Cat Art Sunday - Zoolatry ROCKS Again!

Mosaic Madness

Gosh, Kitties, we are so lucky!
Ann at Zoolatry must like us a lot, because this week she did MORE of her magical and mystical Photoshop art for us.
(We are very practiced muses, of course.)
We must make Mosaic Madness into a poster for the mosaic studio, don't you think?

Look what she did with Mosaic Lady's favorite painting...

Reading to Bianca

Victor, you can make this one into a poster for your bedroom...

Sadie's Sunflowers

Miss Boo, how perfect is this for Willie Cross Paws?...

Willie's Kisses 'n Hugs

And for Lucy, the new little foster kitten...(Miss Peach will like this one!)

Cream 'n Sugar, Please

Mosaic Lady asked if Ann could do something special with the last photo she took of Leah and her best friend, Walter...

Walter's Sunset

Together, Always

And the most AMAZING one of all...

Walter Over the Rainbow

Fostering the Fosters Friday ~ by Annie

Kitties!
Paybacks are a bitch.
This is Dupont Lucy.
Or maybe Stevie for Stevies Nicks & Colbert.
Don't let the Mosaic Lady-bestowed new name fool you.
WE ARE NOT KEEPING HER!
She and Smudge (who you will meet another time) are foster kitties of the nice TAAG President who is in Italy right now drinking great wine.
We are Fostering the Fosters.
This is Mosaic Lady's new mantra, and I make SURE she repeats it often.

Of course, the dawg is again suffering from her new-kitty-induced OCD, just when she'd finally recovered from the bout I triggered. She was so fixated and out of control the first night she didn't touch her dinner.
She is a freak.

Mosaic Lady met this kitty at a local adoption day last Friday. Someone found her in the Dupont parking lot and she was being fostered at a local vet hospital. But she was spending her whole life in a cage there, which explains why she spent the entire adoption day sleeping and purring on ML's chest. She refused to be in a cage another second when she knew she didn't have to. (It's easy for us kitties to sniff out and exploit ML's pity.)

Now she runs all through the house creating havoc with all us kitties and the dawg. She is really pissing me off because that is MY job.
Mosaic Lady wanted to see how I do with a kitten. Now she has her answer. BADLY. I do BADLY with any other cats that might want something that is MINE.
Like space and air.

Mosaic Lady thinks Dupont Lucy Stevie has gorgeous markings and the most unusual furs.
She looks like she is wearing a raccoon coat, or a possum or squirrel coat, or maybe bunny furs?

Stevie is a bit of a frootbat, so maybe by next Friday, Mosaic Lady will manage to get some good shots of her face.

Wordless Wednesday - Willie & Bianca

Thank you, Ann

Mancat Dream Monday - (by Annie)

Who looks outside, dreams.
Who looks inside, awakens.
~ Carl Jung

9/23/07 Early Morning Dream...

Mosaic Lady was the passenger in a small, golf-cart-like vehicle that an unknown woman was driving. They were climbing a narrow, winding road up a mountain, like on a driveway or a similar path, headed to the lady driver's home. The road was pitch black. There were no headlights nor street lamps. Mosaic Lady said: "You need a light source out here", but the driver seemed undaunted and knew her way well.

Once they got to the house, Mosaic Lady knew she was there to pick up Walter, who had been living there a while. The driver lady told ML that Walter was so upset at being here that he'd started to pee in inappropriate places from the stress. ML went inside and saw Walter's huge white floofiness on an upper floor, like in an open loft area. She started to climb the stairs toward him and saw he was sleeping with a black cat who fled as ML approached. Mosaic Lady hugged Walter close to her chest.

When she woke up and turned on her back to stretch I ran into the room and got up on her chest and laid down, like Walter always did. I don't crush her as much, though. She cried a while because even though all the Mosaic Cats are part of her heart for very special and different reasons, Walter seemed to have claim to the largest part of her heart and she still misses him terribly. This was only the second dream she has had of Walter since he died last May, and the first one in four months. He's been very quiet!

If any of you kitties or your persons love to do dream analysis like we do, please feel free to share your intuitive hits with us!

Cat Art Sunday - Zoolatry ROCKS!

We were very slow on the uptake in getting our photos in to Zoolatry for the AMAZING artwork Mom Ann creates. Most of you have already taken advantage of her very generous offer. After you oooh and aaah over the ones she's created for us so far (be sure to see Sadie & Victor!), Go to Maggy and Zoey's blog to see many more of your kitty pals portrayed as the pieces of art that they all are!

