I’ve been a house cat for the past few days. That isn’t very different in function from being an office cat, but I’ve found that houses tend to have more flexibility in their mealtimes and I’m quite a fan of that. Usually I’m a bit of a commuter because the house and the office aren’t all that far apart, but these days, I seem to be in the doghouse (a most unfortunate term) where work is concerned. I think I’ve been banished from the business side of things until they cat-proof the ladies’ powder room.

I don’t have all the details of why this sudden DIY office-improvement fad has overcome the whole premises, but I heard a little snippet that sounded like “if she won’t stay off high surfaces, she’s got to stay out, and you know she’s not going to stay out just because you tell her not to. She’s a cat, for crying out loud. They don’t understand the concept of boundaries so you’ve got to create them for her!”

Hmm. I could have sworn I heard them say the same thing about someone’s visiting out-of-town relatives… but I shan’t go there. I think all of this hubbub about creating boundaries wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for that incident last week.

What incident, you ask?

It was nothing big. Just… tiny. Trivial, really.

See, one of our lovely Smart Poppy ladies hadn’t had the time to put on her full work-day face before getting to the office, so that’s what she was doing when I strolled in that morning, attracted by the merry trickle of running water. She’d had a tiny mascara mishap and was trying to dampen a cotton ball. I jumped up to have a closer look, but her exclamation of surprise made me jump out of my skin and off the sink.

But oh, by my stripey aunt’s crimped tail, if I didn’t in my haste take every last thing that was sitting on the sink dresser with me, and if it wasn’t all in very loosely capped bottles and jars and compacts because she’d been halfway through her makeup routine.

Everything seemed to slow down for me, so I can tell you precisely that it all happened in this sequence: my paw grazed the edge of the Borghese moisturiser, which toppled onto the Smashbox primer which had been kind of hanging half off the edge of the dresser in the first place, and as it fell the Stila lipgloss which had been half-open and leaning against the primer bottle joined in on this doomed beauty product free fall, and…

My memory gets very vague after that point, but if I close my eyes I can see various textures and colours and types of skincare and makeup flying through space and landing on the bathroom floor. It was far worse than if only the primer, moisturiser and gloss had fallen, because I was so alarmed by the sound of the glass primer bottle hitting the floor that I jumped back up in a panic, landing on the mirror half of the open Dior foundation compact, which set off a Marx brothers-meets-tiddlywinks chain reaction with the MAC pigment and liner that had been sitting on the product half of the compact.

The air in the bathroom was thick with shimmering lilac for a good two minutes after — now that’s a really fine, lightweight powder, the pigment — and that made it a little sneezy in there, but it sure was pretty.

And then I think I could still have kept myself from being in too much trouble if I’d just stayed and looked contrite, instead of reflexively jumping back onto the floor — again — and scampering out of the bathroom in search of a safe place to hide.

I’m still not sure how they found me, but maybe the lilac-dusted sticky pink and nude-tone paw prints gave me away.

I don’t know if I learnt anything from that experience. Conditioning doesn’t really work on cats, I think, because we aren’t as consequence-bound as, say, dogs.

And I won’t mention any names, but maybe some people could learn to cap their cosmetics firmly and tightly. Seriously, don’t expect a cat to take responsibility for her own actions. What would be the point of having humans, then?

I have a friend who has to resort to trimming her lashes so that they won’t rub up against her spectacles.

This lady has a routine nailed. Curl lashes. Put on glasses. Wait two seconds and see if eyes begin to water and/or she sneezes, both of which are indicators of eye irritation. If results positive, remove glasses. Trim lashes, a fraction of a millimetre off one strand at a time, using the tiniest pair of scissors I have ever seen outside a house that doesn’t have “Polly Pocket” over the front door. Put on glasses. Blink. Wait. Repeat until lashes don’t touch glasses anymore.

She wakes up very early in the morning, this friend of mine.

I felt as though I were watching a great artist or scientist — and I believe that in many cases you can’t be one without also being the other — at work.

I watched in wonder as she then curled her lashes again — “because the shape of the curl changes when the lashes are shorter” — and why couldn’t she just trim before curling, then? — “because then you’re trimming off the wrong length” — okay, Bella will not argue with a woman wielding microscopic scissors. And then took out a tube of Chanel Extracils and exclaimed… and if I had not been there, I wouldn’t believe it either…

“I love how this stuff really does lengthen. It’s like magic, you know?”

