8 posts tagged “cats”

Let me explain what I mean.

First of all, my family has started preparing the house in order to make it more saleable when they move out to Seattle in a couple of years.  (Yes, there's that much to do.  It's a 100-plus-year-old house and the kitchen still looks like it's 1973.)  This means that there is a considerable amount of stuff that's no longer going to be needed, which probably means that there's going to be a fairly big garage sale at some point this summer.

Second, I have plans for re-arranging the furniture in my room that involves replacing my desk with a smaller one, getting rid of the long-dead Windows 95 computer that's been collecting dust for over a year now, and moving some things around.  In a roundabout way, that means I'm going to have to get rid of a lot of my own stuff, which I don't really mind, because what with all of the packing boxes from my dorm room I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with the sheer amount of stuff in here.  However, it also means having to be brutal with myself as to what things I can keep.

The biggest thing, however, is that due to a combination of both of the above circumstances, I have to start clearing out my cat closet.

For those of you who don't understand the significance of this, let me explain.  Sometime in late elementary school or junior high, at the peak of my Cats obsession, I started collecting all of the cat paraphernalia I could lay my hands on and displaying it in my walk-in closet.  This meant stuffed animals, magazine photos, figurines, clothing, books, and many odder things.  It wasn't limited to domestic cats, either; I included wild cats of all types.

Eventually, this escalated to a walk-in closet that couldn't really be walked into, considering that I'd moved my lion, tiger and leopard displays to the floor.  One shelf contained all of my stuffed domestic cats, another contained all of my domestic cat figurines, and a third displayed a scale model of the Cats set (which once contained Beanie Babies standing in for characters until I switched to paper cutouts.  I'm very proud of this).  A bookshelf that had been moved into the closet contained all of my cat-related literature, as well as most of the cat-related household objects (saltshakers, statuettes, notebooks, etc.), and was topped with the other crown of my collection, my ragtag temple to the cat goddess Bastet.  (This was purely for decorational purposes; I don't actually follow Egyptian polytheism.)  The walls, including the ceiling were covered entirely in pictures of cats, except for the space where I had stuck up black construction paper to simulate the sky for the stage set.  On the clothing rack were cat- and animal-print clothing, as well as costume pieces for a long-abandoned Cats production; more of these supplies were in plastic crates under the shelves.

I don't think I'm bragging when I say this collection was staggering.  I say "was" because over this past Christmas break, I came to the unhappy realization that since we had begun the preparations for our eventual move out of the house, I would have to start bagging up my cat things. 

The bagging process itself was relatively painless.  I sorted my things into the most sentimental or the prettiest, which I would probably keep in some setting or other; the rest I put in plastic crates or garbage bags.  One crate was set aside for things like Beanie Babies and other collectibles that I might be able to make some money from.  I left up the Cats set, most of the better costume pieces, the Bastet temple, the "wallpaper", and my shelf of books, the latter because I ran out of time to sort.

Now, however, I'm faced with both the process of actually getting rid of the things I sorted and the prospect of having to take down all of the pictures from the walls.  This is particularly painful because in an indirect way, taking down the pictures will eventually lead to having to dismantle my Cats set.  Process:

1) I take down all of my thousands of pictures, keeping my favorites.  (This will take a while.)

2) The paint underneath doesn't match the paint in the rest of my room, since it was covered when I was redecorating.  I must paint the closet to match.

3) In order to paint, I also have to take down the black paper that serves as the sky for the set.

4) The set looks sloppy and incomplete without the sky, and I can't put it back up because it will ruin the new paint.  I must take down the set.

This stuff has been with me for about eight years now, maybe more; I can't remember exactly when it started.  I really don't know how to deal with all of this.

Gypsy died last night.

I can't say it was a shock, since she's been failing for a while.

I do wish, though, that when I was home in November, I'd known that this was going to happen.  By the time I was home again only a few weeks later, she already wasn't the same cat; she'd lost a considerable amount of weight and wasn't as snuggly anymore.  I never got to say goodbye to the Gypsy I loved most.

