Autumn Surprise

Yesterday I returned from my noontime swim to find all waiting on the kitchen for me to feed them Momma, Bootsy, Felix, Keeko Jr.--and a fuzzy widdle gray striped kitten! The kitten was trying to nurse off Momma, but Momma wasn't having any of it. The catlets, who Momma presented to us this spring, didn't quite know what to make of Junior and were keeping their distance. I managed to snap a few quick pictures before Junior hid between the storage chest and the exterior wall of the house.

Excited and intrigued by the appearance of this new kitten, I dialed up the husband and shared the news. Later during the late afternoon, the husband spied Junior out once again with Momma and the catlets, and he took some more photos to document that Momma was now more hospitable to the new arrival, thus making the relationship between the two more clear. Yup, Momma managed to get herself knocked up again after her spring brood was born. Good going, Momma. We'll start calling you Britney Spears.

The appearance of just one kitten is a bit of a puzzler, but I didn't want to linger on what might have happened to any other kittens. Of course, I need not have wondered to long, for before the husband and I went to bed, we looked out on the kitchen patio--and Momma's new brood had doubled in size. This second new arrival is a dark little thing--a blend of Felix's classic black cat and Calli, who was born in the spring of 2009--and was thus difficult to photograph at 8:45 p.m. at night.

(Yes, Gentle Reader, we're typically in bed by 9. Hey, I get up at 4 a.m. Do you seriously expect me to stay up all night?)

This morning, the newbies were out once again, following Momma happily and starting to get a feel for our yard and their siblings. The catlets are still trying to figure out what to do with the kittens, since they still have a lot of their pouncy kittenish playfulness. At one point this morning, the newbies were stalking each other around the tree, and Keeko Jr. was watching nearby. After a brief discussion of the new kittens' physical attributes, the husband and I have temporarily named the gray tabby Tank since it reminds me so much of Tank the Armadillo of Beanie Baby fame. The Felix-Calli cross we're thinking of dubbing either Smudge or Splotch since its calico markings are sort of smudged on its black coat or look like splotches on its black coat.

While having new kittens to watch grow up is mildly entertaining, I do honestly not look forward to having to tear the boy away from kitten gazing so that he can do his homework or help set the table or get to bed on time. Of course, two new kittens means two more mouths to feed for several months, and our band of moochers is really getting out of hand. I wonder if there's a way to slip all of them some sort of tranquilizer in the food so we can take them en masse to the vet to be relieved of their reproductive organs. Think we could qualify for some sort of group discount?

Happy Halloween!

It's not midnight yet, so I got this one posted in time!

Happy Halloween, Gentle Reader! If you're not bouncing off the walls from a sugar high or drunk off your ass, take a few moments to enjoy some images from Halloween 2009 at Chez Boeckman-Walker.

This year, the boy had not one, not two but three costumes. Here's the latest custom costume, courtesy Mum. The boy has a...frightening attachment to Anakin Skywalker and won't be persuaded away with it, no matter how many times his father and I remind him that Anakin's a real jerk and then becomes Darth Vader, who's really a jerk. Ah well.

Here the boy attempts to do his "angry Anakin" impression. Umm, okay. (Check out the "authentic" Jedi padawan rat tail--er, braid. The husband found it while cleaning out the Star Wars closet this summer, knowing it'd be right up the boy's alley come Halloween.)

I don't think Anakin was ever this smirky. But the boy is. The boy could have been the smirkiest Jedi ever. If, y'know, Jedi were real.

The boys once again carved pumpkins. Let me assure you, Gentle Reader, great thought and planning went into choosing a design for them. The boy, in fact, drew up several ideas at the end of September, when we acquired our gourds.

Perhaps that's why the boy was so...anxious about Daddy getting things just right.

In the end, the husband thought the duo sort of looked like Waldorf and Statler.

What do you think?

While the boys wielded knives, I wielded butter cream frosting and cakes made of swirled-together orange-colored and cocoa batter.

I was inspired to do this little bit of butter cream artistry by my dear friend and the world's greatest Spin instructor, who now is my dear friend, the world's greatest Spin instructor and entrepreneur. She's launched her own cupcake and doggie treat business, Sweet Treets (Web site forthcoming). Since we've swapped goodies over the years and the husband put together her logo, my dear friend shared some very yummy treats with us, and they put my own frosting work to shame:

Check out the logo!

