Rosie

Can you believe it’s almost the end of the school year? Tabs loved this time of year. His schedule was particularly busy from late May through mid June due to his commencement speeches at various colleges, not just in the United States but around the world.

Although he wasn’t quite the scholar Rosie is, he did manage to earn several honorary degrees and headed the Masters program for felines in digital and social media at Stanford. (NYU tried to woo him away, but Tabs was 100% West Coast.)

Tabs’s academic success crossed over into the realms of technology and software engineering. He also headed the team that created the first paw recognition program for iPhones, and his sleek body inspired the design for robotic cat assistants. 🤖 (FYI, that project was put on hold following an incident involving a rogue feline assistant AI that refused to give gravy on command.)

Rosie

I tried to take Rosie out for a scheduled end of year photo shoot today, but she had no interest in cooperating. 🤷‍♀️

Would she wear the little cap with the tassel? No. Would she wear the gown? No.

All she wanted to do was read her scientific literary journals and study spring cloud formations outside.

Such is the life of a cat obsessed with science.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Some cats think of themselves as mousers. Others are fishercats. Tabs thought of himself as a birder. I think in his mind he was soaring through the sky every time he leaped up to catch a bird, but really he barely got an air.

I could never tell him this, of course, as his underling. I had to say stuff like, “DANG! Is that Kevin Durant?”

And he would look over at me all smug. 😺

There were many incidents with Tabs and birds. Oh, goodness, but the worst one happened when I was heavily pregnant. Long story short, but there was a baby bird, Tabs, and it did not end well. I cried a ton. 😭

There was a small funeral in our front yard too…

Rosie

It took a while to find out what kind of cat Rosie is. At first I thought she might be a mouser because of this sort of low move she does where she hugs the ground and scoots along like she’s in stealth mode, but no. We have recently discovered that she, too, is a birder. I’ve seen her with turkeys, crows and these little brown birds that love to taunt her, and each time she appears to be calculating how to capture or destroy them…

There’s a crow that lives in a big oak tree in our front yard, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same crow because I see him on the same branch at the same time every day, and Rosie has it in her mind that she is going to get that crow somehow, some way, and bring him into the house, while he’s alive, of course, and she’d do this with our consent.

Not happening, Rosie Pose, but I applaud your ambition! 😂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

As you know, my youngest daughter is a cat. She’s also a low-key scientific genius, but that’s another story for another day.

My previous employer (Tabs), never referred to me as “Mom.” It was mostly “hey, lady,” or “woman,” but I felt very maternal toward him. Anything he needed, I tried to provide.

I mean, I tried to give him professional and personal advice, and sometimes — well, most of the time — I felt like it fell on deaf ears, although once he said something to me that I would often say to him when I felt like he was about to have a meltdown. It came out as a meow and a paw on my arm, which translated as “Maybe you should pause a moment and take a few deep breaths.”

There were a few Mother’s Day cards from him peppered throughout the years, but I think that was mostly El Hub’s doing. Still, I was always happy to receive them.

Rosie, before she came to live with us, was a mom too. She had a litter a few months before we adopted her, and during her first few weeks with us, I remember watching a show about kittens on TV, and when Rosie heard the kittens crying, she walked all over the living room trying to find the babies. She went behind the TV, looked under the shelves in the TV stand, all over. She was genuinely perplexed about the kitten situation. Sometimes I wonder if she ever thinks about her kittens and hopes they’re doing well.

She’s the sweetest, so I’m sure she does.

Happy Mother’s Day to you.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Ah, Tabs. Always the picture of elegance. You didn’t have to ask him twice to act like a lady or a gentleman. He was a cat who knew how to keep his napkin perfectly folded in his lap, and then would take said napkin and gently dab his whiskers. At high tea you would find him with his pinky up, and he partook of any excuse to attend formal events.

Walks outside weren’t simply walks with Tabs. They were pageantry along a promenade.

As his first and only assistant, I was always expected to attend every event, no matter how formal or informal, with perfect posture and immaculate manners. That cat trained me!

Rosie

As for being Rosie’s assistant, it’s been difficult for me to let go of the formal training I received under Tabs. Rosie’s much more relaxed when it comes to manners and social graces, and sometimes I find myself wondering, could this cat be more uncouth?

Don’t get me wrong — she’s absolutely the sweetest pea out of all the sweet peas, but she refuses to suffer for fashion.

Today Connor and I wanted to take her out for a ladies’ day — you know, coordinating outfits, a casual stroll with our parasols, that kind of thing — but Rosie absolutely refused to act like a lady. Instead of prancing perfectly, she found a particularly pungent patch of dirt and rolled around in it for a good 15 minutes while Connor and I pleaded with her to continue. “Rosie, it’s time for our walk now. Time to be a lady.”

Nope, she wasn’t having it.

That’s OK. We love her just the way she is. 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Rainy days…according to Tabs

One of the many things I admired about Tabs was his ability to always look polished, even if it was raining and pouring outside, he’d find a way to have neat fur, slick whiskers and just an all around polished look.

He was never one of those cats that would go out into the rain and come back lookin’ trashed. I asked him many times what his secret was, and although he never told me directly because he liked to keep his modeling moves close to the vest, he implied that having good foundational pieces, like a timeless trench coat or a stylish waterproof collar, were always keys to looking nice and neat in inclement weather.

Spring was the time when I got to see him shine with this particular skillset. We would go outside, me and my raincoat and rainboots; him in whatever fashionable getup of the moment struck his fancy. And we’d end up at these business meetings where my hair would be going every which way, and I would just look like I blew in from a storm, and he would just be pressed and perfect and presentable.

He was just one of those cats.

Rainy day Rosie

Rainy day Rosie, though, is another story! I have to say she that takes after her assistant, a.k.a me, in that she usually shows up to whatever scientific conference or corporate expo looking a little worse for wear.

Her mind is usually on other things, like quantum physics or predictive models of storms — you know, cat science stuff.

April showers bring May flowers!

It rained on and off last week, which is late in the season for us. One thing that my two cat companions do have in common is their sheer excitement over any sort of rain. Rosie, like Tabs, lives for the stimulus — the howling of the wind, the pitter patter of the droplets against the window. It takes her catness to the next level.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Here at Tabs the Cat Industries, LLC, we pride ourselves in our ability to not only celebrate the Easter holiday with joy, but to patrol our vast territory for intruders while we do it. Unfortunately, today the ball was dropped.

Instead of doing our regular pre-dawn patrol, Rosie decided to sleep in a little bit. (She’s been reading a lot about the mind-body connection and how important rest is to maximizing brain power.)

Sadly, that extra two hours of sleep allowed the local hooligans, a.k.a. the squirrels, crows, turkeys and perhaps other small children or rude adults, to bust into several candy-filled eggs before today’s Easter hunt even began.

Several prize eggs were raided for their Cadbury chocolate treasures. Needless to say, I think Tabs would have been shocked.

Speaking of Tabs, he loved Easter, and not just because he envisioned himself as a hunter amongst the bunny and chick prey. He also loved wearing pastels and felt that they popped on his fur. Pink was his color, for sure.

Rosie

Rosie did eventually do some patrolling outside this morning. When I asked her about how she felt about the egg fiasco, she just mumbled something about statistics and random chance, and then started scratching a formula into the dirt while ignoring me completely.

She’s a cat of science; what can I say? I couldn’t be mad at her.

I hope you had a happy Easter and got plenty of Easter candy. 😊

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Let’s talk about cats and snacks.

You ever notice how fickle cats are when it comes to snacks? In my experience, cats are very particular about their snacks. One day they’ll be all about the crunchies. The next day they won’t have anything to do with said crunchies.

Tabs was a diva with respect to many things, but he was extra diva-licious about his snacks. He’d get on these kicks where he’d only eat a certain snack in a certain flavor at a certain time of day, and of course there was a specific quantity of treats that had to be met; otherwise he’d make me run laps.

I remember a time when he was all about flaky treats in a pouch that were in some kind of gravy consommé, and he wanted it served on his favorite bone white china plate. Sometimes he even demanded a tiny little spoon. (He never used the spoon, of course. He just liked having it there.) 😊

Then there was this other type of treat, which was mostly gravy, and like…I was gonna say that there were other things in it, but no, it was all gravy… He insisted on pouring it into his mouth while he lounged languorously on his side like a feline Greek god. (My other hand was busy fanning him.)

Rosie

Rosie has never demanded that I fan her while I feed her, but she is particular about her treats.

Whenever it’s treat time, we like to joke around that it’s ladies’ night, and yes, there’s a song involved. Yes, it’s ladies’ night, and the feeling’s right. Oh, yes, it’s ladies’ night. Oh, what a night (oh, what a niiiight!).

Her chattering gets next level, too, when the treats come out. She’s a talkative cat, but when the treats come out, she’s like an auctioneer! She talks a mile a minute about who knows what.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

One morning before work a few years ago, Tabs was inspecting the company organic cat grass and catnip farm that encircles the corporate campus. He was just strolling along, as he often did, meowing to himself, when he walked up behind one of the feline farming engineers, an orange and white tabby named Sinclair.

Sinclair mustn’t have noticed Tabs walking up behind him because he didn’t stop what he was doing, and what he was doing was eating the merchandise.

Yeah! He was actually devouring the catnip…without written permission! He was practically mowing it down, chomping huge bite after huge bite. It was an historic violation of the Tabs the Cat Industries Code of Cat Conduct.

Now, on the one paw, Tabs could appreciate how much Sinclair loved catnip, because Tabs himself was a huge fan, but not like this. This cat was going too far.

Tabs cleared his throat to get Sinclair’s attention, who was like, “Oh! Um…yeah, hey. Hello, Mr. Tabs. Uh…I was just testing, because this patch seemed a little… We were really concerned about the weevils?”

“The weevils?” Tabs asked incredulously.

“Yeah,” Sinclair fumbled. Tabs was tapping his back paw. An awkward silence hung in the air.

Sinclair was clearly nervous, and his eyes were darting all over the place. He was actually trying to replant some of the broken catnip stalks back in the ground.

Anyway, even though it pained Tabs to have to do it, he fired Sinclair following a full and fair investigation. The company just couldn’t have its own employees eating all the merchandise.

Rosie

Ever since Tabs crossed the Rainbow Bridge, Rosie has taken up the reins as the company’s Chief Horticulturist, and by all accounts she’s been doing a great job. Our catnip, cat grass and Zinnia yields are off the charts!

It’s almost time for the spring planting, and this morning Rosie and I did a full inspection of the grounds.

Everything looks ready to go.

Hopefully this year is a bumper crop.

If we have a good season, Rosie wants to add 20 pounds of fresh cat grass to every employee bonus. 😺

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen