A Clowder of Cats

We have two cats, a 15-year-old gray and white named Smokey and a 5-year-old mackerel tabby named Fafner. He is a mackerel tabby because his marking make an M on his forehead. My son thinks he is also a an Egyptian Mau, a variety of tabby descended from the ancient temple cats. Nonetheless, we adopted both cats from a local shelter.

Our daughter also has two cats, a dapper black and white named Remy, who is almost 2, and a tortoiseshell kitten of about 10 months named Eleanor Rigby, Ellie for short. Remy, who has an easy-going, sociable personality, was lonely, and so Jamie adopted Ellie who lost an eye as a young kitten.

This week, which is spring break for me, my husband, and our daughter, Remy and Ellie came to visit us in the suburbs while Jamie went to visit her boyfriend in Houston. The dynamics have been interesting.

Remy spent most of the summer with us while Jamie was at various music festivals, so he was already comfortable in our house. In fact, he loves our house with its stairs, many rooms, windows, and other cats. (Jamie lives in an apartment.)

Smokey surprised us by adapting quickly to the new cats. He is fond of Remy, in a cat kind of way. He and Remy play well together, wrestling and chasing.

Fafner was named after the dragon in Rochard Wagner's opera "Siegfried." Unlike his namesake, our Fafner is a big coward. His favorite activities are eating and sleeping. He has bonded strongly with our son. A strong attachment to one person is one of the characteristics of Mau cats.

Ellie, tiny and young, is a diva, though a most affectionate one. She loves me and my husband, twining herself around our legs and sitting in our laps. She also loves Remy. The other cats are a different story. There was a lot of hissing the first few days, all by Ellie directed at Smokey and Fafner. There was some hitting, too. She has now calmed down and only remembers to hiss, softly, occasionally.

Having four cats is a lot of cats. Every time you turn around there's a cat. You have to watch where you step. Cat meal times are crazy - our two cats eat a different diet than Jamie's cats, but our cats think Remy and Ellie's food is much more delicious than theirs, so we have to try to separate them. But those bowls of Fancy Feast are just irresistible!

I had been calling them a herd, but that really doesn't fit cats. They don't act together like herds do. So then I tried pride, like lions, which still doesn't fit. A pride of lions is a more cohesive group than four cats is. So I Googled it. A group of cats is called a clowder. An odd word, I wondered where it came from. Here's what dictionary.com says:

variant of dial. clodder clotted mass, noun use of clodder toclot, coagulate, Middle English clothered, clothred (past participle), variantof clotered; compare obsolete clotter to huddle together; see clutter

I don't really see much huddling together or clotted masses with these four. Clutter and glaring are also terms for a group of cats. Glaring makes a lot of sense to me. There's plenty of glaring, growling and hissing when a group of cats assembles. I can also see clutter, as they do tend to clutter the place up.

In any case, our clowder has livened this week up. We miss the youngsters when they go home with Jamie.

Late Night Adventure, tame variety

One of the pleasures of being on spring break is having no schedule to stick to. There are only a few times this week that I need to be somewhere at a particular time. Last night was one of those times - I had an orchestra rehearsal from 7:30 to 10:00. My husband is not playing this concert (coming up in April), so he decided to go downtown (Chicago) to see a concert. He asked on Facebook if anyone wanted to go with him. Facebook can be so useful! And a young friend of ours said he wanted to go.

They went off to catch the train to Chicago and I drove in the opposite direction to my rehearsal. After two and a half hours of Beethoven I arrived home at 10:30. This is normally after my bedtime. But the two of them were sitting at the kitchen table, eating cookies and talking about music, so I joined them. We talked about the concert they saw (mixed reviews), Robert's new job which starts new week, his plans for the future, orchestras, conductors, concerts, and recordings old and new. We talked about people we know in common and what we're all doing this summer.

By then it was 1:00 am. We still hadn't run out of things to talk about, but it was definitely time to go to bed.

And since it is spring break, I slept in this morning!

1st day of Spring and Spring Break!

I made it to Spring Break! I left school shortly after dismissal in a rush. Such a rush that now I have to go back to retrieve a few things I should have taken with me. I was in a rush to catch a train to downtown Chicago to go to a Chicago Symphony concert at which Yo-Yo Ma was the soloist. It was certainly worth the rush and the extra trip back to school. This morning, Saturday, my husband and I got up to attend the bar mitzvah of one of his young cousins. So it wasn't really until this afternoon that I felt I had really made it to spring break.

I was tired. It has been a long couple of weeks with report cards, school auction (major fundraiser), service learning, debates, quizzes, tons of grading. So I didn't want to do anything! The newspapers have been piling up and so I grabbed a bunch, lay on the couch, and read. This gave me the feeling that I was purposeful - I was reading the papers, which is why we get them - and then I could recycle them and so declutter. And I read some interesting articles, including a good one on how not getting into the prestigious colleges of your choice not only won't damage your future success, but may end of being the best thing to happen to you. (If you'd like to read it, here's the link.)

I tried to take a nap, but I'm just not a good napper. So I decided to make a list of things to do during spring break. Even before making this list, I know I will not be able to accomplish everything on it. Let's just think of it as a menu that I can choose from.

1. Start walking and exercising again. Three days of outdoor ed is coming up in May and climbing up the dunes at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is a killer if you're not in shape. Besides, it's good for you and makes you feel good!
2. Catch up on stuff around the house, like cleaning.
3. Practice! Not that I don't practice every week, but not only is a week off the prefect time to get more practicing in, my daughter and I are playing a duet concerto together in May.
4. Get together with friends that we haven't seen in a awhile.
5. Taxes. Sigh.
6. Catch up on blogging. I have two other blogs besides this one. In one I write about music-related things, and the other is for reflecting on my project to include more problem-solving lessons, including some design thinking activities, in my teaching. Both these blogs have been sadly neglected.
7. Cook and bake! I love to try new recipes when I'm not in a rush.
8. Read. It began with a search for information on Revolutionary War hero Joseph Warren in order to help a student research his report. Now I'm interested, too, and have a good adult biography on Warren. I also have a biography on Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man so she could join the Continental Army. I need to review that one for another student. After those, there's a stack waiting of mysteries, nonfiction, other biographies, and so on.
9. Study for my gifted education endorsement exam. Sigh. I hate dealing with bureaucracy and trying to figure out how to apply, sign up for the exam, and access the online state department of education has not been fun. From what I hear, the exam is no fun either.

And of course I'll be blogging here each day.