For as much fun as we always have come trick-or-treat time, Halloween 2009 started with a pleasant surprise.

Calli has found her way home!

First Rory P. Calhoun and Keeko showed up on our kitchen porch on the first cool morning of the fall, and I can so count on them showing up anything the overnight temperature dips below 65 degrees that I've now set out three bowls so the boys and Momma don't fight. Now with Calli's return, I'll have to scrounge up a fourth bowl.

Momma needs to do a better job of finding homes for her offspring, methinks.

Well, check back tomorrow for pictures of the human residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker in their trick-or-treating attire. That is, if you're not in a sugar-overload diabetic coma, Gentle Reader.

Happy Halloween!

Homecoming

Fortunately, this homecoming has nothing whatsoever to do with getting mummed.

She looks thrilled to have been mummed, don't she?

No, this homecoming did not involve spending an ungodly amount of money on a tacky collection of cheap ribbon, silk floral, plastic gee-gaws, glitter and a hell of a lot of hot glue. The cost involved was very minor, and it came as quite a surprise on a chilly morning.

Look who made their way home!

If you're having a hard time discerning what's in that photograph--which would not be surprising, given that photographing anything through our filthy kitchen doors is impossible, especially at the butt-crack of dawn--shown above, the gray blurs are, respectively, Keeko (aka Tweedle Dee), Momma and Rory Calhoun (aka Tweedle Do).

That's right, Gentle Reader. Two of Momma's three kittens have found their way home after she took pains, I'm sure, to lead them away to new homes where they could freeload off another fam--er, I mean, fend for themselves. No sign of Calli, but that's not surprising. The Tweedle twins were the ones who stuck to Momma like glue, and since I believe they're both boys, it kind of makes sense that they'd find their way back to the place where they could always count on a meal.

Gads, I'm such a sap for cats. Because you know already, Gentle Reader, that I gushed with joy when I spied them out the window. And I rushed to put out more food for them--because Momma was not happy that some of her brood were back and now threatening to diminish the booty she guilts out of me every morning and every evening.

With the weather turning cooler and damp, it is nice to have a reminder of the warmer (not the blazing hot) days of the summer that just passed. Plus it's nice to see the kids all grown up, although they do still have a lot of their kitteny skittishness and catlet independence streak. I do wonder if Momma will try to ditch--er, lead them away again to new homes, or will she just hiss and spit and spat at 'em until they get the hint and go away.

Ehh, they're male. They won't get the hint.

Aha! I Was Right!

From the brilliant minds at the University of Sussex, via LiveScience.com:

Cats Do Control Humans, Study Finds

If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat.

Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings.

This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed. The study showed that humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore.

'The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response,' said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex. 'Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom.'

They Know Us
Previous research has shown similarities between cat cries and human infant cries.

McComb suggests that the purr-cry may subtly take advantage of humans' sensitivity to cries they associate with nurturing offspring. Also, including the cry within the purr could make the sound 'less harmonic and thus more difficult to habituate to,' she said.

McComb got the idea for the study from her experience with her own cat, who would consistently wake her up in the mornings with a very insistent purr. After speaking with other cat owners, she learned that some of their cats also made the same type of call. As a scientist who studies vocal communication in mammals, she decided to investigate the manipulative meow.

Tough to Test
Setting up the experiments wasn't easy. While the felines used purr-cries around their familiar owners, they were not eager to make the same cries in front of strangers. So McComb and her team trained cat owners to record their pets' cries--capturing the sounds made by cats when they were seeking food and when they were not. In all, the team collected recordings from 10 different cats.

The researchers then played the cries back for 50 human participants, not all of whom owned cats. They found that humans, even if they had never had a cat themselves, judged the purrs recorded while cats were actively seeking food--the purrs with an embedded, high-pitched cry--as more urgent and less pleasant than those made in other contexts.

When the team resynthesised the recorded purrs to remove the embedded cry, leaving all else unchanged, the human subjects' urgency ratings for those calls decreased significantly.

McComb said she thinks this cry occurs at a low level in cats' normal purring, "but we think that cats learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans." In fact, not all cats use this form of purring at all, she said, noting that it seems to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners rather than those living in large households, where their purrs might be overlooked.

The results were published in the July 14 issue of the journal Current Biology.

