Cat Lady Post – Cat Care, Birding, and Amateur Geology

Which topics would you like to be more informed about?

I like trivia. I have decades of being a huge Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy nerd under my belthyttt. My knowledge was vast, but pretty superficial outside my concentration. General information was my territory.

Once upon a time, my hippocampus was on top of its game. Granted, I was horrible at faces, but I could easily remember names. I had so-so visual memory, but excellent auditory recall. That’s why I was great at trivia and school. As long as I was following the lecture in the classroom, I hardly ever needed to review.

I’m just basking in the glory of my younger days. These days, my memory is shot. I’m a veteran of multiple childbirths, two of which through C-section. Besides that, life has also accorded me various griefs and heartaches. I’m not sure of the science behind that, but it’s clear they messed with the old noggin. And the cherry on top is that I’m also operating under a mental fog, courtesy of perimenopause.

Still, I love knowledge. I like learning. I definitely have numerous interests that I want to pursue and be a Jedi master at. Don’t be fooled by the reference. I have never seen any of the movies. My knowledge of the franchise is very much, to emphasize my initial point, trivial.

There are plenty of topics I want to get into, but these three readily presented themselves as soon as I saw what today’s prompt was.

Cat Whispering

I already whisper to my cats. Okay, it’s more an annoying, high-pitched baby-talk, but they love it.

We have seven cats (+1 kitten we’re still trying – not very hard – to rehome, but, man, our true limit was four cats ago), and I’d like to think I have a fair amount of knowledge about them, but they still leave me guessing a lot of times.

I want to reach a level of expertise that allows me to understand what their every meow and every expression mean. I also want to know what kind of mischief they’re planning behind their poker faces.

But most of all, I want to know just what each one of them specifically requires to feel extremely loved and safe.😻

Ornithology

I’ve always liked birds, but let me tell you about my spark bird (smugly throwing in a little birding jargon😁). It was a hummingbird. On my first morning visiting my aunt in Oceanside, I looked out the window and saw a bee flit from flower to flower. But wait! After rubbing my eyes and having another gander, I realized that the tiny thing was actually a bird.

I was thoroughly charmed, and the fascination carried out to other birds in the area. I found them more colorful and interesting than the birds back home. Not really having observed more closely in the past, I mistakenly thought that they were all run-off-the-mill sparrows and pigeons. I later on realized that I was actually seeing and not registering a much bigger variety.

I’ve been a backyard birdwatcher for decades now and have joined several birding trips in the GMA (Greater Manila Area, which includes the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Bulacan, and Rizal) a few kids ago (my eldest has joined in a few and I distinctly remember her at about five years old giggling to another kid, “I saw something that looked like poop” after looking through the scope. It’s always my kids.🙄). Nonetheless, I’ve failed to ever reach hardcore birding status. I’m part of a birding group and am just in awe of some of the other members’ knowledge. I have no intention of being a birding champ like the dudes in The Big Year, but I want to be like Jack Black’s character and know what kind of bird it is just from the chirp.

Now I love all birds, but I have such an affinity with crows. It is my goal to become best friends (not just a casual acquaintance) with one. Or a whole murder of them. Ravens are also welcome, but we don’t have them here; otherwise, I’d have loved telling everyone that we had an unkindness of ravens in our neighborhood (they sound like they should be going around in Harleys, their leather vests showcasing their tattoo sleeves, most of their heads wrapped with a bandanna…).

Rock Hounding

I’m a collector. Not of anything that could fetch me big bucks, but I like finding things that give me pleasure and keeping them. In a hoard. Not that I’m a hoarder. But maybe I’m a hair away. Who knows about these things? Let’s just say minimalism has never had an appeal to me.

One of the things I like to collect are pretty rocks and sea glass. I especially like heart-shaped ones and skipping stones. I’m also forever erroneously identifying fossils.

My Dad got us a selection of semi-precious stones when I was a teenager, and I’ve loved learning about quartz and agate and whatnot since then.

Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of geode hunting and cracking. It’s endlessly fascinating and satisfying to watch. So now, I look at seemingly lumpy, spherical rocks and pick them up to shake them and listen for water or actual crystals.

There you go. I think this blog post makes me seem like a total geek. That’s okay. I’ve never denied it.😁