I Didn't Plan on This Post

This blog is supposedly written by an astronomer, and is supposedly in part about astronomy, but you wouldn’t know it recently without the verbiage around its Blogger frame.

A historically significant Galaxie.

I really am working on a couple of big posts about science and community colleges’ ways of wrenching it into relevance for our students. Multi-spectral views of the “grand design” spiral galaxy M74 are in the offing here in SherWords, for example, and in the works are guest blogs from electrifying explainers of modern Meteorology and Geology. Let’s hope that the latter guest appearances happen before global warming and/or earthquakes kill us all. (The astronomer is holding a major asteroid impact back as a trump card.)

But, meanwhile, Fort Harrington just insists on continuing to happen. And, particularly, its short, supposedly “dumb” denizens insist on being cute in ways that can’t be ignored, unless you can ignore a baseball bat applied to your nose.

You think being cute is a once-in-a-while thing? HAH. These critters work on it full time, and sometimes perversely. For example, the last post in this blog was a presumably unusually-cute picture of Emma. Yesterday, she just had to trump that with the prettiest picture ever taken of her, seriously:

Emma, January 2nd, 2008

And, the day before that (New Year’s Day), Guinness and the still-acclimating Finn McCool just had to practice their Hallmark audition:

Finn McCool and Guinness celebrate New Year's Day, 2008.

And, yesterday, even the chickens had to get into the “You just TRY to leave this out of your precious blog, pinky!” game, notably the remarkable Specks…

Speckles surveys the deck rail after the solstice.

… and Bratty, the Black Giant.

Bratty perseveres, kicking dirt to uncover worms, a month after the loss of her sister.

Bratty’s picture is both warm and heartbreaking to Diane and me. Pepper was her nearly identical sister, and (if you can believe it), Pepper’s eyes were even more startling in their warmth.

Detritus

Eye of Guinness.

Digital photography has its own extravagance, a profligacy, an excess of images born of exuberance that spins its own dust bunnies. While I’m working on a few more significant entries in this blog, I thought I’d grope around under my virtual couch and splash a few images up here that have languished at the tail-end of my Nikon’s memory chip for the last month or so. Nikon-bunnies, as it were or was or is.

Murk!

The above is a really, really bad picture of me. At the right side of the frame, you can trace out the arc of my left arm, in the left-center, you can see the black circle of my camera’s lens, in the upper-left you can sort of see my gray-headed, um, head.

… but, if you zoom out a little …

… you can see that it’s actually a pretty good picture of the Little Prince, the Magic One, the Guinness!

This is the season for…

… the holly…

… and the (English) ivy!

(Holly and Ivy are long-time and exuberant dominant ladies of Ft. Harrington’s front yard.)

And it’s the season for something that I wish everybody all the time anyway: peace on your earth, and good will to all your men and women and children, and thank you for visiting here, God bless you.

HAPPY- HAPPY to you all! (And joy-joy, too!)

The main man of the Fort, the Kelsey, the ferocious and the virtuous, naps. A lot.

And he wishes you the best for the holidays and the new year.

Guinness-the-Kitten

Oh... "hai," as they say.
Click on any image to see a larger, higher-resolution one.

More than ten years ago, I was active in campus "governance" (read: political) activity at DeAnza. In 1994 - 95 I was President of the faculty Senate (Diane has threatened -- no, promised -- to divorce me if I ever go back to that sort of thing, but that's another story.) During my time in the Senate, I grew to appreciate and enjoy the company of a Senator from the History Department who is a Burmese cat breeder by avocation.

At that time, our beloved, tiny Max (who was a non-show-quality tossoff from a breeder in Southern California) was little more than a kitten, and this History prof was one of the very few faculty members I could freely and happily talk to about this incredibly cute thing that my little cat did yesterday! The three of you who are cat people know what I mean by that; the other four may want to skip this blog entry entirely.

Yes, SherWords readership appears to be up to seven.

Anyway.

Whatcha got?

Fast forward a decade and more:

When Max died after his long battle with renal failure earlier this year, I told my colleague about it, just because she knew Max vicariously. Soon thereafter, a little miracle appeared in one of her litters: a sable (very dark-brown) tiny guy afflicted with pectus excavatum, or "flat-chested kitten defect." While severe at first (my friend said they weren't sure for several weeks whether he would survive or not), he grew out of it well, and the only continuing setback seems to have been that he was about a month behind his litter-mates in development -- but stayed just that far behind, as though he had just gotten a late start and then charged along at a normal pace. (Subsequent meticulous examination by the Ft. Harrington vet shows nothing of concern -- his heart and lungs have developed normally, and the only slight remaining manifestation is that his chest is a little flatter than a normal kitten's... which serves to make his little round Buddha-belly even more comical.)

I like this big ape's chair. A lot.

When she was sure that the little guy was going to survive -- and pretty sure that he would be a normal, healthy cat -- she gave Ft. Harrington a call. Clearly, she couldn't breed, show, or sell the kitten, but she wanted to place him someplace she felt comfortable with. She asked us to take him.

We had to think about it for a long time. Thirteen, maybe even fifteen seconds later, we said "yes." His name is "Guinness," because of his color and to continue the Irish theme of his orange mate-in-newness here at the Fort, Finn McCool.

Unlike Finn, Guinness had absolutely zero trouble melding in with the menagerie. His obvious baby-ness probably helped him a lot, even with the dogs, but the rapidity with which he became comfortable with everyone was just astounding. We did the same preps we did for Finn -- isolation, introducing the other animals one at a time after he felt comfortable in his room, etc. etc. -- but trashed that routine after about two days. There was no point; he was just confident and accepted by everyone within 48 hours.

Two days after Guinness arrived (left to right: Cooper, Guinness, Alnitak).

He took a quick, special affinity to the Maine Coons, Al and Cooper. Comical at first because of the crazy difference in size, it sort of makes sense in hindsight: he's a kitten, and those two huge, gentle, fluffy cats may have had (and continue to have) a mom-like attraction for him.

Al, Guinness, and Cooper.

He even tries to nurse them sometimes. When that happens, they just gently push him away, but not very far.

My, what big... oh, to hell with the teeth. Your mouth is bigger than my head!

Breakfast with the bookends (Alnitak, Guinness, Copernicus.)

Even Oolie, the Black Freighter, grudgingly thinks he's ok, maybe.


But his special friend is turning out to be Finn McCool. Finn is still young enough (at about 15 months, but nobody's really sure about that) that having somebody to play with in a kitten way is a fun thing -- and it's helping Finn's long adjustment.

Buddies in a cat tree.

Not that Finn is having a bad time -- he's not; it's just taken him a while. Finally figuring out that the 'Coons are too tough to be messed with probably helped a lot:

On my command... unleash heck!

... but we're still not particularly happy that he likes to ambush poor Jax:

Why doesn't that orange cat like me? Everybody likes me!

But, for now, Guinness and Finn are the best of buddies, and that's going to be good for...

... everybody.

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