Happy Valentine's Day

This poem is by one of Bob's favorite writers, Anonymous, but it perfectly expresses my affection for the boys and girls in Room 204. All my love, Oliver!

Oliver's Place

A great artist by the name RM #11 has created this rendition of the building where I reside.  As you can see, RM #11 also drew in the homes of my neighbors. That's Bob next door to me.  He calls himself an intellect which is a fancy way of saying he's smart.  His human is a professor at an university and often brings home textbooks that Bob loves to read.  He also loves to share his knowledge with the rest of us. Bob has an adopted sibling named Miss Darcy Kitty.  That's her sky diving off the side of the building. She is a brave adventurer, as you can see, who often strolls the trails in the park nearby when she's not sky diving.  Hanging around Bob, she has learned to love books, but she prefers adventure stories to textbooks.  A good book will often inspire her to seek her fortune.  Last week she found her fortune in the form of a half-eaten burger in the garbage can behind Kidd Valley. She was generous enough to share her fortune with me. Othello lives in the apartment directly above me.  He's a feline Shakespearean actor who has a funny way of talking.  Bob tells me that Othello speaks in iambic pentameter and I have no idea what that means, but apparently it's a Shakespearean actor kind of thing.  Next to Othello, lives Vinnie.  Vinnie is old and lost a leg to diabetes many years ago.  He keeps a garden on his deck where he grows vegetables to help him stay healthy.  Whereas Bob is book smart, Vinnie is what I like to call life smart.  When I told him that, he just smiled his gap-toothed smile and said, "That's because I've learned from my mistakes.  And when you make as many mistakes as I do.....you learn a lot!"  And now, thanks to RM#11, all my regular readers can have a picture of where my buddies and I live. Thank you, RM#11!

Boys and girls, can you tell me something about the place where you live?  Is it a house or an apartment?  Do you know your neighbors?  Without using their names can you tell me what makes them unique?  I'd love to learn more about you.

Vinnie

"Hey, Vinnie, what'cha ya doin'?" I called to my three-legged neighbor. Vinnie appeared to be scratching around in a small, rectangular box of litter, but what strange litter.  Usually litter is light grey.  The stuff he was digging was a dark, blackish-brown.  Clearly not litter.

"I'm sorry, Oliver, what was that?  These old ears aren't what they used to be." Vinnie smiled up at me with that semi-toothless grin of his.  I love Vinnie's gap-filled smiles.  They always warm my heart.

"I asked what you were doing."

"I'm tending to my vegetable garden, young man." replied Vinnie with what seemed like a small amount of modest pride.  "Yessirree, nothing beats fresh vegetables harvested from your own deck garden."

Before I could stop myself the word, "Eeeuuuuwww" escaped my lips.  "Sorry, I don't mean to be rude.  I just don't like vegetables." I explained.

"Quite all right. I understand.  I used to hate 'em myself.  That was back in the day before diabetes claimed my leg."

"Dia...what...ese?"  I asked.

"Diabetes.  It's a disease that we felines are susceptible to.  It comes from eating too much unhealthy food and not enough veggies.  By the time my vet discovered the disease it had already progressed to the point where I needed to have my leg amputated." He patted the stump that served as his leg. "Yessirreee, this here ol' stump is my battle wound in my fight against the disease, but I've come out the winner.  I changed my unhealthy eating and have started growing my own healthy food."  He looked at me again and I could see his old eyes twinkling. 

"I don't see any vegetables." I said.

"Well, no, not yet.  They take time to grow.  Right now, I'm just tending to the soil." He motioned to the blackish-brown stuff and I recognized it then as the stuff Miss R.'s plants grow in.

"Soil.  I know a little bit about soil.  Miss R's students are studying soil right now at school.  I bet they might even have information that would help your garden grow."  I was pleased to think that I might be able to help Ol' Cat Vinnie.  He's just a cool guy.

"Oliver, that would be marvelous. I sure would appreciate it," Vinnie said and he grinned that old gap-toothed smile of his. 

So, boys and girls, I need your help.  What can you tell me about soil?  How does soil help plants grow?  Do you have any information that would help Vinnie?

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

What a coincidence that the boys and girls in Room 204 happen to be studying soil on the same day that I visited my new neighbor, Othello.  Why is that a coincidence, you ask? Well, it just so happens that Othello was preparing for a new role in an upcoming feline production of Shakespeare's "As You Like It."  Apparently, his preparation called for tearing into and rolling around in his human's 20 pound sack of garden soil. When I asked him what garden soil had to do with acting, Othello just rolled his eyes and replied, "Lord, what fools these mortals be." Bob later told me that's a line from another one of Shakespeare's plays. Anyway, Othello's human was clearly not impressed with that particular exercise in acting because she rewarded the little guy with a bath. I don't think the post-bath scowl and the attitude that you see photographed here had anything to do with role preparation. I hoped the catnip cookies I baked would cheer up the little guy, but when he smelled the cookies he just rolled his eyes again and said, "Oft expectation fails, and most oft here."  At first, I thought that might be a compliment to my cookies, but Bob suggested otherwise. I think maybe Othello just needs to learn to avoid activities that require tub time.  Maybe you boys and girls in Room 204 could summarize what you know about soil and then I can show Othello why it's not a good thing to prepare for acting roles by rolling around in dirt.

