Pictures of kittens and also words.
This is the baby crew.
Every single one is my favorite.
First, we have Baby Sir Earl.
When he goes to Parliament, his official title will be The Second Earl of Grey… but unlike his predecessor, he cares nothing for wealth and power; as chancellor of the tea party, he believes the key to economic growth is a strong middle class.
You can scoop him up in the middle of wild attack mode, tuck him in your elbow to hold him like a baby, and he goes IMMEDIATELY into the loudest purr… he LOVES getting LOVE… out of the sweetest crew, this is the sweetest kitten.
Next:
Baby Petunia, trash lady, prima ballerina.
Sometimes the names just reveal themselves— Petunia is a dancing floof baby… (in my Instagram stories!) And when you have been gone for a while and she sees you again, she gets SO EXCITED— she does a prancing kneady dance… and if she sees that you are not petting her with BOTH of your hands, she gives you an outraged MEEP.
Also, she is a hoarder of trash. She LOVES a tissue. Or cotton ball. Or anything that can be shredded and used in her interpretive dance routines. I already knew this. But it was further confirmed just now when I found a whole hoard of ripped-up tissue behind a bin. I am positive it’s her stash.
Next:
Sweet Baby King Loulou, tribe of the shoulder monkeys,
Baby girl Louie’s namesake is my brother’s cat— named when they moved to St. Louis and got him… original Louie is massive and also some kind of reincarnated Egyptian king? Matthew explained to me his pedigree, but you know how hard it can be to understand all of the royal titles of other people’s animals.
Baby Loulou’s markings are the BEST— she is tiger on the top, cheetah on the belly. Her face fur is like Morse Code. Dot dot dash… but even better is her personality— for a kitten, this one is SNUGGLY… she LOVES to be up on your shoulder— EVEN when her siblings are doing crazy time… she LOVES to be with the humans.
She likes to ride on your shoulder and if you need both of your hands, you can just tuck her into your neck, like she is a violin chin rest— then you hold on to her with the side of your face.
Lastly, Tiny Baby Elvis.
If you are new, my soulmate catbaby died of cancer… she was a lady tuxedo, named Elvis… and at this point in my kitten-life, the black-and-white ones are always considered some iteration of Elvis.
Paul calls them Elvis Tribute Artists.
Little-known fact: the term Elvis impersonator is considered rude.
So this is my current ETA.
She was the tiniest of them all. OH MY GOSH SO TINY… A tiny baby runt.
It took her forever to start growing— now she has got the hang of it, but she is still half the size of Sir Earl.
She does not care. Elvis is FIERCE… she is a fighterbiter… all day, every day. Fighting and biting… Elvis gives no hedgehogs… she drinks 10 cups of coffee and STARTS ATTACKING AT DAWN.
Also, she is toy-aggressive— ALL OF THESE TOYS ARE MINE NONE OF THEM ARE FOR ANYONE ELSE.
I love her.
And yes, Petunia’s face is ALWAYS extra.
I’m rereading Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town.
Also, we watched two good documentaries, both on Netflix.
Inequality for all… (not new, but I had not even heard of it)… it’s why Sir Earl is soapboxing about how we must shed our political labels and realize that power has ALWAYS SOUGHT TO PIT THE WORKING CLASSES AGAINST EACH OTHER SO WE DON’T NOTICE WHAT THE RICH PEOPLE ARE DOING.
Also, Reversing Roe.
Also, apparently none of this even matters because the planet is almost over.
Meat and money are more important than oxygen and clean water.
October 9, 2018 @ 12:54 pm
“Paralyzing rage, and unending-primal-scream” = same.
I have a one-year-old daughter. How do I explain to her that she has limitless potential and can do and be anything she sets her mind to……except in the end, since she has ovaries, she ultimately doesn’t count as a full human being. How do you have that talk.
October 9, 2018 @ 1:32 pm
YES!
October 9, 2018 @ 11:32 pm
Also, apparently none of this even matters because the planet is almost over. The wry humor and casual insouciance of this cracked me up! I had a kind of epiphany of-well of course-my watching the news as though it’s a religious devotion and now reading that a group of Scientists have determined that we must do 5 things within a few years or we tip into such heat that crops won’t grow,food animals will perish, and we will find ourselves pondering why did I not act and what possible act might I have executed that would have made enough impact to stop our hurtling to a moment,a thought, a sickening realization that we didn’t know what to do and so maybe,possibly,it could happen but nothing we can’t cope with because-hey..we’re certainly not dumb. I’m 78 and my reference point is the bodies off loaded from the absolutely necessary vietnam war were no longer being shown-flag draped and saluted by the military present. There were so many it became obscene to pretend – and so We The People especially young men yelled and screamed and said Hell No!