Now, Be Sure to visit Ann's blog, In the Mind's Eye. Mosaic Lady was blown away by her portfolio. Eye Candy!

Mosaic Lady took this photo of Walter last early spring. She called it Daffy Walter. You may recognize it as her personal avatar.


This was the last photo Mosaic Lady took of Mosaic Walter...

Of course Annie was drafted into the NFL by the Carolina Panthers!! You can see all the other teams and players here at the National Feline League blog.


Thank you, Ann, for sharing your bountiful gifts with all of us so very generously!!

Last Day of Summer Sweethearts!

~By Sadie Badie

Art work by the UBER talented Ann, Mom of Maggy & Zoey.

Matchmaking Hook-Up Artist credits and thanks to Mr. Hendrix the Kitty.
(Go see his blog right now! There are some really moving photos of his sweet Mom today!)

Speaking of sweet Moms, Victor and I would like to again acknowledge our Moms for having the ultra-refined good tastes to not only go to the same college (University of California, Santa Barbara -- GO GAUCHOS! Victor, what's a Gaucho?), but also to be born in the same hospital (St. John's, Santa Monica, California)!** We think those two synchronicities alone make us a Match Made in Kitty Heaven!

**Annie is tempted to remind every kitty that neither of these confluence of graces happened in the same decade. But I will remind her right here and now that if she did so, she might find herself turned back into the rescue group. Because they DO take evil demon seed kitties back if they don't quite "work out" in their new, adoptive homes.

Just sayin', Annie.

Formerly Feral, Formerly Foster, Now Family, Friday!

~By Evil Foster Intruder, Annie

KITTIES!
I got a Forever Home yesterday! An application was submitted on Tuesday and Mosaic Lady got the call yesterday that it was approved! My new home is going to be

WITH MOSAIC LADY
AND MOSAIC CATS
AND MOSAIC DAWG!!!!!

A show of paws from those of you who saw this coming from Day One?
ALL of YOU?
Wow.
Thanks for your confidence!

My Worming My Way In (TM) Strategy had 3 key components:

1) At first, I led Mosaic Lady to believe that I was so well-adjusted, flexible and sweet that any number of possible living situations would make great forever homes for me. As soon as I saw that she wrote that on my first Petfinder bio, I immediately became the Wild Mini House Panther you know and love. Soon after, she started calling me her "special needs foster kitty". With each passing week, she became more concerned that my options for happy homes were narrowing. By Tuesday of this week, she figured I'd end up coming back to her anyway because I'm so wild, so why not save us all the stress and just keep me now!

2) I started sleeping on her bed all night, all through the night, on the second night.

3) I started channeling Walter. I try to do about 87 things in a day that only Walter did. It's no coincidence that I have asked that my arrival day here of 8/9/07 be proclaimed both my Gotcha Day and my first birthday. My spay paperwork says "approx 1 yr old", and Walter would've been 11 on 8/11. I am proud to carry on his Leo energy in the family!

Mosaic Lady had to be pretty strategic her own self in this operation. She had to convince the rescue org that being a semi-supervised, outdoor-during-daylight-and-only-when-she's-home kitty is not necessarily a death sentence. Having the two geriatric geezers here as living proof probably bolstered her case. Plus, we live in a very safe and private place. Mosaic Lady was willing to keep me as an indoor-only kitty, but frankly, Kitties, after living my whole first year outside, inside is BORING AS DOGGIE DOODIE. I communicate this constantly by jumping from window to window and racing from door to door, trying to get OUT. Especially when I see the Mosaic Cats outside on the decks and porches. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr........

ML foolishly believes that if I can go outside for a bit (off the harness!) and blow off some of my bottomless energy, I will not pick on Sadie and Bianca so mercilessly inside, nor will I bounce off her walls, jump up on every counter, stove, and table, race across her laptop keyboard, and break so much stuff. HA! Wait till she gets a load of me treeing Sadie, or trapping her under one of the decks, or chasing Willie off of his hot tub perch. HA!

I knew I'd sealed the deal when I heard Mosaic Lady tell the Prez of TAAG how entertaining I am for her: "The house was like a morgue after Walter died." Sure, Mosaic Cats are nice and quiet and obedient. Kitties! Nice and quiet and obedient is BORING AS DOGGIE DOODIE!!!!

