After this, it can only get better, kitten-wise.

In ancient Egypt, cats were mummified and entombed with the dead–with great pomp and circumstance, or just included in a shared crypt. Why? No-one knows. Or at least Wikipedia doesn’t know. Maybe it kept away mice. Maybe the beast that ate the judged souls was allergic to cat dander.

Why ramble about this? Why indeed?

This poor little guy looks like he was embalmed by crazed quiltmakers in the 1960s, during the peak of the Margaret Keane art-clone wars–by a troupe of grandmothers after a quilting bee. “Oh, won’t your little kitten look cute when we’ve shellacked an entire remainders bin of gingham scraps to him? No? Add some more gingham, dear, you’ll come around once the acetate fumes build up a bit.”

It’s the muzzle that does it. It’s bony, attenuated, really adds a grim, deathlike cast to an otherwise delightfully camp-retro-schlock piece.

This way, Muffins will last well into the next millennium, where we will have finally figured out to resurrect beloved house pets–as long as their corporeal forms have been carefully preserved with decoupage. Until then, well, we’ll pick some really timeless patterns to keep her looking as fresh as possible. Bring me those pinking shears, I feel a fit of paisley coming on.

Not dead enough for you? Try Church here, I’m sure he’s sufficiently half-past dead. He’ll be appearing in a new cat zombie film shortly. It’s not very scary, you just run a can opener and they forget all about the brains.

Sorry, rambling. Here’s the cat.

The jury…the jury is out here. Once again, we are in the realm of “high school rebellion against prefabricated art,” but there’s a certain love her, too–the cat looks far too well-realized. Was this someone’s art therapy after losing a favorite cat? Did their sister have a stuffed moggie with similar markings?

So many mysteries.

Gingham cat found at Savers South. Yellow cat of death found in 2008, provenance unknown.

Deep in the heart of San Antonio, there is a Goodwill. It’s as polished as a downtown department store, and even has a coffee bar built in. We swore we’d find that Goodwill and we would shop at that Goodwill. And we did. But they actually had standards, so we went off to go to every damned Texas Thrift in the city instead. I’ve never seen a nicer Goodwill, but honestly, in this blog, quality is something of a downside.

Everything I see sparkles. My dress sparkles. The flowers, they sparkle too. Even my dog sparkles. Ever since the operation, I don’t have to see…ugly things. Only beautiful things. So beautiful.

…please, help me…I’m not even white, they painted me this color. The last thing I ever saw was a bucket of whitewash and two inch-wide rhinestones. Help me, or kill me, either way. You want money? I got two diamonds, baby, you can HAVE ‘em! Seriously! Just send help! I’m not even a cat, or a dog, or whatever, I’m an effing RACCOON! If I could see ANYTHING I would so give you rabies…

I could sparkle too, if you’d just give me a chance, really, I promise I’d be quiet, and…sparkly…

Texas Thrift, I35, North San Antonio

After the magnificence that was the South Flores Texas Thrift Store, we knew that anything else would be a pale second. Out of a sense of duty, we went down the other, lesser thrift stores on South Flores, taking a detour down Military Drive because South San Antonio is kind of like the Bermuda Triangle, navigationally speaking. We found this little guy at the Sally on Southwest Military Drive. Won’t you take him in? He’s looking for a good home.

Previously, I’d have thought that you couldn’t screw up a puppy dog, but shell art changes the impossible to the inevitable. Shells cascade down his ear like a river of tiny, friendly worms, and the skin around his eye isn’t covered with a down of fur, so much as a jagged, pale, serrated parody of hair. Don’t pet him, you’ll only hurt yourself. And that’ll hurt you, and blood everywhere, and it ends up just like that last trip to Thrift Land, we can’t take you anywhere anymore.

Points to the artist for clever use of cowrie shells as lips. It didn’t work, but I do applaud the effort.

Teeth like a dainty shark. Well, I’m in love. How much IS that puppy in the window? The one with the serrated jaw?

Okay, here’s the plan. Me and Scoob here will distract him. Velma, you knock the hideous shell dog off the shelf with that giant pumpkin. Let’s go, gang!

…Several confused left turns later, we had navigated out of the gravity well that mysteriously surrounded Southwest Military, and found our next destination–Community Thrift on Southeast Military. Truly a magical wonderland! This MUST be a re-furbished Home Depot, Sams, or some other Big Box store, but they’ve turned it into a hunter’s paradise. Not everybody was as impressed with it as I was, though.

Displeased cat is displeased. However, if you bathed yourself with your tongue (and who doesn’t?) and someone shellacked you with a heavy gloss of irridescent black and yellow paint, you’d probably cop a bit of an attitude yourself. Kind of like Bill the Cat.

Ack!!

The heavily-painted, faintly disgusted cat was only the guardian, the sphinx at the entrance to the valley. Beyond him–her–it–a full aisle of brik-a-brak. It was…beautiful. I had come home.

I don’t know how to spell it! It’d sound like Walt Whitman’s barbaric yawp, or an anthropomorphic oboe singing its love song to the moon. Or the mating calls of two steamrollers in a misty forest in October. Or the world’s biggest frog doing a Barry White impression.

Try to fit THAT noise in your head, and then meet today’s kitten.

Bwaaauuuur!

You may be wondering what this is. I am too. Maybe it could hold napkins, or possibly two dead mice, unless you have a better place to keep two dead mice. It is, in fact, a whatnot.

Apparently, Mentone, Indiana was something of a what-not hot spot in its day. There was a What-Not club (I don’t think it was necessarily related to the What-Not Shop, but quite a coincidence!) And then there was Eber, churning out his what-nots. People probably asked him not to. “Eber,” they’d say, “The City Fathers have asked you to slow down with the what-nots. They’re piling up around town hall, and our Suzanne couldn’t open the bakery this morning because there were a bunch of balsa-wood terriers and a clever shelf made to look like a man with a handle-bar moustache outside the door in a pile. We don’t need all these damned what-nots.”

“Nobody needs ‘em,” Eber would say, whittling a piece of balsa into thin strips, dipping them in glue. “That’s the point, Lawson. You don’t need a what-not. It’d be like having a mighty craving for a whimmydiddle or a gew-gaw.” He’d peel another thin, curving strip of wood away, peel and dip. “Are you saying you’re having a problem with my what-nots?”

“Well, no, not as SUCH, we value you as a member of this community! You’ve been here since Taft. Oh, I see you’re making a Taft now. How clever.”

“It’s not a Taft, Lawson. It’s a what-not. You think this town could stand on its own feet without my what-nots? This town was BUILT on what-nots. The walls–the streets–they might as well be built of three-ply Douglas delaminated board. What-nots made this town, and what-nots can break it.”

“Well…perhaps just fewer what-nots?”

“Get off’n my porch, Lawson. It’s balsa.”

Bwaaaaauuuur!!! cat found at Goodwill on 183, Austin. Better than chocolate with more shell art.

I had this thought that just maybe kittens would be a good way to ease back into harmony and happiness after a week of clowns, but, no, the kittens in their own special way bring their own special nightmares. Particularly when they seem to have been inexpertly resurrected after an accident involving a cast-iron skillet, an air compressor, the La Brea Tar Pits, and maybe a flock of seagulls with dyspepsia.

So we’re going back to clowns.

…No, never mind. Clowns are not an improvement. At least, not that clown.

Back to kittens. Or at least ex-kittens.

When you were a kid, did your mom ever pop open those pre-made cans of cinnamon rolls? The kind that comes six to a tin, wrapped up in a coil of tinfoil and cardboard, the kind that unseals itself with a satisfying “pop” as the dough stretches and relaxes? The kind that comes with a gritty, sugary white pasty frosting? That’s really the important part.

One day in the midsummer, we accidentally left one of those sweet roll cans under the rear window, then went out for lunch. There was probably a “pop.” There was no shortage of icing. I think the dough was turning a little crisp in the sun. That’s what I’m flashing back to here.

Try not to make eye contact. It’ll follow you home, and leak on the carpet.

Clown from Savers South Lamar, cat from Savers North on Burnet, Austin. Thank you, Savers. I love you too, but maybe we should just be friends.

Become lost in the depths of its eyes. There is only you…and the kitten, reflecting you. As it reflects you, you become the kitten, consumed in its gaze. When it blinks–if it blinks–hundreds of you will vanish and be reborn in an instant.

The kitten is all things. It is peace and tranquility, insight and understanding. It is not, however, made of shells, but it knows someone who is.

However, you should not, if at all possible, allow the hypnotic spirals of the shell owls distract you from the very important thing, namely, the kitten. Who knows what insights can be found in the depths of its eyes? What self-knowledge and revelation could you glean if you–oh hold on–

It got bored, never mind.

Savers on South Lamar, Austin

Tiny bundle of adorableness, or BASKET OF MURDER?? You be the judge.

Things made with real fur end up on the “horrors” shelf far, far too easily. This is not an ethical judgement on fur, though using scraps of bunny fur to make a basket of itty bitty tiny kittens does seem a little shady somehow. No, when bits and pieces of a living creature have seen heavy wear, ended up going through a washer, been savaged by spaniels or ruined by rugrats, they add a special sort of pathos to the final product. Then, when clerks slap a $1.99 sticker on it, they gain a new sense of tragedy, a context to their original owner’s death. Mmm, delicious tragedy.

So…kittens.

Faceless kittens.

Were their tiny little kitten noses gnawed off by mice? Is this the first of a race of eyeless cave-cats? Are they content?

The one in front at least doesn’t look very happy. It looks a bit like an extremely hairy elderly man trying to chew a Tootsie Roll with only his front three teeth. An elderly man who is so very old that his nose has been replaced by a piece of either flint or chert, because cosmetic surgery wasn’t as advanced in 1830 as it is now.

I’m still not sure how many kittens we’re facing off with. Poor wording there. There looks to be two little kittens, with three little bodies. Bad enough that we’ve lost our faces, someone’s completely lost its head. I tried to find it in the $.99 bin, but…no luck. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadfound it, an apology just doesn’t seem adequate.

Goodwill near Parmer and I35, Austin