Rosie

Rosie

The holidays are officially over, but we’re still feeling the Christmas spirit around these parts. Peace and love and goodwill toward all of the furry friends, including…pals of the canine variety.

This afternoon, Rosie was taking a leisurely New Year’s Day stroll around the neighborhood when Connie rounded the corner walking Bella, a “friend of the family.”

Rosie, being the peacemaker she is, very calmy greeted Bella as she crossed the threshold into Rosie’s personal space. Bella, on the other hand, had other ideas.

There may have been a little grumbling and a tail twitch here and there, but in the end the two reached a détente.

I’ve never seen Rosie interact with dogs before, so I was pleasantly surprised to learn that she’s a cool customer around them. That reminds me of another cat… I think you know who I’m talking about. 😊

Tabs

Tabs was also a friend of the canine community. In fact, he worked with dogs throughout his modeling career and was an inspiration to many four-legged friends and fans because of his barrier-breaking portfolio.

But don’t get it twisted. When they had to, the claws would come out.

Generally, though, that was a rare occurrence. Normally, even the most demanding dog divas were putty in his paws.

He just had that magic about him.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Hi, friend. Merry Christmas.

I hope you had a wonderful holiday. Sending best wishes for joy, good fortune — good health, most importantly, for you and your loved ones, because nothing else matters more.

It’s funny, but I was just thinking about Christmases and this post series, Sundays With Tabs. I started the blog in 2007, so this is the…fifteenth Christmas for Makeup and Beauty Blog.

It’s hard to even fathom, but I’ve been typing words and taking pics for this website for a considerable part of my life. There are actually children in high school right now who weren’t even born when I started it.

I gotta say, it blows my mind!

Thank you for sticking around and not immediately clicking away, like, “What the $#@& is this place!? What the heck did I click? Is this a website about cats???”

Yes, basically. I mean, pretty much. Cats, makeup, reality TV recs. Mostly nonsense really.

Ha! But seriously, it is. 😊 And that’s OK with me because I know your real life is serious. Just like me, you have big concerns. You have things you worry about. You have hopes and fears. You may have dreams. Sometimes you have trouble sleeping (who doesn’t, right?). I’m sure you feel melancholy about some things, just like I do. Certain things make you feel bad about yourself, and I’m assuming this because you’re human (or a cat!), and I think most people feel a lot of the same things. We go through a lot of the same challenges over the course of a life, just at different moments.

Honestly, I don’t know where I was going with this other than to say that I’ve been blogging for a million years. God willing, I’ll be blogging for a million more. 😂

Since I have the benefit of these 15 years of perspective about this whole blogging thing, sometimes I’ll look back at the whole span of time and certain things will stand out. One of them is how Tabs, who passed away a little over three years ago now but was a huge part of my inspiration for blogging, would — and I kid you not about this — really and truly appear to look forward to the hoopla I put him through to take the holiday pictures I took and shared of him.

I’m not kidding! I mean, putting on the outfits, coaxing him to look at the camera, sometimes bribing him with treats, enlisting El Hub to stand behind the camera waving a feather cat teaser toy to get his attention — frankly, the tricks of the pet blogging trade. Yup, sometimes to get a good pic of Tabs looking dreamily into the camera took A LOT of work. Sometimes dozens and dozens of pictures to get one great one.

But yet…no matter how many pics it took or how much time, Tabs never walked away. He never swatted me in disgust — not once. If I set him down on the ground, he stayed right there, right by my feet giving kitty hugs, and I don’t think I’m just convincing myself of this. I truly believe that he enjoyed himself. I also believe he loved me, and he loved kindness and attention. I swear, in his cat way, he loved the fantasy I built up around him. 💕

If some people can be larger than life, then so can some cats.

Rosie

We got up pretty early this morning and all came downstairs for our Christmas and to open presents. Played Christmas music on the Amazon Echo, made our coffees and hot chocolates, and Rosie was right there with us the whole time.

Of course, the crinkling paper from the gift unwrapping is almost impossible for a cat to resist, and she was all over it. Her grandparents (my mom and dad) also got her some new toys, which she promptly proceeded to lose under various pieces of furniture.

Now the day is over, and Rosie is nowhere to be found…

I think she tired herself out with the festivities today and found a quiet spot to nap, but when we all go upstairs to bed, guaranteed she’ll follow us up, because she always, always sleeps in our bed.

She’s an important part of the family now. 😊

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Oh, man! If Tabs were still here? ’tis the season for adventure! Maybe it was the densely packed fluffy fur on his tum, but that cat did not slow down in winter. Didn’t matter if it was 20 below, he did not shy away from frigid temperatures, among other things. He would have had his cup of hot catnip tea to warm his bones, but then he would have been out the door. He was just as busy adventuring in December as he was in July.

Funnily enough, but one year, he disappeared for two weeks in December. No note, no phone call, just up and disappeared. Came to find out that he hopped on a flight to the UK to meet the Queen!

Yeah, apparently, he got knighted!

She said it was for his “lifetime of service to the feline community”.

England loved him. In fact, he was bigger than Beckham there for a while. You couldn’t find a BBC channel that didn’t have at least one program with Tabs on it.

While he was out there, that’s when he also filmed his famous season of The Great British Baking Show.

He went all the way that year. Even got his paw shaken by Paul Hollywood.

Rosie

Rosie hasn’t gone on any trips lately because she’s not really that kind of cat. She prefers to stay closer to home, especially around the holidays, but she has been feeling particularly regal, thanks in no small part to a show she’s been marathoning on Netflix.

