Mimi and Mewsette Monday: Stuck Inside with Bella in a Basket, January 4, 2015
For whatever reason it was that day I was outside and Mimi was inside. This was an act of cruelty as far as Mimi was concerned. The front door was open so I wasn’t returning from an errand, I was intentionally outside, and Mimi was stuck inside. I see it was a Sunday so I may have been getting things done outdoors on a sunny day, or even shoveling snow. No matter, Mimi may have even been considering breaking out somehow, even though she is hunched up with cold inside the door.
I used the photos in order of their appearance for this post, and I really have no idea what I’d been doing out there or how I managed to get anything done when I came back in because it was non-stop cute.
Inside, Bella is enjoying a basket nap on the cabinet under the big north window.
Mimi hopped up on the cabinet near Bella in the basket. She wanders around the basket, looks at Bella, sniffs the bow, even starts to step into the basket, then relents and does some face rubs on the basket and its handle. This is an example of Mimi being “bad,” getting into another cat’s space, which she even respected with her own children. Bella watches calmly. Mimi doesn’t threaten her, in fact she would probably be honored if Mimi climbed into the basket with her, and if Mimi really wanted the basket Bella would get out and welcome Mimi into it.
Still, it was a little strange for Bella, who was just trying to have a good nap.
“What was that all about?” she asks me. Just Mimi being Mimi.
She gets up, turns around, and continues her nap.
The coast is clear…
…back to that nap.
But trouble is brewing.
Mewsette has joined Mimi at the door. The stare at me with that look of disappointment, once again, with human lack of awareness of feline needs.
Bella got a nap of about a half hour before Mewsette decided to give her the same treatment as Mimi. Mewsette walked up to the basket and began sniffing. She tasted the ribbon. She walked around, and around, and looked at the basket and Bella from all angles. Ultimately Mewsette also resorts to some face rubs and more sniffs. Again, Bella isn’t threatened by Mewsette, they’ve often cuddled in a basket, Bella like Mewsette’s lost sister since Mewsette was stuck with three brothers.
But Mewsette has an idea…
But Mewsette is a silly girl and can’t pass up the chance at some prime cuteness meowdeling, sitting tall, tilting her head one way then the other in her series of killer head tilts. I’m not sure what she’s looking at, it might be a bird or squirrel outside the front window, it might just be Mewsette’s imagination. Who could find a kitty like Mewsette at all threatening? At that moment I can tell you I wanted to run over there and hug her and kiss her, but Mewsette did not like that kind of treatment (I know, because sometimes I did it anyway). Bella rests calmly in her basket and watches the show, whatever it is.
“Will there be another visitor?” Bella asks me? I don’t think she anticipated that level of attention, or any attention at all, during her nap in the basket, but here she’d had about an hour of occasional attention from her two favorite girl cats in the world.
But once again, the comfort of the basket made it hard to keep her eyes open, so she drifted off into sweet dreams of her basket and her sisterhood.
Just an average day in the feline family. Bella was about 10 months old, and she and Basil, who was up on the cat tree watching all the activity, were the only two fosters, before the parade of litters of other formerly feral kittens. Right now Bella is sleeping in a different basket in just about the same spot on that cabinet. Many things have changed, but some things have stayed the same.
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From Instagram January 19, 2025
when my sites were offline from the malware intrusion
Let it snow. We are safe inside and warm.
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From the Back Yard and Beyond
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From Paths I Have Walked
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From Portraits of Animals
Frosty Morning, Just Before Sunrise
From around this date in past years
A Rectangle of Sun, 2023
Mimi and Mewsette and I all do our best to share a rectangle of sun on the deck. They mill around and then sit. I watch the ballet of light and shadow at my feet.
These were from October, a warm day after the first cold of the season.
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From Instagram
Snow is when you find out why your motion sensor porch light goes on and off all night long.
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From the Back Yard and Beyond
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From Portraits of Animals
From around this date in past years
Snow Day, 2022
The girls impatiently wait for me to get with the program because it’s time for them to go outside, snow or no. The snow outdoors brightens things up as for just a few minutes the warm glow of the sun tried to move through, thought it faded back behind the clouds.