And she’d put on her glasses and leave for work, sneezing her way out the door because, guess what? Her now even thicker, but now very well-defined and decidedly dark, lashes were hitting the lenses again. But who’s got the time for a re-trim? Definitely not the girl who’s already spent 30 minutes on just her lashes, oh no.

Maybe this is why I wasn’t born human, with eyelashes and opposable thumbs to fiddle over them with. It totally escaped me why she would go to all that trouble only to use a product that adds length again. She did try to explain. “It isn’t the same. Natural length is just… floppy and unstructured. A good mascara not only enhances, it defines. It lends shape. It doesn’t just add length and shapeless body, it practically gives you a whole new set of lashes.”

And it’s worth sneezing for?

Apparently so.

What do you say? What lengths (snicker) do you go to for great lashes?

I know my answer: none whatsoever. You can’t mess with something that isn’t there, and lashlessness is just one of the things a cat has to bear. But I bear it much more graciously than I do cheeklessness because, well, I don’t spend all that much time with my eyes open anyway.

Ooh, it’s time for my 1.05pm nap. I’ve been awake for a whole 38 minutes now. What am I trying to do, set a record?

G’night, lovely ones.

Bella

Have you ever suffered from windy-day hair-lip?

That’s when you’ve given your lips an immaculate coating of sexy, sheer gloss, and then five seconds after you walk outdoors the wind blows your hair into your face.

How about melting foundation, weeping mascara, cracking concealer and other weather-inflicted makeup injuries?

As an astute observer of the human female and her beauty routine, I’ve seen plenty of evidence that it’s best to take Mother Nature’s mood into account when planning what to put on your face. I am so tempted now to wax lyrical about the joys of never needing artificial enhancement on my natural-born beauty, but that seems to irritate some of you humans. I’ve no idea why; in general, humans seem an irritable lot.

So, because I’m nice (and because I do not like it when irritated humans take it out on me by “forgetting” to share the cheese from their sandwiches), I won’t say any more about me.

Let’s talk about you. Oooh I love saying that, it makes me feel like Billy Crystal in Analyze This. If I didn’t already have a job and love it, I’d like to be a therapist.

How much does the weather influence your makeup choices? Do you spend so much of your time indoors that you never have to consider whether a lightweight foundation is a better choice than a caked powder one, even if the latter offers you better coverage? Or if you need an extra layer of setting powder to make up for additional humidity? If you’re spending your entire existence indoors, well, good for your face, but Bella’s inner health guru thinks you should spend a little time out in the fresh air.

But chances are you’re like the rest of us who spend some of our time outdoors, mostly in order to get to whichever indoors we need to be in: work, home, school, gym, etc. “Gym?” you ask. “Do cats work out?” Ah. That’s the perfect segue to the public service warning that my dear, bandaged friend the personal trainer (with a poor sense of judgement) has asked me to insert here. Do you know what happens when you place a cat on a fast-moving treadmill? My friend begs you not to try and find out. He did, and his scratches should heal just fine.

But you may not be so lucky.

By the way, my friend was trying to prove that cats are poor cardiovascular athletes and all we’re good for is elegant stretches and haphazard lunges at flying insects. His thinking has changed now, after our half-hour sprint around the building so that he could catch me and prove to the doctor that I’m not rabid or tetanus-riddled. I hope he’s learnt now that a cat needs to prove nothing.

So have a glance at the weather before you make the gloss-or-matte, powder-or-liquid decisions. Have tissues, oil-blotting paper  or a hankie nearby on humid days to dab your face before touching up with the finishing powder. Give the heavier products a rest when the weather’s particularly dry and hot.

… and never, ever even consider putting a cat on a moving treadmill. Never. Bella has warned you.

“I bought this under-eye concealer the other day,” the first woman said to her friend, “and it worked really well. Blended with my skin tone and everything. You wouldn’t suspect I had such dark circles. But I ended up giving it to Mum.”

“Why, she need it more than you?”

“No… I think we’re about the same. I must’ve caught her dark circle genes or something. It’s just… the moment I smiled, the stuff cracked and it looked awful.”

“You gave a beauty product that makes you look awful to your mum? With daughters like you, who needs…”

“Well, the thing is… it works fine for her, because it never cracks.”

“You mean…”

“Yup. She never smiles.”

I am not going to get onto a moralising soapbox about the folly of wasting one’s inborn ability to express joy. Really, if you want to go through life looking as though the bad fairy Malevola waved her wand over you at your christening party and doomed you to a life of frowning, go ahead. More fans left over for me. And you know I’m not one for forcing people into fake smiles. But… is it really that hard to genuinely feel pleased, delighted, amused, tickled or gratified even once a day?

I didn’t hear the brand of that concealer she handed over to her non-smiling Mum, but I can assure you you won’t find it in our store because we’re one joyful bundle of laughs. All right, that last statement was a bit over the top — makes it sound as though we’re not ventilating the place well enough when the plastic sealer is in use. But we are big fans of smiling, and the cosmetics we stock fall in with that. Frowning is for Persians (poor things are born that way) and pouting is for Pekingese, so if you’re neither, show some teeth and give Bella a grin. Ahh, lovely.

And if you don’t want your private coffee conversations to be blogged about, well, be careful what you say when there’s a black-spotted white cat within earshot.

I have a confession to make.

I hear you: You, Bella? The smugly sublime sage of Smart Poppy? What secret vice could possibly dwell in your angelic soul?

Oh, yes. I know the voice of my adoring public well.

But, true enough, I do have a confession to make. And it’s huge.

Are you ready?

This might be life-changing, people.

Here goes. All set, now.

Are you sure you want to read on?

Be brave. Close the window if you don’t want to see something ugly.

All right. Lean in. Listen close.

I wish I had cheeks.

I mean, from a purely anatomical  point of view, of course I have cheeks. But they’re tiny, angular and not even expandable the way my hamster friend Cappy’s are. I’ve often thought it would be so handy to be able to bring a day’s supply of food with you everywhere.

Yet that’s not the main reason why I, despite my claim of total contentment, feel an occasional smidgen of envy towards you humans. It usually arrives around the time a new shipment of cheek stuff comes in … I wonder why.

Indeed, I’m a girly girl  (girl cat, girl, same thing. Except for the cheeks, sigh.) to the core — the reason why I crave cheeks is because cheek colour looks like so much fun. I gaze in awe at the shelves upon shelves of creme, pan, powder, mousse, stick and gel choices in the stock room. And it’s not just colour, too. There’s bronzer, highlight, contour… the list just goes on.

In case you’re wondering, the answer is no. The packing staff still have not caved and let me in the stock room as I have asked for countless times. I have never before met a group of people so immune to the Pleading Stare, Ingratiating Purr and Enticing Back Arch — even when I administer them all at once.

Heartless is what they are.

So, the next time you’re putting on makeup and you get to the cheek part, spare a thought for us cheekless folk, will you?

I’ll be thinking of you too. *melancholy eyes*

*Pleading stare*

*Ingratiating purr*

Forget enticing, any back arch will do if it finally breaks the anti-cat-in-stock-room resolve in this place. What, still nothing?

Heartless. Simply heartless.

But I love you anyway, especially if you smell of salmon. Tuna is so last decade.

xoxo
Bella

Well, actually, it isn’t such a shabby place today. My toothache miraculously went away. I love it when a little TLC and a good supply of twigs to chew on removes the need for an emergency trip to the vet.

I thought it would be nice to check if anybody took me up on last week’s challenge to be more up-front about your imperfections.

Did you allow yourself more room to be real, instead of forcing a plastic smile when a genuine one wouldn’t turn up?

Did you pull a couple of trusted friends aside and tell them what’s on your mind?

Did you set aside time to reflect on what it is that’s bothering you, and create a plan to either remove it or make it more manageable?

Did you blaze forward and wear your favourite red lipstick all week, even when it completely clashed with your top? I’m not trying to make your life seem trivial, but honestly, try it. I had no idea red lips could do so much for a girl until Spider Chick told me about its therapeutic benefits, and now I’m a solid convert.

Oooh and speaking of lips, have you seen our shelves lately? Well, obviously you haven’t because it’s an online store, but if only you could! Because there’s red and more red. And for those of you who want something else, there are the plums and pinks and corals and mauves and… sigh. I love being a makeup store cat. It has so much more glamour than being, say, a bookshop cat.

So, back to what I was saying before. Whatever it is I’m doing here — and sometimes I don’t have the best grasp of that myself — I am not trying to trivialise the heavy realities of human life. Once again, I hear the question from some: why take advice from a cat on living the human life?

Let’s start with this: therapists charge from $50 an hour upwards, and it’s hard to find one as cute or lovable as me (and humble! Let’s not forget humble!). And just try scratching your expensive human therapist under the chin and we’ll see how you go with getting good advice before you’re out the door and on your way to the police station.

I am like a bear with a sore thumb today. Or a cat with a sore jaw, whichever you prefer. I am all sorts of grumpy, and that’s before I even come into contact with anybody else.

I am aware that this emotional state is generally considered unattractive in human and small, adorable household pet alike. But unlike humans, I have no ability to filter my feelings so that I can present a more palatable side of me to the world. With me, what you see is what you get.

Maybe a Grumpy Day is not the best time to be considering this, but I’m wondering if life is healthier for someone like me. As part of the animal kingdom, I have no social pressure to constantly be courteous and cheerful to other people when I’m feeling anything but. I don’t have an internal filter that tells me to ignore the pain of my throbbing bicuspid, smile and look pretty when what I would rather do is lie down and moan. (I stand corrected with regards to my introductory line. I’m not *like* a cat with a sore jaw, I *am* a cat with a sore jaw.)

I yowl when I want, scowl when I want, and am blessed to be around humans that still find me delightful anyway. Everyone should be so fortunate. They say “Hello”, I spit and hiss, and they come back with food for me. This, people, is unconditional love.

So here’s a challenge for those among you with toothaches of your own. Or perhaps headaches, stomachaches, heartaches. Who doesn’t have days when the family’s in turmoil, finances are tight, and you still feel that you need to put your best face forward so that nobody will think you can’t keep up with life?

I’m not suggesting that you bite everyone’s heads off — that could make your next performance review quite interesting — but that you dare to display something of this not-so-perfect experience you’re having to the people around you. Rather than succumbing to the pressure to be artificially perky, be authentic. Be truthful about struggling with pain or any of the other imperfections of life.

But, you say, I don’t have humans like you do, Bella. If I spit and hiss (or the equivalent in your language), they’re just going to spit and hiss back. I understand. For some reason, people tend to be a lot more tolerant to their pets than to their humans. But I’d still say give it a try. Not the spitting and hissing; the genuine admission that life isn’t working for you today. It’s a lot less exhausting than trying to keep up appearances.

And I hope at least one person will bring you a dish of Tuna Surprise.

Love,

Bella

No, I’m not a week late in writing the ubiquitous January 1st “Happy New Year” post.

I am right on time, doing a slightly less typical January 7th “Happy New Year” post. I am nothing if not trailblazing.

Not to fear, though, this isn’t a “What’s your New Year’s resolution?” inspirational-slash-guilt-inducing post. If I believed in New Year’s resolutions, I’d… I’d… well, I don’t think I’d be writing this post, because I would probably be too busy running on a treadmill, or making lists of people to forgive (or seek forgiveness from… if our neighbour is reading is, I really didn’t mean to do that to your lavender bush. Well, a little. All right, it looked like fun at the time and the important thing is that I’m sorry now. Right?).

As I was saying…

I am definitely not putting down the whole idea of new year’s resolutions. If you think that the start of a new year is a great time to plan for change, then go for it. But what’s wrong with the rest of the year? If you think it’s a little late to start mapping out your plan for 2010, don’t. You still have 51 weeks of it remaining. Not to mention the many more weeks after that, because you know, life does go on after December 31st and you can’t very well plan for just one year’s worth of positive change, can you?

That’s one thing you could learn from us cats: how not to see the passage of time in chunks — weeks, months, years — but as something more fluid and seamless. I don’t appreciate that whole jarring explosions-at-the-stroke-of-midnight celebration half as much as I quietly enjoy the good things in my daily life: sunbeams on my belly, being hand-fed a cheese snack, rolling in lavender (once again, I’m sorry! And I’m sure it will grow back soon).

And if I am made aware of something that needs changing in my character — such as my neighbour mentioned in that note to my humans, to do with the lavender bush — I want to address it now. Today. Even if the date is completely mundane and forgettable, and even if I mess up within a week. Then I’ll just start over. That’s the joy of not being calendar-bound; I can just see every day as a new beginning.

Maybe you can, too.

Happy New Year!

Love,

Bella (the cat, in case you’d forgotten)

Remember how I was wondering why some of you humans seem to have a preoccupation with changing the looks they were born with?

I’ve gone one further. I don’t just wonder why “keeping the looks I was born with” is out of the question; I wonder why some people go to the extents they do in order to attain that sought-after “different” appearance. And everybody has a different idea about where “safe” and “reasonable” ends, and “obsessive to the point of risking one’s health and life” begins.

By the way, I apologise in advance if I seem as scattered and disorganised as a cat let loose in a Christmas bauble factory. This entry is mostly stream-of-consciousness, because I find it so much easier to process life’s tough questions when I write them down. Now you know why I need those 14-hour sleeps; reflection is exhausting, especially when you have no attention span to speak of. (Ooh, look Ma, baubles!)

Some of the people I’ve talked to — it’s nice being a conversational sort of cat — say that they draw the line at surgically invasive procedures. So they might have a little peel here, maybe a needle stick or a couple of light treatments there, but the moment anaesthesia and scalpels are required, they’re out.

Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? But if you’ve done your homework, you might know that some of the so-called non-invasive procedures have a higher risk of going ugly than certain invasive/surgical ones done by trained, experienced practitioners. So it seems a little naive to assume that just because something is only being done “on the surface”, it’s safe.

You can probably tell that the subject of humans and their ideas on beauty fascinates me. I can’t help it. I spend more time with your kind than with my own, and being the resident cat at a beauty shop, I’m privy to lots of juicy chatter about, well, beauty.

Plus — ooh I’ve been waiting ages for the chance to pull out this line — beauty, my dahlinks, is my middle name.

No, actually, it’s my first.

So, what do you think? Where would you draw the line when it comes to cosmetic procedures? Something to think about as the end of the year approaches and we face the prospect of being another year older. Because, apparently, if popular culture is anything to go by, aging and beauty generally don’t make a good mix. But that’s another post entirely.

Love and kitty kisses,

Bella

Wow. It’s been a while over on this side. See, this is what happened. The stationery supplies cabinet is usually closed firmly, because apparently I am insatiably curious and the humans are afraid that I’ll wreck the carefully ordered rows of staples. (Have they never heard about the beauty of chaos? People.) So one day I saw it ajar, and not only that, it was glowing! I poked my nose in and before I could say “tails and whiskers, pads and paws” (the hit kitten nursery rhyme back in my day), I was in this glorious parallel world where all the animals talked and everything was covered in snow…

Sadly, this is not true. I’ve just become, unfortunately, very caught up in all things offline. I do apologise. I have been busy skulking around corners, waiting to pounce on the next pair of feet that happens by; absorbed in observing the many strange and wonderful ways humans try to change how they look, thinking that it will change who they are.

On that note, I nearly fell off the hedge in fright the other day. I was having my usual mid-afternoon sun bath — not recommended unless you’re also covered head to foot in thick, UV-resistant fur. Suddenly I felt a human hand on my neck, and an adorable little-old-lady voice cooed, “Hellooooooooo, kitty.” I opened my eyes to greet my new friend, and that’s when the Great Scare of 2009 happened.

Let me first say that I am not completely against artificial means of beauty enhancement. All I’m saying is, before you enhance, make sure the effect actually is going to be beautiful!

She was glowing in the sunlight. Not the radiance of someone who dutifully eats her two-and-five-a-day and drinks nothing but water, and lots of it. For all I know, she does that, too. But she was giving off at least a couple of watts of her own, just from the unearthly orange tint that surrounded her entire being.

I don’t understand it and if you do, I’d appreciate it if you could share the wealth. What is it that makes people do this to themselves? I mean, I guess it’s a good thing to see a spray tan because theoretically that means one less person who thinks it necessary to broil her skin under the sun and increase her risk of fatal melanoma.

But what’s wrong with keeping the original colour of your skin in the first place? I am not being sarcastic or superior, I am genuinely puzzled. The idea of changing one’s appearance just does not compute in my advanced feline mind. Not yet, at least. Anyone care to help me along?

I do realise that beauty is subjective and this woman’s intent was to improve her appearance, not frighten cats and young children. Which is why, all the more, I’d like to know how it is that you humans all have different ideas about what “beautiful” means, but the vast majority of you seem to think it’s what the other people have. Or, at any rate, what you don’t. (Because I know there aren’t a lot of naturally orange people walking this great earth.) Why doesn’t there seem to be a default setting of “I was born beautiful”?