Popping Corn iWith Drizzle

Cyndi: I haven't napped in two hours and yet I can't get to sleep, Marcus.  You're a guy with stories.  Tell me a bedtime one, please.

Marcus:  Okay.  It was a semi-dark and overcast, and drizzly morning yesterday.  Jan was fixing our breakfast when she heard the faint but clear sound of popcorn popping.  She checked the microwave, even pulled the plug.  It wasn't the toaster; the coffeepot wasn't dripping, neither was the tea kettle.  It had to be the gas stove.  You know about a gas stove, Cyndi.  If it was leaking, it could go KABOOM!

Cyndi:  *leaps into air*  I asked for a bedtime story, not a nightmare!

Marcus:  Jan moved everything including the metal burners from the old stove and lifted the top.  Wow, was it crumby in there!  She stopped investigating to do some cleanup.

Cyndi:  Is she crazy?  She stopped searching for the source to clean under the stove top?  What if the popping corn had exploded?

Marcus:  You know how easily Jan is distracted.

She started pulling things away from the wall.  She rolled away the plastic drawers and then the microwave cart.

Cyndi:  Let me guess.  She grabbed a broom and started sweeping back there!

Marcus:  No.  She looked behind the cabinet and stove.  The area was dry and there was no sign of popping corn.

Cyndi:  I know!  Mama mouse was in the wall popping corn while her little ones watched mini TV.

Marcus:  Stop interrupting me.  You know if there were mice, all of you cats would have been back there trying to punch a hole in the wall.

Jan glanced out the window..  Raindrops were bouncing off the igloo doghouse near the window in time to the popping corn.  Relieved, she moved everything back where it belonged.

Cyndi:  And then she finished fixing our breakfast?

Marcus:  Not yet.  Jan got to wondering why that igloo had been near the house for several years but it had never popped corn before.  It wasn't the igloo.  She went back to the window, leaned closer for a better view, and  -  You'll have to excuse me.  I need to go pee. Must be all this talk about rain.

Cyndi:  Marcus, come back here!  You haven't finished your story.

Marcus:  I'm sorry.  Jan forgot to come right back to let me inside.  Where was I?  Oh, yes, Jan leaned closer for a better view and saw the plastic storage bin she had been using to haul leaves to the curb upside down beside the igloo and the raindrops falling from the roof onto it did sound like popping corn.  The mystery was solved.

While Jan had been dawdling, Rusty had calmly munched half of Merci's kibble.  Jan refilled Merci's bowl and finally served us all breakfast.

There, now you can go to sleep.

Cyndi:  How?  I'm wide awake after your bedtime story..

Marcus:  Would you like me to tell you another one?

Cyndi:  Are you kidding!

Triple Blur Candy Cane

Marcus:  I don't know why Jan was complaining I act like a whirlwind.  Obviously I was being such a calm boy.

Micah:  Oh, excuse me.  I didn't mean to snort, but that took me by surprise.

Marcus:  The picture was taken after three weeks of being cooped up with no exercise while Jan had the flu.  That proves I'm a calm boy. 

Micah:  Then what does this picture prove?

Marcus:  That Jan is a bad photographer?

Micah:  This picture proves you wrong.  It was taken about ten seconds before the other one.  She offered you a stuffed candy cane.  You ripped it out of her hand and shook it so violently it's in the picture twice! Or is that three times?

Marcus:  Wow, I am good!  I bet you've never seen a triple blur candy cane before.

Micah:  I doubt anyone has.  You then rushed around into your crate to guard it from the rest of us.

Marcus:  Yes, I have to guard everything around here or one of you would steal it.

Micah;  But we didn't want it!

Marcus:  You could have told me that then.

Micah:  You didn't ask. 

Percy:  This week we Funny Farmer Felines interview Marv from the Marvelous is Marvelous blog.  Doesn't he have a sweet smile?

Cyndi:  You can read the story of his special rescue in Handsome Happy Marv on Mousebreath.


We are joining the Pet Parade hosted by Rascal and Rocco and co-hosted by Bionic Basil and Barking from the Bayou.

Imitating a Goofball

Marcus:  What a handsome dog that is.  He looks like he just won the Dog Treat Lottery.

Taylor:  Marcus, you aren't supposed to flatter yourself.  You're supposed to compliment others.

Marcus:  I am.  Oh, wait - you mean that's me?

Taylor:  Of course it is, you goofball.  Who else would it be?

Marcus:  I don't know, but I think I resemble Dr. Dreamy from Grey's Anatomy more than a goofball.