The German people brought to their knees by the reparations of WWII saw in a brutal thug a savior -he was not. Trump is our P T Barnum who is following a strategy of Putin.
Separate us from one another,from our Allies, break and dilute the structures of Democratic self government and when we protest demonize us as an uncontrollable Mob. I can only hope the midterms brake this disaster in a reasoned steady effort toward sanity and order.
November 4, 2018 @ 8:40 am
correction: The reparations of WWI
October 9, 2018 @ 12:54 pm
Had to laugh when I saw your kitten scratched hands!!
On the rest… you’re not alone.
October 9, 2018 @ 12:58 pm
Love love love these new babies!!! Too cute for words! Yes, these past few weeks have been nauseating, to be sure. VOTE VOTE VOTE…for the love of God, VOTE!!! I know that the laws of the universe being what they are, no one ever really gets away with anything and sooner or later, there WILL be a reckoning for those who have perpetrated this sham of an investigation and subsequent appointment to our highest court. In the meantime, I also know that the will of the people WILL win out….I just have no idea WHEN!!!
October 9, 2018 @ 1:08 pm
I totally get the primal scream. I have such a deep seated anger that I feel ill. Fortunately I can still vote and support every woman candidate available. Kittens help…..
October 9, 2018 @ 6:23 pm
Don’t support someone just because they’re a woman, because that does not guarantee that they will look out for other women. Susan Collins (R-ME) cast the deciding vote FOR Kavanaugh. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has a similarly poor record when it comes to looking out for women and children.
October 9, 2018 @ 1:12 pm
Unending rage, yes. I asked my husband for a flame thrower for my birthday. He thinks a paint sprayer would be more practical, and possibly dual purpose. Though he reminded me our kitchen is over budget and there is no lawyer money, so I better not get caught. I have no floofy bebeh to snuggle/play with, and stop the Spiral of Wrath. Stress eating has gone from potato chips for breakfast to adding milano’s for lunch.
On the brighter side, the floor is down, the walls are going up. I may have a functioning kitchen by thanksgiving. Though we may have ribs ala Frank Bennett instead of turkey, as I am thinking of going all Towanda if I can get an alibi and some help.
We should probably get a furbaby asap.
October 9, 2018 @ 3:59 pm
LOL
VOTE VOTE bring all your friends and neighbors and VOTE!
October 9, 2018 @ 1:15 pm
I love you.
I don’t know you, but I love you.
I wish I knew you.
I imagine you would be the best tonic for my current state of mind if I could be in your presence.
But, disallowing that, your posts bring me joy and relief.
Thank you.
October 9, 2018 @ 1:15 pm
I love everything about this post!! In keeping with the theme of the last week, here’s a song that needs to go viral: https://youtu.be/N34hehRgw9g
Please view, share, and VOTE.
October 9, 2018 @ 6:41 pm
Thank you RobynB for that great song! Just sent it on to several friends. Thank you VEB for kittens and everything else.
October 12, 2018 @ 2:19 pm
I never post anywhere but had to thank you for sharing this song! Forwarding it widely. It makes me cry with rage but also with the joy of sisterhood and almost-hope.
October 9, 2018 @ 1:17 pm
I appreciate that you have commented on the country’s situation this week. Thank you.
October 9, 2018 @ 1:19 pm
Kittens make everything feel better! Except, sadly these last few weeks , months and years.
Thank you for being a ray of sunshine and hope!
October 9, 2018 @ 1:30 pm
I am a kind-hearted, light-hearted, somewhat superficial, sentimental old broad. (For example, I cried when I saw the retiring pilot, taxiing to the end of his final flight, salute the firefighters who were ceremonially spraying his airplane in the “crossed swords” ceremony, and the firefighters in their engines return his salute. It’s on YouTube, see for yourself, I’m blubbering again.)
I love you, Victoria, and your legions of like-minded young and old followers. I love your kitties, your house, your Paul, your dancing, your style, your verve, your accessories, your kvetching. I love that you live near Philly, my hometown. I love your activism and am creeping toward giving up meat because of you, and only because of you, you persuasive Minx.
ILLEGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM
October 9, 2018 @ 1:30 pm
Your hands bear the scars of a champion cat ‘rastler was we say here in the Deep South. This past week I’ve been lying in bed eating comfort food. It’s grim. No one gives up power gracefully. But we have kittens!
October 9, 2018 @ 1:31 pm
Love you, your blog, and your kittens. Thank you.
October 9, 2018 @ 1:31 pm
Yes, keep us fighting with each other-while the rich take over.
Meat and Money. Says it all, doesn’t it?
October 9, 2018 @ 1:37 pm
Seems wrong to think about that ass-hat in the same post as those precious kittens, but I did love the post. AND I loved the song one of your commenters posted. Listen and share!
