Today is Mimi's tenth birthday. She was born Sept. 3, 1998 at the Sonoma animal shelter and was moved in April to the San Francisco SPCA Maddie Center, where we adopted her. She survived a perilous kittenhood, climbing on the roof despite all the barriers we put up. At one point, she was kept from a hundred-foot fall by a sponge mop held at quaking arm's length. Now, more than middle-aged and weighing 20 pounds despite her low-calorie kibble, she does well to jump on a chair. Her godfather (yes, she has a godfather), after reading "Jubilate Mimi" in Half Moon Bay Memories, wrote a piano Capriccio and Sarabande in her honor. The title of the article and the piano piece comes from Christopher Smart's transcendental poem to his cat, Jeffrey, "Jubilate Agno".