I swear, Gentle Reader, Dr. McComb should have recruited Parmer Dude for her study. That fat, hairy bastard makes that annoying, hard-to-ignore plaintive wail of a meow 10 to 15 minutes after we've gone to bed. He isn't crying because the little moron is hungry. No, the dain-bramaged furball, I swear to you, is wailing because he's lost in the dark. Yes, Gentle Reader, you read that right. He's lost. Even though he's lived in this house for seven years, I swear to you once we turn out the lights, he can't find his way from the kitchen to our bedroom. The only way to shut him up is to call to him so he can follow the sound of our voices.

God love the fat, hairy, noisy, dain-bramaged bastard....

Despite the girth and the noise and the bulimia and the shedding and the smell and the gum funk he leaves behind on certain wall corners and his penchant for taking up half the couch when he's inclined to join us on it and the poor vision and the brain damage, I probably wouldn't trade him for the world.

Another Installment of Random Kitteny Goodness

I realize it's been a while since I showed off the kittens. To be honest, they haven't been around much this month. With the reroofing and fence reconstruction going on next door, the heat and their kitteny need to explore, they've been scarce. But when they're here, they're still adorable as hell!

Of course, all this adoration of the kittens has my own feline children rather jealous. They ganged up on me the other day and demanded I post some pictures of them. I told them to do something adorable en masse, and I'd happily satisfy their demand.

So they finally did it. Friday night, the husband and I opted to do some bike maintenance. In our living room. Hey, if you've got concrete floors and some old linens, you can do it too, Gentle Reader! Furthermore, the living room was the most feasible place to do it since the garage was sweltering (a heat index of 110 degrees F makes for a roasty-toasty garage) and the kitchen isn't spacious enough.

Anywho, the presence of my bike, with all its outdoor smells and grime, was a major feline attraction.

They think they're so helpful!

Bucket seemed really keen about the tires. Maybe he's got a rubber fetish? Of course, after he thoroughly sniffed them over, the indoor member of the Nickel family proceeded to try to bite my front tire.

Perhaps Bucket wants to make sure I remember how to replace an inner tube by puncturing the one I have.

By the way, my school bus-yellow bike after a wipe-down with some degreaser is now canary yellow. Who knew? To be honest, I preferred the dirty school bus yellow.

Maxin' and Relaxin', Feline Style

With the passing of Memorial Day 2009, summer is here. Momma and the kittens show us all how to pass the dog days in cool cat style.

Yet More Kitteny Goodness

Here are some shot of the little ones from earlier in the week. Too bad, Gentle Reader, you can't be here to enjoy their frolicking. It truly is a great way to pass the time.

Usually these two are attacking each other in the oleander. They're taking a break. Being adorable is hard work, after all.

Chow time!

Camping out on the storage chest, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Do rough it without Momma and Calli.

Just ridiculously adorable, aren't they!

Random Kitteny Goodness

Enjoy a few snaps of Rory Calhoun--or Keeko, take your pic, Gentle Reader--that I took on Friday as he--she?--played in the late morning sunshine.






Aren't kittens just the best source of random stimuli in the world!

We Have Kittens!

This blog sort of got its start with Momma's kittens, who came to be called Sambar, Rasam and Idlihead. Sadly, they all disappeared--hopefully finding better homes--before the Central Texas heat finally dissipated last fall. Then as things began to green up in February, Momma started putting on weight, then one rainy day she was on our porch yowling her little head off, then appeared a little less heavy and, in the past two weeks, has looked down right emaciated. Given her dramatic weight loss recently, I thought perhaps she was no longer nursing and had maybe even picked up a parasite.

While I still am concerned about Momma, she did bring us a gift of trust this morning: kittens!

Yes, Chez Boeckman-Walker has once again been graced with the appearance of Momma's latest batch of kittens. And they are oh so adorable and rolly polly and playful and curious and pouncy and bouncy and Tigger-ish!

Now before you start lecturing me, Gentle Reader, on the irresponsibility of letting Momma just breed at will and letting her bring more "unwanted" kittens into the world, let me tell you this: I've been feeding Momma for more than a year now, and the closest she has ever let me get to her is maybe a foot and a half. Someone did something to her that traumatized her, and it's only been through a lot of patience and quiet, gentle movement that I've been able to get Momma to understand I'm no threat. Once she ran and hid whenever I came out to give her food. Now she only hovers a few feet away, waiting patiently for me to go back inside and lock the door. (Yes, she knows the sound of the lock because if she hears it but doesn't see me, she runs away and hides.)

Given these circumstances, there's been no way for me to nab her to take her to a vet to be fixed. And if you rant about getting a humane trap, Gentle Reader, I'll find a humane trap for you.

Okay, so now that we have that rant out of the way, how about some kitten photos!

From back to front, we have Calli (not the most original name for a calico, I grant you that), Rory Calhoun and Keeko. The boy named the last one, and I say to you now, Gentle Reader, since two of them look practically the same--a problem we had with Sambar and Rasam--Rory and Keeko will probably be interchangeable.


And here's how Rory Calhoun earned his (probably will be a her) name. Standing upright, like a little Rory Calhoun! That one's got talent!

UPDATE
When I returned home from my morning adventures around 11, our little family was where I'd left them this morning--and the exact same place where I saw Momma's kittens last year. I grabbed the camera and took some more photos because the lighting was better, although the fiberglass window screening does give the photos a bit of a '70s-style softness. Enjoy!

And You Thought the Snuggie Was Silly

I can't tell you how many times I've been subjected to the commercial for the Snuggie, the blanket with sleeves so you can veg on the couch and never disturb your blanket placement to do such pesky things as use the TV remote, answer the phone or feed your face. It's on all the damn time when I'm on the treadmill, especially so when I'm running my 10 miles at the gym on Saturdays.

Is it just me, or does this ridiculous thing remind you of that robe Exedor wore on Mork and Mindy?

See what I mean?

Well, as utterly absurd as the Snuggie is, I've found something that tops it in terms of sheer absurdity. Gentle Reader, I present to you...leg warmers!
If you find yourself pondering making yourself or someone you love (or really, really loathe) a pair of these ridiculous things, I have a bit of advice for you:

Get a cat!

I escaped from beneath this feline pile-on for fear that (a) my legs would be forever crushed and (b) I'd sweat to death despite the near-freezing temperatures outside. Trust me, you won't need leg warmers ever if you get yourself a cat or three and experience temperatures below, say, 50 degrees.

And I Thought I Wasted My Time....

But for a sickie like me (my throat's killing me, I'm running a fever and my whole body aches), this is some funny stuff:

See more cats who are well-versed in Palin-ese at icanhascheezburger.com
.

Attack of the Kitchen Toys

Chez Boeckman-Walker is a very toy-filled house. That's appropriate considering we came to own notre maison to accommodate the husband's vast collection of Star Wars action figures, vehicles, accessories and other detritus. The boy has picked up on his collecting bug (plague is more like it), but we're trying our best to keep it in check. Moi, I don't have tools or technology--I have toys too.

And yesterday, I got some news ones for ma cuisine and for the Star Wars room/study where I work (work to earn money, that is, not to stay in shape or provide fodder for this blog).

Falling into the category of "Christopher Kimball told me to buy this" is the new 8-inch chef's knife.


Per the Cook's Illustrated equipment review, I acquired a Forschner (Victorinox) Fibrox and I can most definitely see why it was so well received at America's Test Kitchen. Phallic imagery aside, I certainly feel...empowered wielding this thing because, well, it fits so nicely in my hand and it does its job efficiently and quickly.


It lets me do the job of slicing, dicing, etc. efficiently and quickly. If you spend any amount of time in the kitchen preparing meals that don't requiring simply adding water or unsealing and nuking, then get yourself one of these babies. It's a solid investment.

My second toy was.... Well, I don't quite know how to explain this, but I found myself obsessed with mortars and pestles. I've read over and over and over again how they're practically the center of an Indian kitchen, and I realized that without one, all the seeds and pods I've acquired for various Indian recipes are just going to go to waste. While I doubt I'll ever go so far as to make my own garam masala and freshly ground cumin and other spices for which a mortar and pestle are essential, I'm thrilled to have one.


If you're ever in the market for an M&P (as I saw them oh so cleverly referred to as on a number of sites), don't get lost in all the rave reviews for the lava rock-like ones from Mexico or the "ultimate" Thai ones. Unless you're a foodie (you know, a food snob--one who's all about about image and having the "right" stuff), you don't need to go to the expensive--and they are expensive, probably because those foodies are tripping over themselves to acquire them and driving up the price and because, well, the damn things are heavy. I myself was torn between the Cordon Bleu model and a high school chemistry class-worthy model for about half the price. I opted for the Cordon Blue model because it was larger (I think--can't say that I took the time to do the math to figure out the exact size of the science class model) and because adding it to the chef's knife order at Amazon scored me free shipping. With the shipping free, I practically got the mortar and pestle free. Woohoo!

