as I type.

Before Mojo got distracted by something shiny, she was going to mention something that, now in retrospect, is even more boring than usual.

As I have said many times previously, Ratty Cat is not allowed in the bedroom at night, because he comes and goes two or three times a night and each time he announces his arrival and departure with his yowling. The decision to banish him is entirely that of my Favorite Husband. Far be it for Mojo to punish a fellow complainer. Whenever *I* hear the stupid cat, being the tolerant, saint-like person that I am, I just roll over and go back to sleep. For me, I have accepted the simple fact that Ratty is a yowly cat, and that's the end of it.

Not the Favorite Husband, however.  MORE Mojo! »

My Favorite Husband must get up early each day. The alarm goes off at 4:30 am. And no, unlike the perfection that is Mojo he does not have the ability to wake up before it goes off and turn it off so as not to wake the rest of the house.

Unlike Mojo, and unlike Ratty Cat, who possesses that same internal alarm clock and hence knows just when it is time to get up. And determines that the rest of the family must get up at the same time. Unfortunately for us, Ratty's internal clock is about a half hour too early.

Ya see, Mojo has owned cats her entire life and is used to them. She pays them little attention when they seek attention at bad times. She does not respond when they feel the need to announce their presence in a room at, say, two in the morning. She pays them no notice when they crawl over and around her as she sleeps. Indeed, Mojo is so used to random animals crawling into her lap one time when she was camping a chipmunk crawled over her to get to an open jar of peanuts she was snacking from, and all she did was look down when it finally occurred to her that she was not sitting at home but somewhere out in the woods and maybe she should see what was sitting on her lap.  MORE Mojo! »

Mom's Stuffed Cats!

Okay, so Mojo is going to try to make this brief since it'll be the last Craptacular auction until she gets back from vacation. So if this is somewhat slap-dash, it's because Mojo doesn't really care. Mentally she is already swinging in a hammock somewhere. Of course there are those who argue that mentally she is always somewhere else anyway, somewhere that doesn't require intellect beyond tying one's shoes (and even then it's the cheater's way that Mojo learned, by making two loops and tying them together instead of making the one loop and wrapping things around somehow. Mojo never learned how to do it THAT way).  MORE Mojo! »