Tabs

What a rainy day!

Holy mackerel. It’s been raining nonstop — nonstop! — since yesterday afternoon. It’s been constant rain for almost 24 hours! I can’t remember the last time it rained like this, but it’s been years.

We live up on a little hill, so we don’t have any flooding right here, but the roads below us are flooded. The county sent texts to our phones warning us to stay home unless it’s an emergency, which is what we’ve done. I don’t know how many inches of rain have fallen, but it must be at least a few, thank goodness. It’s very welcome because of the drought, and this should mark the end of wildfire season.

Tabs would have gone buck wild for rain like this. He, like most cats, got really fired up whenever it rained. He always wanted to go outside to check it out. As soon as I’d open the door, he’d dart out, then rethink his choices and run back inside, haha! It was like, “Yea! This is great! Wait… This is water! What the hell?!”

Rosie

Rosie did something similar today. She desperately wanted to go outside. She was mewling at the windows, but as soon as I opened the door, same thing. She took one step outside, got her paws wet, and then bolted back in the house!

Cats… 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

You know, as Tabs’s main assistant (his only assistant really), I struggled at times to fulfill the terms of my employment agreement. He did not make it easy on me; however, the job, I may have mentioned before, had its perks. One of the big ones was that I got to sit in on styling meetings where he would style celebs.

Was I ever allowed to talk to Keanu Reeves? No. My M.O. was to remain in the background and take notes. Nevertheless, I learned so much during those styling meetings. Tabs was definitely a rulebreakers when it came to fashion, but one traditional rule he firmly believed in was that if you find colors that are complementary to your aesthetic or your fur pattern for that matter, you take the color palette and you run with it.

Rosie

I was trying to explain that to Rosie today when I gave her this autumnal, rust-colored collar. I said, “Rosie-pose, don’t you see how the rust tones in this work of art play so well with the orange in your fur?” And she was just like, “Nah.” She was not having it. Instead, she wanted to talk to me about binary stars. I don’t know… She’s on an astronomy kick I think. She watched a Carl Sagan documentary, and now she just won’t stop talking about planets and stars.

Anywho, I keep trying to get her to accept the side of her that could be fashionable like my former employer. Maybe one day I’ll break her down. All this is to say that while I’m no fashion wunderkind, I do believe Rosie rocks the autumn tones very well. 😊

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

It’s full-on fall, y’all. On windy days when I see the fallen oak leaves pick up and swirl around, I think of how Tabs loved to chase them. He’d sit there and wait for a bunch of leaves to swirl around, and the he’d just bound on over and get up in the mix.

Did he ever actually catch any leaves? I don’t know. But it was the cutest thing to watch. Another thing he loved, absolutely loved, was chasing squirrels. Again, did he ever actually catch any squirrels? No, but he sure had fun going after them. He’d do this funny thing where he’d run up a tree, and he’d only get like 5 feet up at the most, and then he’d just pause with his claws on the trunk and be like, “Oh, now what?”

I wish I could have brought tabby with me to Starbucks so that I could have a pumpkin spice latte with him on my lap. Maybe if we’re ever reunited again in the universe we’ll do that on a chilly fall day. Of course, he’d do his tabby a-hole move and spring off my stomach when I least expect it and I’d end up with pumpkin spice spilled all over me, but if I could spend a little time with my boy, it would be worth it.

As you can tell, I miss him a little extra today.

Rosie

Oh, Rosie-pose! We found out this weekend that she absolutely loves egg yolk. I gave her a little bit yesterday after eating my breakfast. I just set the plate down with the leftover yolk on it, and she went to town on it.

Ever since that little extra treat she’s been my little shadow, following me around, snuggling on my lap. I don’t know if it’s appreciative, or if she’s just trying to bank some extra points so I’ll give her more yolk in the future.

Cats are funny. She has such a different personality than Tabs did, but she’s also very loving and sweet like he was.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Even though it was crazy hot this weekend, it still felt like full-on fall. There are leaves everywhere, it gets chilly and breezy at night, and people and cats are starting to put their Halloween decorations up.

As I’m sure you can imagine, Tabs never missed an opportunity to celebrate Halloween. For him it was an entire season, and it lasted more than a month. Sure, he wore costumes all year round, but he took it to the next level in October.

One day he’d be punk rocked out, the next he’d be decked out like a dinosaur.

