Rosie

Tabs

Today was probably the most springy spring day so far in 2023. No rain. Just SO WINDY and SO many lovely wildflowers.

Tabs, as all are wont to know, was a fierce fan of California Poppies. He thought they were goldenly gorgeous and made fantastic statement pieces when incorporated into feline fashion, like this gorgeous collar here, which he designed himself…

Rosie

My goodness, what a day we had around here.

All the rain we’ve had is paying big color dividends right now. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many beautiful flowers growing all over the place in California this time of year.

I mean, there are fields of wildflowers all over the hillsides as far as the eye can see. It’s epic!

It’s California, and it’s almost May, so the flowers won’t last much longer. It’ll be 100 degrees and very hot before we know it, but at least for now, what a blessing. It’s truly lovely. 🌻🌹🌺

It’s also crazy windy! Rosie was content on her walk this morning to just sit there marveling at the movement all around.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Tabs serving fierce dance looks…

Man, what a weekend! We just got back from one of Connor’s dance competitions in Sacramento. It was quite the “to do,” but you know who really knew how to serve fierce dance lewks?

You guessed it — Tabs! 🤣

A lot of people didn’t know this about him, but he used to sneak out of the house to go out dancing…

Yup, he did it all the time. He just loved rockin’ out and shakin’ his groove thing.

Sure, when he got older, he traded in his tap shoes for DJ equipment, but he never really quit dancing entirely.

In fact, he performed in the Novato Cat Ballet Company’s rendition of The Nutcracker 12 years in a row.

Rosie rocking the floor

The whole neighborhood is filled with feline dancers, including Rosie, of course, which is no big surprise when you consider how hard she works as a cat scientist in her day job.

I mean, she has to do something to let off steam.

It’s always the quiet ones, right? 😺

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Rosie

So, Rosie started a new hobby… Yeah, she recently read a study on how hobbies improve your mental capacity, so she decided to take up birding.

Truth is, she tried a few other things first, like jazzercise, but nothing grabbed her interest quite like birding.

I was a little surprised by this because she is not a birder. No, she is 100% mouser, and we know this because she loves to stalk her toy mouse and carry it around in her mouth, mewling in the middle of the night so everyone knows she is a mighty hunter.

Anyway, she’s been getting to know all of the birds in the neighborhood, and I’ve been tasked with keeping a running list of them.

Interestingly, she’s already identified 12 completely distinct local turkey gangs, and there are even more of them yet to find! Who knew?

When I asked Rosie how she knew so much about turkey sociology, she reminded me that she taught a course in it at Chico State University last fall.

Since we’re on the subject of birding, Tabs was an avid birder, and not only for hobbyist reasons. It was also because he could not help himself… He’d spend hours cacking at the window, staring and cacking, cacking and staring, and when I would remind him of his various appointments, he would just ignore me.

Tabs

Side note: did I ever tell you about the time Tabs was birding and I had to tell Karl Lagerfeld that Tabs was indisposed?

It wasn’t pretty. 😂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Tabs

Even though, technically, Tabs wasn’t allowed to have any Easter candy, I think he reveled in all the other creatures in his orbit receiving special treats on Easter.

Well, except for Peeps. He did not approve of Peeps…

He told me that he caught a glimpse of the Easter Bunny early on Easter morning a few times, and for many years I’d just say, “Sure, buddy,” and just go with it, until one morning there was a knock on the door just before sunrise. When I opened the door there was a basket on the welcome mat filled with a treasure trove of Cadbury mini eggs.

I looked up and caught a glimpse of a white cotton tail disappearing around the corner. The card next to the basket said, “Thinking of you, Tabs. Love, EB.”

He certainly charmed everyone, didn’t he? 😊

Rosie

Last night I asked Rosie if she had any plans for the holiday, and she said that she was going to check on her various experiments around the neighborhood. For instance, she’s working on this whole elaborate research project on pollinators and California wildflowers.

I invited her to participate in today’s Easter egg hunt with Connor this morning, and she seemed ambivalent at first, but when I mentioned that she could take a scientific angle and perhaps use the data to discover the median time it took the various children in the neighborhood to locate the eggs, her ear tufts perked up.

She hung out with us for a little bit today but then disappeared around an oak tree with a pencil in her mouth and that look of concentration in her eyes…

Hope you had a hoppy Easter. 🐰🐣❤️

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Tabs

Tabs was a fiend for catnip.