My_Cat_Likes_to_Hide_in_Boxes_by_jagyularr

So, I got the urge earlier today to watch Cats, so I took the opportunity to watch it tonight.  I'm just finishing it now (Ken Page is rounding out the second act with "The Ad-Dressing of Cats; incidentally, I still find it hilarious that he voices Oogie Boogie when I first knew him as a lovable, patriarchal cat).  And I have to say, even if I was a freaky little whatsit, I really miss the junior high days when I watched this every day and danced to it.

Number one, I don't have the time to do that anymore.  Number two, there is no room in this dorm room to dance.  And number three, I feel like with every day that passes I am losing my familiarity with this show.

Don't get me wrong, I still know all of the songs by heart and could sing them in my sleep, and Boo Boo and I will still occasionally bust out "Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer" or "Macavity" and do them exactly right, but I guess I'm kind of wondering what happened.

I have these two massive plastic storage boxes in my cat closet (which, incidentally, I'm actually thinking of consolidating.  If you know anything about my cat closet and my devotion to it for many years, you know that's a huge, huge deal) full of costume supplies that I once planned to use for a second try at a full-scale production.  Obviously, that didn't happen (I've had most of those supplies for 4 years or more), but I'm loath to get rid of them, partly because I'm such a packrat and I still think I'd be able to use a lot of it for costumes of my own, and partly because there is a small part of my brain that feels like giving up all of that admittedly useless shit would be like giving up a huge part of my childhood. 

And maybe, in a way, it would.  Cats was what really got me into theatre in a big way, and the fact that I spent so much of my time in junior high working on my website and writing bad fanfiction really got me into those things, too (websites and writing, that is).  But those things are a part of me now.  Am I so afraid to let go of some of the things that got me here?

None of this would be a big deal for anyone else.

Show us the very last picture you took. No cheating!

DSCF3805

 This also happens to be my current Facebook profile picture.

This is what I will look like tomorrow evening at the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis.

Yes, I am going to see Cats, and yes, I dress up to see this show.

1) I've realized that I have a lot more fun blogging now that I'm on Vox, and I think I know why.  When I first started blogging and I had a Xanga, there were a bunch of people I knew on Xanga who actually read what I wrote, so I felt like I had to update every couple of days even if I had nothing to say, so it felt forced.  And then, of course, when I was on Myspace, I had a slightly nicer style of writing, but only actually posted when I was either really excited, really depressed or really pissed, so there wasn't a whole lot of variety.  

Now I'm writing purely for my own purposes; even though people do occasionally read this stuff, I'm not doing it for them, so I don't feel bad if I go a little while without posting.  Plus, I can write about whatever the hell I want to, rather than it having to be a journal or something.

2) I've also realized that, although I'm still an avid Cats fan, I've been absent from the fandom for months and months.  I haven't updated my website in over a year and haven't even touched it since the fall.  I've abandoned my fanfiction, and the forum I used to frequent hasn't been typed into my address bar since maybe December.  What has happened to me?

3) Now, a little bit of a rant.

Years ago (and I mean years ago, like maybe twelve years) when Janna and I were little and we went to Wales, we discovered these great little toys called "In My Pocket".  As you might suspect, I was most attached to the "Kitty In My Pocket" toys, but there was also "Puppy", "Pony", "Bunny", and some miscellaneous zoo animals.

Each Kitty came with its own little identification card, which specified their breed (Birman, Korat, Persian, etc.) and temperament and told a little story.  What's more, these cats actually looked like cats.  Observe:

Mnkiplot01

I still own every single one of the Pocket toys that I bought while in Wales, which amounts to thirty or forty little cats, and I know there is still a considerable number that I don't have.  Now those, ladies and  gentlemen, are collectibles.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I was at Wal-Mart and noticed a box on the kids' discount shelf that was emblazoned with the logo "Kitty In My Pocket".  I was a) surprised, because I had never before seen these toys for sale in the US, and b) dismayed, because it appeared the brand had undergone a major overhaul.  Now, they were fuzzy, oddly proportioned chibi-cats.

When I got home, I did a little bit of research and discovered that yes, these chibi-cats were indeed from the same company as the one I adored so many years ago.  However, they now only have twelve cats to collect, their "breeds" have been reduced to things like "tan & white" or "tabby", which are not breeds, and their names are now completely unimaginative: "Midnight" and "Smokey" and "Snowflake".  I'd rather give cats people names than saddle them with something like that.

