My kids and I were flipping tv channels the other night, and a commercial/teaser for an "entertainment news" program flashed video of the barely clad pop group the Pussycat Dolls. I'll admit it- I share an inexplicable love of "Don't Cha" with much of America (tell me it's not on your ipod!), but I don't need my kids watching, or worse, imitating, the booty poppin'. Before I could change the channel, the announcer promised more of the "feisty felines" later in the evening. That phrase caught their ear. "What's a feisty feline?" "Isn't a feline a cat?" Not wanting to dwell on the bustiers and pouty lips, I tried lamely to come up with examples from the kids' tv shows and books. Garfield, anyone? How about Crookshanks from the Harry Potter books? I floundered. Hayden is reading Bunnicula. I held up Chester, the cat from that book, as a cat with attitude. They all kind of looked at me blankly until five year old Ethan, lover of comic books and superheroes, said "I know! Catwoman! She's a feisty feline!" I was oddly pleased. Maybe because he so fully got the connotation and denotation of feisty or maybe, at least, because his example came from a book and not a lounge act.
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