Taylor:  You wish.  Besides, he was killed off a while back.  You don't really want to imitate a corpse, do you?

Marcus:  No. I guess I'd rather imitate a goofball. 

Taylor:  Then you should be very proud of yourself.  You appear successful at it.

Merci Was Sleeping

Marcus:  HEY, GUYS, GUESS WHAT!

Percy: Shhhhh!  Merci is sleeping.  You'll wake her up.

Marcus:  She should get up and come outside to play a rousing game of fetch with me. 

Percy:  She's old.  She needs her rest, not a rousing game of fetch.  One day you'll be old and want to sleep all the time too.

Marcus:  No, I'm never going to get old and sleepy.  If I do, who will keep Jan awake when she starts nodding off at 1 a.m.?

Percy:  I think the question would be more like, when you are old, who will awaken you at 1 a.m. so you can annoy the daylights out of Jan?

Marcus:  Don't worry.  I'll read the directions to learn how to reset Jan's alarm clock.

Percy:  And I suppose you'll borrow her glasses to read them?

Marcus:  But I have perfect vision.  Oh ... you mean when I supposedly get older.

Percy:  Yes, when you grow old, you will have to borrow Jan's reading glasses to see the dial and wear a hearing aid to hear the alarm.

Marcus:  Then I definitely don't want to grow old.

Percy:  You don't have a choice.  If you live long enough,  you will grow old.  By then you won't mind.  You'll have accepted it.   Merci did.  Where are you going?

Marcus:  To apologize to Merci for yelling when I entered the room.

Percy: But she's sleeping.  You'll wake her up!

Cyndi:  Spyder and Gracie are our interview subjects this week.  They don't have a blog yet but plan to.  You can read Presenting Spider and Gracie at Mousebreath.


We are joining the Pet Parade hosted by Rascal and Rocco and co-hosted by Bionic Basil and Barking from the Bayou.

Our Printer Finally Burped

Merci:  You should be napping.  Why are you still awake?

Cyndi.

Cyndi:  I'm too excited about having a printer again. We've been without one since March 18 of last year when Win 10 did another upgrade and disconnected it. 

Merci:  Just as a short and hopefully comic version of why we furries have had a collective headache for the past 11 months...  Jan claims she has practically gone blind reading all the info for that printer, as well as all the MC how-to data on it.  Nothing worked!  It was there but it wasn't and it didn't do anything.

Cyndi:  That's when she found out she was not supposed to have a parallel cable plugged into a hub into a usb port on the computer.  But this computer has no parallel and only had two usb ports (until Doug recently added four more), hence the hub. The no-no setup worked just fine for about 3 years.

Merci: Must be the luck of the ignorant.  She didn't know better, so it worked for her.  She did say - repeatedly! - she didn't think the printer's usb port works.  Guess what?  It doesn't! 

Cyndi:  The printer company has been wanting her to call to resolve the problem, but she often has trouble remembering simple everyday words (and names of people she's known for 30 or 40 decades) and didn't want to go through that confusion on the phone with strangers.  (They can't see her waving her arms and turning red .)  To get a response to her emails, she had to sign up for an account and it was in that account she started finding some helpful postings.

Merci: It was not a problem with corrupted drivers, but multiple installs of them on different ports.  Also, there might be something left in the queue that didn't delete and wasn't showing.  She emailed the info to Mr. Doug Thursday night, ran CCleaner, and Mr. Doug showed up the next morning before she could install the printer for the gazillionth time to look for those problems.

Cyndi:  He brought the whole electronic pharmacy - laptop, new cable, etc.- and installed the printer on the laptop.  That's when we learned for sure that the printer usb doesn't work.  A test page was printed a few months ago, but when connected to a computer, the printer wouldn't even burp!

Merci.

Merci:  So why is Cyndi excited about having a printer again?  Because it did print with the parallel cable plugged into a usb cable plugged into  a usb port.  Yep, the no-no set-up is the only one that works.

Cyndi:  Mr. Doug found two test files on here that had not deleted, the printer burped, and now we have a laser printer again.  Eleven months of perseverance, investigation, in/un-installations, confusion and discouragement shortened into one blog post.

Merci:  And Wednesday, two days prior, a very sweet lady gave Jan a brand new ink jet printer.  We haven't had a scanner since the old all-in-one died a few years ago.

Cyndi:  Jan was busy over the weekend printing some files before Win 10 decides to uninstall it again. 

Merci:  Of course, she might spend another 11 months trying to set up the all-in-one.

