Ten Years in a Box

I have books!  The majority of my books have spent the last ten years in boxes.  They are now free, proudly displayed on my lovely mission style bookshelves.  Unpacking the books was a process of rediscovery, each book a treasure and a clue to who I am.   Step by step, I am reclaiming myself and building a new, unrepressed life.

Penny in Seguin
October 2005

It must be difficult to be the actual Center of the Universe and not make it to a single ring, not win a single rosette. For pictures of my "traumatized" kitten, we thank Julie Mosley, who got the shots of the nervous kitty on her cell-phone. (Yes, I left the Nikon at home--I figured that with showing 2 HHPK and Kuma by myself, I had enough to do. I am spoiled.)

Kuma got a rosette.

Kenny got 10 rosettes.

Pima la Femme Barbe'e got 11 rosettes (including the Becknell award).

Penny got...well, Penny got all the OTHER attention.

She served as a perfect example of a non-rufoused brown spotted tabby. Many people think rufoused means "red," and while it does indeed mean a reddening, it is not just red. As Libbie Kerr once explained, picture a bottle of yellow food coloring. In the bottle, in high concentration, it appears red. When diluted, it's yellow; rufousing is all those rich buttery colors and apricot and red. So Penny was more than able to hold her cool-colored self up to rufoused kitties for the comparison. She is truly one cool kitty. I mean, people asked me if she was a (tarnished) silver.

She's cool in other ways, too. We walked around the show hall and she took it all in. When I stopped talking to chat, she would get impatient with me. As I left a group to walk with her as she began to squirm, I confessed, "She's a bit spoiled."

Mark guffawed. "What? You?!? Spoil a cat? Noooo!"

Hmmm...maybe I need to try some tough love to get Kuma out of turtle mode. Maybe I do coddle them a bit. But Penny plays Airplane-Kitty, too. Zip, zip through the air, never knowing which way we'll twist her next.

Penny's a tiny bit famous now since her mom can't seem to stop writing about her, so many people were thrilled to meet the little princess they had read about. Since we'll be doing the photography for the TIFS Deer Park show (my first professional cat gig--all I've dealt with before are rock bands in California), I hired Jesse to agent our cats.

"Which cats?" he asked.

I pointed, "Kuma, Pima, and," I whipped her limp form out for dramatic effect, "Penny."

I can't even type the cacophony of disbelief that came from the circle of my dear friends at that announcement. I believe it was Mark, Jesse's dad, who quipped, "For that honor, YOU should pay HER."

I don't know. I'm thinking maybe showing the Center of the Universe will not be a walk in the park.