Meet The Coven

God just loves people who post pictures of their pets on-line, right? Just like he loves a drunk and pill-pushers...

To our credit my wife and I are in kind of an awkward position where we can't not show them. Because of our own personal and peculiar feline affliction people just plain don't believe us when we tell them about our cats.

We have three.

But that's not the kicker. They're all black. We love black cats. Must be the mystique and lore behind them. Although, we're not pagans (last time we checked anyway) nor superstitious in any manner. We're not even crazy-cat-people like you might have us to be.

Quite the contrary (well, at least functional within society anyway...).

We have never EVER been to a cat convention, for one (OK! So there was this one time when I was young and impressionable, and curiosity (...ahem...) got the best of me - CatCon 1990 in Boston - but I was so creeped-out by the whole event that I've never returned to any since! All those fuzzballs in cages being exploited like that! Yuggs! Best-In-Show-types are nuts...).

My brother, Mike, has visited us on several occasions and swears he has only seen one of our cats! That while having all three of them at one time sitting on his lap ... yeah, same fur color, different cats, dude.

With all the confusion going on (and with this in-your-face blog venue to exploit!) we decided something had to be done!

So, without further adieu I present to you ...

"THE COVEN"

TOSCA (AKA - TOSCANINI)

Our noble import from the kiwi island nation of New Zealand. Heather brought Tosca stateside after living abroad for several years. She found her in a local Wellington Cat Shelter cowering in the back of her pen. It was love at first bite. Heather's theory is that Tosca was abandoned after living with an elderly person who might have passed on in her presence; she has this funny penchant for putting her paw over your nose and mouth while you're asleep. We postulate that its her way of checking to see if you're still breathing and alive (some might argue she's just trying to suffocate us...). Tosca is rotund. Ummm, kinda F-A-T actually (shhhh, we think she may know how to spell; she's a literary cat surmised from her love of crosswords - sleeping on them at any rate). She doesn't so much walk as waddle. She rarely makes it more than about a foot in total ground covered before she collapses on the floor falling into a coma-like state. She is a fuzzy, black, fluffed-up pillow with four semi-stumpy stout legs sticking out. Her purring has been known to shake cabinetry dishes loose from their settings. Read: Loud! and loooong. Very love-able but just don't pick her up quickly; you might strain your back. Always lift with the legs! The epicenter of tremor-like activity has been registered on the Austin Richter Scale with locations roughly around our neighborhood every time she jumps off the bed and lands.

MARLEY (AKA - JACOB MARLEY)

Poor misunderstood, misrepresented, maligned, malcontented Marley. My friend, Elaine, found her 'treed' in her back yard by another neighborhood cat in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts one winter when she was a kitten. She took her in a few weeks before Christmas time but decided she couldn't have another pet. She emailed all of her friends with a picture and a note and I ended up answering the call. Neither did I know: total flippin' feral spaz! A real curtain climber, ceiling hanger, Animal House meets Animal Farm wack job. I hemmed and hawed over a name for days after taking in this bizarre little energy-mass. Almost settled on "Cat" when one night while watching the Alastair Sim film version of the classic Charles Dickens 'A Christmas Carol' (1951, B&W - best version hands down!) it dawned on me: the Ghost of Jacob Marley. The first apparition who appears Christmas Eve warning Ebenezer Scrooge against greed and cruelty and begs for him to discover his own inner kindness. Marley the cat needed lots of my inner kindness I assure you. She is like a ghost, too. She hides a lot when strangers show up, but once you get to know her its all gentle head butts and purrs from there. She has since calmed down to unrecognizable degrees and has found another happy incarnation as a paper weight and 'lap cat'. She will frequently make a perch of your leg and hang her arms over either side of your knee at which point she takes on an uncanny resemblance to one of the famous Notre Dame Cathedral pensive gargoyles ... or perhaps a wise old panther on a tree limb in wait.

ANUBIS (AKA - DUMBASS)

Ahhh, Anubis. Where to begin? Perhaps everyones' favorite as she excels at defining the word 'Dope'. But in the most adorable of manners. Another lost soul found in Sidney, Maine. Our friend, Chris, and her husband Rob, found, then "Sunday" (christened for the day she wandered into their lives), at the time bounding out of a corn field. She made herself right at home and nurtured an immediate cuddly companionship with their baby daughter, Ruby. It was decided that another cat wasn't a good idea, so again, Dennis & Heather to the rescue! And, added bonus, "she matches the other cats!" On the car ride back to Boston, we noticed this cat had an undeniable Egyptian heiroglyph-like profile to her. Astounding, really. I thought, now what's the name of that Egyptian cat god? You mean, "Bast"? Nahhh, dang, that doesn't sound right for her. But, Anubis, the Jackal God of the Dead... perfect. Anubis doesn't meow so much as "hum". It almost sounds like a whinny at times. I gather she may have spent a lot of time in a barn with horses. She is fearless to the point of stupidity. We think she may have been a 'frat-boy' in her past life. When she assaults Marley (Tosca will have nothing to do with her) she puffs out her chest and bends out forward both her front legs resembling a total dude-with-attitude. At night when she's running around the house we can hear the sounds of her buck teeth scraping along the floor. She is a charmer.


There you have it. Tournee du Chat Noir a la flesh and fur! Come visit us on Halloween sometime; it's always a hoot when the kids see our little black 'Coven' greet them.

(Anubis in jack-o-lantern lit silhouette)