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More about my cats

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

My Manx Cats

I am a cat lover as well as a dog lover, at this point I only have cats though. What I think is special about my particular cats is that they are part Manx Cat, in that they have no tails. Part Manx because their mother has a very short stub of a tail.

When I first saw the mother cat, I assumed that someone had cut off most of her tail, it was only when she gave birth to kittens on my patio did I realize that she must have ben born that way as two of her kittens had no tails and one of them had a short stub like her with the two others having normal tails.

I adopted the two with no tails, one male and one female and I like to refer to them as my “Gift Kitties”, as I think they are a gift from my Goddess, Rhiannon of the Birds.

I have named them Miss Kitty and Festus after the Gunsmoke characters; because I call all cats kitty, I thought it was a witty sort of joke to name my female cat Miss Kitty and so I decided to name the male Festus to keep it all Gunsmoke.

When they were kittens, they liked to play and they would chase each other around my bedroom at night when I was in bed,  and since I have a house with raised wood floors they would make a lot of noise, when they were doing that.  I call it thundering paws. I never minded though and they didn’t keep me awake either.

I miss being able to watch my cats play like that as now when they are both 4 years old they no longer play like they did when they were kittens.

Festus my male cat does like to attack wadded up paper balls and so sometimes I will wad up some notes that I no longer need and throw it on the floor for him to play with.

Now days my cats just like to be in the room that I am in, so as I am typing this in my office at home, Festus is in an open window snoozing and Miss Kitty is sitting on a near by chair grooming herself.

I am always glad of their company and I just enjoy having them with me whether it is my office or in bed with me or when they are elsewhere in my bedroom

My Kitties are very special as, I consider them to be my Gift Kitties since I feel that they were a gift from Rhiannon my personal Goddess.

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My Manx Cats

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

I named my cats using names from Gunsmoke.

They are Miss Kitty and Festus.

This is because I really liked to watch Gunsmoke when i was growing up, i also watched The Rifle Man and Bonanza, but Gunsmoke was my favourite show at that time period.

I chose Miss Kitty as a sort of joke, since I call all cats kitty, at one point after just calling my female cat kitty, I decided that Miss Kitty would be clever and witty. I love to try to be witty.

Festus was originally just Miiss Kitty’s brother who came in my house uninvited with no name, but once i made up my mind to make Miss Kitty an inside cat, I also decided to have her brother that kept coming in with her since he was always around when she was.

So the male became Festus, since i wanted to name him after someone in Gunsmoke and I could only think of two male names in the show, Fetus and Marshall Dillon and I didn’t want to nmae him after the Marshal. For oine thing I think The Marshal and Miss Kitty had some sort of a thing going. So Festus he was now. :-}

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Early memories of Reading

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

I have been sf & fantasy fan since I was small, since my father read “Tarzan of the Apes” by Edgar Rice Burroughs  to me as a bedtime story when i was about 6 or so years old. Then as soon as I could manage to read it  my self I did. As I recall I was in the 4th grade at that point.

When I was in the 5th grade I was at that point reading the Mars books by ERB.

As I was growing up I also was reading E. E. Smith and A. Merrit and Thorne Smith since my father also read those authors as well.

I don’t recall exactly how long it took me to read a book when I was 11 or so, but I do recall that I would take one book to school in the morning and by the end of the day I would have finished reading it.

Now When I read a book I am finished with a 300 page mass market paperback in 5 hours.

When I was 11 there weren’t that many choices in reading in SF & Fantasy, so my favourite writers were a small group consisting if I recall correctly of Andre Norton, A. Merrit, Edgar Rice Burroughs, E. E. Smith, Thorne Smith, and Dr Seuss who has been a favourite of mine since early childhood.

I am not sure if I had discovered writers like Asimov and Fred Pohl, Poul Anderson, Jack Williamson and Jack Vace when I was 11, I know that I did discover them later and I am a fan of their writing even now.

At this point in time these are my Favourite writers in alphabetical order: Douglas Adams, Poul Anderson, Asimov, Robert Asprin, Clark Aston Smith, Margaret Ball, Ambrose Bierce, Ray Bradbury, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Patricia Briggs, Steven Brust, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Avram Davidson, Charles De Lint, L. Sprauge DeCamp, August Derleth, Lord Dunsany, David Eddings, Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, Alan Dean Foster, Esther M. Friesner, Tara K. Harper, Harry Harrison, Kim Harrison, William Hope Hodgson, Robert Jordan, Katherine Kerr, Mercedes Lackey, Ursula K. LeGuin, Fritz Leiber, Holly Lisle, Anne McCaffrey, Patricia McKillip, A. Merritt, Elizabeth Moon, William Morris, Andre Norton, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick K. Pohl, Terry Pratchett, Fletcher Pratt, Kat Richardson, Spider Robinson, Fred Saberhagen, Elizabeth Anne Scarbourgh, Robert Silverberg, Clifford D. Simak, E. E. “Doc” Smith, Thorne Smith, Mark Twain, William Tenn, J. R. R. Tolkein, Jack Vance, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Jack Williamson, Roger Zelazny.

Most recently I have been reading books by Kim Harrison <http://www.kimharrison.net> who I think is a really excellent writer and I highly recommend her.

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