💗"Boots look nice on pussy cats. . ." (purr, purr)

Boots look very nice on pussy cats. (purrrrrrrrr)

The photo I used for the thumbnail is Bentley's "mug shot", the picture that started it all. We weren't in the market for a cat - at all - and in fact, I had just lost a beloved pet, a sweet little lovebird I called Paco. My last lovebird Jasper had died after seven years or so of companionship, and when I brought Paco home I was delighted - if you opened the cage, she would climb right onto your hand, go up your arm and nibble on your ear. But only a few weeks later, we found her dead on the bottom of the cage, and we never figured out why. She wasn't quite mature yet, and may even have slipped off an unfamiliar perch in a very large cage. But I was devastated, and knew I could not adopt another bird, it was just too heartbreaking.

Meantime, my daughter, who had also lost a cat, had adopted a new kitten named Mia - and every time we went over there, we were enchanted. But we hadn't owned a cat for ten years, and after Murphy left us, we said, "No more cats." Then Shannon  began to work on us. Hey, you're retired now - retired people need a cat!

So I began to look on various websites, SPCA and kitten rescue sites, and then - I found this picture, and something happened! I showed it to Bill, and said, "We have to go see this cat. Maybe tomorrow?" He said, "Why don't we go right now?"

We weren't even thinking of an adult cat, and this cat was a year old, a stray wandering along the road probably trying to find a girl friend. He was badly injured, and someone found him and brought him in to the SPCA across town. He was in a cubicle all by himself, and when I went in he was very high up, but immediately jumped  down and came up to me, his tail in a question mark. I picked him up, and he melted in my arms. We had our cat.

Yes, he HAD been injured, attacked by a dog or a  coyote, and it was a lucky thing that he had survived it. There was virtually no  fur on his back, just a shaven patch with awful  scars. I asked the staff if the fur would grow back, and they said they didn't  know. But when we took him home, everyone fell in love with him instantly. My daughter-in-law commented on his  bald spot: "That's where his wings broke off."

The fur almost all grew back, but when he leans forward you can see little bald spots on his shoulders,  which we call his "duelling scars". We like to say, "You should have seen the dog!" Obviously he had fought back valiantly, and ended up in safe haven.

So  now Bentley appears in many of my videos, and wanders into the frame when I show off my trolls. We can't imagine our lives without him. He is the perfect cat for us, quiet and dignified, but quirky and unpredictable at times, and fiercely loyal to us. If  Bill and I are having coffee and talking, Bentley will mosey into the room  and plunk himself down exactly in the middle. If I am sick or troubled, he will nudge the door open and jump up  on the bed to be with me. He lap-sits on Bill, but with me he prefers to nest between my ankles while I am reading in bed.

So it was a natural that he would be the visual for this song, which to this day brings tears to my eyes. Boots like nice on pussy cats. . . (purr, purr!)

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😽How the Pussycat Learned to SPEAK!

A song from my favourite childhood record, Puss in Boots. Puppetry by ferociousgumby!

When I was just a teeny-weeny kitty,
Everyone told me that I looked so pretty.
They said, “Beautiful eyes!”
They said, “Lovely fur!”
But all I could answer was “Meow”,
Or “purr”.

My coat was black,
My eyes of course were yellow,
People always said, “What a charming fellow!”
I wanted to thank them, but I did not know how,
For all I could answer was “purr”
Or “meow”!

Then one fine day, as I was lying sleeping,
A great idea into my head came creeping:
A pussycat who could learn to say “meow”
Could say just “me”, by leaving off the “ow”-

So I said, “me, me, me, me, me”
And it was plain you could see
From “me” to “we” to “she” to “he”
Was just as simple as it could be.
I practiced daily for a week,
And that is how I learned to speak!

Then I thought that I would try
Slipping off from “me” to “my”.
From “me to “my” to “sky” to “why”
Was just as simple as eating pie!
I practiced daily for a week,
And that is how I learned to speak.

Soon I was no longer a beginner,
If someone asked, “How would you like some dinner?”
If I wanted to answer, I could say, “YES, SIR!”
Instead of replying just “Meow-ow-wow-ow

Wow-ow-wow"
Or “purrrrrrrrrrr,
Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

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The Troll Doll Channel: 💗FALLING IN LOVE💗

I have discovered a TROVE of 78 rpm recordings from my childhood, all in pristine shape, with nary a pop or a skip. This is one of the real joys of YouTube. I tried to sing some of these songs to my kids a zillion years ago, and they acted like I was crazy (which I am, of course!). But now I feel vindicated, and get to enjoy these any time I want. One of my all-time favorites was Puss in Boots. What I really appreciate now is how good the voiceovers were, with Puss coming across as a total smart-aleck and his master, John, naive and a bit of a dimwit. And the singing was so great! They honestly do not make voices like this any more. People really knew how to sing, and gave their best even on a children's record which would probably not pay them much. What I love about this is how childlike the imagery is, making the romantic aspect a little more comprehensible to kids. I mean - sliding down bannisters? Home runs in baseball? Come to think of it, falling in love IS a little like that. Especially the bannister part.