He got into the stuff. Loved it. He loved rolling around in it, wrestling with it, chewing it, rubbing it all over his beauty body and pretending to hide in dense fields of it.

It was one of his favorite “meow time” ways to treat himself.

And it wasn’t a secret. Everyone knew how he felt about catnip. I mean, he starred in more than 20 top-tier, multimillion-dollar beauty ad campaigns for catnip-containing products.

To be blunt, he was mad for it.

Rosie

Rosie, on the other hand, doesn’t derive the same pleasure from catnip that Tabs did, but she is, as you know, a mercurial cat scientist and a semi-pro cat hiker.

She loves hiking, and one reason is because of her botanical pursuits. She knows a lot about chemistry, and she’s always on the lookout for different rare plants with unique scientific properties.

Like, her research indicates that a rare subspecies of catnip exists in the Novato area that has the potential to turn humans into cats.

She’s hoping to find a specimen this spring in the Novato hills and bring it back to her lab, where she hopes to isolate its beneficial properties.

She needs help accomplishing this, though, so she’s enlisted my help and the help of her newest assistant, Connor, to accompany her on these exploratory hikes.

I’ve been on three hikes with her so far, and I’m really enjoying myself. It’s just great to be able to witness a true genius at work in the field… I mean literally in the field.

Rosie says we’re getting close to making an historic discovery. She thinks we’ve narrowed the search down to one remaining hill, and the elusive transformatio nepeta cataria will be ours soon! 🐱

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Unlike Rosie, who holds multiple PhDs in the sciences, Tabs was more of a lover than a fighter…or a scientist. But he did go through his Neil deGrasse Tyson phase.

It didn’t last as long as his kitty modeling phase, of course…

But he still holds the record for the longest cat space walk…

And he will always be known as the first cat to have walked on Mars.

He was also the first feline mission commander at JPL…

And designed what still stands as the most successful cat-created video game in history. 🐱

Rosie

Rosie, though? Her scientific credentials are simply next level.

Unfortunately, she got herself into a bit of trouble this weekend with one of her discoveries.

While working remotely as the lead astrophysicist for the Cat Academy of Technology and Science (CATS) project to create a device that can translate cat meows into human speech, she accidentally manipulated Novato’s gravity!

It was crazy! It lasted all day long too!

She was floating all over the place, and when she finally figured out how to reverse things, she inadvertently opened a rainbow portal in the space-time continuum.

It was pretty incredible. 😹

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

The flight back from Stockholm this morning was a little bumpy, but Rosie sure is happy to be back home.

As you know, she won her first (of many, we hope) Nobel Cat Prize this year for her groundbreaking research into creating the most delicious and nutritious cat treats in the world. With her team of dedicated scientists at the Cat Treat Research Institute (CTRI), they created some amazing new treats she can’t wait to share, including a new tuna-flavored crunchy made from 100% cheese.

For cats who live in inland countries far from the ocean, it promises to greatly improve their quality of life.

She only had a couple days in Stockholm, but she did spend one of them sightseeing around the city with her friend Dr. Koko, who’s also a renowned torbie scientist.

Wait — have I mentioned about the Nobel Cat Prize before? I just realized that I’m not sure I told you about it.

Yeah! She was thrilled and honored by the news. She’s dreamed about winning a Nobel Cat Prize ever since she was a kitten, so this was one of her greatest accomplishments.

We’re all very proud… 😊

Tabs

Tabs, of course, was brilliant in a multitude of ways, but he was more of a party animal than a scientist.

When it came to cat treats, he dabbled in new cat treat development, but he was always more interested in eating cat treats than making them…

And he was much better known for his kitty supermodeling and his ability to throw amazing parties than for his work in the kitchen or the research lab. 😸

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

So, with all the rain we’ve been getting here in “sunny” California, we’re way overdue for some rainbows.

We gotta be getting some good ones soon, which is great, because Rosie is an excellent rainbow tracker, as was her mentor, Tabs.

One of the things Tabs prided himself on was his ability to locate gold at the end of rainbows… He was a real pro at it. 🐱

In fact, we used that gold to fund many of his philanthropic endeavors.

Rosie

Rosie, too, has an aptitude for rainbow tracking, although she’s still working on the gold part.

But I’m sure she’ll figure it out. She’s been studying March meteorological patterns and reading up on Leprechauns this weekend, so I expect her to find a pot of gold soon.

Maybe it’ll happen on St. Patrick’s Day! ☘️

I hope so. You can do it, Rosie! Good luck! 😊

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen