It Is My Honor to Present to You the Nice Photo My Girl Did of Me

Back when my girl started the second level of human education, middle school, she switched schools and her new English teacher saw she was reading and comprehending at a higher level than most of her class and so, rather than have her be bored, the teacher let her into the eighth-grade English class.

The very first book she read in that class was Pride and Prejudice.

This started what Cassie calls my girl's Renaissance nuttiness, even though Lily's favorite eras are the Regency, where all the Austen novels are set, and the Napoleonic era, where all Dumas' novels are set, not the Renaissance. Even though she loves reading them and is eagerly anticipating the upcoming Regency-fest, she says she'd hate to live then; the average life expectancy was forty-two and they had yet to invent litter boxes.

But she's all excited because she heard that someone found a lost novel of Dumas' and they're publishing it!

The one thing that gets my girl about this photo is that it is historically inaccurate. I'm supposed to be a musketeer from the Napoleonic era and this painting is from the Jacobean era. But she couldn't find a good photo.

-D'Artagnan du Chat Noir, "All for one and one for all!"

P.S. I did come out from under the bed. You mancats and musketeers right - Lily wasn't mad at me; she thought she'd hurt me when she tripped over me. After we had a nice long talk, she went and confiscated Buster's Stash.

You know, I really think I have a special connection with my girl. I am the only cat in the house she talks to in French. (Yes, Buster, I can hear you scoffing over there.) But she talks to Locket like he's actually John Locke and to Buster like she's actually going to rule the world.

Buster Theodora: I am going to rule the world, D'Artagnan! If you have that attitude, I will not ask you to be the president of Australia!

P.P.S. Musketeers - please check the sidebar and make sure I got all of you. I had to ask for my girl's help and she's been so busy with getting her scholarship ready, we're not sure if we got them all. If you want to be a musketeer, please leave a message saying so!

It Is My Honor to Protect My Girl From the Pizza Delivery Man, or, My Fault

Today something happened that Lily grins and calls one of the great social exchanges of our culture. We had a man come to the Cat Philanthropy house with a big, thin box that smelled really good. My girl calls it "a pizza box."

Lily went to the door to get it.

This, of course, wasn't safe.

There is only one human man that is safe enough to be around Lily and that is her cousinbean John and that delivery man definitely wasn't the cousinbean. The cousinbean was in the house.

So I, of course, had to come over and stand behind her and glare at the man and give him my best, "Don't you even think about it!" look, even though I wasn't sure what he was thinking about. It didn't seem like very much.

So my girl took the pizza box and turned around and she didn't expect me to be right there. In fact, she didn't even see me under the pizza box. And she tripped.

And it's my fault.

She didn't actually fall. She grabbed ahold of the doorframe and caught herself.

But she could have fallen. She could have hit her head on the entry table and gotten a concussion and fallen into a coma. She could have twisted her ankle and gotten temporary nerve damage from the inflamation. She could have... okay, maybe I shouldn't listen to every word my girl says when she plots her books aloud (she's an amateur writer of murder mysteries).

But it's my fault.

I am a mancat-in-training. I weigh sixteen pounds and I am a little over a foot tall. My girl is a short bean. A really short bean. If she and Shawn Johnson stood side-by-side, Shawn Johnson would be taller than her shoulder. So I am a big cat and she is a small bean and perhaps if I was a small cat and she was a big bean she wouldn't have tripped, but either way, she did and it's my fault.

I am a bad mancat-in-training and a poor excuse for a musketeer!

So now I am hiding under the bean's bed in the company of a small part of Buster's Stash of Shiny Things, most notably aluminum foil she stole. My girl has been on her stomach trying to coax me out three times, but I'm back too far for her to reach because I know if I let her scratch me in the special spot on my head, I'll collapse into a puddle and she can scoop me out.

Mancats, musketeers, how do I resolve this? This is almost as bad as the time I made my girl trip and fall down the stairs because I had my tail around her ankle.

-D'Artagnan du Chat Noir, "All for one and one for all!"

P.S. All musketeers - the sidebar will be updated ASAP can do it - as soon as my paws can do it.

Why It Is My Honor

Without my girl Lily I would be dead. I would have frozen to death on one of those nights this January that were -30 degrees below zero. It is my honor to protect her from whatever dangers arise, whether they be from laundry detergent, trashbags, or spiders. It is my honor because I know that I will never have to find mice to live off of again. It is my honor because she is my girl and I am her cat and that is my duty. It is my honor because she is not just the food and water person, as Buster Theodora sometimes calls her. She is my girl. She lets me crawl into her lap and stay there as long as I want to for tummy scritches and lots of oogooes and pookoos, as Cassie calls it. It is my honor because I have my forever family with her.

She named me D'Artagnan because she thought I was as brave as the D'Artagnan in the Three Musketeers. In the book, D'Artagnan wants to become a musketeer terribly bad and he eventually succeeds, but the point is, I feel, that his job as a musketeer was to protect the royal family. This was, by extension, the monarchy and therefore the peace of the entire country of France. We, as cats in the Cat Philanthropy house, are essentially the citizens of a microcountry ruled by the beans, or, in this case, the Locke family. It is my job as chief of security to handle keep the beans safe, including my girl Lily.

This blog is mine alone to discuss my adventures protecting my girl and my family.

It's also my honor to welcome you!

-D'Artagnan du Chat Noir, "All for one and one for all!"