I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Humor

  • close encounter of the cat kind

    close encounter of the cat kind


    stray cat adopted by Pretty who named her Lilibet

    (I call her Pussy)

    Naturally Pretty would settle on the nickname of Queen Elizabeth II for the recent interloper who crashed our carport four weeks ago, who now sits at the top of the steps of our kitchen door with the expectation of Fancy Feast meals twice daily, but refuses human touch. Her Royal Highness.

    I have solid reasons for resisting Pretty’s cat rescue attempts over the past 20 years: my cat allergies, our dogs’ instinctual desire to murder cats, additional vet bills…I could go on.

    Why give up the fight over the cat with Pretty now, the reasonable reader asks, to which I reply I got nothing on that. The cat showed up. Pretty started with giving her water. The next thing I knew I was ordering Fancy Feast from the grocery store. End of story.

    My friend Ellen Hawley (notesfromtheuk.com) has a cat named Fast Eddie and asked for a photo plus name of our Stray Cat so here you go, Ellen.

    I also would like to dedicate this post to the memory of my friend Luanne Castle’s cats (writersite.org/2021/10/06/making-after-loss/) Pear, Felix, Mac and Izzie. No one could love a cat more than Luanne and her husband the gardener although Pretty will surely try her best.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • boo at the zoo, are we there yet? not yet

    boo at the zoo, are we there yet? not yet


    My friend Dick Hubbard who has been my most faithful reader since the days of the OG Red Man (the rescued Welsh terrier that became my alter ego in Red’s Rants and Raves) called me after my last post to say that my “grandmother inspired” posts were excessive. Now Dick is the only person who consistently rates my blogs as 5 star excellent so I want to apologize in advance to him for yet another Ella inspired post.

    Yesterday Pretty and I planned an adventurous outing at Riverbanks Zoo for the annual Boo at the Zoo experience in October. Please ask me if we have ever gone to this annual Halloween celebration. The answer is No, negatory, nunca in our 20 years together, but I ordered our tickets to take Ella and her mother Pretty Too later this month. The tickets come with complete instructions for costumes, trick or treat buckets, masks for adults, etc. I didn’t expect Boo to be so complicated.

    I hope Boo at the Zoo will be as fun as our first visit with Ella to one of Pretty’s favorite haunts: Barnes and Noble.

    Naynay, please?

    Pretty and I seem to struggle with setting boundaries.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • view from the cheap seats

    view from the cheap seats


    Some dogs love to howl at the moon, some dogs stare at the moon but prefer to bark at the mailman, a few dogs never notice the moon at all. They think if they ignore it, the moon will gradually go away – kind of like rain. Dogs who could sing would make up songs like Moon, Moon, go away – come again some other day.

    The United States Senate reminds me of a dog pound. You ain’t nothing but a hound dog Mitch McConnell loves to lead the rest of his pack in howling at the moon on a regular basis, but he’s also learned to sing. This week Sing Along with Mitch brought the hit song Debt Limits, Debt Limits Go Away – come again some other day. Like in early December.

    But then the rest of his minority pack started barking at Mitch for losing an imaginary game of Wake, Wake Don’t Blink at Me with Chuck Schumer who can’t sing at all – can’t even carry a tune as we used to say about my Aunt Sister. Nope. Chuck and his majority pack must be saving their howling for the mailman or the boogeyman or some other man because they’ve 100% lost their voices when it comes to howling at the moon. They can’t even whimper on their own. Whatever song Mitch leads, they sing along from one rousing chorus of Proud Donald to another stanza of Catch the Falling Star of Joe Biden.

    As for voting rights, infrastructure, income inequality, raising the minimum wage, institutional racism, police reform, gun control, burning bushes, floods, pandemics, vaccines against said pandemics, insurrectionists who evidently would be happier without democracy – most of us are like the dogs who choose to ignore the moon. If we ignore the moon, maybe one day it will just go away on its own.

    But what if there’s really a Blue Moon from Kentucky that ain’t ever going away, then what?

    And that’s the view from the cheap seats.

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    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and stay tuned.

  • ain’t no slide steps high enough

    ain’t no slide steps high enough


    Our granddaughter Ella James will be two years old this week on Friday, October 1st. so Pretty and I decided last night we would have a zoo day today to celebrate her day off from school (Jewish high holiday). It was a memory maker, as my mother would declare on the days before she lost hers. Whenever I get discouraged, whenever I feel like the world brings us all too many problems, I find a day’s dose of Ella James with Pretty works wonders.

    Pretty and Ella make joy real

    None of us quite understood proper bird feeding

    Cherry Icee fabulous

    Uh, oh. The Icee fell down.

    What’s this? Ugh. I get no respect. Seriously?

    Ain’t no slide steps too high for me to climb

    Do I know you? I don’t think so.

    Wheeee – let’s go, Nana!

    Bye, Bye, everyone – see you next time!

    (Another highlight of our day was the wonderful carousel ride which Ella rode twice, but my pictures weren’t suitable. Next time.)

    Ella and I were very tired after our morning at the zoo so we sat on a bench outside the entrance to wait for Pretty to bring the car around to pick us up. Unfortunately, my perfect granddaughter threw several wipes on the ground after she snatched them from the pack of wet wipes we brought for emergency use. Ella, I said sternly with my most authoritative voice, I have to tell you something very important. We never throw any trash on the ground.

    She looked at me with the same look Pretty gives me whenever she gets aggravated at something I say.

    Hush, she whispered. Hush.

    I burst out laughing. And that’s the way we roll.

    Thanks so much for indulging our zoo day pics – stay safe, stay sane, please get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • lesbian jungle

    lesbian jungle


    Vintage Paperback & Pulp Fiction Cover Art – 1966

    “I don’t know why, but of all the girls I’ve had in my life, Renna has always been different … special … but I’m afraid things will never be the same between us. I’m a full-fledged butch, now, and I feel, at times, that it repels her”–Cover blurb.

    Pretty had a large collection of lesbian vintage post cards in Bluestocking Books in the early 1990s, and one of them is now part of my little sandwich bag conglomerate collection of cards on my desk. Oh yes, I “rediscover” these gems periodically, and Lesbian Jungle is a favorite. Imagine.

    Today I needed something fun to distract me from the Biden Administration’s recent disasters. Don’t get me wrong. I love Joe and the folks he has working for him but please don’t say drone s—-e, immigrants under b—-e in Del Rio, Texas. C—d anything. French ambassador r—-l. These words seriously make me cringe in horror today. You have to do better, Joe. Where is Kamala?

    Instead, I bring you a cheerful picture of the cover of a lesbian pulp paperback published by Publishers Export Company in 1966. The cover artist was unknown, but Jeffrey Luther with PC Design copyrighted this post card of the cover in 1999. Thank goodness the French Line (see top left of post card) survives as hopefully my French followers who rank #4 on my international blog stats will, also. Please stay with me, Annie and Animal Couriers – what would we do without you?

    I was interested to see that censorship of this particular literary genre in the 50s and 60s required the story to end unhappily for the lesbian heroine. There could be no happy homosexuals which probably explains the grumpy little girl in the picture frame next to the post card above. I know 100% she was too young to read lesbian pulp at the time she posed for this picture, but she already understood the endings.

    It’s a jungle out there so stay safe, stay sane, please get vaccinated, and please stay tuned.