Underland Updates

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Yes! Hello! Splendid. Um. Right. Yes. Good. Evening. Morning.

Um. I’m, well, Mowgli — but Mother calls me Mogs for short which, might I just say — for the record, you know — I find rather quite, how shall I put this?… um, offensive.

Though, admittedly, it is preferable to “Little Bastard,” which seems to have become firmly impregnated into the morning routine. Humans are amusing, aren’t they? Blessed beings that they are.

I have lived extensively, one might say. I’m currently fourteen years of age, though — even if I do say so myself — there is little sign of my wits slowing down or diminishing in any objectionable way. I am sprightly, and growing older with grace and aplomb. More plomb than grace, but… trivial details. Trivial.

A seasoned traveller. Former resident of the (Un)United Kingdom and Slovakia, which — between you and me — was frightfully cold and alarmingly lacking in gray-based cuisine.

Anyway.

I wake my human daily with a light tap to the face — not, you understand, out of rudeness, but… well… concern. One must make sure she hasn’t perished in the night, or worse still, forgotten breakfast. I once waited until 6:07. Unthinkable. Never again, my friends. Never again.

I consider myself quite composed, really. A bit of a gentlepaw, one might say. An aesthecat. I enjoy:

• 🐾Gazing wistfully out of windows
• 🐾Lying directly in doorways (for ambience)
• 🐾Licking the same patch of blanket for no outwardly apparent reason
• 🐾Watching birds and thinking about… taxes? Maybe death? Something terribly deep, I imagine.

I live with two… individuals. The humans are tolerable. A nebulous pairing. But the companion four-paws leave much to be desired.

Poe, who screams whenever light touches the food box. Very passionate. Unhinged, those with less manners than myself might say, of course. Though they may, in all fairness, have something of a point.

Akela, who — from what I can discern — seems to be some kind of unnecessary extra in a Tennessee Williams play. Box-bound and emotional, she has a rather intense penchant for the paw-on-head pose, like she is constantly afflicted with a migraine or some other such irritating ailment. Though some conditions, it would seem, are rather more traumatic than others. Bless her cotton-padded paws. We do not discuss her “episodes.” It would be rather uncouth, don’t you think?

I, on the other paw, am refined. A thinker. A deeply misunderstood gentlecat of principle.

I have a bit of a tendency to get stuck in laundry baskets, but that’s neither here nor there, really. Is it?

Do I sometimes fall off things that aren’t moving? Yes. But in a very dignified way, of course.

I said I was young for my age — not eternal.

Anyway — must dash. Something rustled in the other room, and I simply must stare at it judgmentally from across the hall for the next two hours. It’s exhausting being the Big Paw I am.

Yours in mild panic,
but with absolute certainty that survival is, indeed, imminent,

Purrs for now,
Mowgli 🐾