Cyndi:  Oh, dear, what if that's true? 

Merci:  Relax.  Marcus read all the instructions Jan used and he said if Jan has a problem with the new one, he'll install it himself.

Cyndi:  Marcus install our new printer?  Now I'll never be able to nap!

Merci:  Thank you for your help, Mr. Doug!  Jan said the next time you have a computer problem, it's her turn to come help you.

Cyndi:  You don't really think he'd take her up on that, do you?

Merci:  Not if he has any sense!

Photogenic Trio

Percy: Hey, I protest! You two keep hogging the posts with your photos. It's either you guys or Marcus.  The rest of us want equal time.

Micah:  It's not our fault Rusty and I are so photogenic and pose so nicely together.

Percy:  Well, I'm photogenic and I pose nicely.

Rusty:  Ah, but not "together" as we do.

Percy:  Micah and I don't like each other so I don't think you're going to get us to pose together.

Micah:  You should try it sometime.  It's really fun to have a friend.

Percy:  Okay, I'll just go sit on the other side of Rusty and Jan can take a picture of the three of us together.  Or sort of together.

Rusty:  Oh, no, you don't!  I'm not sitting between you two.  I don't have any claws to defend myself.

Micah:  I don't blame you.  Percy likes to attack for no reason.

Percy:  Attacking you is not for no reason.  I have to defend myself.

Micah:  Are you claiming I instigate our battles?

Percy:   Well, I certainly don't.  Or rarely do.

Rusty:  I think I hear some kibble calling my name in the kitchen.  Somehow I think I will feel safer in another room.  If you will excuse me, I'll just tiptoe out of range.

Micah:  That sounds like a good idea.  I think I'll have a snack too.  If you'll just move out of the house, Percy, so I can get by you...

Rusty:  Since Percy is otherwise occupied after being pushed off Marcus' crate by an unnamed assailant, I'll go ahead and announce our interview subjects for this week are from Cuddlywumps Cat Chronicles.


Stop by Mousebreath, the ezine for cats, to read Miss Cuddlywumps, Paisley and Webster.  mousebreath.com

We are joining the Pet Parade hosted by Rascal and Rocco and co-hosted by Bionic Basil and Barking from the Bayou.

Misplaced Jan and Memorial

Micah:  Cyndi, why are you wearing that old hat? I thought you had misplaced it.

Cyndi:  I found it and it's not old, at least not as old as Jan is.  She is the one who actually misplaced it behind some shelves in the bedroom.

Micah:  Are we going to have to misplace her soon and find a new human?

Cyndi:  I think so!  I can't believe what she did to us Sunday night.

Merci: It wasn't that bad.  We didn't catch her mistake either.

Micah:  But it's not the first time she's been on the wrong day, either forgetting or causing confusion.

Merci:  Calm down.  Take a deep breath and let's discuss this rationally.  It might help you feel better.

Cyndi:  Okay.  We felines have been working ahead on the mousebreath cat interviews.  Sunday night we finished another one and it's ready to auto publish in a couple of weeks.   By then it was very late and we were all tired.

Micah:  And suddenly Jan told us we didn't have a post for the next day and we'd better hurry up and post one before she turned off the computer.  We finished our yesterday's post after midnight, set it to auto publish, and gave a sigh of relief.  Then we went to bed.

Merci:  So what is the problem?   It all worked out well.

Cyndi:  The problem is that the next afternoon it occurred to us it was only Monday, not Tuesday.

Merci:  Yes, it was.

Micah:  But we have only been publishing on Tuesday and Friday now.

Merci:  Oh, I see.  Jan convinced you to write your Tuesday post Sunday night to publish on Monday.  Yes, that is a bit odd, even for her.

Cyndi:  We did publish on Tuesday - Jan's idea of Tuesday.  That's why we're publishing again today.

Merci:  Because it's Tuesday again?

Micah:  No, because it's Wednesday, the middle of the week.  Jan blew up our regular schedule and there's an extra day that needs attention.

Merci:  I'll take your word for it.  What an odd week.  Sunday became Monday.  Monday was Tuesday.  Tuesday was lost and Wednesday we are posting off schedule.

Cyndi:  Right.

Merci:  I hope readers aren't as confused as we are! They might not come back.

Micah:  Yes, it might be time to misplace Jan.



Jan:  On Facebook Monday (yes, it was actually Monday, not Sunday or Tuesday), I realized I hadn't seen a post from my old cat-loving friend KC.  She was not a blogger but we met through my blog and her cat story site.

