The Mystery of the Cat Sarcophagus

Donna Barr and I saw the King Tut Exhibit at the Pacific Science Center In Seattle yesterday. It did not feature the large, flashy items I recall seeing at the LA County Art Museum in the 1970s, but it did have objects with small, fascinating details of particular interest to artists....beautiful freehand carved lines on a golden mask, a sketch on stone (in graphite, perhaps) of a nude princess about to enjoy a duck dinner, and a cat sarcophagus.

The images of the cat seemed particularly odd.... There was a little dartlike object protruding from the cat's back which we were told was its tail tip, and you can see what looks like the tail wrapped around the cat's haunch in front, but even if the tail was tucked under its leg (which does not seem anatomically correct even on a skinny cat, the way the loose skin covers the leg when it is bent) it looks like the tail is emerging from the other side of its back, anyhow. The Egyptians were much better observers and recorders of natural history, it seemed to us. Could this have been a depiction of an accidental death by an arrow or small spear? The web link shows the interpretation of the writing on it, which does not refer to any accident.

Funny thing, in the pictures in this article about the sarcophagus, the images seem to be reversed. On the tomb itself, the cats were facing in opposite directions from those depicted in the link below. If I was able to read hieroglyph, I would no doubt find them backwards....




Here are fascinating details of the sarcophagus

Monster Mash today

After three days of a fever and flu symptoms, I am grinding my way through Norwescon. I. Read from Mother Mountain yesterday with my fading voice and this morning is the Broad Universe Rapid fire reading where I only have to read for four minutes and run the Chocolate Raffle (hey, it gets people in to the reading). This afternoon I will be Mimi's evil assistant for her Monster Mash, where people gleefully cut up decrepit plush animal toys and morph them into weird mutants. And I have to do very little talking.

This is Mimi with her Monkey-pony. It is much more disturbing in real life and it makes monkey screeches and pony- neighs when pressed in the right places. There is some song that goes along with this concept as well--Mimi began singing it and Sunder, who was sitting with me at the Broad Universe table, joined in and sang along. I simply do not know enough about fannish culture.

Also, thanks to Liz, who gave me some alcohol hand wipes so that I do not give everyone else this bug.

This is my first blog posting on my iPad with the Blogpress app, from the SeaTac Denny's.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The reason for the title

To the left is a page I drew last year. It was meant to be for a young adult book to be published by Scholastic, and it was supposed to be in the form of a letter you would write to yourself as a young person.

It was rejected because it was not specifically written like a letter (such as, I suppose, "Dear Little Roberta, how are you...") which I thought seemed to be a bit of a technicality, but people are entitled to their editorial policies...

But writing and drawing this did make me think about just "why it is we ARE here". I don't recall ever really agonizing over this as a young person, because I was spending so much of my time drawing pictures and writing stories in my own unique manner. And that pretty much seemed to answer the question for me. I am so saddened to hear about the LGBT young people who are driven to suicide by cruel and ignorant people. These were all truly individuals who needed to grow up to be who they were meant to be, to give their unique gifts to a world that obviously needed them.

Welcome to my Blog on Blogger

This is Roberta Gregory's new blog!

She has been told Blogger is easier to use than Wordpress, (the location of her previous blog) so Donna Barr is helping her get started. (Visit Donna's "Midnight Library" site with the above link.)

At left are two members of Roberta's family: Roo (also known as Roo-Paws) and the human holding him is Bruce.

Roo is a rescued kitty and a remarkable cat, believed by some to be the reincarnation of Vincent, a cat who disappeared 10 years ago. Roo is also an accomplished hairdresser! He likes to groom what remains of Bruce's hair. A feline behaviorist who examined Roo (when we hired her to help us with some of his personality quirks) told us we have a Border Collie in a Cat Suit-- he is that bright! Sometimes it seems like we have a little Killer Whale in fur, instead.

Roberta writes a lot about cats (as well as many other topics) because one of her current projects is True Cat Toons.

Oh, yes, and Bruce Taylor is a talented writer of Magical Realism and other creative fiction, with many books to his credit. To find out about them, visit Bruce's website.

Roberta is basically playing around with Blogger in this initial post, trying to figure out some of the tricks. For something that is supposed to be easier than Wordpress, it still seems a bit of a challenge.