T Time

The video begins with a black cat sitting in an open window, barking to the world. Yes, you heard me right…barking. The owner then comes around to the right side of the feline, who realizes the cat is out of the bag (so to speak) and his ruse is up. As he turns, he gives out a couple of choked bark/meows, almost like “oops, I’ve been caught”, then he starts to do the typical cat thing…he meows.

At this point I’d like to say that I’m laughing so hard I’m wiping tears from my eyes, but I wasn’t that caught up in the video…yet. Before I go on, I need to explain something here. I have five critters that are all rescues. Four cats — Kozi, Candycorn, Snowball, and MewMew — and a dog — Baby — that for years thought she was of the feline persuasion ($1,000 bucks later I finally convinced her that kitty food was not good for her constitution).

So anyway, there I am, watching this video, with the volume turned up, and as the cat in the home movie begins to bark, MewMew perks up. The bark goes on for a few more seconds and MewMew is now jumping from the chest freezer to the top of the table, head cocked, hackles raised. Then the kitty on the video does the bark/meow, and MewMew is sniffing at the onboard speakers, trying to figure out where this oddity is coming from. Then movie cat meows like a regular feline. MewMew puffs up, in all her limited glory, and hisses, finally seeing the scene playing out on the screen. She smacks at the image, like that’s going to do any good, and pounces up and down, landing right on my keyboard, which then resets the video to start again. When the video kitty renews barking, MewMew freaks out, proceeds to do “legs running in the same spot but not moving”, and takes off into the interior of the house. Now I have tears running down my face. Here’s the link.

Needless to say, I didn’t see her for over an hour. The other cats, they slept through it all. This is not to say that they don’t have their moments too. They all do. That’s what entertains us humans. Animals and the funny, strange, and adorable things they do.

Like the time Kozi (short for Kamikaze Kitten, which he outgrew over 16 years ago) ran through the house with a plastic grocery bag around his neck, hauling his cookies as if he was being chased by the devil himself. And boxes…

They love boxes. Doesn’t matter if it’s a beer box, soda box, or shipping box. It also doesn’t matter if they can fit in said box or not (which is another story). Kozi and MewMew are the two biggest culprits. Case in point…we recently stocked up on Coronas to help us through massive yard work, two 18-count boxes to be exact. I threw them off to one side of the kitchen until I could throw them out later, one on top of the other. MewMew decided she wanted the top condo, Kozi, with his arthritis, selected the bottom. There was only one problem with this scenario. There’s not a lot of strength to these boxes, especially when laid on their side and weight placed inside of them. So, as MewMew settled into her luxury accommodations for the long haul, her condo began to slide sideways. Now Kozi, being old, it takes a while for him to react to things going on around him. As MewMew’s condo collapsed in its free-fall, it kind of flattened Kozi’s snuggy space. MewMew spilled out onto the floor, glancing around to make sure no one had seen her fall from grace. Kozi, on the other hand, just kind of slunk out of the mess, unruffled and unfazed, not quite sure of what he was doing a minute ago.

Snowball is the celebrity of the bunch. He was the mascot for SUITE Magazine, a small white fluff-ball that all the women loved. He’s still adorable, even though he’s now about seven-years-old. His thing, when he wants attention, is to stand up and put a paw out towards your face, or hand, or anything he can reach, to make sure he’s noticed in some way. His momma, Candycorn, is the bitch of the bunch. Her claim to fame is her extraordinarily long claws. Watching her trying to run across a carpet or rug is hilarious. Because her claws are so long, she can’t retract them enough, and hence, they catch on everything. There’s been many a time when she’s raced after Snowball, only to do an Olympic flip, and land on her back, claws caught, meowing for a rescue, which is so beneath her.

Baby is the dog of the bunch, although she still firmly believes she’s a cat. We have a three-level kitty house and all the cats know the bottom floor belongs to “the dog”. Baby goes in there and scratches, like a cat, with nothing more than her tail end hanging out, intent on her mission. If this wasn’t so cute, it would be almost pathetic, but she has her ways about her. She’s also 17-years-old with congestive heart failure. She has to take medicine twice a day just to keep her quality of life at an acceptable level. But damned if she doesn’t realize her meds are mixed in with her favorite wet food, and somehow finds a way of eating around them.

With Kozi and Baby getting to the end of their days, it’s videos like the one I just watched, that make me appreciate all the good years I’ve given them. I know, there will come a day, very shortly, when I’ll have to make the decision to allow them to pass over that rainbow bridge, but until then…they entertain me in so many way…as most animals do with us humans. Whether it be chasing a laser, chasing a lizard, or chasing a lint ball, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for them.

I grew up in Cocoa Beach, Florida around astronauts and aerospace engineers, a true child of the Space Race. Is it any wonder I live life like one big adventure? After turning thirty-something, I became an editor and reviewer, and have over fifty books to my credit. From there, I ventured into providing stock photography and cover art for books, and then married one of the models I ‘discovered.’ Oh, and did I mention I work with the Chippendales, Thunder from Down Under, and RT’s Mr. Romance contest?

I spent the first ten years of my married life as a Special Forces wife, raising a bunch of boys along the way, then I went through a divorce and went back to Florida, back to my mother and family. It took a while, but I eventually remarried ‘The Perfect Hero’, became a co-owner and CEO of SUITE Magazine, traveled the world, and immersed myself in pleasures of the water: jet skiing, snorkling, scuba diving, tandem surfing, etc. So now, I’ve come full circle and I’m writing again, thanks to Gail Delaney and Desert Breeze Publishing. 

Or to state it properly: Mr. Zogs Sex Wax. At first I didn’t know why they called it that because I, for one, would never use anything in my sexual escapades that imbeded a gooey mess into all the tiny hairs on my body worse than any brand of super glue I’ve ever had the displeasure of tangling with. But that’s what Frederick Charles Herzog, III, better known as Mr. Zog, calls the wax he invented for surfboards. Zog liked the name because it was attention-grabbing, absurd, and a spoof on advertisers’ not so subtle attempts to use sex to sell a product. It worked.

Now let me backtrack a bit here so you’ll know why I even bring this up. Last Labor Day, my husband and I attended the National Kidney Foundation Pro Am Surf Festival at the Cocoa Beach Pier. We watched in amazement as a local couple competed in the Tandem Surfing event. He was 63 and she was 59! We met the couple and the other contestants and immediately got hooked. My hubby is a long time surfer. I grew up doing gymnastics and cheerleading…the perfect compliment for tandem surfing. Woo-hoo! So we decided to give it a try. Our first competition will be Labor Day 2011.

How we want to look

How we look right now

I’m hooked. I spend hours perusing web cams to see what the surf is like at our various beaches. We surf on the weekend, during the week, whenever we can get to the beach. We’ve even braved an invasion of Mauve Stingers, a small reddish jellyfish that killed the beaches here over the Memorial Day weekend, suffering numerous stings in the pursuit of our passion. I was amazed when we caught our first wave, more amazed when we first both got up to a stand on the board. My excitement spilled over when we accomplished out first lifts this last week. I screamed out my first surfer jargon.

“That was so narly! Let’s do it again.”

My hubby snickered.

What I don’t like is things that wiggle under my feet or come in for a closer look.

“Oh God! I stepped on something. Let me get on the board.”

“We haven’t gotten past the break.”

“I don’t care. I want on the board now! It’s moving.”

“Tamara, it’s the ocean. Of course it’s moving.”

Then there was the manatee he stepped on when he fell off the board. I held on for dear life, just knowing that the sea cow would come up under the board and flip me off into the group of stingrays that decided to see what we were up to. I had visions of ending up like Steve Irwin. It probably wouldn’t be so bad if we had clear water here in our part of Florida. But we don’t. It’s always murky and dark. Hiding unknown creepy crawlies intent on scaring the bejeezus out of me. Or eating me. The Caribbean, I like. You can see the bottom, see all the fishies and other things before they get you. But not here.

I won’t even go into my phobia of Jaws coming up to take a chunk out of me. I know it can happen. That’s why I keep my feet up on the board. At all times. Thank goodness I get dumped off in the shallow water.

And we have to practice our lifts on hard ground first. Nothing like trying to catch a tiny wave on a monstrous, slow moving board, and then try to figure out how to do a lift as well. So we practice in our front yard. To the continued amusement of our neighbors.

We were attempting a lift, and not well, and as I was unceremoniously dropped to the ground, I screeched and giggled as I hit the grass.

“I love this. Free entertainment and an excuse not to do yardwork.” Our neighbor sauntered up with a big grin on her face.

“Oh fine, be amused at my expense,” I grumbled as I pulled clover out of my teeth.

“But it’s so entertaining!”

Yet, right. I’m sure my hubby thinks that as I accidently plant a foot in his nether regions, or lose my grip and throw my arm around his head in a move not seen outside the wrestling ring. But we’re having a blast with it, and learning new lifts each week. We’ll probably get knocked out of the competition in the first heat, but we can sit up on the pier and knock back beers with the best of ‘em, discussing the virtues of scented surf wax versus the original.