Mike's birthday

We went down to London today for Larry’s brother Michael’s 60th birthday. Michael has nice friends. They’re Londoners.

So am I. I didn’t realize it until now but I think I’ve always been in Londoner denial. Londoners are so conservative, plain, ordinary. Surrounding London is farm land. London is called the forest city. Because it has plenty of trees. What makes London and Londoners so plain and ordinary?

But Michael’s friends are nice. Maybe being a Londoner isn't such a bad way to be.

Last winter Larry’s brother moved from South London to the Pond Mills area.

As a child, Pond Mills held a mystique for me. I think it’s because for some reason all my teachers through grade school were always talking about Pond Mills. They just couldn’t get enough of talking about the particular geological feature of London that was the ponds of Pond Mills.

Readying to get off the 401 we needed to call ahead to get directions because, even though we’d already been there a few times, we still weren’t sure how to get to Mike’s new place.

Eli was on his cell phone calling ahead. He was describing to Michael where we were. He was looking at the street sign and telling Mike we were on Port Mills. I wanted to scream, you idiot, it’s not Port Mills, it’s Pond Mills!

I think only a Londoner would get so upset, even if it was just inside my head, at this minor little word misreading.

Later in the day, near the end of Jacob taking Larry and me on a walk through a swampy forest area with these cute little wooden walking bridges behind Mike’s and the other people in his subdivision’s houses, an elderly lady called to us from the backyard of one of the houses. Because she could see that Larry was tall and she wanted him to help her get a bird that was stuck in her eaves trough out. You’d never believe; this poor bird had its head stuck in her eaves trough. It was a sparrow.

The lady had one of those square shaped clothes lines with the pole in the middle holding it up going neatly into plain white concrete patio. She had noticed the bird when she was taking her laundry down. But there wasn't any evidence of her laundry having ever been there anymore: like a laundry hamper with white bed sheets folded neatly in it. When I was a little girl growing up in London in another subdivision our square shaped clothes line didn’t go into patio concrete. It just went into regular ground with grass growing out of it.

She brought out this kind of a step ladder I’d never seen before that was shorter than a usual step ladder and with a wheel on one side for Larry to use to get at the bird. Maybe you would call it a half step ladder. But once it was set up for climbing on, the wheel part was no longer functional so you didn’t have to worry Larry was going to roll away.

I was holding the ladder steady anyway, Larry on the top step, but just for the regular reason of holding any ladder steady for the person climbing it. Larry was struggling getting the bird’s head out. He would tug on the bird’s body and the bird would make this loud squawking sound that sounded like what the bird meant by it was, please don’t rip my head off my body.

The lady was saying maybe Larry needed a taller ladder and I was saying the same, because with the short step ladder Larry had to reach up to help the bird and maybe if he got higher he could see better how to get the bird out.

She brought out another step ladder, a regular one, that was taller and without the wheel. Both of them were silver metal.

But then Larry got the bird out without needing to switch ladders. It flew away to a bush at the lady’s neighbour’s house next door. Larry said what he realized was that where the roof met the eaves trough wasn’t firm. So he pulled the eaves trough down and pulled the roof up which allowed the bird to get its head out.

Jacob walked over to where the bird had flown to in the bush and it flew away some more. Larry said the softness of the bird’s feathers felt just like fur, like the soft pet fur of our two new pet kittens which surprised him. He didn’t know bird feathers were going to feel like that.

More

Some names for Lilu: Goth girl, Cleopatra, the bearded lady, lovely Lilu. Lilu comes when you call her. Iggy comes too when Lilu does. They start sitting on the couch in the living room and race each other to the cat carrier in our bedroom at the back of the house then fight over whose territory it is. Then climb up the cat scratch post to the window sill and to the spot on the top of the box I put the blanket on, on the top of the dresser. They look outside at birds and whatever is out there. They jump down and chase each other around the house more.

Their feet running together sound like horses galloping, very small horses.

They wake us up.

Different kinds of cats

There's scardy cats, 'fraidy cats; there's hidy cats. Larry says he's been a hidy cat. So have I. When he first got here Iggy was quite the scardy cat. Lilu approached new territory at a pace that better matched her ability to cope with the new environment. Iggy would stalk it, meet it head-on, discover suddenly his fear, then run away.

Iggy is clownish pressing his needs forward then finding himself embarrassed by human lectures about claws and biting. Lilu is discreet, catches on quickly, and hence is even more embarrassed when things, like artificial prey, get away from her. Because of her superiority she has more appearances to keep up than Iggy. More readily she must disguise motives that have been thwarted.

But none of this is quite what Larry meant by being a hidy cat.

Cow kittens

Iggy, the boy cat is getting big. His fur is very fluffy. Lilu, the girl cat is much smaller. Our old cat Quari was my cat first. Then I moved her in to Larry's before I moved in myself. Quari liked Larry but he never fully warmed up to her.

When Jacob was born Quari would lay across the bed over top of him when he was a sleeping baby. She let him take all the attention away from her. But he never warmed up to her either. I was always Quari's best and first person and was always happy about that.

These kittens move around. Lilu likes to sleep on Jacob's bed. Iggy loves to get on Larry's chest when he watching TV and butt his nose in his face.

Quari used to talk a lot. I talked a lot to her. I talk to these kittens too but they are very quiet. Their voices are small. They make funny trilling sounds sometimes; Iggy more. They gallop through the house together. They play with squeaky toys we got them - a bird, a fish and a mouse.

They like the bathtub plug. They take the plug from the bathtub and leave it in our bed.