Have you seen it? It’s called Harry & Meghan.

It’s pretty good. Very interesting. Rosie likes the idea of royalty, but she wants to be the queen of her own kingdom.

I can’t blame her. 😊

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

For Tabs, rainy days were synonymous with one bold pop of color. His favorite statement color to make a statement? Red, of course.

I like how it pops against the gray of my fur and the gray of the firmament above,” he would say when he was in bougie mode.

This cape with its attached hood in scarlet were a favorite ensemble of his on wet days, when he would insist I took him out on the hillside so that the red could play against the green.

If the grass was glistening with raindrops, even better.

Rosie

Rosie, on the other hand, prefers a subtler approach, like a simple red rosette on a collar.

An added bonus to this approach is that it’s also festive. 🙂

Rosie would like me to mention that one of the gifts underneath the tree is something she purchased for her “sissy” Connor. (It’s a cat-themed card game called Rat-A-Tat Cat.)

Rosie’s convinced Connor is part cat. I’m inclined to believe her.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

I’ve only known one person — actually, strike that — one cat who could look debonaire in the middle of a rainstorm.

Yes, it was Tabs.

Trust me, the paparazzi tried to catch him looking unkempt or frazzled every time it rained, but they always failed. Even during a torrential downpour, Tabs was able to serve major lewks.

You’d often find him carefully grooming himself nonchalantly as the rain poured down around him. I don’t think I ever met a cooler customer.

Rosie

To Rosie, rain is yet another reason to explore the world of science.

We all went outside today, and I tried to get her to loosen up. I even dressed her in this fun waterproof shark sweater hoping it would inspire her to walk the runway a bit, but no. Instead, she kept meowing on and on about citrus flavonoids and barometric pressure…

I think she enjoyed herself, and even though she’d never admit it, she liked being a little stylish today. 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

He wanted fame, and fame wanted him.

There was no way Tabs could have just been an ordinary housecat. He had too much swagger.

Even when he was just merely existing, “it” practically radiated off him.

What was “it?” The wow factor. Je ne sais quoi.

At the height of his fame, his style was so ubiquitous that it even filtered into toddler fashion.

Everyone wanted to be like Tabs.

He had a unique way of fusing cat street style with boardroom style, and to this day, no other cat has reproduced his point of view.

I especially enjoyed his power move phase, where every day he dressed like he was about to embark upon a hostile takeover.

It was breathtaking to see 20 pounds of pure unfiltered swagger.

And then, just like that, he could turn it off.

Rosie

“Don’t mess with madam,” as Rosie would put it. While not quite the same type of aggressive styling Tabs favored, Rosie has power style of her own.

She prefers a single bold statement piece, something that is feminine yet deadly at the same time.

All the cats in the neighborhood admire her for her beauty and her brains.

She doesn’t really try to be impressive. She just is. 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Tabs the Cat — supermodel, philanthropist, barrier breaker and arctic explorer.

That husky boy loved the snow. In fact, I think his whiskers might have drooped a little if he had found out we wouldn’t have been able to go on a trip to Lake Tahoe due to a last-minute illness, which is basically what happened to us this weekend.

No, it wasn’t Covid. Just another virus, but all three of us got it, which is why I’ve been out of commission so much this week. I’ve been absolutely delirious from lack of sleep since Wednesday.

As Tabs would have said, though, tomorrow is a new day. We’re all feeling quite a bit better now, but we still had to cancel the trip we had planned to go play in snow at Tahoe this weekend.

Tabs’s loving touch would have been handy to have around this weekend, because it never hurts to have an extra set of paws to nurse one back to health.

He was an angel when it came to caring for his assistant when she was down for the count.

That said, there were a few times when Tabs overly enthusiastically offered to operate on me…and whenever I told him no, he seemed shocked by it. I don’t know how he received a medical degree amongst all of his other endeavors, but he did!

Rosie

Rosie, another a lover of snow, also holds a legit medical license.

Even though she’s driven by the cold, hard facts of science, she too is loving and sweet when her assistants aren’t functioning at 100% efficiency, so she was a good caregiver this week.

One thing though? I don’t know if this was a crazy dream I had due to the lack of sleep, but for some reason I vaguely recall being transferred on a gurney into a surgical observation room at one point. In the fever dream, Rosie had her scrubs on and that cold, curious look she gets sometimes when she’s deep in pursuit of scientific knowledge.

Yeah, I don’t know what was up with that… 🤷‍♀️

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

The felines I’ve assisted are vastly different, but one thing they have in common is their love for faraway friends.

For Tabs, it was a squirrel who lived in the neighborhood. This particular squirrel stopped by a few times a week to allegedly visit the oak trees near our house to gather acorns and whatnot, but really, it was a social visit. He and Tabs would stare at each other from afar, communicating with friendly and interested looks, and it was my understanding that neither felt threatened. They were, for whatever reason, fascinated with each other.

I asked Tabs about it once. What was the story behind their long-distance friendship? He said they were both thinking of investing in something called cryptocurrency, which I hadn’t heard of at the time. Tabs was always at the forefront of technology, as you know. I just never he received his insider information from a squirrel.

Rosie

I recently discovered that Rosie, too, has a faraway friend, a small terrier mix named Bella who frequently patrols the neighborhood.

The two stare at each other from their respective command posts, silently exchanging information which I’m assuming has something do with science.

I ran into Bella the other day and asked her if she and Rosie were currently working on any research together. She gave me a knowing look and pointed at a nearby stick. Later, when I asked Rosie about it, she grumbled about security clearance and how I did not have it, so the details remain a mystery to me. 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen