Thank Grog It’s Firday!!
And man…did “grog” ever match the goings on for the Miller clan over the protracted Thanksgiving weekend! As mentioned in my last Friday Filler, we drove 9 1/2 hours through the midnight fog, driving rain, and wind, over the Siskiyou Summit, and into a weekend of Thanksgiving, Birthdays, and a perfusion of wine-tasting. My daughter Ali, who lives in San Francisco with her husband Ryan, works for GAP Inc. as a Senior Buyer. Where was she on “Black Friday?” With us…wine in hand…watching the Ducks pound the Beavers in the Civil war. Her buying for the GAP Black Friday was done months ago!
This was between my wife’s birthday on the 22nd, and Ali’s birthday on the 24th, which was celebrated with a stay at an old farm house on a vineyard, and several sojourns to other wineries for “tastings” throughout the weekend. You had to pace yourself. Trust me.
I threw in the towel mid Saturday, and escaped with my daughter Maddy’s boyfriend to Sanoma TrainTown, (see the link) which was a great deal ($7.50 for a 20 minute train ride, or roughly 1/4th the cost of a “tasting”) where I heard the agitated tales of “Jefferson,” my daughter’s latest “demonic child in cat form.”
Which brings us to the REAL reason for this post…a discussion of Cat People, and how the Crazy Cat Lady is a perfect addition to our games, and the airways above our towns!
Let’s make something perfectly clear…I’m not a “cat person.” Although, by way of circumstances, I have been forced to deal with them in close proximity on and off throughout my life. My choice to be a “dog person” comes from a sad story of my youth…along with several situations where the wishes of daughters prevailed over common sense.
My first cat, was a family cat that I really, truly don’t remember much about, except that he was “part Manx,” meaning he had a stubby tail, and was “batshirt crazy.” He died from some dreaded kidney ailment just a couple of years after we got him. He was not affectionate. He was nuts…and demanding. His name was “Cat.” Perhaps that’s why he was always so pissed off.
After protracted lobbying over several years, the Miller kids were finally allowed to have a dog. “Duke” was a black cock-a-poo, that was one of the most devoted, loving, chillaxed dogs ever. Instead of barking at the mailman, he would actually find the mail truck several blocks away on his route, and Duke would escort him to our house, and beyond…protecting the mailman from other dogs. Which unfortunately, led to his demise. One day, a substitute mailman was on the route, and didn’t know that Duke was “friendly.” When he came up to him, the sub-carrier shocked him with an animal control stick, which made Duke growl at him. Duke was reported to animal control. My Mom buckled under the fear of being sued (she has been irrational about lawsuits her entire life), and *Poof*, one day we came home from school, and Duke was gone. Like I said. Sad story… I never trusted my mother again.
Which brings us to the first family cat of MY kids’ childhood. Oliver. A very, very chillaxed black cat, with a tattered ear, who just showed up one day. Oliver was more cat than dog. He followed you around, always more interested in what you were doing than what he wanted. VERY un-cat-like.
He just liked hanging out. He didn’t meow…or make a fuss. He didn’t wake you up at 4am to go out. He was chill. I loved Oliver…because he didn’t act like a cat. We had him for 9 years, before he got some form of feline cancer. Broke my heart to watch him lose his grip on life in his final days.
Enter Maddy’s cat Scrimpson. She got him when she was a sophomore at Oregon State, and lived in a “no pets allowed” apartment (which should tell you something about Maddy). Scrimpson, was another coal black cat, but of a variety (Bombay) that had huge long, double jointed claws…which he used on everything. Nthing was safe…screen doors, speakers, couches, recliners, rugs…all mine…because he was often “visiting” for weeks on end, while Maddy figured out her next living situation.
Oh….and he had protracted stays with us while Maddy did student exchanges and internships in Chile (5 months) and Uganda (almost 6 months). We did the math once…and realized that “Scrimpy” had been with us several months more than he had been with “his mamma.” He was NOT a chillaxed cat. He was a hunter of anything that moved. Birds, snakes, mice, moles, baby possums, baby raccoons, all neatly deposited on our front porch each morning.
I had a “I’ll respect your weird space, if you don’t shred mine” relationship with Scrimpy that was born out of many smacks on the head (his), and his learning when I clapped my hands loudly and hissed like an insane, rabid, mongoose, that he was to stop whatever he was doing, and get the hell out of the room. It mostly worked. But, after a while, I think Scrimpy grew to love the floor show.
Scrimpson finally met his match (we think) while roaming in the woods next to Maddy’s place in Portland…which is dominated by roving packs of raccoons and coyotes. Or…he just finally drew the line at moving again, and decided to become a feral forest cat. Which ever, he left one day, and never came back. However, I still have several thrashed screen doors and windows, as well as two vintage guitar amps, shredded by him, as a lasting memory to his proclivities.
Maddy’s latest cat is named Jefferson. He has not stopped biting her “affectionately” or diving onto her from the bookshelves when she enters the room (also “just playing”) since she got him as a kitten.
This photo has not been doctored in any way. He is THIS insane…
I have had one brief interchange with him, where I literally tossed him across a room on hardwood floors, only to have him pause…shake his head…and attack me once again…over, and over, and over, again. Cute? Or a spawn of some ancient Egyptian demon. Not sure which, but Maddy’s boyfriend, Josh, is thinking the latter to be true.
So…WHY DO I LOVE CRAZY CAT LADY??? She throws cats. She has a Cat-a-pult. I totally get it. I love the catapult. It heaves cats into a brick wall next to Crazy Cat Lady’s back yard.
And now…because I bought her “Ms. Claws” skin…She mushes a fleet of shopping-cart-pulling-cats across the sky, battling for air space with my “Homer Santa” and Norbert’s Bi-Plane. This is actually a great set of animations that seem to actually be timed in association with the physics of the propulsion provided by each!
I spent more time watching than I care to admit. And I realized, that if Simpsons Physics is accurate over time/space/air…then Norbert’s plane is the fastest by almost 2.5 times…as it “laps” the others in less than 2.5 revolutions across the screen. CCL’s Cat Sleigh is faster than Homer by about 1.75 times…and the poor reindeer hauling Homer’s bloated body, are by far the slowest.
So yes, it took a great deal of patience, and a little luck, to get a screen capture of all three in the same place at the same time. Who knew that cats are faster than reindeer? But there is is…in plain site for all to see!
I love the Crazy Cat Lady. She is hilarious, and represents how I feel about cats…they are best thrown. Homer as Santa is a hoot…and Norbert in his bi-plane represents my greatest wish as a child…to be a WWI Fighter Pilot.
My current wish…is that all of you cat people out there allow me to simply scratch my head and wonder “why???” And at some point…before she dies (my Mom is almost 87) to finally forgive her for giving away Duke while we were at school. Neither is likely (I’ll be 65 on New Years), but one can hope.
Christmas is almost upon us! Let the cats be released from their bondage to fly free in the Cat-a-Pult!
How about you? Cat people? Dog People? Favorite pets??
Broke down and bought CCL’s skin despite my vocal and documented protests. Black Friday raised my bonus % tons so still heading into Christmas event with plenty of donuts.
TressMacneille (the voice of CCL, Agnes Skinner, Jimbo Jones, Brandine, Lunch Lady Doris, Lindsey Naegle, Miss Springfield, Boobarella, Dot Warner, Babs Bunny, and so many other wonderful characters) is my voiceover hero. She voices another CCL on Futurama too (plus many many more). Nobody can make crazed gargling noises while throwing cats like she does. Something to aspire to.
They really ought to bring her voice into the game.
Agreed!!
Crazy Cat Lady? Heck yeah I bought her as soon as she was available, and get a kick out of the Iguana thing. Bought Ms Claws too but wouldn’t have (price) except that y’all taught me how to farm. (Yay!)