Rosie

We put up some decorations already, and Rosie helped. She has a great eye.

She also loves fall and Halloween almost as much as Tabs did.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Tabs was a firm believer in the transformative power of treats, and he was partial to turkey Temptations and Purina Pro Plan Savory Bites. He believed that if you eat well, and often, you can accomplish great things.

Rosie

Rosie is also a huge proponent of frequent treat consumption, and she’s all about chicken Temptations. She gets some every other night, and she can tell when it’s her treat day (we call it Ladies’ Night). She’ll follow me into the kitchen and block the doorway until the treats magically appear.

She sent us to Target today to scope out looks for her Halloween outfit, and while we were there we saw the treats.

We’re usually a family that gets the bagged treats, but this time we brought home the giant 16-ounce tub.

The treats power her up to perform the advanced mathematical calculations she has to do for her side hustle as a professor at MIT (the Meowsachusetts Institute of Technology). 😹

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Man! I cannot believe summer is over. What the!? And we didn’t even get many hot days this year. It’s weird out here in the Bay Area because we get some of our warmest weather in early fall, but still. I wanted more pool days by now.

Tabs would have done a big summer send-off this weekend with a full-scale kitty modeling show. He always liked to end the seasons with a huge event of some kind, and then follow it up with a party to ring in the next season. To him, everything was a good reason to celebrate his fabulousness.

Rosie

Rosie loves fall just as much as she loves summer, so she’s perfectly fine with the seasons changing. She’s all about the science of seasons, and botany is one of her many interests, so it’s all just so fascinating that she looks forward to every season changing. She sees the wonder everywhere she looks in the natural world.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Rosie doesn’t want to manage. She’s not like Tabs in that way. She doesn’t want to be the big boss. Sure, she’s a boss lady cat, but she doesn’t want to have to tell everyone what to do. She doesn’t particularly enjoy being in charge, unlike Tabs, who loved calling the shots and making the tough decisions.

Rosie would rather leave the drama to someone else and stay in the lab. She’s all about the science, not the drama.

Going for these morning walks now with Rosie, it’s a very different experience than it was with Tabs. He, for lack of a better word, dominated the circle. He didn’t just walk around it. He owned the asphalt all the way around.

All the other cats in the neighborhood knew Tabs basically owned the road and the sidewalk, and he didn’t just “go for walks.” He strutted. To Tabs, the circle was one giant catwalk.

Rosie

You know Rosie though. She has panache, obvs, but she walks around the circle like she’s conducting an experiment. She studies the plants, measures the distances between the houses, records light levels and air quality in her journal, and she even measures the ambient acoustics to estimate the number of turkeys, quails, dogs and cats. It’s quite extraordinary.

That said, she isn’t always serious. She also knows how to let down her fur. Sometimes she’ll pull me toward a tree and climb up it, or she’ll chase a squirrel, so, I mean, she also has fun sometimes.

And yes, occasionally she’ll also strike a pose. After all, she is the new CFO (Chief Feline Officer) of Tabs the Cat Industries, LLC.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Oh, my gosh, this time of year on the hill? Tabs loved late summer here so much! The long days, the active squirrels collecting acorns and leaping from tree to tree, the noisy woodpeckers, the huge flocks of overstuffed turkeys, the breezy nights and afternoons that send leaves and dry grass dancing. It’s a super exciting time of year for a cat, and it thrilled him.

The wildlife has been more active than usual this year. My tabby would have loved it.

Some nights after he got home from work, El Hub would take Tabs out on the hill, and the two of them would explore every nook and cranny. Tabs would climb oak trees, chase lizards, stalk moles, and he even caught a bird or two WHILE ON HIS LEASH! Now that’s the dedication of a natural born birder.

Rosie

Rosie has also found her groove lately. She knows what’s up about September. Just like Tabs, she gets totally fired up when it’s windy outside, which it is a lot here from now till November.

When everything around her is rustling and moving, all the leaves, grass and branches swaying, it really gets her kitty senses tingling.

I wonder if they could have hung out together, if they would have gotten along. I think about it a lot. Most of the time, I think they probably wouldn’t, because both of them are fairly standoffish around other cats. Tabs certainly was. He was very territorial.

But maybe their mutual love for September would have brought them together.

Maybe. I like to think so.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen