Happy Birthday Carole and Nick - Owls - Top Cat - The Name Elanor

[Catlady]

No: HPFGUIDX 8719

Happy Birthday, Carole, belatedly.

Aylihael sent Carole a birthday postcard of a Big Black Dog incognito in
sunglasses. I giggled.

Happy Birthday, Nick, belatedly.

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, Amanda Lewanski <editor at t...> wrote:

> The strength of the talons of any hunting bird is amazing;
> you must, repeat must, have some sort of arm protection.

In the books, these wizarding owls perch on their people's arms and
shoulders and heads (!) with nothing but regular clothes/hair to protect
the people's skin. I suppose if that is shown in the movie, they will
have to put DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME as a subtitle. Do you think the
perched-on people's skin is protected by charms that the people did, or
that the owls use owl magic to avoid hurting people they like?

Susan McGee wrote:
> Actually, I finally figured out that it's from the kid's book
> Top Cat...in which a new kitten (Stripy Cat) is introduced into the
> family. I guess it's a metaphor for a new sibling. The Top Cat states
> that he will fight Stripy Cat and bite him behind the ears, and that
> he does not like his "cute little face." Eventually, of course they
>  bond and all is well.

Cats, of course, have to establish their pecking order. Sometimes the
newcomer and the original cat work out their rank and become friends, or
tolerate each other, and sometimes it never works out. When I brought a
kitten named Pippin home to my cat Cindy (this was over 20 years ago),
Cindy went to live with some neighbors. They kept bringing her back (she
had an ID necklace) and she kept going back to them until we all gave
up. Recently my friend Roy's Siamese Hadjii died of old age, and
Hadjii's tabby friend Silver was very lonely. So a 'friend' stuck Roy
with her unwanted Siamese named Smokey. Smokey beat up on Silver
something awful and then ran away. Silver found his own friend, an
orange wild cat that Roy calls Bigfoot because of polydactyly.

> People from small families like mine would like to have more siblings,

I don't feel any desire to have more siblings. Perhaps when I was still
a child in the nuclear family, I might have thought it would be nice to
have a sister instead of a brother, but really it would have been nicest
to be an only child.

However, my friend Lee, who was an only child, claims that the ability
to read or think despite background noise such as TV, radio, or spouse
talking on the telephone, is limited to people who grew up with
siblings.

Kathleen Kelly MacMillan (related to Ernie MacMillan?) is writing fanfic
under the name Elanor Gamgee. I surely will read it when I have time,
but meanwhile I wonder whether JRRT invented the word 'elanor' for with
his mind under the influence of the Gaelic name 'Alan' meaning
fair/blond. It turns out to be quite different from the name Eleanor (as
in Eleanor Roosevelt): the original was Eleanor of Aquitaine and her
name was really Alia Anor (meaning 'another Anor' -- she was named after
her mother, Anor) (this name can also be found as Alianora). I found a
website with a version of the story:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/7545/Eleanor.html
The general summary of the version on the web site matches the story
that Lee read to us out of her ancient Encyclopedia Brittannica, but
Lee's version was much funnier.
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