MLK

Monday morning dawned wet and cold, the kind of day where I prefer to stay in bed and sleep in.  You can imagine my irritation then when a deep, booming voice resounded from outdoors, reverberating throughout my apartment.  Irritation gave way to awe and wonderment as I heard the beautiful words, "I have a dream...."  The poetry of the words and the tone of the voice wrapped themselves around me.  "I have a dream," the voice repeated.  I love hearing about people's dreams so I jumped through the pet door and launched myself onto my deck where I could hear better.  I could see my neighbor Bob sitting at attention on his deck next to mine.  "Hey Bob," I whispered.  "What's going on?  Who is that?"

"Shhhh," whispered Bob.  "That's the new guy in C403.  His name is Othello.  He's one of the few successful feline Shakespearean actors. Today he is honoring the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by reciting the leader's best known speech.."

"Huh?" I said.  What I meant was who ever heard of a famous feline Shakespeaerean actor?

"Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." Bob repeated.  "He was a leader in the area of civil rights."

"Civil rights? What does that mean?" I asked outloud but my brain was still trying to figue out what a feline Shakespearean actor was.

"Shhhh, Oliver." Bob sighed.  I could tell he was getting annoyed, but seriously a feline Shakespearean actor? "Just listen, Oliver.  It'll make more sense if you just listen."

So I curled up on deck table and listened as the new cat, Othello, continued reciting the words that first moved a nation so many decades ago.  "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.' "  I continued to listen as the words washed over me making me feel a strange sense of hopefulness and peace.  I wish I had known this leader of civil rights.


I'm curious, kids, what can you tell me about Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? I'd like to know more about the man that penned those words.  And what are your dreams?  I'd like to know what human kittens dream about. In the meantime, I'm going to bake some catnip cookies to bring to the new cat, Othello.  I've got to see this feline Shakespearean actor with my own eyes.  Who knew?



I

Miss Darcy Kitty

"What ARE you doing, Oliver?" asked my nosy neighbor Bob.

"If you must know, I'm wrapping a gift for Miss Kitty." I retorted. 

 I shouldn't be so snappy with Bob.  He is my friend, after all, but he teases me about being friends with his adopted sister, Miss Kitty. Actually, Miss Kitty's real name is Darcy.  She was named after a famous character named Mr. Darcy in a famous book called Pride and Prejudice by an even more famous writer named Jane Austen.  At first, Bob's human thought Darcy Kitty was a boy so he picked a boy's name from a book in Bob's personal library. As it turns out though, Darcy Kitty, unlike the character in the book, is actually a girl, so sometimes the humans just call her Miss Kitty.

Bob's human brought Miss Kitty home a few years ago on Valentines Day as a playmate for Bob, but Bob doesn't really like spending time with her. Bob calls it a classic case of sibling rivalry.  Whatever that means. 

Darcy Kitty and I get along all right. We both like watching the water skiers on the lake. Still, Darcy has always been rather shy.  I guess anyone would have a hard time coming out of her shell with Bob around, but I was feeling bad for me Miss Kitty. I think she could use more friends.  Chunkier friends.  Friends like me.  So, I used my allowance and went online and bought her that famous book by Jane Austen, the one that has her name in it, so she can have her own copy of it.  Who knows?  Maybe she and Bob will find some common ground and start getting along better.  I can't wait to give it to her for Christmas.  I think she's really going to like it. 

What about you?  Have you ever been so excited to give a gift to someone that you couldn't wait for them to open it and see what you got them?  I'd love to read about it.  Now, if only I could get this tape out of my paws.

On Poetry

A little bird told me that Miss R.'s students are going to be hosting an International Poetry Potluck on December 15. In preparation, they will be learning to write all sorts of different kinds of poems AND they will memorize a famous poem to recite in front of their parents at their classroom potluck. Talk about your lucky loons (Bob tells me that is an example of alliteration, whatever THAT means.) My neighbor Bob considers himself a jack-of-all-trades.  I don't really know what that means either since his name is Bob, but I do know he is pretty good at poetry.  In fact, at night when our humans are sound asleep in their beds, the cats in our building like to hang out on our decks and converse.  Sometimes, though, we just listen as Bob recites poems.  Some of the poems he recites are from famous writers but others he has written himself.  Last night he taught me this poem.  This one was written by Bob's favorite writer, Anonymous. It's about a cat who owned a human named St. Jerome.  I don't know why the human was called a saint.  Seems to me, we cats are the saints putting up with all their crazy human antics.  Whatever.  Here's the poem. 

St. Jerome's Cat
St. Jerome in his study kept a great big cat,

it's always in his pictures, with its feet upon the mat.

Did he give it milk to drink, in a little dish?

When it came to Friday's, did he give it fish?

If I lost my little cat, I'd be sad without it;

I should ask St. Jerome what to do about it.

I should ask St. Jerome, just because of that,

for he's the only saint I know who kept a kitty cat.

Anonymous

Tell me boys and girls, do you have any favorite poets?  Have you decided which poem you will recite?  Better yet, have you written any poems?  I'd love to read them if you have.