When I did open the door, Mimi says “nope” but Mewsette braves the snow on the deck because there is an important message on one of the chairs. So important that Mimi actually changes her mind a little bit later and checks it herself.
Then later, Mimi follows me out the front door and lets me know how she feels about there being snow as far as she can see in all directions. She makes her way back to the house but can’t resist a stop at her catnip garden, pretty ragged now after I freed it from eight inches of snow, then in we go.
The heavily promoted snowstorm finally reached us, and I’m glad it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. We did have piles of snow, at least eight inches in my back yard piled atop a bird bath and a chair, and during the night the snow changed to sleet and freezing rain a few times. My car is covered with ice, which is not nice, and I decided to let it warm up a bit so that it was easier to scrape off before I ran off to the woods and the creek when there was a little more sunlight, probably tomorrow, since rain is forecast for Wednesday…we finally have our snow, can’t we just keep it for a bit?
~~~
From Instagram
The videos above! and from the weekend…
Mewsette had to sample the peanut butter and jelly muffins even before I did. Happy #caturday!
Hamlet is enjoying my new self-healing cutting mat, sure that I got it because it matches his furs. It matches a few other furs in the house too, but we’ll let him think he’s special, because he is.
Must be the cold weather, I don’t see these two cuddle very often at all. In fact, the only time I saw them in the same cat bed or next to each other in any way was when Simba came back from the vet the second time and was feeling pretty uncomfortable. I found Midnight Louie curled up in the bed with him the first time then. A few more times, then not again until recently.
So maybe it’s the cold weather, maybe not, I had heard they were never terribly close although they lived in the same house for 5 years, but I’m happy to see them a little closer to each other. Then again, maybe it’s #caturday.
It’s turned into a snowy day, and it’s also a sew-y day as kitties settle on the bed to #supurrvise me while I work. So cozy.
From the Garden and Beyond
Click the photo to read more.
Garden Chair
Garden chair has a nice fluffy cushion. Might be a little cold, though. A few months from now Mimi will be snoozing on it. About eight inches of snow in that part of the yard, five or six elsewhere.
And from over the weekend…
Full Moon Waiting for Me
I turned off the lamp
but light still shone,
my bed awash with cool blue
pulls my thoughts to follow a path
up toward the full Wolf Moon
the imperative solo light of January nights;
I hear her distant howl across the valley
and feel her pull on me
to follow her path
past the effect of old wavy glass
through the tangled branches of the spruce
to the clear cold blue night of adventures
that might have otherwise been mine.
A poem in progress. Read more…
From around this date in past years
Cats Are So Much Fun, 2021
Don’t worry, I’m okay. See the photo below.
I posted these photos on Instagram on December 4 when I was being observed in the kitchen by three judgy cats, Giuseppe, Mewsette and Mimi. Instead of getting the usual face-on photo I thought I’d get one that was from a more interesting angle. I did this by holding my camera below them and using the front-facing camera. I had a great laugh when I looked at the photos I’d gotten and decided to share them right away! And then I was a little concerned someone might think I’d fallen on the floor (and couldn’t get up), so I leaned forward and took one more.
I’m trying my best to catch up! I still have photos from November that I haven’t shared, and I overloaded my studio schedule this week and didn’t have the time to post. Well, I was having fun in the studio this week, that’s the truth. You’ll see it all soon.
~~~
From Instagram
November 18: Mimi told the neighbor’s cat something I can’t publish here when he came over to sample her catnip plant. He wisely stopped in his tracks and quickly considered his escape route. One afternoon last summer, when he wanted to come over to stalk birds at the bird feeders, she chased him all the way across the street into his own back yard and cornered him behind a lawn mower. She lived her young years primarily outdoors, raising kittens, and dealing with every unneutered cat in the neighborhood. She’s never too far away from that when she’s guarding her castle. Don’t mess with little Mimi cat!