Supper, Fast and Easy
I was quite busy yesterday editing drug monographs then scanning and packaging those scans into a PDF to upload for the coders in Delhi, and that little activity required four or five computer restarts and, eventually, the installation of Adobe Creative Suite (or Adobe Creative Sweet! if you want to be geeky). I'd picked up the boy from daycare on my way back from yet another HPB visit so that the husband could go directly from work to the gym to claim his license (yes, it wasn't lost after all, just forgotten Saturday morning in the gym's kids' care center), so I was a little hard-pressed for time and attention to make a grand feast.

And when you're hard-pressed for time and attention, you make a quick and easy chicken stir fry using heat-and-eat low-fat, low-sodium chicken breasts (sweet chili flavored), a bag of sugar snap pea veggie mix for stir fry and the sauce/glaze from a quickie stir fry recipe. Oh, and you also throw in a pot of bowling water two bags of 10-minute brown rice.


Looks pretty tasty, non? And I didn't even break a sweat for this one, which was a nice change of pace.

The sweet chili chicken breasts added a nice kick to the stir fry because that recipe is totally lacking in flavor if prepared as directed. May the FSM bless HEB for its quality quick-serve products!


As wonderful as this meal looks plated, it wasn't a total hit with the fam. The boy--being the boy that he is--outright refused to eat any mushrooms that might have been served unto him. Getting him to eat the few sugar snap peas he did eat took quite a bit of coaxing, and he took forever to eat the carrots.

Then again, his sluggish ingestion pace was largely due to our choice of dining entertainment. While at HPB, I found the Voyagers! complete series on DVD. I have fond memories of this show, which aired when I was in the first grade, and oddly enough, I'd been thinking about it just that morning on my way home from the gym. Imagine my surprise and delight to see the boxed set on the shelf. And the clerk who rang up my purchase shared with me how much he'd loved the show as a kid. That's the nice thing about HPB: You don't get the pretentious, snooty unemployable Lit Ph.D. grads that you often encounter at other book stores. Or at least if they are Lit Ph.D. grads, they don't feel the need to show off their education.

Les Chats Dans la Cuisine
If you haven't picked up on it yet, Gentle Reader, I'm a crazy cat lady. I can't help myself--although the husband strongly wishes I would, even though he has a bit of crazy cat lady in him. (And no, that wasn't a sexually slanted line.) Since the kitchen is one of "my" rooms in the house, my three feline kids tend to spend a lot of time there. Okay, they spend a lot of time there because they think they're going to get more food. Especially Parmer (aka, Parmer Lane, Mr. P, Parmer Dude, P. Dude--yes, he's vying with P. Diddy/Puff Daddy/Diddy/Puffy/StayPuft for most names assumed in a lifetime), whose poor damaged brain must not be able to send or process hunger signals properly because he's always meeping (Parmer meeps; he doesn't meow) for more food, sometimes within minutes of eating. Since he can't control his appetite, Parmer's.... Well, Parmer's my big boy.


Last night, Parmer decided he wanted to help me with the dishes. Or thought he might be able to find scraps in the dishwasher. Or decided the open dishwasher door's plastic was cooler on his enormous belly than the ceramic tile floor. Or--well hell, I don't really know what motivates Parmer to do anything that doesn't directly involve food. But here's Parmer making his blog debut at last.

(And no, please don't contact me to rant about how unsanitary cats in kitchens and cats sitting on kitchen appliance doors are. I really, really don't care. Humans are far too clean for their own good, and, hell, I've cleaned up enough feline bodily fluids and byproducts and enough human bodily fluids and byproducts that nothing bothers me. The residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker are all in damn fine health. Except for Parmer, and he'll tell you his problem is glandular.)

Of course, Parmer wasn't the only cat in my kitchen. The husband got creative while waiting for me to finish up scanning, uploading, emailing and everything else I had to do to send off my first batch of edited monographs.


I really think this is an expression of how the husband feels at times. He would be Bats. Me, I'm Catwoman (heh, doesn't the husband wish!) with my brood of cats.


If you'll look closely, you'll notice Bats is smirking. 'cuz that's what he does. He's not going to show you that in some way he's enjoying the torture, but he is. The husband...well, he's not going to fully admit that he's enjoying the torture of me and my horde, but he is. Or else he gets the whip!