The Cat Circle, and Archie's Book

[rolanni]

This is about the Cat Circle.  It kinda looks like this, except ours is brown and beige, really, really old, and kinda well-loved.

How old is the Cat Circle?  Well. . .we bought it for Max! who was always cold.  Not a Maine weather kind of a cat, Max!  More like a Daytona Beach guy.  This is Max!:

He lived with us between June 1992 and May 2006.  Yeah, we expect to keep our cats around for a while, here at the Cat Farm.

So, anyhow the Cat Circle got pretty heavy use at first, then not so much.  Kodi adopted it for awhile (I don't have a picture of Kodi on the computer, and if I start going through photographs, we'll be here into next week and none of us will have gotten anything done.  Kodi was a polydactyl brown cat.  She was a cat genius who went blind around the time she had completed half of her twelve years, and she totally Administered this place like it has never been Administered, before or since.  She adopted Max!, who was none too bright, and kind of kept him both out of trouble and in the loop.  After she lost her sight, he became her guide-cat and more-or-less constant companion.)

Patia disdained the Cat Circle.  Nicky liked it, off and on, but really preferred my lap.

Within the last couple months, Mozart has started using the Cat Circle, which had become a kind of auxiliary cat toy box.  He'll snug down amid the ping-pong balls and the catnip-stuffed mice and fishies and do some heavy-duty dreaming.

And now, Socks has adopted the Cat Circle.  Possibly, he's done so because it's one of The Big Guy's spots.  It's important to study The Big Guy, after all.

...which brings us -- or at least, me -- roundabout to Archie's Book.

This is Archie:

Archie was my very first cat.  He was orange and white, and very wise.  He taught me everything I know about cats.  And, as house legend has it, he kept a diary, a Book, for the cats who would come after.

While all of our cats have been their own unique person, they will sometimes behave in ways that are clearly Archie-like.

Such as begging for salted peanuts (and then licking the salt off, and batting the remaining nude nut around the house).

Or getting on top of the countertop (then crying because the countertop is off-limits to cats).

When one of the cats acts in such a way, we say that they've been reading Archie's Book.

But now, the Cat Circle has got me wondering.  Wondering if it's not so much a Book that's passed down the line of cat lives, but a Dream Repository -- heck, several Dream Repositories -- throughout the house, which are accessed from time to time, and added to, with the filed dreams becoming deeper and richer as each successive dreamer adds to the repository.

I kind of like that conceit, myself.  And now I'm wondering if there isn't some way to. . .download the Dream Repositories -- to back them up.  Or if doing so would alter the dreams on file. . .

Comments

[bridget a wheeler-gehrling (from livejournal.com)]

....who was it that theorized about witnessing and event changed the essence of the event?

I think that formatting the Dream Repository to a media that would be more accessible to the Cats' Staff, would be beneficial to most cat lovers and cats alike. JMONSHO

[jesse d (from livejournal.com)]

I posit a corollary of the Heisenberg/Schrödinger uncertainty principle and experiment. Until such time as one can definitively observe a direct correlation between use of the dream repository and the gaining of knowledge contained in Archie's Book, the feline somno-cyclotron both Is and Is Not the source of such knowledge. Once it has been observed, however, the quantum state will collapse and the Circle will be *either a repository *or a bed.

so...I say best not to ask too much. :)

- J

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

This calls for a book about cats and dream repositories. ^_^

Though I'm not sure they would entirely approve of Internet-equipped dream repositories. I wonder what would happen if they adopted a laptop or similar sits-flat-on-surface computer item (old-style Sun "pizza box" computers?) as a nap spot...

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

... But isn't a recurring dream an attempted download that never quite finishes?

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

I've got several of those!

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I can say this well, but perhaps the dreams are kept by those who have passed the rainbow bridge, although from time to time, they do allow the dreams to be temporarily borrowed and used by those who are here. As long as they clean the dreams nicely and perhaps add a touch of catnip scent before returning them. :-)

now I'm full of tears again

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

though this time (for the first time out of four or five times today...) tears of fond remembrance rather than those of frustration. And I like how Bridget thinks.

Cat Circle/Dream Repository

[catherine ives (from livejournal.com)]

As all of you know I am not a cat expert at all but a dog person. But in my opinion cats are very mystical and telepathic creatures. Mostly dogs are not. They are very pratical and down to earth. A friend once told me that cats send off various vibrations through their fur. I'm sure that for them Dream Repositories are very probable.

Thanks for introducing us to some of your cats. Wishing Luck to Socks in his current adoption of the Cat Circle with all its benefits.

[constellation books (from livejournal.com)]

I love the way you think and this brought tears of joy to my eyes.

Perhaps the cats-that-came-after *are* backing up the Dream Repository by repeating Archie's actions? Just like we keep the memories of our past friends and relatives alive by telling their stories?

I have often wondered if my Jack Russell was the reincarnation of the white poodle I grew up with and gone these mumblety years; there are certain behaviours that are just SOOOOO Peri, bless her neurotic smart loyal self.
Lauretta@ConstellationBooks

Cats and the Dreaming Circle

[capricchio.livejournal.com]

It sounded like the dragon and the sussdriad. :)

I liked when I got new kittens (after the Capricchio passed on last fall)and these little ones brought out all of the old toys that went back to some of my first cats. THey played with them so hard, they seemed to have picked up some of the personalities of those first fuzzer cats. It is good to have the happy memories brought back.
SCritch all your kitties for me. :)