Tabs

Spring has sprung! 🌷 — and despite the seriousness of current events, Tabs wouldn’t have let it rain on his parade. Nope. Spring was his favorite season, and he saw it as a time of tremendous creative, mental and spiritual renewal.

Times are tough and getting tougher. Tabs would have said, “Adversity reveals true character.” He was a very inspirational cat.

He was also the greatest springtime kitty supermodel of all time.

PGR (Pretty Girl Rosie), even though she decided to pursue a career in science, has also been inspired by Tabs. She sees me always looking through ad campaigns Tabs did, and the walls in the home office are decorated with poster-sized pictures of Tabs, and I think some of that fabulousness has rubbed off on her, because every once in a while I’ll catch her striking a pose for the camera. 📸

I think she might even try to get a few kitty modeling gigs as a side hustle. 😂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

The Irish roots run deep through the cats of this household. Even though we’re officially unclear about either Tabs’ or Rosie’s true origins, by default they’ve taken on the family’s legacy, which makes them both a quarter Scotch-Irish.

Rosie reminded me this morning that Tuesday is St. Patrick’s Day. When she found Tabs’ favorite St. Paddy’s Day collar, she tried it on. I think she was also secretly hoping she’d find his end-of-the-rainbow treasure, but he was very secretive about its whereabouts. He never told me where he hid it. I suspect it’s buried in the front yard somewhere close to Sushi the Betta fish (R.I.P.), who died under suspicious circumstances.

I think Tabs’ best St. Patrick’s Day was the one he acted as master of ceremonies for the local cat chapter of the Knights of the Emerald Isle, where he wore his family collar with pride.

Tabs

Rosie’s more of an introvert, so she’ll be spending her St. Patrick’s Day at home. Also, she’s practicing social distancing from other cats in light of current events.

PGR

And PGR rocking her new shamrock charm

Happy St. Patrick’s week to all you Irish cats out there. ☘️

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Tabs was a true lover of the great outdoors, and one of his favorite times of year was cherry blossom season. In fact, he commissioned, as you may recall, his very own line of sakura-themed kitty kimonos, which he loved wearing around the house on Sundays.

And one of his fave collars was all about cherry blossoms. 🌸

Tabs used to say that some of his best kitty modeling poses came to him while he meditated under his favorite cherry blossom tree. 🌸 It was a great source of inspiration for him.

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Dude, I can’t even tell you how many times I watched Tabs climb something or jump on something with a hand on my heart, and just thinking, “Oh, no, he’s gonna fall!”

He was just so incredibly awkward when he climbed things, but also bizarrely brave. I guess this is normal cat behavior?

He was always that way, too. When we lived in that apartment in Mill Valley, and Tabs was a stray and would come around at random times throughout the day, and sometimes I’d get home from work or grocery shopping, and he’d come bounding down the hill behind our place like a majestic puma until he got to a spot where he would leap to the top of a narrow wooden fence, and then walk along the fence, which was about 10 feet off the ground, until he could hop down to a set of stairs and walk up to me.

Every. Single. Time he walked on that fence, one of his back feet would inevitably slip and he’d almost fall, and I’d have both of my hands covering my mouth, like “Oh, no!”

But he never did fall. He just almost fell about a hundred times.

Oh, but he did fall from other things, like his cat tower…

The first time I watched him ungracefully fall from his tower, he dropped like a sack of potatoes. I thought, “Uh…aren’t cats always supposed to land on their feet?”

No, I guess not, because he sure didn’t! He literally landed on his back. It was the least graceful thing I’ve ever seen a cat do, and he did it more than once! I think he was humiliated whenever it happened because he would get up from the floor grumbling and walk out of the room without making eye contact with me.

He was beautiful and brave and always loved climbing things his entire life, even though he was not a good climber. In fact, I would characterize him as having…questionable agility.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Did I ever tell you about the time Tabs caught a bird…on his leash!? Maybe I have, but I don’t think I told you all the sordid details. You see, we were just wrapping up our morning walk. It was a good day. The sun was out. It was clear and warm. Tabs was feeling friskier and more playful than usual. He even climbed one of the oak trees about 10 feet up before plopping back down.

As we were walking back to the front door, Tabs was leading me like usual on his leash until suddenly I saw was a flash of movement in front of me. I look over to my right, and there’s Tabs about 10 feet away with something fluttering IN HIS MOUTH!

By the time it registers with me that it’s a bird in his mouth, and I say “Tabs, no! Stop!” and rush over to him, it’s too late. He darts behind me with it still in his mouth, trying to keep it away from me, but the wings are no longer flapping. It’s just hanging there limply. I think it was a baby sparrow because it was that time of year when we find a lot of nests and hear the baby birds chirping.

I pull the slack from his leash, and Tabs reluctantly sets the small bird down on the concrete. He looks almost as freaked out as I do, like he couldn’t believed what just happened either, like “Whoa! I can’t believe I just caught a bird! Did you see that? Wow, I did not expect that to happen today!”

Of course, the bird was no longer with us, but at least it met its end quickly.

There were other times, too, when Tabs almost caught birds on his leash. One time he leaped so high, the leash pulled straight out of my hand, and he swiped a bird so forcefully that he knocked it out of the sky. Thankfully, it bounced a few times like someone skipping a rock and made it back into the air and got away.

We always joked that Tabs was a natural born birder — a veritable ninja tabby. Rodents were definitely not his forte… Remind me to tell you about the time we had a rat in the kitchen (!), and Tabs wouldn’t get anywhere near it, but he would chirp and chatter at birds for hours and hours at the window.

Perhaps appropriately, some of his favorite kitty modeling ad campaigns were bird themed… 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen