B. C. mews

One of the endearing things about Basement Cat is his meow. He presents as such a rough, tough, thuggish guy, someone who mugs our old lady and bites the Scot's ears, constantly harrassing our other cats. And then when he's hungry or feels the humans are beating up on him unfairly, he lets out a tiny peeping "mew" that sounds like an adorable little kitten. It's as if Vito Corleone sang out in an exquisite counter-tenor. Humans brandishing the squirt bottle tend to break helplessly into smiles.

His voice is very different from the raucous yowls of the Shakespearean Heroine (who is able to terrorize experienced veterinary technicians), or the articulate chatter of the Grammarian (who must have some Siamese in him). The tiny mew reminds me that Basement Cat is still quite a young cat, not yet two years old, and that he will continue to mellow into a good companion. He bites less, and less hard, than he used to; Purry B.C. shows up more often and in more diverse circumstances; his attacks on the others are more playful and less aggressive (though the others have been conditioned by past experience, alas, not to want to play). It's progress.

Updated just 20 minutes later: but he's being a pest again. In my ongoing struggle to learn classical Greek, I have been trying to memorize 5 words a day (or some new grammatical paradigm). Last week I wrote these on my desk calendar, but I wanted more space for the usual calendar things. So I got the bright idea of a post-it stuck to each day, which could be collected and used like flash cards for review, while the calendar square underneath could fill up with things to do, a word count, and so on. Guess what B.C. feels like chewing on, this morning!