Anyway, Kitties,
A show of paws from those of you who think I'll turn into such a blog hog that soon I'll have my OWN blog?
Wow! All of you?
Thanks for your confidence!
Annie's Antics? Annie the Anarchist? Annie the Antichrist? Annie Bananaie's Amusing Blog Stylings?
Maybe I'll have a Name My Own Blog contest...maybe I'll do a T13 about my many entertaining ways...maybe I'll demand that we learn Photoshop... and publish my blog in two languages, like Adan! The Cat Blog Sphere is my oyster lizard!

(A special note of THANKS to my Evil Joy Fairy Godmother (TM), who begged ML from the start to give up the ill-fated "fostering" notion and just adopt me. She was smart enough to give me the time I needed to implement my Worming My Way In (TM) Strategy. This allowed Mosaic Lady to labor under the silly delusion that she was in control and making her own decisions. HA!)

Willie's random facts meme

Yard Guard, Monterey, CA

Darling Divine Miss Boo tagged me for the "not TMI" meme.

The guidelines for this tag:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules
2. Write some facts about yourself: some random, some weird, some just plain fun.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them)
4. Let those 7 people know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.
The challenge is to keep it interesting without making the reader think “Um, too much information…”

*I was born in Seaside, CA, right next to Monterey. I was the last kitty left in the litter, so Mosaic Lady had no choice. She had to take me. Once she saw me sprawled across the sofa of my birth home, she thought I was a basketball player. I was 90% limbs. I am not fat, but I am very long. Thus my life-long nickname: "Mister Big Boy".

*When we lived in Monterey, we would get baths every weekend. The fleas were as big as quarters, and as plentiful as, ummmmm...something that is plentiful.
When we moved to Colorado and lived at 8,000 feet, we never got another bath.
Now we are on Frontline and so far no North Carolina baths.

Yard Guard, NC

*I have been a very good big brother to Bianca for 15 years. I am not super-affectionate and no longer very playful, but I am a calm and steady presence in her life. We nap very close to each other for most of the day.

*I am a calm and steady presence in Mosaic Lady's life, too. I can read energy and moods better than any other cat she knows. I have slept next to Mosaic Lady's legs for almost every night of my long life. I used to share her legs with Walter.

*I do not mind Annie the Foster Intruder so much. I let her lick my tail twice! I now share Mosaic Lady's sleeping legs with her, and I don't pummel her when she swats or hisses at me. I mostly blow her off, although Mosaic Lady thinks that she might have caught me almost playing chase with Annie this week. Might have almost.

*My worst habit (according to you-know-who) is coming inside after spending a lot of time outside to use my litter box. I don't see why this is an issue. Everyone is most comfortable doing their business in their own home. Except for maybe some senators.

*My other worst habit (or greatest skill, depending upon who you ask), is my Machine Paw. There are three very opportune times to employ it:

1) While Mosaic Lady is still sleeping in the early morning, I Machine Paw the legs of her wooden bedroom table to energize her into her day.
2) After she throws me out of her bedroom and shuts the door, I wait an hour until she has fallen back asleep and then I use it on her bedroom door to LET ME BACK IN.
3) After she has her cup of coffee all ready by the couch and the laptop on her lap and Bianca by her side and her morning news on the TV, I use it on the front door to LET ME BACK OUTSIDE.
It is irrelevant that she has just let me in the back door while preparing her coffee. Coming in the back door is NOT going out the front door, is it kitties?

We tag Starbuck, The Bengal Kitten!

Perfect like Sunday afternoon

Easy like Sunday morning

Kitties in the Mist...
Willie & Sadie.
This is our front yard and is the exact view Mosaic Lady has when she is on our couch surfing the innernets.


Bianca's front porch...
(Burst of color courtesy of Crate & Barrel's motel chairs and cocktail tables since ML never got around to planting flowers in pots...yet.)

Tongue Thursday

Annie's opening statement...

Victor's rebuttal...

Kismet seizes the floor!

Tabby Tuesday - Three Who Came Before

Milo & Merlin...
Darling orange boys.


Gracie, the founder of this tribe -- Bianca's surrogate mom.
Milo, Mosaic Lady's heart chakra kitty -- baby Walter's adored partner in crime.

Tell a wise person or else keep silent.
~ Goethe

In a cat's eyes, all things belong to cats.

My new harness Monday ~ by Annie

I have wanted to go outside in the worst way, Kitties. I can not remember when I was last inside of a house, if ever. I even had my babies under a trailer. I spend a lot of time in the windows here, and it really gets to Mosaic Lady (which is why I do it, of course.) She took me outside twice using Bianca's collar and a leash, but I raced up a tree and she was afraid I'd choke to death. And then, I ran so fast and took her by such surprise that the leash flew out of her hand. That made her wet her pants a little, thinking about what she'd tell the rescue group and what they would think of her responsible fostering skills. Who can say just why I stopped in my tracks at the edge of the lawn where it turns into the forested canyon? I did hear Mosaic Lady scream: "Jesus Christ!!", so maybe He made me stop.

On Thursday, she had to take the Dawg to the fur doctor's and came back with this hot pink harness for me! (She thought I was tiny, so she first came home with a 14"er, but I am growing into my paws because I'm eating whenever I want now instead of just once a day, so I needed the 16"er!) See how it matches my pink nipples and looks so fabulous with my jet black furs and turquoise green eyes?

It also complements my tongue.
Here I am expressing my pleasure at being restrained.

I also like how it looks with Mosaic Dawg's leash, which has a definite flavor. Mmmm....purple!

I went over to visit with Willie to see if he wanted to chat, but he is not so chatty, really. He has never been on a leash or harness and has had outside (daytime) privileges his whole life. My rescue group will not allow that so ML and I are both trying to be good, compliant, obedient girls. It is a struggle for us both.

The picnic table leg has a flavor, too. Mmmm, black!

When I caught sight of the forest, I wanted to run wild and free, and very fast! I start panting when I am outside (I am excited!), so Mosaic Lady knew it was time to go back into the house.

I raced down the hall with my harness still on and jumped up onto my bed with all my toys. I was very wound up! (I know that the plastic UPC tag should not still be on my harness, but Mosaic Lady clearly does not.)


I am proud to say that I allowed a collar to be placed on me with NO resistance whatsoever. OK, with just a little resistance. But not for long. I also adjusted to walking on the leash with the neck collar in five minutes. The harness, too, took me five minutes to accept.
I am an early adaptor!

Daisy...can a neon, paisley hoodie be far behind?

Cat Art Sunday - ACEOs

Well, Miss Peach just reminded us that we do have something to share today!
This was Mosaic Lady's Christmas gift to herself, and it hangs in her bedroom in a great black frame with thick borders.

You can probably guess that she chose it because it reminded her of Walter, huh?

It is a tiny ACEO (art card, editions and originals) created by one of our favorite artists on eBay, Jeri.
Mosaic Lady bought a crow ACEO from Jeri as a Christmas gift, and three more cards from three different artists also for gifts. We'd never really known about ACEOs till last winter.
Oh no! Look at all the wonderful Halloween Kitty Art Jeri has up for auction today!
We have to surf away fast because we can not be trusted to look at Jeri's art too long without Mosaic Lady's express permission to access her Paypal account for immediate payments and BUY IT NOW!! purchases. (Those are the best. We are into immediate grat in this house.)

If you collect these darling artist trading cards, or are talented enough to make your own, we would also like to recommend Jonathan for all your framing and matting needs.
HE'S SUPER COOL!
We see he has added a funny photo of himself since we last visited him.
Perfect!

Keep creating, gifted Kitties!

Sadie's one big happy family Friday

Kitties, I have a very dark problem I'd like to share with you.
Perhaps you can relieve me of my burden.
I've tried to handle it myself, but it won't go away, or even ease up a bit...

I've tried deep relaxation, self hypnosis, and meditation...

I've tried daydreaming about my sweet little Victor, using all the active imagination techniques I know...

I've often tried to apply my assertiveness training skills to the problem...

I've even tried to surrender my problem, turning it all over to my Higher Purrer. I am hopelessly powerless over it, and it certainly makes my life unmanageable!!

ANNIE.
Intruder Foster Demon.
Evil incarnate.
Mini house panther on the prowl, mercilessly hunting down her prey.
ME.

The confrontation...

The escalation...
The tension so thick, Mosaic Dawg's mouth is forced shut.


Kitties!
Sadie is a mega-drama queen!
Does this look like the face of a demon seed kitty from hell?

If a kitty does not keep pace with her boring foster companions,
perhaps it is because she hears a different birdie chirping.
Let her stalk to the chirping she hears,
no matter how annoying or irritating it seems.
~Henry Helton Thoreau

Sher and Upsie Darling are hosting WCB. Go see all the wonderful kitties (and ask them to help relieve me of my dark, oppressive burden!)