Big thank you for that plus for all of the lovely neighbors I have acquired from here. (I’m towensmw628) Had some incredibly rare free time last week and discovered your KEM farming posts. Freakin frijoles! I had a lot of fun playing around and went from level 250ish to 939 in short order.
Cats have never forgotten they were gods nor will they permit you to do so.
Bombays ROCK! Definitely a cat person here. I like dogs but well…..they’re just a bit too needy for me. When a cat shares his affection with you, on the other hand…..well now, that’s an honor.
(Kitty isn’t destroying things with his claws. He’s simply in the deconstructionist phase of his artwork.)
I have to admit…Scrimpson was a pretty cool looking cat. Long “ballet legs” and super strong, long body. Very efficient for hunting…obviously. I like to think that if a coyote did get him, the aggressor paid the price big time.
My family only rescues dogs and birds. At one time we had a 22 birds. Oh and we have a turtle named Shelly who keeps some of the fish I get her as pets.
Come on Pat! You can do better than three!
My record is 7… 😎
Well…as I have 5 daughters, 3 cats was more than enough. However. you can add to the mix, several pet rats, two hamsters, loads of fish and a box turtle. So…cats? Not enough room. At least the rats pretended to like us…which is more than a couple of the cats.
In your screen shot!! ROFL 😂
They don’t call me crazy cat lady for nothing! 😂
Those of you that watch addicts live will have met Gary… More fox than a cat and huge too! He’s just got a new friend to play with Tiger who’s a ginger Tom also. Both of them bring me presents … Half eaten presents!
❤
I’m just not a fan of the flying animations. I bought it thinking it was a new character so not only did I just get a skin, one animation is one I’ll never use. Plus when buying it, I accidentally bought a statue in my vault because I wasn’t paying attention. So I have to start redougnuting forthe next event.
In the past 48 years together we have had10 dogs, 14 cats, three rabbits, and one rat.. ihave scars from the cats and rabbits. Right now we have Miri, a black cat, who has a fascination with my hubbies feet.
Our latest addition to the household, Colin, suave in his tuxedo, also has a fascination for feet! Sweet, ticklish and affectionate. Until he bites your toe. Oi!
I’ve had many cats in my nearly 60 years on this planet. I’m not feeling very happy right now as I’ve just finished cleaning the litter boxes in my laundry room for the resident 5. All are indoor cats as per Australian law. All are “rescue cats” & mixed breed moggies. Eldest is Salem; jet black & will turn 20yo next week. Arrived here the day before NYE 1998. So small he couldn’t even lap milk.
Then there’s Phoenix; (known as Feeney) Tabby & white long hair; Survived the Black Saturday bushfires in Kinglake Victoria as a kitten in 2009 found 5 days after down a rabbit hole by rescue workers. Went to Cat Protection Society refuge – where my eldest daughter was a volunteer. They were going to put him down as he has respiratory problems, was burnt, & mentally retarded due to smoke inhalation. My daughter brought him home to save him & here he is still! Apart from random sneezing he is fine.
Then there’s Loki; A very fat cream ginger. Dumped in a box @ a Safeway store loading bay. 8 kittens too tiny to lap – He was the lone survivor after a truck reversed over the box! Covered in blood my daughter who worked the late night shift there washed him up & brought him home – Just a week after her Dad had had a nasty heart attack. He & Loki are such firm friends that I credit Loki for keeping my hubby alive & he Loki. Loki arrived @ a time when they both needed each other. & Loki still takes up more bed space than I do! For some reason he still thinks he can fit into a pocket or the hood of a sweater! He weighs over 10 kilos now. (& yes he likes lasagne!) Only a month younger than Feeney; So they can grow old together.
The last 2 are RiverSong; The only female of the bunch; A smaller replica of Phoenix Feral as all getout! Mad hair! So pretty. Another rescue that no one wanted. She’s now 3yo.
Finally there is Tyrion @ 7 months A mixed breed stripy & dotted tabby & white short hair. Evidently an American breed of African origin. Looks like a mini tiger. Hubby & middle daughter went to a shelter to adopt a torty girl kitten she saw online; But this young man just kept launching himself @ them until they brought him home! Such a smoocher. A bit of a tyrant though!
I’m not a crazy cat lady BTW; Rather a crazy duck lady. My little mixed breed brown drake Charlie will turn 17 on 6th Dec.
I was not a cat person until we moved to San Diego and Grady moved in with us. Our first house had a balcony off the bedroom with a Callery Pear tree. It doesn’t bear fruit but smells, real bad, look it up if you dare. Anyway one morning we awoke to an orange tabby nestled between us. Long story short Grady belonged to the ex girlfriend of our neighbor and he wanted nothing to do with him. For the next 18 Grady won our hearts like no other pet has and I still get choked up thinking of him. However it is true, dogs have owners and cats have staff. Thank you Grady for picking us!
Well , because my household is 2 Black Cats + 1 brown Chihuahua (yes, they all get along indoors, the Chihuahua will take you for a drag – erm I mean walks – 3 times daily as the Cats watch wildlife in the yard on their condos) …. I can recognize when someone has had some difficulty with pets growing up (and you Sir deserve a special merit badge for fostering your child’s pet while she was away). 😸♥️
Alright , after Kem farming 280 🍩 ‘s over the last 2 Days (with 300 sprinkles in reserve) I finally invested in the Crazy Cat Lady (shrugging off the 180 spent) and have not regretted it …. this is filled with funny Visual Tasks and hey it’s a time killer until next week. 😀
FYI – to my fellow Tappers not pleased by the random Bart Simpson Screen of Death popping up? I feel your pain! Especially as I continue to make changes to my Springfield …. I strongly urge not to edit your Town for more than 10 minutes at a time, or risk running into ‘that screen we dread seeing’ (ugh!) 🤔
Anyone traveling in in Northern California / Central California? I strongly urge you to visit the Walt Disney Family Museum (it’s the only place where they put the Walt in it, ’cause he’s long gone from the theme parks) 👍
TGIF – I need a nap
I think there’s a syncing issue with servers or EA expects everyone to have crazy good internet. Either way I usually sync before I start designing by going to friends screen and coming back. This gives me plenty of time to design.
280 donuts in past 2 days??? Whats your bonus percent? Mine’s only 324! Advice?
Thanks, Patric, for a great post! I read the whole thing to my hubby, and he loved it, too. We are cat people who love our two 10 month-old kittens. They are crazy tuxedo cats who provide hours of entertainment. Cats rule!
I love my bombay…he is a cat/dog, does not require walking and never barks. ^_^
Bombays are brilliant! We lost our Boo a year ago and miss him every single day. He used to curl his paw, like a show pony, when he required treats (salmon Temptations ONLY, TYVM; he was a CAT, not some sort o’ animal.)
I LOVE seeing all of the black cat Staff here! Begrudging or otherwise. Black cats sadly are the least adopted and yet every black cat in my entire life is/was seriously cool. My Boo was a conversationalist, not just a talker; each night he’d wait in the window for me to come home, then casually greet me at the door (just passing by, purely coincidence). He taught us that he could fetch; did the most amazing leaps, twists & acrobatics, had the energy of a kitten until cancer got its hold; loved to make the dog push him around the house while he reclined in his computer chair…Yep, I miss my little boss every single day.
I am a 🐈 person, although I had an English Mastiff that I adored for 14 years. But my devon rex of 17 is my baby! She has her temper and when I leave to go on holidays all hell brakes lose! She hisses, insults me, it’s horrible, but when I get back, she never holds a grudge, like some of my other cats did. She has never bitten or scratched me, but she can get very vocal and plain rude when angry. She has never demolished anything and pretty good at scratching in the designated areas!
