Musketeer Meme #5

Sorry for not posting in two cat years! My girl finished last semester with a 4.0 and now is taking everything she needs to from her college so she's busier than she thought she ever could be, but she's allowing me two minutes to post as her spring break is next week and she's taking a few days off.

Firstly, I have updates. All my brofurs and sisfurs are well and happy. Cocoa has developed a penchant for stealing rubber bands off every conceivable surface. She shares them with me and we have a great time with them. Buster Theodora takes pencils, pens, knitting needles, and once even a mercury thermometer (the beans took that one from her real quick) and walks around with them. She also keeps making Stashes of Shiny Things wherever she thinks they can stay hidden. Our mother Godiva is enjoying her retirement in the sun and John Locke has started this very unnerving dance where he runs between the beans' legs when they're not looking.

And now I have the next Musketeer Meme.

How do you protect your beans from unwelcome visitors? We keep being visited by a skunk because the beans left food out for another stray cat our neighbor wants to adopt. The skunk calls himself Joe and he thinks Cocoa feeds him because she's always sitting there when he comes up. With her locket, we think he thinks she's a skunk too. We keep our eyes on him whenever he comes but I worry he might try a sneak attack with some friends of his, a posse of fat raccoons that live in the woods behind the Cat Philanthropy house.

All for one and one for all!

Au revoir!

-D'Artagnan du Chat Noir,
Musketeer Extraordinaire

The Next Two Musketeer Memes...

My girl is terribly busy; she has a huge bean-paper to write, but she gave me five minutes to write the next two memes. She says to blame her for the reason we haven't been posting; the computer got sick with a virus, though I don't know how, as it's never around other computers to contract it from, and then papers were due and everything else.

My girl says she has started counting down the days until the semester ends.

Anyhow, the next two memes are... [drumroll]

How do you protect your beans from food? Lily likes to cook (she's mastered meringue and something called floating islands, very French, but that's it), but ever since she started class her schedule has been really tight and there's been no time for cooking. Lily's mom makes good food, but Lily's mom is usually working. Needless to say, TAKEOUT! All those people who have touch it {shudder, shudder}! But it's awfully good.

And for the second meme, I have a conundrum...

Can we protect our beans from loss?

I worry that when my mother, brother, sisters, and I die Lily will be very lonely. She will have no animal left to snuggle with after a long day. I know she does worry about it; how can she not when the death of Tom, her sweetheart of a dog, is still so fresh in her mind?

She said she likes the idea of the Rainbow Bridge and that Tom is there waiting.

I've run the numbers on Lily's big, scientific calculator, and if we all live very long lives, we will be with Lily into her thirties. That means by the time we all go to the Rainbow Bridge, Lily will have stopped worrying about us dying and start enjoying us being with her. Am I right?

Well... Lily needs the computer back...

Au revoir!

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

Musketeer Meme #2

(Scroll to the bold if you're bored and just want the meme.)

My girl is turning into a cat. She's gone all day some days and when she gets back, all she does is sleep. She sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and just when everyone thinks she's slept enough she sleeps some more. She says the reason she can "go-go-go" all summer is because she overdoses on caffeine but when she overdoses on caffeine she's too jittery to focus on schoolwork and now that school (and the three college classes her school is letter her take) have started, she is busy all the time. Apparently beans get real sleepy when they're busy. And when she's not sleeping, she's doing homework. Apparently college classes give out a lot of homework.

So we have a whole round of apologizes from the both of us. She uses the computer a lot but when she's not on it she brings all these interesting things home from her school and it distracts me. Her books smell really funny, particularly her lab manual, which she doesn't let me near. I need to know if there is something dangerous on that book to protect her!

Lily: I am really sorry, guys. I've started to get the hang of this on-campus thing now, so I'll be able to post more regularly.

So... the Musketeer Meme for the week is books. How do you protect your beans from books? With my girl's classes she has a lot of books and most stink terribly from that library. I must protect her from whatever's on them! If you want to join the Musketeer Meme or just grab the badge, click here.

Now my girl needs the computer back so she can make a list of all 114 (including the unnamed ones) elements, list their numbers of protons, neutrons, and electrons, and also chart their noble gas and Lewis dot structure notation. I sense an office hours visit to her professor coming on next week; her class is for people who've already had high school chemistry. It's kind of hard because this is her high school chemistry, but she's trying really hard and we all think the first exam last Friday is in the bag.

She asks that you send good thoughts her way if you decide to go to bed early. The midnight oil is nearly burnt out from all the nights it's been, er, burning in the Cat Philanthropy house. The upside is she very nearly doesn't care anymore if I sleep in her bed, so I do every night.

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

P.S. Did the Cat Blogosphere disappear or is Lily's computer acting up? If someone has a moment, could they please post this post and Buster's new post (she's recruiting) on the link thing of the blog? Lily, Buster, and I would really appreciate it.

Musketeer Meme #1

Sorry it's taken so long to get this going. My girl has been very busy because school starts up for her very soon. If I'm a little late posting, I apologize in advance. My girl's classes have already promised to provide her with a great deal of work, which means she'll probably be using her computer a lot, too.

This week's theme is aerosol cans. How do you protect your beans from aerosol cans?

I'm actually terrified of them, but I must be a musketeer even in the face of fear. When the beans spray stuff like Pledge, it sounds like someone's hissing.

If you would like to join the meme click here (or scroll down).

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

It Is My Honor to Present the Musketeer Meme!

The cousinbean Cassie thought it would be great if I started my own musketeer meme that all the feline musketeers across the Cat Blogosphere could use and add to.

About once a week, in addition to a new post, I'll post a household danger that we muskeeters must protect our beans from. Then you fellow mancats and musketeers leave a comment or post on your blog on how you protect your beans from this danger.

If you want to participate, link your blog's home address or leave a comment!

You do not have to be a mancat, a mancat-in-training, or even male to participate! Remember, there is once instance (that my girl knows of) in musketeer history when a woman snuck in to join the muskeeters. That woman turned out to be one of the best musketeers, so everyone is welcome!

Take the little meme sign, please!

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.