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They said, 'beautiful eyes' - they said, 'lovely fur'

If I really want to spring the latch on my childhood and release all the hobgoblins of memory, I listen to Children's Record Guild recordings on YouTube. I didn't save any of my originals, which were in bad enough shape when I inherited them from some other family who didn't want them any more. But they didn't go anywhere. They took up residence in the back of my brain. When the internet was relatively new, I discovered "kiddie record" websites which actually SOLD these things, and I was amazed to see they still existed, but I wasn't about to pay $50 for an old beat-up copy of Puss in Boots.

Now  I can hear them, many of them, for free. Some have aged better than others. This might be my favorite - a vastly-simplified version of the Puss in Boots tale, with the main character played by a brash actor with a slightly nasal, possibly New Jersey accent. At the time I just thought Puss was "neat" and didn't notice how American he sounded. 

Then there were the songs. They stuck in the mind. When we  got a kitten in about 1990, I went around the house singing something that made my kids want to climb the walls. It was the song about how Puss learned to talk.

"When I was just a teeny-weeny kitty,
Everyone told me that I looked so pretty.
They said, 'beautiful eyes',
They said, 'lovely fur',
But all I could answer was meow,
or purr."

Pretty soon they were singing it with me, helpless to resist. "My coat was black, my eyes of course were yellow/People always said, what a charming fellow! I wanted to thank them, but I did not know howwww, for all I could answer was purrrr, or meowwww."

When I listen to these things that we played so often, full of familiar skips and scratches that somehow became part of the story, they seem - different. They've changed. For one thing, they're so short. In childhood, time is perceived differently. When we were waiting for Christmas to come, it seemed to take a few thousand years. Now Christmases whip by in a blur, and I want time to go slower so I can at least breathe. The stories now seem almost laughably brief. Puss in Boots was one of the really big, impressive, two-disc recordings, a musical extravaganza, an epic. You had to keep turning records over to hear it. And the whole thing lasts about fifteen minutes! It was hard to fit more than three or four minutes per side on a 78 rpm record, especially a cheaply-manufactured kids' recording. 

Fifteen minutes! Surely those stories lasted hours, because they were a kind of universe we entered. We didn't notice how stupid some of the songs were: 

"Oh a beaver shouldn't bother with a bathrobe
And a raincoat on a reindeer isn't right
And a seal in bedroom slippers
Though he fits them on his flippers
And he zips them up with zippers looks a fright
Now a spider in a sweater is no better,
Hippopotami look horrible in hats,
And a sparrow in a snowsuit looks much worse than one in no suit,
But boots look nice on pussycats
(purrrrrrr, purrrrrrr)
Boots look very nice on pussycats.
(purrrrrrrrrr)."

That song, dumb as it sounds, still kind of gets to me because it's sung rather tenderly, and the "purrrrr, purrrrrr" is quite convincing. Then Puss says, "Thanks, Jahn," and the spell is broken.

All those actors are dead now, because these things were mostly made before I was even born. It was an important cultural genre then, children's records, and even my own kids caught the tail-end of it. And then it all changed. I can't keep up with kids' entertainment now, not sure I even want to, and every day I encounter at least six words that I don't know the meaning of. And yet, in the midst of this alien landscape, I can take a trip backwards any time I want. For free. By the power of YouTube.

A great idea into my head came creeping

In this magical age of YouTube, everything comes around again. These Children's Record Guild rediscoveries are recordings I thought I'd never hear again. As a kid, they were epic tales that seemed to go on forever, so I'm surprised to see how short they are, some of them having only three or four minutes per side. Though I didn't post it here because it's in four parts, the Children's Record Guild version of Cinderella is full of the music of Prokofiev. It wasn't familiar to me then (for in spite of my classical music upbringing, the only Prokofiev I knew was Peter and the Wolf), but many years later I discovered, or rediscovered the ballet and got the strangest prickly feeling all over: yes, I had heard this music before, embedded in a story, or was the story embedded in the music? It took me a while to put the pieces together, and when I hear it now I realize how cleverly Prokofiev was adapted and spliced together with a minimalized version of one of the world's oldest fairy tales.

