Kitten Wars: Of Night Humans and Morning Cats …. 9/14/14

This morning I learned the difference between the Night Human and the Morning Cat. I went to bed sometime after midnight or closer to one after napping on the couch a bit. Teeny does not usually bother me on the couch other than to lay within hand’s reach for the occasional pet and scritch. However, when I went to bed well, that’s another matter. You see, my grande dame considers my bed hers. Actually I believe the bed is split into sections. The dog has the foot of it. Cleo sleeps under it. Teeny has the top when she deigns to sleep there.

But last night, I did the unthinkable. I put away all kitty food. That meant NO early morning snacking for the cats. Oh, wow, that was not the answer on the morning that I wanted to sleep in. At 4 or 5 Teeny decided to tell me all about it through and intense drum session in the litter box. Calling her name forcefully was not nearly threatening enough to get her to stop. I had to get up, out of my warm nest of blankets, and stand in a relatively cold room before she raced out. We went through a few of these over the next hour before the sleepy human realized that she could lock the cat out of the room. Well, that was not a kosher idea according to the cat.

She just started soft paw clawing at the door once she realized that the door to her domain was shut! So I reached around my door and blocked her stretching post (door frame) with the laundry basket. Unable to make the wond’rous sounds that she knows drives me nuts, she started her soft purr-meow which got Cleo to come out from under the bed to then soft paw the door from the inside. I think by this time it was close to 7 AM. I gave up and opened the door for the cats. They left the room and began playing somewhere else. Thank goodness Cleo distracted Teeny!

Kitten Wars the Musical Edition 8/28/14

It would seem that I have a VERY musical cat. Teeny enjoys what can only be described as Percussion instruments in the Oh dark thirty realm of night.Sometime between 3-5 AM she has taken up the art of the litter box scratch. Now during the day, she is very silent with this one, but in the wee hours of the morning, must be her performance time. Not the normal scratch and run is she. Oh, no. Teeny must scratch the walls as loudly as possible, making the sound echo not only in the box where she is but also in the bathroom. When shooed out of it, she waits, then comes back about a minute later. But, I have developed a way to alleviate this a bit. Each night she is no longer allowed in the bedroom. Her litter box is placed outside the room as well with a crate blocking my door so she can’t scratch it instead. Fortunately for me, she has not added the Climb and Scratch technique to her percussive talents.

New Year, New Students, Fresh Start

Each school year I create a “mega” bulletin board that guides the theme for the year. I’ve done paper rainforests, waterfalls, and jungles. Sometimes I choose a science topic that the kids will be studying. The 2013-2014 school year found me doing Space Exploration. I’m guessing that I was quite the strange one at my latest school because people would drop by just to see how far along I was with that bulletin board. Once I finished it, I had a couple of teachers asking if I did murals for side money. I don’t. I make my murals just for the kids. If I did it for money, it would cease to be fun.

At the end of last year, when I was taking down my bulletin board, I was approached by a few colleagues who asked me what I planned on doing with my star burst bulletin board as I was rolling it up and putting it into the trash. They were dismayed that I had spent a few days painting it only to throw it away at the end of the year. I think one of them actually took it out of the trash and carted it away later, but I can’t prove that one. I only know that it developed legs of its own before the custodians came around to pick up the mounds of end of the year trash.

Of course, the follow-up question was, “Well if you’re throwing that one away, what do you plan on doing next year?”

Not giving it much thought, I said, “I think I’ll do something like ‘Starry Night'”. I know better than to answer questions off the cuff like that. It always sets me up for something later on!

At this point, I need to inform you that I have no formal art training. Matter of fact the last art class I took was in fifth grade which was back before Star Wars came out. So, I was being a bit facetious in my reply, to say the least. I do not consider myself an artist, but rather a dabbler. Well, my colleague took me at face value and was fairly excited that I was going to go for it.

I had all summer to think about it, forget about it, and come back around to it. For some reason, the idea just wouldn’t leave me alone. If I wasn’t thinking about that painting, I was hearing Don McLean in my head with his version. Something somewhere was trying to tell me to try it!

So, here’s a picture of the bulletin board that I made for the 2014-2015 school year. I used navy blue bulletin board paper and acrylic paint. I did not overhead project it. I even went so far as to intentionally leave elements out. This is my impression of the picture only, but boy did I have fun painting it over the last few days 🙂 I’ve had lots of people dropping by just to see where I was with it. I’ve had people sharing stories about when they first saw the original, when they went overseas to the various museums, or when they listened to …. Don McLean.