Shimshi Remembers Grandpaw: Caturday Art and Sunday Selfies

Hallo again, Effurrybuddies.

How have you all been keeping? We are all as well as can be expected, considering We have been at war now for five weeks. We try to keep Our Spirits up, each in Our Own Way - Mummy, with her Mewsic and Us, by taking part in the weekend blog hops: the Caturday Art blog hop, hosted by the Wise and Beautiful Athena and her HuMum, Marie, and the Sunday Selfies blog hop, hosted by those Deliciously and Predictably Unpredictable Kitties Blue and their HuMom, Janet.

This week, it is the turn of ME, The Mighty Shimshon (Shimshi for short) aka The Little Purrince, Furrst of My Name, Master of the Queen's Mischiefs and Captain of the Guard,  to lead the J-Cats on the bloggie hops.

I proudly present to you My Selfie:

We all have an additional reason for feeling furry sad this week. On Tuesday, it will be exactly one year (according to the Mewish Calendar) since Grandpaw was called away to his Rainbow Bridge. We have been thinking about him a lot. Mummy wonders aloud all the time, what he would have made of the situation here now. As a Holocaust survivor, he was always so grateful for the existence of the State of Israel, where all Jews could find a Safe Refuge - and now, it looks like even that is not to be lightly taken for granted and that some Humans (quite a lot, in fact) think that Israel has no right to exist!

In honour of Grandpaw, Our Caturday Art this week will be dedicated to him. Mummy used LunaPic to make three different artifications of him.

Here is one, using the Psychedelic filter at 55%:

There are two more, one using Sketch4 at 50% with an overlay of Beauty at 25% (right) and another using Monet at 70% (centre). Mummy decided they should all hang in PhotoFunia's National Gallery of Art:

That's all for now, Dear Anipals. We will try to visit as many of you as We can before Mummy goes to lie down and rest, ahead of Caterwauling Practice.

So before We go, here are the blog hop badges:

        

Be well. Be safe. We love you all.

Mournful Messi

Hallo again, Effurrybody!

Furrst of all, We want to thank all those who visited Us during this past week, and left kind words of comfort about Grandpaw, after he crossed his Rainbow Bridge.

The week of the shiva, immediately following the funeral, was especially hard for Our Woofie Uncle, Messi. Not only was the house full of strangers, people who, in his eyes, were not supposed to be there, but his Daddy, who was always there, was no longer there - and nobody could explain to him WHY. Mummy said you could see, by his drooping tail, that he was both unhappy and scared.

Messi loved Grandpaw furry much, and Grandpaw loved Messi. Mummy says that Grandpaw - her own beloved Daddy - always used to make up funny songs, in which he replaced the words of existing songs with new lyrics. She remembers him doing this since She was a little girl - and Grandpaw carried on doing it right up till the End.

One song, which he used to sing to the tune of the Paul Robeson favourite, Trees, started off with the line: "I think that I shall never see, A canine lovely as Messi".

This week, too, We are going to let Uncle Messi repurresent Our Extended Family in the weekend blog hops - the Caturday Art blog hop, hosted by the Wise and Beautiful Athena and her HuMum, Marie, and the Sunday Selfies blog hop, hosted by the Predictably Unpredictable Kitties Blue and their HuMom, Janet. He has no blog of his own, and although We all have the Sads, it is harder still for Messi, because he was Grandpaw's constant companion.

See those sad eyes:

The picture above, and the one following, were taken at the shiva. Mummy artified the second one with the help of LunaPic, using a mixture of filters and art effects, including Surreal Painting and Sadness and a few others, but She can't remember in which order - and, in any case, her own eyes were leaking so much that her vision was all blurry.

As you know, Mummy has her own blog (details in the sidebar), and She intends to write about Grandpaw later this week. In the meantime, if any of you or your Humans are interested, you can read Grandpaw's autobiography, which we mentioned last week. He had a furry long and eventful life.

Next week, We hope to return to regular posting, where We take turns in repurresenting the J-Cats in the blog hops. Meanwhile, here are the blog hop badges:

     

Till next time, then.

Be Well. Be safe. We love you all.