The Cat’s Whiskers
Santa Cats
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Task 3: In honor of the depiction of Santa in Australian-style clothing, dress up your dog (or cat), or just use photoshop or another photo editing program, to dress up one of your pets as the Australian version of Santa Paws. Post the picture here – the zanier, the […]
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THINGS SIMON’S CAT IS THANKFUL FOR (Thanksgiving Collection)
Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!
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Festive Tasks: Door 5, Task 2 – Cats
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Task 2: Show us your feline and non-feline pets. Try to get as many of them into a picture as you can without causing mayhem or the fur to fly and share it with us. If the animals just don’t feel the love, multiple photos are ok too, […]
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Halloween Bingo 2021: Card, Spells, Markers and Book Pool
Phew! I’ve had blog display issues for the better part of August due to a stupid WP plugin acting up (and of course, it was a plugin allegedly intended to “facilitate” the import of content into my chosen theme — haha, right), but luckily they were resolved just in time for Halloween Bingo! (Gosh … […]
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An Alphabet of My Likes and Dislikes: “N”
This is a post belonging to a new blogging project — the title is pretty much self-explanatory, I think; the project’s introductory post can be found HERE. Credit for the idea: BeetleyPete. As always, the only thing linking the two items mentioned in this post in my mind is that they both start with the […]
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Children’s Games, the Feline Version
24 Festive Tasks: Door 11 – International Children’s Day, Task 2: Get out and play any children’s game: hopscotch, jump rope, tag, yo yo – anything. Children’s games, in my home, are strictly the cats’ games, of course — and one they like in particular, and which we’re practically playing every day, is hunting after […]
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When Charlie Tried to Rearrange My Office Shelves …
24 Festive Tasks: Door 13 – International Day for Tolerance, Task 1: If you have kids or pets, tell us about something “bad” they did that was so funny you couldn’t help but forgive (“pardon”) them. If you have neither kids nor pets, was there such an event in your own childhood – or with […]
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Staying Zen in Stressful Times
24 Festive Tasks: Door 12 – World Philosophy Day, Task 2: How do you stay zen / sane over the holidays or in other stressful periods? And / Or: How did you manage to stay (more or less) zen throughout 2020 … if you did? This, too (like my favorite rainy day reads can easily […]
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2020: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
We’re still a month away from the end of the year, but my reading will probably consist mainly of Christmas books in December, and I hope and pray that life won’t come up and throw anything else at me in the final month of the year, either. So I might as well post my “Year […]
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Hygge!
24 Festive Tasks: Door 8 – St. Lucia’s Day, Task 1: Get your Hygge on — light a few candles if you’ve got them, pour yourself a glass of wine or hot chocolate / toddy, roast a marshmallow or toast a crumpet, and take a picture of your coziest reading place. Post a picture. […]
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Reading by Flashlight … with Feline Accompaniment
24 Festive Tasks: Door 19 – Hanukkah, Task 2: Read by flashlight or candlelight. Post a picture. Reading by flashlight was the plan for last night — but I had barely gotten comfortable with Paul Doherty’s first Friar Athelstan mystery … … when Charlie showed up, sat down on my book and made it clear […]
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Battle of the Books Goes Feline: Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management vs. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace
24 Festive Tasks: Door 20 – Festivus, Bonus Task #2: Battle of the Books: pick two books off your shelf (randomly or with purpose); in a fair fight, which book would come out on top? The fight can be based on the merits of the books themselves, their writing, or full-on mano a mano between […]
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The Belgian Flag, from Book Spines
24 Festive Tasks: Door 17 – Armistice / Veterans’ Day, Task 2: Create the flag of one of the countries that fought in either World War out of book covers. If your country was one of the participants, make it the flag of a country other than your own. Not the German but the […]
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T.S. Eliot: Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
For “cats are (still) very much like you and me” … A frequent reread, and my choice for the “Black Cat” square of this year’s Halloween Bingo card — as (almost) always, courtesy of my favorite audio performance by Sir John Gielgud and Irene Worth, as well as parts of th. In case anybody is […]
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Halloween Bingo 2020: The Rest of the Game and Wrap-Up
Sooo, that’s another bingo game behind us already! Many thanks to our game hosts for successfully moving the game from BookLikes to a new venue and organizing one heck of a game despite that venue’s built-in limitations. I had a great time and would only have wished I could have participated more throughout the game […]
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Halloween Bingo 2020: TA’s Game Preparation Post
Note When updating this post during the game, the books actually selected will be highlighted in bold print and with a check mark (√) next to them. Updates Spell invoked: Bingo Flip with Lora — STONE COLD HORROR replaced by READ BY FLASHLIGHT OR CANDLELIGHT Also, as our game hosts have made it clear that […]
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Ngaio Marsh: Scales of Justice
Et in Arcadia ego. Scales of Justice is a book from the middle segment of Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn series and a superb example of the “serpent [even] in Paradise” type of Golden Age mysteries. Marsh goes to great lengths to establish the book’s seemingly idyllic rural setting, beginning with its name, Swevenings (which we […]
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Georgette Heyer: No Wind of Blame – 3d Spring Buddy Read of 2020
… and I refuse to accept any other / specific reason for the recent flurry of buddy reads; I just intend to go on enjoying them. Also my first Heyer reread since whipping through her entire mystery collection over the course of the past couple of years, and I’m so ready for it. Let’s do […]
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#Stayathome Pets: Charlie, the Camouflage Cat
I was working late last night and Charlie decided to join me. After having dithered a while where to take up temporary residence, he picked … a box, of course; one of the few that have, by sheer dint of emergency storage, so far survived the Big Decluttering Project. Given that both the box itself […]
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Creature Comforts
24 Festive Tasks: Door 9 – World Philosphy Day: Task 3 How do you stay zen / sane over the holidays or in other stressful periods? My only salvation in stressful times: Creature comforts. Lots of them. And BookLikes! 2019 was a hell of a year in virtually every respect, and I don’t mean that […]
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