This is what Kitty In My Pockets look like now:

Untitled

One of my favorite childhood toys has been ruined forever. 

This makes me wonder why all products for children have been simplified to nauseating status in recent years.  TV shows have done this, too.  When I am channel surfing and see the drivel that children are supposed to "learn" from, it makes me determined to never, ever let my children watch television; at least, not until they are old enough to watch some not-so-insulting shows.  Either that, or I'll buy a VCR on eBay and show them my old-school Sesame Street videos, back from the time when Elmo was not the vocal point of every episode and the plotlines were still clever.

Show us your passion.

Eyes

This is my passion.  Ever since the sixth grade, when Mom first played the "selections" cassette tape in the car (I don't even know when she got it), it has been my passion. 

In the past seven years of obsession, I have watched the movie countless times, succeeded in learning nearly all of the choreography, seen the live show nine times (seven times professionally, three of those in costume and the rest in face paint), created three character costumes, three wigs, three partial wigs, two boxes of costume components and at least thirty face paint designs, created a website on the subject which is now undergoing a complete overhaul, forced two different choir classes and several friends to watch the movie, written a number of fanfictions in varying degrees of skill, purchased every souvenir that I could afford (including several that weren't at the souvenir stand), started a new chapter of my life upon discovering that my idolized actor from Cats was gay, participated in a highly amateur (and illegal) basement production,  and am now in the process of planning a legal revival of said production.

Does that impress you?

Does that scare you?

If neither of the above, you might consider consulting a psychologist.

Of unashamed felinity,

~Carly

Seriously, though, it's a new HP that I got only like a month ago.  According to SpySweeper and TrendMicro, I have no spyware or viruses.

So why does the internet freeze EVERY TIME I TRY TO UPLOAD PICTURES TO FLICKR?  Or to Catbook, or to Picnik, or to DeviantArt, or even to transfer photos from Facebook to Picnik?

Mayhaps I need to get Firefox.

I am frustrated, both with that, and the fact that I just got a 77 on my first acting quiz, because the questions were worded funny.   And...well, crap, I can't give the other reason, because since I posted this address on Facebook, people might actually read it, and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

CRAP.

Oh, and I'm kind of pissed because this one person who's on a Cats fan forum with me all of a sudden brings to the argument that "Cats is just okay.  It's not great."  Not that I get mad at anyone who says  that, because we all have a right to our opinions, and I'm not that scary, but this person has been on those forums for longer than I have, and it kind of makes me wonder what she's even doing there when the rest of the people there are HUGE fans.  She even went so far as to say "It doesn't deserve all of the fanaticism associated with it", which basically insulted everyone she was talking to.  And yet I get the feeling that I'm the only one who's pissed.

I was in a great mood when I came back from Spectrum an hour and a half ago.  What happened?  I got on the internet, that's what happened.  Sigh.

Currently anti-internet,

~Carly~

Cats.

I'm watching it.

I don't understand why more theatre people don't like this show.  Lately it seems like its only place in society is the show that everyone makes fun of. 

I mean, obviously, not everyone can love it as much as I do, since I'm a bit scary about it, but honestly, what did those Jellicles do to deserve such scorn?  Maybe the idea of people in cat suits is a bit ridiculous, but the music is fun and the dancing is fantastic; what more could anyone ask for?

I've been a fanatic for perhaps seven years now, and don't plan on stopping anytime soon, although I now have other dimensions to my life, which - to be frank - I really didn't have in the seventh grade.  I will still design makeup and display it on DeviantArt.  I will still update my fansite (or at least, I will once I get a decent web editor).  I will still wear costumes to the show, on the rare occasion I do get to see it.  I will still blow off steam by dancing to the video in my basement.  I will still write fanfiction.  I will still remember all of the lyrics.  I will still lust over Cats memorabilia on eBay.

So get over it, and don't make fun of Cats in front of me just to annoy me.

Lookincute

 << Case in point. This was two years ago.

Fanatical cats,

~Carly~