You sound like an enabler parent! LOL…”pretty good at scratching” isn’t good. But, she sounds way better than Scrimpy, who would look right at you and go deep on the carpet, speakers, and furniture.
Love cats. Love dogs. There’s not deciding between the two for me!
Our cat at home, Lucky, is a drooler. If she sits on my lap I can’t pat her or the drool starts pouring!
Our guard-cat at work, Thundercat, who adopted us one day about 3 years ago, is very big & fluffy & usually just wants to sleep on my keyboard. She is very vocal & loves a babble chat after breakfast.
Also have several cockatiels who love grooming me. However, the grooming hurts 😀
And, no ‘word check’, I meant cockatiels, not cockatrices’. How does it know the word cockatrice & not cockatiel?? 😀
The drooping thing is really weird… all of the cats we have had do the same. Depending on the cat, I assumed its mouth was watering before it took a bite!
My cat is my bro. He was 1.5 lbs and a day from dead when I found him in the gutter. His b itchy mother left him… He lost an eye in the process. He thanks me daily for saving him and I insanely love him. He trained my wife to do whatever he wants. He knows not to mess with me. Cats are smart in their own way. I wish I could put up cat pics. I have tons of shots of ol’ one eye, aka kiki, aka little man, aka snow leopard, aka little bastard (that’s my wife…)
Sounds like a great story! Maybe a kid’s book…”Kiki the one-eyed gutter dwelling snow leopard!” OK. Maybe not.
I am a dog person, but our last Golden Retriever passed of cancer last summer and we have yet to get another pooch. We also have a cat, who is a pound rescue that we got many years ago. We were looking for a short hair cat at the time and we got Oliver. As a kitten he did have short hair and the shelter assured us that he was indeed a short hair, although they had no way of knowing his actual heritage as a stray kitten. Also, the cage he was in at the shelter had a medicine package attached to it. He had what looked to be a cold, sniffles and a weepy eye. Again the shelter assured us that he would grow out of this illness in time. Well…we have a 9 year old long hair cat with a congenital runny nose and weepy eye. Never believe what the shelter says…learning lesson… Oliver is the most Dog-Like cat I have ever witnessed. He follows us around the house, greets us at the door when we come home, comes when we call him, and even gets excited when it is dinner time. He does have his cat like proclivities as well, the piano bench legs have become scratching posts, and the couch has also be used as a claw sharpening device, although we have put a stop to that with some double sided tape applied to the scratch prone areas of the couch. I usually could be in favor of cat-a-pulting cats in response to their mischief, but I don’t think I could ever see doing that to Oliver, as log as he keeps his claws away from my new couch. I am a dog person, but as long at our cat continues to “act” like a dog, I could be considered a cat person too.
OK. That is just weird. Oliver was the name of the cat that I described as being “Dog Like.” Maybe we should name ALL cats Oliver!
Well, our Oliver was named after the orphan kitten in the Disney Movie “Oliver and Company”. That movie just so happened to be one of our kid’s favorite movie at the time of the kitten adoption. The cat in that movie joins a gang of dogs and roams about New York City, so…there might be something to the cat name of Oliver and some association to dog-like behavior. If you live in a world of belief that animated movies are real life…hmm.
So there’s a building now that awards donuts…
Yep. Kinda. 6 a day…nothing to get tooooo excited about.
Great post, very funny, as for cats I like them but they don’t like me?, So we don’t have them, but there’s a tom cat, jet black that lurks around my car and runs out when I go to work, scaring the basheebas out of me every morning, I call him CAT, first name ******* , there’s also ginger that hangs about my door and bushes outside my house, he looks at me when we cross paths, I say alright cat and am sure he nods back at me, never gets to close though, anyway after reading this post I think I will buy cat lady skin, just for the fun of santa homer and cat lady flying over my screen.
She is a hoot…and the other tasks are funny as well.