Flooflink(floofinition) 1. Connection between animals. Origins: Middle Flooflish, of Scandfloofnavian roots; first noted use in the fifthteenth century.
In Use: “Dog and cat, both Hurricane Katrina survivors, had an unshakeable flooflink from the instant they touched noses.”
2. The established cause and effect between an animal’s action, sound, or behavior and a result.
In Use: “Entering the house to a scene of disheveled plants and unrolled toilet paper, Pietr gazed at the drowsy kittens, certain that he was looking at the flooflink, as his dog studied him with wide, innocent eyes.”
3. An electronic connecting structure about animals which provides direct access from one web page to another.
In Use: “Just googling ‘funny cat videos’ resulted in a plethora of flooflinks to click on and kill time.”
In Use: “Seeing the video title, ‘A Curious Cat’s Life is Never Boring’, Michael just had to provide a flooflink to it in his post.”
Lethflooflogica(floofinition) – Inability to remember an animal’s correct name. Origins: Attributed to Carl Floong, borrowed from ancient Fleek.
In Use: “Bunchy had acquired so many names — neighbors called him one thing, different family members referred to him by other names like Sparky, Blackie, Onyx, and he’d come to the family with a foster name — that the pet sitter often suffered lethflooflogica and referred first to the other animals’ names before landing on Bunchy.”
We share our house with two floofs. Both are cats, strays that decided to call our place home. One is Papi, the ginger blade, also referred to as Meep and Butter Butt. The alpha cat is Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah), a black and white mixed fur cat with shades of Maine Coon. He’s older by several years.
Tucker has recently taken to not responding to me. Not responding, that is, until I mention Papi’s name. I can and do say, “What’s up, Tucker, are you hungry, what do you want,” etc., and get nothing. But if I say, “What is it, Papi?” Whoa, Tucker turns and marches over.
In my mind, I attribute this whole thing to Tucker trying to trick me into thinking he’s Papi. When I call Tucker by Papi’s name, Tucker is thinking, “I did it! He thinks I’m the other cat.”
As anyone who lives with an animal knows, this is basic flooflighting.
Flooflemma(floofinition) – A usually unpleasant choice faced by an animal. Origins: First known use in 1523 in Europe.
In Use: “Facing a major flooflemma between being bored in the house or being outside where it was cold, Papi chose to keep going in and out, causing some friction with his hooman room mates.”
In Use: “Forced into the flooflemma of not eating or eating food she didn’t like, Sunshine lived up to the Floof Code and walked away from the food.”
A floof’s song pierced my dream. The reckoning of life commenced. Rolling free of my warm, comfy nest, I thrust my self out into the day. Blinds were drawn so I could see.
Fog. A good thick stew of it.
27 degrees F. Ice and frost was slathered over everything visible in existence outside of my window.
This is Monday, January 13, 2025. Yes, it is Monday the 13th. Just like the movie. And TV series. Based on the novel.
Lest my spirits get too high from these devs, I shifted gears and jumped into digital media to see how great the world is faring. After that morale post, I fed the floofs again and gave them treats. Then I turned to here.
Sam Moore passed away this month. Like others, He was part of my life’s tapestry of sound as part of the duo, Sam and Dave. “Soul Man”, recorded and released by them in 1967, was an early favorite song. Another of those tunes with easy lyrics to learn and repeat, with a jaunty, changing rhythm, and mesmerizing vocals flitting between highs and lows, the kind of stuff that inspires attempts to emulate it while pretending to be on a stage, cheered on by an audience of billions. Those memories induced The Neurons to put “Soul Man” into the morning mental music stream (Trademark past due). Very memorable to me from the song was the shout out, “Play it, Steve,” as Steve Cropper played guitar. Cropper was also the guitarist on the later Blues Brothers’s cover, and they repeated that call out, to my delight.
Let’s get positive and do what we can to seize the day. I’ve seized the coffee; now it’s seizing me. Here’s the music. And off we go, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.
Floofcake (floofinition) – 1. Term of endearment for a sweet animal. Origins: 1829
In Use: “Rachel often referred to her chubby yorkie as her floofcake, an expression which the dog accepted but did not like.”
2. Wrestling move by many animals to dominate others by throwing their dead weight down on them. Origins: 1932, United States
In Use: “No more than twelve pounds when she was wet, Caramel would put herself on top of Cassie and pin Cassie in bed like Caramel weighed a hundred pounds.”
Rolling out of bed and ambulating down the hall, I checked the windows where my eyes met a wall of fog. Inspiration seizing me, I reversed course and dropped my head back into its indentation on my pillow. A floof’s unending breakfast song forced a reassessment of my moment after an indeterminant amount of additional Zzzs. I rolled back out of my warm coccoon of sheets and blankets and gave it the old Ashlandia try once more.
This is Saturday. January 11. 2025.
Yarp, fog socks us in. 37 F, air stagnation advisory, high of 42 expected, sunshine is being offered if we can slip fog’s tenacious grasp. Then it might be a pretty day.
Or not. As the barista related to me yesterday morning, “I was on the phone with my room mate and she said, ‘Oh, it’s a pretty day. Think I’ll go outside and do something.’ Then, five minutes later, it was foggy and pouring rain.” Yep, and it didn’t stop until daylight no longer let us in on what was going on outside.
The state of fog has fog-themed music energizing The Neurons. But some of ’em were hooked on an earlier thought about breakfast. Shuffling around, The Neurons pulled up Breakfast in America. Released in 1979, the album gained a life in my music rotation. See, this was back in an era when I bought music albums. Through tech’s evolution, the media shifted. Vinyl, tape, CD, whatev, we hooked the album up with the appropriate device and played the album. By then, I was 23 and made enough money that I could drop $8 on a new album now and again. Put it in perspective, gasoline was less than a dollar a gallon and a cup of coffee was usually less than two. Also, phone service was waaaayyyy cheaper and we didn’t have the net. We in the U.S. had cable and paid less than ten a month for basic.
So you’d take your new album home and play and listen to it while cleaning the house, washing and waxing the car, making and eating meals, and other activities. Happened with sufficient frequency that the songs came to be known in order. Every note and nuance was etched into The Neurons’ aural wetware. Today, they began playing the album for me in my morning mental music stream (Trademark droppy).
First song up is a guitar & keyboard-driven offering to Hollywood, “Gone Hollywood”. Supertramp wasn’t happy about the place at first. Complaints about life and Hollywood interspersed with moody sax playing. Real picker-up with lyrics like, “Ain’t nothing new in my life today. Ain’t nothing true, it’s all gone away.”
But the self-pity fades after the guitar solo and musical bridge. A more upbeat mood takes over. “I’m the talk of the boulevard. So keep your chin up boy, forget the pain, I know you’ll make it if you try again. There’s no use quitting when the world is waiting for you.”
Then there’s the rest of the album. Several hits on there. “The Logical Song.” “Goodbye Stranger.” “Take the Long Way Home.” Yeah, you might know those, if you’re of a certain age and musical preference, or if you drove around with the automobile’s music turned to pop stations in the 1980s.
The fog hasn’t let up but coffee and I made a pact, and it’s going to carry me through the trough of the day. Be good, be real. Here’s the music, and off we go, into the wild gray yonder.
Floofsimilar(floofinition) An animal that looks or acts amazingly like another. Origins: Medieval Flooftin.
In Use: “Goof and Ball were different species but with almost the exact same black and white markings and chill, friendly personalities, were spooky floofsimilars.”
In Use: “Mark went out looking for his big black white cat. A week later, his cat showed up, and he realized that the first cat was a floofsimilar.”
Floofybeat (floofinition) – Style or sub-genre of rock or pop music which incorporates animal sounds or approximations of animal styles. Origins: USA circa 1965.
In Use: “The Kiffness creates floofybeat videos of cats ‘singing’ tunes.”
In Use: “‘Li’l Red Riding Hood’ by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs is a 1966 pop song that incorporates a wolf howl, qualifying it as floofybeat music.”
Floofstruse(floofinition) – An animal who is difficult to comprehend, predict, or understand. Origins: December 1, 2024, Ashlandia, Oregon, USA.
In Use: “Even after ten years of living with Corky, he was a floofstruse enigma, alternatively loving, sweet, and friendly, and then sullen, remote, and sad.”
In Use: “Bob always told others that Lucy was floofstruse, usually happy, sweet, and playful, but then another side emerged, and she became Lucifer.”
Michael Seidel, writer 