October 9, 2018 @ 1:39 pm
These are truly the cutest kittens you have had yet, yes?! Seriously beyond adorable. I am always in awe that you can let someone take them, but thank goodness you so, so you can help even more. If I didn’t already have seven cats, I’d take these off your hands. I don’t have any kittens and my husband just mentioned he missed having kittens around!
My perspective on the Kavanaugh story is very different than yours. In 2013, my husband was falsely accused of sexual assault by a woman he worked with years ago. Very similar to this case, she swore he pushed her up against a wall, hand over her mouth, felt her up, etc. Said it happened multiple times, and she had dates. Two of the times she said it happened he was not even in the state (travelling for work), and one of the times he was having a root canal. Should he have lost his job and been arrested merely on his word? What would you do if someone showed up at your door claiming Paul assaulted in her at a party in high school, and she doesn’t remember how she got to the party, or how she left the party, but she knows it was him? And that the four people she named at being at the party all deny it, one of whom is her best friend and says she wasn’t there and has never met Paul.
If we must always believe women, what if it was Ford was being confirmed and being accused as the assaulter, would you automatically believe she was innocent, and that Kavanaugh was lying about the charges?
I do not automatically believe all women. Some do lie and some victims are traumatized and can’t always remember everything correctly. Not sure what the case is with Ford, but she lied about being afraid to fly and she lied about why she wanted a second front door. As Senator Blumenthal posited, Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. Or does it not apply to women?
October 9, 2018 @ 1:50 pm
Less than 2% of sexual assault claims are false! Kavanaugh even contacted his friends to tell them to shut up! If he was innocent there would be no need to have done this. He lied about the entries in his diary — he knew full well what they meant and thought he could act all naive and smug! There were at least 3 women who said he assaulted them — not just one and the FBI didn’t do their job, just a cover-up. Sorry if one or two men are wrongly accused, but thousands of women receive no justice and no protection — so yes, I believe women over men and will continue to do so.
October 9, 2018 @ 2:22 pm
You should do some quality research on false accusations. You have let your personal bias blind you to facts and rational thinking. This type of thinking will destroy our country.
October 9, 2018 @ 2:23 pm
Thank You, Darling Lily, for making this point. NO ONE wants ANYONE to get away with despicable behavior, but if we allow the word of one human to RUIN THE LIFE of another human so easily, then we are all in trouble. It’s better to let 20 guilty go free than convict 1 innocent. I love you, VEB, but you will lose readers if you bring politics into your otherwise wonderful posts……
October 9, 2018 @ 8:44 pm
I agree with S Roche. VEB, I enjoy your posts, but I’m thinking of tuning out. This is not a forum for politics.
October 10, 2018 @ 12:21 am
Isn’t it up to the blogger who pays the expenses of posting and gives freely of their writing without charge to determine what their space will contain? I don’t believe any blogger can be intimidated by threats or they would cease writing their own thoughts and become a bobble doll for the readers. Agreeing for the sake of readers seems to me to be an exercise in futility. What’s the point of having a blog and working hard to write well if you have to be like Fox Spews and only tell readers what makes them happy. And refusing to listen to an opposing view seems limiting to me,it would be like reading only literature written by yourself.
October 9, 2018 @ 2:30 pm
Thank you Darling Lili for your wise words. The MeToo movement has certainly raised awareness of sexual assault but it’s been taken too far the other direction. Why can’t we consider the man might just be innocent? Isn’t this reverse discrimination? It seems we’ve lost all sense of fairness and reason.
October 9, 2018 @ 2:39 pm
You have been totally propagandized. No one called for Kavanaugh to be jailed. We called for him to be investigated. There was a reason he wasn’t. Think about it logically.
October 9, 2018 @ 2:33 pm
Darling Lily,
So sorry you and your husband had to go through a situation like that. And I agree with you on all your points. Having a mentality of “believe them all the time” is just as dangerous as those that dismiss entire groups simply for being different, less powerful, a minority, whatever. What’s sad is that those who scream the loudest over the Ford situation don’t realize the damage they are doing to real victims. Ford may have had something terrible happen to her at some point but based on a lack of any substantial details, dates or witnesses, I don’t believe Kavanaugh is the guilty party. But making her the poster child of the “believe all women” movement is ridiculous. I’m a woman, I’ve been sexually assaulted before, and I don’t believe most of the claims she’s making. I think a lot of people feel the same way. Now, whatever was trying to be accomplished in the women’s movement attached to this trial is tarnished by being associated with her name and alleged story. There are hundreds of thousand of women out there who have come forward with sexual assault stories and have details, evidence, witnesses, police and even hospital reports to back up their claims yet have been refused a voice or justice. THOSE should be the women leading a movement.
Thanks again for sharing your story.
October 9, 2018 @ 2:44 pm
I find your post to be very offensive. Please don’t bring your propaganda here. Victoria, I apologize for this unpleasantness, but this issue is too important not to challenge this nonsense. Although I’m not ruling out a little trollery.
October 10, 2018 @ 12:01 am
Please don’t bring your propaganda here. Victoria,?????You are in Victorias’ space-you have every right to state your opinion but not to prevent others from stating theirs. And one woman’s propaganda is truth to most of Victoria’s commenters. United we will stand,as a people,as a Nation as a tiny planet,in a small galaxy in a 100 million light year universe. The sooner we wake up to no matter how much we feel superior to others our galaxy of 100 billion Suns is a tiny dot of light in a cosmic sea of galaxies. So we kinda need each other if we want to avoid the fate of the dodo bird. IMHO of course.
October 9, 2018 @ 3:30 pm
Thank You Darling Lily, not all women (including myself) agree with Victoria.
October 9, 2018 @ 3:43 pm
This! Totally this! You are so spot on Darling Lily.
As for the other 2 accusations, my eyes rolled so hard I saw the inside of my head. In the one, she wasn’t even sure it was him, and again, no witnesses. And the other one went from a sworn affidavit of drugging and gang rape to a live tv interview of him handing out cups of punch and standing in a group and talking. Never mind that she said she knew rapes were going on, but kept going to the parties anyway. The stupid, it just hurts.
And then the histrionics in the senate and outside the supreme court. WTF is wrong with these women? Is it no wonder women don’t get taken seriously when you have screaming harpies like this (And yes, I just went there. That’s what they were!!! Go back and look at the footage.) I’m embarrassed and pissed that I will be lumped into the same category as these psychos.
October 9, 2018 @ 4:04 pm
I agree….I need evidence for belief and condemnation. One of the things that made our country exceptional was the concept of innocent until proven guilty. I am also skeptical of anyone of either gender who wait 36 years to come forward with allegations. As someone who was molested as a child and didn’t speak of it til my late teens I get not wanting to out yourself . But waiting this long just seems …..wrong…..
October 9, 2018 @ 4:39 pm
Whether or not the allegations were true; the treatment of Dr. Ford and the behavior of Kavanaugh were terrible and should have disqualified him from this position. He was petulant, argumentative, and rude. He answered questions with questions. He became emotional and bratty. His lack of professionalism would have kicked him out of a fast food interview let alone an interview for a seat on our highest court. The Supreme Court is supposed to be above and beyond politics but that is no longer the case. Our system of checks and balances are over. I can only hope all of us crying out in outrage and wallowing in despair stand up and vote and demand change from our officials. They are supposed to work for us, not companies or the rich or the loud minority.
October 9, 2018 @ 11:48 pm
Kavanaugh showed a terrible partisan prejudice in his hysterical rant and the attempt to embarrass a Senator about her beer drinking and another senator about his was so inappropriate that to me he failed to show sufficient impartiality and decorum for the position for which he was applying. It is called the SUPREME COURT for a reason. The nine men and women are expected to be the finest jurests in the land. Without a proper investigation it was impossible to find for either party but I can’t help believing his votes will always be suspect
October 9, 2018 @ 1:41 pm
I think the kittens provide the self care you need to assuage your rage. Me thinks I need some kittens because my rage today is fierce. It does help to know I am not alone. VOTE!!
October 9, 2018 @ 1:44 pm
The babies are adorable — I think they picked up the personalities and traits of their foster parents! Rage is putting it lightly. I saw a special on Public Television Sunday night “Considering Matthew Shephard.” The basic message is that we should all love one another no matter what we look like, our religion, politics, etc. – which Matthew practiced his whole life before being tortured and brutally killed because he was gay. I know this is true, but I “hate” what is happening in this country right now, especially the treatment of women, LGBT community, people of color, the poor, the environment. I’m 68 years old and have never been so depressed about the Trump/Republican control in this country; felt so hopeless because of the systemic breakdown and attack of our morals and voting rights, gerrymandering, etc. or sworn more in my entire life — but I will definitely vote Blue and hope that more and more people see the need to reverse course.
October 9, 2018 @ 1:44 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N34hehRgw9g&feature=youtu.be This girl is brilliant! Women have gone from possessions to nearly a human being back to a possession all in my lifetime. Makes me sick to my stomach. Too bad a bunch of old white women can’t run the country for a while.
October 9, 2018 @ 1:51 pm
I just wanted to warn you about kittens and ribbon — my kitten ATE a 2-foot long piece of narrow ribbon, but fortunately was ok. As for everything else, I agree, especially with lots of kittens.
October 9, 2018 @ 1:51 pm
Finding comfort in your kittens, in your profound words that mimic my feelings during the past week and comments from your readers who are equally perceptive. Makes me feel in unity with all of you.