Other dlanders have been after me to post pics of freaky scary crazy kitten for a while now, so the other day I figured out how to do it. So multimedia, after a fashion, has arrived chez porchlife.

Speaking of the Porch, I’m moving. So while this blog will remain porchlife for posterity's sake; from May 1 on I will be living more of a Decklife.

I'm kind of hoping that Squirrelly will be OK to go on the Deck, because then she might just go out there and leave me the fuck alone in the wee hours.

I don't know if I've mentioned that Squirrelly fetches. She'll bring me a toy and will retrieve it until I hide the toy or Cemetery Jack (other cat) tackles her to involve her in a new game. When it comes to Fetch, Squirrelly is more singleminded than her name, age, and species would lead you to believe.

She used to do it all the time, but unfortunately now she only does it when I'm in bed. This is fine when I'm reading, but generally the game ends when lights go out and resumes at dawn. There is an order to the toys, and every night it's the same. She brings me noisy toys, easily saliva-soaked toys, and toys which leak catnip; those toys get hidden, and then the more acceptable (but less popular with Squirrelly) quiet toys make their entrance. Kitty whip, Big Rattly Mouse, Little Rattly Mouse A, Little Rattly Mouse B, ball with bell, rattly ugly purple long-tailed cat, tiger with bell, assortment of small catnip mousies, then finally the Quiet Beaver.

No jokes about the Beaver please. I am aware I am Canadian and that we like beavers. I am also aware of the Beavis and Butthead-type meaning of the word. But I'm especially sensitive about the Beaver lately, as stress and busy days have recently caused an imbalance in bedbound games involving beavers. As far as I'm concerned I spend a lot of time in bed playing with the wrong type of Beaver.

I don't know where Squirrelly found it...I don't even remember obtaining it. It was her first toy...I am assuming she extracted it from a box of old crap somewhere in my house within the first three hours of being brought home from the SPCA. Squirrelly is a tiny cat. She's nine months old now and only 6.5 lbs, so I think she'll stay small. The Quiet Beaver is roughly spherical and about 10cm (4") in diameter. Squirrelly can't carry it and see and the same time, since she has to tilt her head back in order to keep it out of her feet as she walks and jumps. But even though she runs into things, she still does it, and she loves it, and I like to indulge her as much as I can because it increases the chances she will tire herself out and allow me to sleep through the night.

Eventually I tire even of Quiet Beaver, he gets hidden too, and then there is peace for a time, as long as Lisa and I don't move during the night, because that is the cue for Endless Scratch And Pounce On Toes And Buttocks Game. Of Doom. Squirrelly thinks that the resulting games of Repeatedly Throw Squirrelly Across The Room and Lock Squirrelly Out Of The Room are not quite as much fun.

As I said, she is singleminded and persistent and eventually she always finds her way back into the room. Usually by that point Lisa and I are both asleep and immobile.

However there is one part of the body that moves despite the soundest and most loglike slumbers.

The eyes. They jerk around under the lids like nobody's bidnis.

And Squirrelly knows this. She is a different kind of REM fan. She likes to sit on my chest. She's not angry or agitated...she's just...watching.

*shudder*

"If thou gazest long into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes also into thee."

~Friedrich Nietzsche

note: the eyes have not been digitally messed with in any way

Her name is going to stay Squirrelly, but when I wake up in the middle of the night to that sitting on my chest, pupils dilated in darkness or in light: she is, and will always be, The Abyss.

So cute. So creepy. My kitten.