November 18: Some days I’m not sure what to think. Guesses?
November 21: Supurrvisory staff is having a difficult time getting motivated on this cold and rainy Saturday morning.
November 25: Judgy Mariposa is not impressed with Sienna’s bedmaking performance.
November 25: Mr. Sunshine looks mildly annoyed at the little love scene behind him. I think I’m running out of space on my desk, and it’s time to quit for the moment.
From the back yard and beyond.
November 25: Oh, hai. I know you can’t see me because I am perfectly camouflaged. So I’m just going to saunter across your yard here, and I may decide to walk up the steps to your deck to eat that parsley too, now that the groundhog has gone into hibernation and doesn’t get all the good stuff before we get here.
November 21: Never pass up an opportunity to bloom, even if it’s a cold and rainy November day. Feverfew is always ready, cheerful and bright.
November 21: On a cold and rainy November day, enjoy a warm October sunset. I took so many photos of Autumn this year, and had so little time, I didn’t get a chance to share so many.
Burnished Sunset
Think this one’s going to be a painting. I recall these lines of poetry–I was shocked to find this welling of emotion happened to others…
from The Princess: Tears, Idle Tears
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more
I’ve been posting regularly on my photo website Today, but I really don’t have the time to share the photos here each day. The deer have been so inspiring, birds, squirrels, and all those autumn photos that I’ll never forget…if you’re interested, please click the link each day to go there and see what’s new! If I have a chance I’ll share photos.
From around this date in past years
Thinking About Fishes, 2020
Bella notices everything, so don’t think she doesn’t know there’s a Pisces medallion behind her ear. She’s aware of composition and hidden meanings, and I suspect she’s a Pisces like me, judging from her rescue timeline. But she was also a champ at the cat fishing game on my tablet, until I dunked it into the dishwater. Someday I’ll have to make that up to her, but in the meantime she is sending me a very clear and colorful message.
From Instagram
Morning watch.
. . . . . . .
Photos from around this date in previous years
Catching Some Sun, 2019
Basil was racing around the kitchen, excited because it was about to be breakfast, when he ran into a patch of sunlight and stopped. What is this stuff? It’s nice and warm! I think I’ll just stand here and cast an interesting shadow for a while…
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Photos from years past.
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How Formerly Feral Cats Enjoy Cold Weather, 2018
These three often get together to enjoy some CatTV. If they hadn’t been rescued, though, they wouldn’t be enjoying it through a window, they’d be out there. Not one of them has ever expressed an interest in getting the “real” experience. I enjoy watching them.
Before the tree fell down in 2016 it was in the background along with all its branches, and there was a lilac in front of the window that I let grow and kept trimmed so I could open the window, but it would still provide cover for the birds at this feeder. The birds avoided these feeders almost entirely for over a year, but finally they are showing up here again. Of course the bird populations on the feeder change every moment, and that’s part of the fun. Here is what they were watching.
From Facebook
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From previous years
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And Yet More Photos of Jack and Diane
At one point while they were doing their thing on the windowsill I just stood there and snapped figuring a few of the had to be good. Well more than a few of them were good, just because kittens are cute. They are at an angle that would make Jack appear larger, but really he’s growing so fast and is noticeably bigger than his sister. Their expressions and posture in the one above just make me smile! My caption was, “These two. Stick a fork in me, I’m done.”
After this the two of them settled themselves into the corner of the windowsill for some intensive birdwatching, but it’s clear Jack doesn’t take it quite as seriously as his sister.
Below, there is no better toy than a sibling’s tail. They were busy chasing each others’ tails on the windowsill. Jack told Diane, “You bite my tail, and I’m going to bite yours!”
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It’s the first day of spring and a gorgeous morning. Mimi waits by the door, keeping an eye on me over her shoulder so I don’t wander from the kitchen and forget the importance of getting outside before the busy part of the day begins. Read more and purchase.
Copyright
All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission, although links to your site are more than welcome and are shared. Please ask if you are interested in using and image or story in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of an image or a product including it, check my animal and nature website Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.
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