I went to her page and read condolences.  I didn't know any of those people but  left a comment asking what happened.   KC had a heart attack Thanksgiving night.  It's hard to believe she is gone.

This is a picture of my ex-vehicle posted on JFF after a snowstorm in 2009. KC added her cats and some text to it and sent it back as a joke.  I loved it.  She was kind, funny, adored her cats and used to post to a site she called Gentle Annie2 named after her beloved cat Annie.

KC is now with her first husband and her son.  May her husband find strength and comfort in happy memories.  I am hopeful her cats are safe and comfortable.

KC sent this in 2008 and it seems appropriate to use it here.  We will remember you that have gone before, KC!  Rest in peace, dear friend.

Merci the Cat Magnet

Percy:  I think Merci has an admirer.

Marcus:  She does? 

Percy:  Yes, the other day when Jan was playing ball with you in the dog pen, there was a tuxie cat in the next yard watching.  We thought he (or she) was watching you.

Marcus:  Everyone watches me.  Jan says I'm not only good-looking, I'm fast and agile.

Percy:  No,  while you were huffing and puffing from the exercise, the tuxie suddenly jumped up and raced along the pen and stopped at the tree, where he stood for a while staring at Merci.

Marcus:  What was Merci doing to attract a cat?

Percy:  Nothing.  She was just doing her usual, walking up the steps to get inside and when the door didn't open, she would go back down and wander around in the corner. 

Marcus: I didn't see any cat.

Percy:  You were too engrossed in the ball.  And when Jan saw the tuxie stalking Merci, she used the ball to lure you in the house so you didn't scare the cat away.

Marcus:   Are you certain the cat was only interested in Merci?

Percy:  Positive!  Before Buddy, Sam and you came along, Merci was a cat magnet.  She rescued me when I was very young.  Cameron was so attached to her, he used to wait outside to follow Merci on her walks; then when he got tired, Jan would have to carry him home.  Finally, he just moved in.  And when it was just Merci and Jan, more than one cat used to follow them part way.

Marcus:  Wow!  I didn't know that.  Did Merci wear catnip perfune to attract them?

Percy:  No, silly.  They must have sensed her gentle nature.   I'm just amazed that tuxie was so interested in getting closer to Merci that he paid no attention to you.  You're hard to ignore!

Marcus:  I must be losing my magnetism.  I need to find it again.  What should I do?

Percy:  Oh, I don't know, but you could ask Merci for her secret.

Marcus:  I didn't know Merci has a secret. 

Percy:  That's because Merci is calm and doesn't babble all the time like someone we both know.

Marcus:  We know somene that babbles?  Who is it?  I won't tell.  Come on, Percy, you can tell me.  I'm your pal.  Is it Rusty?  No, it can't be.  It must be Cyndi.  She's a girl and girls like to chatter on and on about whatever.  No, wait, I know who it is.  I think.  Is it ...?

Percy:  Sigh!

Trusty Old Blue Ball

Micah:  You look pretty intense there, Marcus.  Is the ball threatening you?

Marcus:  No, it wouldn't dare threaten me.  Can't take my eyes off it for a second, though.

Micah:  Why, would it run away if you do?

Marcus:  I was waiting for Jan to try to kick it. She's sneaky, but I'm faster than she is sneaky.

Micah:  Oh, so you were playing soccer?

Marcus:  No.  She picked it up and threw it so we played chase.

Micah:  You don't play catch?

Marcus:  Rarely.  Jan usually throws it past me so it's hard to catch.  But I am good at catching if she bounces it.

Micah:  I'm all for anything that exercises you and tires you out so you leave the rest of us alone for a few minutes.

Marcus:  Jan might have returned my red ball to Amazon (Sending Red Ball on Vacation) but I still have my trusty old blue ball with the tooth holes in it.  Oh, and by the way, the rope toy Jan accidentally threw into the tree a few months ago finally fell down into the pen.  So if this ball should happen to fall apart for no reason, I'll still have something to chase.

Micah:  So your new blue ball is now your trusty old blue ball.  Interesting.  But you do know, I hope, if this ball should happen to fall apart, it will certainly NOT be for no reason!

Marcus:  You're right.  If this ball falls apart, it will be Jan's fault.  She's awfully hard on my toys!

Percy:  Our interview this week is with Sophie, Dexter and Olive.  You can read Three Chatty Cats Chat on Mousebreath. 


We are joining the Pet Parade blog hop with hosts, Rascal and Rocco, and co-hosts  Bionic Basil, and Barking from the Bayou.