March 20, 2004 - Today, spring begins, according to the calendar, but when I look out the window, spring in Alaska looks just like winter in Alaska ... with more sunshine. I do love sunshine ... especially naps in the sunshine ... and with longer days, I have time for more of them. I've lived with Miss Jerrianne for six months now and we've gotten on very well together. I'm quite content.

Soon after I moved in, a friend asked Miss Jerrianne if she knew the piano tune Kitten On The Keys. All I remember are a few words, she said:

Kitten on the keys,
Playing merrily,
Making pretty music,
Do Re Mi ...

But it turned out that wasn't what he had in mind at all ... he meant a ragtime piano piece that Zez Confrey wrote in 1921. You can hear it and see it playing on an old time player piano here:

www.fcrosby.com/freeman/piano/kitten.html

Miss Jerrianne explained to me that the music was recorded on punched paper rolls ... something like Braille for pianos. It wasn't necessary to know how to play the music ... just pump the foot pedals to supply power to turn the roller and the keys would go up and down, playing the music, automatically. She remembered seeing one at a friend's home when she was in grade school.

I do like lively music and when I hear it playing, I come running and jump into Miss Jerrianne's lap and see whether there is anything fun to watch as it plays. Sometimes it's an animated e-card with a catchy tune like the cards featuring dogs and cats and birds ... and especially her Thanksgiving card that plays Turkey In The Straw on a fiddle here: www.jacquielawson.com

Then, there was a request to translate "goobers" (peanuts) into the King's English. Miss Jerrianne turned to google.com to illustrate her answer and ... well, you just try to get this popular Civil War song out of your head once it gets in there! www.acws.co.uk/songs/goober.htm

At bedtime, I like to slip into one of my favorite hiding places and refuse to come out ... until Miss Jerrianne sings my favorite lullaby. I hear her calling, Here, kitty, kitty kitty ... but I do not answer her call. I lurk in the shadows and I don't make a sound. She turns out the lights and calls me again. I do not respond.

So she sings me a lullaby ... a Victorian ditty her grandma sang as she rocked her to sleep when she was little ... The tune ... though I didn't recognize it, and you probably wouldn't either ... is the same as My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean, but the words her grandmother sang were these (search for the first line, with quotes around it, at google.com for a slightly different version):

My kitty has gone from her basket,
My kitty has run up a tree ...
Oh, who will go out on the branches,
And bring back my kitty to me?

Well, I can't very well leave her lying awake, worrying about that poor kitty, so I mosey on over to my scratching post and give it a good workout. Scratch, scratch, scratch, she hears. That's my signal to her that I'm coming ... in my own sweet time, of course. After all, I'm a kitten, NOT a puppy!