All through the house

"She waited to pounce with shining eyes and switching tail. She waited with shining eyes for something to fall, to tinkle, to crash, to break..." ~from A Pussycat's Christmas, by Margaret Wise Brown

If you started with this blog at the beginning, you will recall that Megzilla is my mother's cat and the inspiration for this blog. Why? Because she's a thinker, and I'm pretty sure she surfs the net at night to come up with ways to move hefty household objects to new and perplexing locations during the night.

Since Meg is the muse behind the blog, I thought I should regale you with a few of Meg's favorite reads for the holiday season. As may be apparent, I consider these Meg's favorites not because I have the least idea what goes on behind Meggy's gimlet gaze; indeed, I wish I knew. I imagine these are her favorites because they remind me of her, and also, frankly, because they are quite wonderful, both in concept and story and in the realization of vivid language through thoughtful illustration. Whether you have children at home or are simply young-at-heart, I urge you to take a look at these holiday classics, both penned by widely beloved authors. I am sure Megzilla loves them. After all, she is smart.

A Pussycat's Christmas, by Margaret Wise Brown. Illustrated by Anne Mortimer. Melodic language brings the sights, sounds, and smells of the season to life, as one black-and-white cat (a Megzilla look-alike) watches her family prepare for Christmas. Cat-lovers will enjoy Pussycat's encounter with tissue, tinsel, Christmas stockings and snow; readers everywhere will love the magical prose and jewel-like illustations that capture the juxtaposed excitement and stillness of Christmas. Brown is the author of Goodnight Moon and countless other children's classics.

The Christmas Day Kitten, by James Herriot. Illustrated by Ruth Brown. Anyone who has ever taken in and loved a stray, will be warmed by Herriot's story of stray tabby Debbie, who one Christmas morning brings her kitten to the "only place of comfort and warmth she had ever known" in plumpish Mrs. Pickering's farmhouse. Sadly, Debbie is dying, but the kitten grows to be a most remarkable and well-loved cat--a true Christmas miracle. Ruth Brown's illustrations perfectly capture the warmth and love of a Yorkshire country Christmas.

Have a safe, happy, and joyful holiday, and don't forget to let me know your favorite seasonal reads. See you after Christmas.

Illustration (above) from A Pussycat's Christmas

The return of Megzilla

It's been a busy week, getting ready for Thanksgiving, and a long time since we've heard from Megzilla. Given that, I thought I'd share something that always makes me thankful: Megzilla and her adorable litter mates, Sigma, Rho, and Psi (the three "siameses"), and angelic tabby Delta Pi. You just don't get cuter than that. Enjoy the slideshow.

Please check out my updated November 9 blog entry, as well. There, you will find another slide show (a lot less cute, let me tell you now) and a picture of my husband with a goat. That's right. A goat. Come on, you know you'll have to look now.

Comfort Books

I'm a big believer in pet therapy, comfort food, and of course comfort books. But before we go there, take a moment to slide your eyes to the right and feast them on the love-bunny known as Rho. Rho is Megzilla's brother, and a little less precociously brainy than his sister. He is, however, quite a sweetheart, loves to give hugs and kisses. So take a deep breath, gaze long into those melting blue eyes, and feel yourself to be deeply loved. Aahhhh, feels good, doesn't it?

Now that the pet-lovers have all forsaken their computers to go hug their own feline and canine family members, let's get back to the subject of comfort books. You know the ones I mean: the ones that you always come back to, the books that never fail to give solace on the coldest, wettest, worst-ever days, the days when you lock your keys in the car, argue with your spouse, slip in a mud puddle, and have to eat leftover tuna cassarole for lunch when you absolutely loathe tuna cassarole. On days like that, my husband likes to immerse himself in the world of Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy. I haven't read it yet, but if you have you might want to log in here and let me know what kind of oddball I'm married to, since the reviews all use words like dark, disburbing, and violent, strangely counterpointed with other words like romantic, witty, teasing, and--strangest of all if you knew my husband--matriarchal. Having said that, I'm thinking my husband may be a little like Meggy and there's some freakin' serious stuff going on behind that innocent blue-eyed gaze.

Back to comfort books. One of my favorite comfort reads is Little Women, a choice which no doubt many of you will understand instantly and wholeheartedly. I honestly have never met the person who grew up American, female, and reading who did not love this book. It's a classic for a reason.

Another favorite comfort book is the aforementioned The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What can I say? It's not enough to know that Vogon poetry is the third worst in the galaxy, Douglas Adams does not scruple to tell you what out there may be worse. If you read this and don't laugh, I am very, very sorry.

Why Blogzilla? For that matter, why blog?

If you don't want to know the answer to those questions, stop reading, um... now.

My mom has a cat, a really cute cat. Her name is Meg, but we call her Megzilla. You can see her picture right over there to the left. She's the one making angel eyes at the camera.

Meg is one of those winsome, alluring little cats with big eyes like a hypnotist's spinning plate that draw you in and make you want more. She could be a poster child for Hello Kitty, she's that cute.

But--and here's where the Megzilla part comes in--Meg is a thinker and--dare I say it?--she's precocious. (Right, did I mention, she's a cat?) She is also deeply entrenched in the belief, as any stray fly or other winged insect can attest, that she is a large and ferocious killer jaguar. Furthermore, unlike Hello Kitty, when you look into Meg's pie-like stare, you know she is not just thinking about her upcoming dinner or her most recent nap, she is thinking really Deep Thoughts, such as, "How can I, a six pound cat, move that 10-pound pillow off the couch, up a flight of stairs, through a narrow door, and into the bathtub? Hm, time to apply those principles of physics I picked up on Wikipedia while Mom was sleeping." (You may scoff, but I've seen her do the thing with the pillow. And maybe I'm wrong about the Wikipedia, but I've seen her sit and look at the pillow and plan, then shift her angle, adjust her momentum, give a little leap, and BAM an object four times her size is on the floor and heading up the stairs in her tigerlike grip. Believe me, this is no innocent kittenish accident. By golly, she planned it.)

So where am I going with this? Well, there is a whole world of information out there in that place we fondly call cyberspace, and I am attracted to it, much as I am attracted to figuring out what's going on behind Megzilla's hyptotist's gaze. Granted, sometimes I feel that I am to that world of information what the fly is to Megzilla, but what of it? Like the rest of us, I get to keep peddling my literary allusions, because I love them, and if cyberspace chews them up and spits them out like one of Meggy's flies or, worse, digests them and they come back as big fragrant steaming piles of blogese, then so be it. At least I have entered the 21st century, allusions loosely intact (no bowel pun intended).