The Emperor's New Clothes, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Sleeping Beauty, Robin Hood, Build me a House, Grandfather's Farm, Pedro in Brazil, Slow Joe, Let's Have a Party, and. . . the immortal Travels of Babar, that one was the best of all:

"I am an elephant actor." (Trumpet fanfare)

Greek chorus: "This elephant actor is going to make believe he is the brave King Babar."

"I am an elephant actress." (Trumpet fanfare)

Greek chorus: "This elephant actress is going to make believe she is the beautiful Queen Celeste."

These weren't just records, they were things to hold on to, companions, a means to get away from the hell of school and the scorn of my so-called friends. They come around again now in this unlikely form, something I couldn't even have imagined ten or fifteen years ago, and they're different somehow - they changed somewhere along the line. The character of Puss, once beloved, is now a smart-ass con with a thick, nasal accent, perhaps working-class Boston or New Yahhk. The cleverness of the songs and the way the stories move right along (they HAD to, at 3 1/2 minutes per side) are more apparent to me. I'm now the storyteller, not the "tellee", so I know a thing or two about the craft.

(Next day.  All this seemed familiar, as if I had written about it before. And lo, when I went digging, I found this:)

There is another association with articulate animals: the Children's Record Guild recording of a very strange, adulterated version of Puss in Boots. We had a number of these recordings, which originally came through the mail as a sort of record-of-the-month subscription. But this set of maybe thirty or forty records was bequeathed to us by someone who didn't want them anymore. Obviously they hadn't been played much: there was hardly a scratch on them. We soon took care of that.

Through the wonders of the internet, I've found some of these records and listened to them again for the first time in more than (blblblpphhht) years. The Travels of Babar, Slow Joe, Build Me a House, Robin Hood, etc. I even found a bizarre version of Pinocchio with Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney which we played half to death (though my recent posting about the hellscape of Winchell-Mahoney Timeexpresses my abhorrence of that particular entertainer, who always struck me as a son-of-a-bitch).

These reborn-through-the-internet kiddie records are miraculously pristine, with no World War III going on in the background. Someone must have preserved them in a vault somewhere, or found some way to remove all the scratches. Anyway, the one I most happily happened upon was Puss in Boots, the strangest re-imagining of the story I've ever heard. Puss, a cheeky little feline in seven-league boots, adopts this person named John and somehow renders him into a Prince by wangling an audience with the King. Sort of like that. But first of all, John is totally gobsmacked by the fact that THIS CAT CAN TALK!

Here is the Ballad of Puss, which we used to sing to each other endlessly. I just listened to it again (I had to convert an unplayable MP4 file into an MP3 for this, which took some doing), and made an effort to transcribe it: for you, precious reader, the gardenia that blooms in the innermost Eden of my heart, deserve to share it with me today.

When I was just a teeny-weeny kitty
Everyone told me that I looked so pretty
They said, 'beautiful eyes'
They said, 'lovely fur'
But all I could answer was 'meoowwww' or "purrrrrr"

My coat was black, my eyes of course were yellow
People always said 'what a charming fellow'
I wanted to thank them, but I didn't know how
For all I could answer was 'purrrrrrr' or 'meow'

Then one fine day as I was lying sleeping
A great idea into my head came creeping
A pussy cat that could learn to say 'meow'
Could say just 'me', by leaving off the 'ow!'

So I said me, me, me, me, me,
Then as you plainly can see
From me to he to she to we
Was just as simple as it could be
I practiced daily for a week
And that is how I learned to speak!

Then I thought that I would try
Slipping off from me to my
From me to my to sky to why
Was just as easy as eating pie
I practiced daily for a week
And that is how I learned to speak!

Soon I was no longer a beginner,
When someone asked 'how would you like some dinner?'
If I wanted to answer, I could say 'yes sir!'
Instead of replying just, 
MeOWW-wow-wow-WOWW-wow-wow-WOWW-wow-wow-WOWW
Or purrrrrrr.
Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

And the following: more links to CRG recordings.

http://www.matthewlind.com/CRG.html

Sounds pretty good (and pretty old)

 

 

www.matthewlind.com/CRG.html

This link, if it works, will take you to a generous selection of the 78 rpm records of my youth. (I never pretended to be young.) These include such delicious favorites as Puss in Boots, Travels of Babar and Robin Hood. That is, if they will play for you. It's dodgy: at first they were in some sort of mp4 format that I couldn't extract sound from, so I ended up converting them to mp3s. But at this point, they might actually play without all that screwin' around.

When I first heard this again, my reaction was: SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!! I never thought I'd hear the Ballad of Puss in Boots again.

"When I was just a teeny-weeny kitty,
Everyone told me that I looked so pretty.
They said, beautiful eyes
They said, lovely fur
But all I could answer was meow
Or purr. . ."