Welcome to CATS ON ICE Memories!

On July 24, 2005, my children performed in CATS ON ICE. The experience is one they loved so much and want to remember forever. This is a memory journal of that wonderful experience.

We would like to invite other members of the cast and their parents to add their memories and comments to our journal!

Photos of my beautiful CATS

Below are some photos of the "Farris Family of CATS."





Rebekah is the sexy "Bombalurina" kitten, Joel is part of "MaCavity's Crew," (villains!) and Annabelle is "Asparagus," the kitten version of "Gus the Theatre Cat."

Poster of all CATS!

Here's the poster that DeeDee Knierim, Director of Coloarado Youth Theatre, gave to all of us to help tell about CATS ON ICE!!!!

We put these posters ALL OVER Colorado Springs!

Joel and Rebekah Sang "Mr. Mistofelees!"

(Originally this post included Joel and Rebekah singing the tune "Mr. Mistofelees," but sadly, Blogger seems to have deleted the file. We can only imagine their great singing now...)

Gus (Sammy) and Asparagus (Annabelle)

Gus was played by Sammy Anderson. Sammy is working hard on his skating and is Annabelle's ice dance partner.

In CATS ON ICE, Sammy played GUS, an old theatre cat who tells about the victories he had in the past. Annabelle was his "kitten equivalent!"

MaCavity's Crew

Joel loved being a villian!

Here is MaCavity (Dillon Kelley) and his "crew" (Joel Farris and Isabella Valdez).

Another photo of the "Farris Cats"

Here's the three "Farris Cats" once again!

Kelly Baker's Original CATS Artwork!

Kelly Baker played the beautiful Jemima Cat in the show.

Kelly has just loved the musical CATS and these drawings show her love for the show!

Kelly, perhaps in the comment section, you can tell more about your interest in CATS and how these beautiful drawings came about?

The Big Day! July 24, 2005

July 24, 2005 was the big day!

It was wonderful!

We woke up early and Mommy put gel in Annabelle's and Rebekah's hair.

We arrived at the Sertich Ice Center at 9:30 AM. Mommy and Daddy left us there!

We spent the morning getting our make-up on and getting ready.

The first show started at 12:30 PM and was over at about 1:30 PM. Grandma and Grandpa came to see us.

Joel and Rebekah stayed at the rink the whole day, but Annabelle went home with Mommy and Daddy and took a bath and removed her make-up.

Joel and Rebekah got to eat a lot of food and watch THE ARISTOCATS.

Daddy brought Annabelle back to the rink at about 3:30 PM.

We got our make-up applied again and got ready again and put on another performance at 7:00 PM.

Everyone was more relaxed during the 2nd performance. Annabelle did a lot more moves in the GUS number, including waltz jumps and sit spins! Rebekah even did a flying camel. She also did many, many spins. Joel did a great flip jump and lots of great spins. It was fun to see our friends do spins, jumps, turns, and have fun skating as we performed.

Everyone was happy!

After the show was over, we went in the audience in our costume and said hello to all the wonderful people who came to watch us.

We hugged DeeDee good-bye. Wow did she do so much for us!

It didn't take long to change clothes and go home. We hugged many of our CATS friends good-bye. We will really miss them, but are glad there is going to be a chance to see eachother again when we do the show on stage in September.

We kept our make-up on until we got home. When we got home, we sang CATS songs and talked about how fun a day we had!

We will never forget this wonderful experience. Joel now wants to perform more and more and has improved so much at his skating. Annabelle and Rebekah both have improved at skating and acting too. We've made some wonderful friends.

We want to thank DeeDee for giving us an experience that we will remember for the rest of our lives.

A CAT is NOT a DOG!

One of our favorite songs was when Tommy Payne who played Old Deuteronomy sang "The Addressing of Cats."

Yes, we all needed to be reminded that a CAT is NOT a DOG!

Our family does not own a cat, but we do own a Pomeranian like the the one pictured above. Our little Pom loves us more than anything.

Sometimes we wonder what life with a cat would be like?

What we learned and what we bought about CATS

The purpose of this post is to share all the things we listened to, watched, bought, played on piano, and read about CATS THE MUSICAL.

Of course, we had to buy some songbooks to go with the musical to play on the piano! So Mommy bought us CATS - Easy Piano Picture Book. Now Rebekah and Joel and Mommy play songs from CATS on the piano daily! Our favorite song is probably the one about Mr. Mistofelees.

If you don't know this already, this musical is based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Eliot. Kelli Knight told us about the book, so we ordered it on Amazon. Soon we ordered the accompanying book on tape and listened to British voices reading us the poems. Rebekah has memorized every poem in the book!
All the poems are almost duplicated exactly word for word in this musical play by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Dillon Kelley had THE BOOK OF THE MUSICAL, so we ordered that too. It included photos from the stage show and also the songs and poems as they were performed in the musical.
We also have watched the video and DVD that includes "The Making of CATS." We have memorized every song and movement!

We recommend ordering any of the items we've suggested on Amazon.com.

We already owned a record of the original Broadway show. That too, is a must have!

All we are missing are CATS t-shirts!

Why we think it is SO NEAT that Kelsey McKenna is in this too!

In the late 1940s, our mommy's daddy, went to UCLA.

Grandpa made a best friend and lifelong friend in college.

Our grandfather's best friend and lifelong friend was Kelsey McKenna's grandfather!

Kelsey's mommy and daddy just happen to live in Colorado Springs. When Kelsey was a baby, our mommy wrote Kelsey's mommy a letter and they connected. Kelsey's mommy, Evony, mentioned to our mommy, Jo Ann, that Kelsey's daddy used to play hockey.

Soon, Jim began teaching learn to play hockey classes at the Chapel Hills Ice Rink. When Kelsey was old enough, she began skating lessons and a few years ago, she began private figure skating instruction under Jo Ann!

As time has passed, Kelsey and Rebekah and Annabelle have become very close friends.

Isn't that a neat story?

And...now we are all doing CATS ON ICE together! Who would have thought that two young men who met in the late 1940s would have grandchildren skating and performing together in the year 2005???!!!

Thank You to those who helped sponsor us!

This post is a BIG THANK YOU to the following people who sponosored us. We couldn't have done this without your support!

Spiral Academy
Linda Cirincione
The Beckrich Family
The Rauhala Family
Karen and Anja and Tristen Knebl
Jennifer Fortner
Linda Famula
Sonja Gonsor
Heidi and Deanna Cooper
Tom McHugh
Paul and Judy Steiner
Kimberly and McKenzie Lind
Jeff Challender
Joyce and David Herlacher
Ballet Society of Colorado Springs
Natalia Whirl
Larisa Gendernalik
Amy and Nathan Hayes
Catherine, Suzanne, and Megan Marcotte
Vivian and Rebecca Bohn
Jean and Estee Medberry
Angela and Amanda Goff
Patti Brickner
Shae and Milan Pinello
Kim Raymond
Arthur and Edith Schneider

Annabelle's Birthday!

Today is Annabelle's birthday!

Since we are supposed to stay home to rest for tomorrow's big show, we just had a small party this afternoon.

Grandma and Grandpa came over and we had cupcakes in the kitchen! Last night, Grandma and Grandpa took us out to dinner at Red Robin and Annabelle got a special birthday sundae and a special song sung to her in the restaurant!

Annabelle got a bedroom set that included a canopy, a comforter, curtains, shams, and matching sheets.

Grandma and Grandpa got her a Barbie CD player.

She also got some gifts from her CATS friends. Kelsey gave her a bunch of stuff and so did Sammy.

Annabelle is so happy and we are all excited about tomorrow! What a neat birthday!

A week of rehearsals in a row!

Wow, did we have a busy week!

We had rehearsals every day this week -- Monday through Friday!

We did the full performance on Monday and Tuesday at the Lon Chaney Theater and then on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, we had ON ice and OFF ice rehearsals at Sertich Ice Center.

We went through most of the show on all those days and wore our fur on Wednesday and Thursday.

DeeDee was always so encouraging at every rehearsal and we had so much fun.

We get tomorrow off to rest and then we perform on Sunday! Yippee!!!

Special MaCavity Crew practice

Joel and Isabella and Dillon had a special practice for MaCavity's Crew today. Now they have a choreographed number that includes salchows and everything! Old Deuteronomy will bend down so they can get the net over his head as they capture him.

Joel also spend some time with DeeDee practicing his bow and his "Mean Like A Minx" line (when he's Carbuckety).

After the practice, Joel switched to his hockey skates and enjoyed playing with Dillon and Kevin.

Joel has really enjoyed the friends he's made during CATS (especially Dillon and Kevin).

More ON ice and OFF ice rehearsals!

Wow, we really have been busy!

We had a rehearsal on the ice before the July 4th weekend (Friday, July 1st) and then after the 4th, we went to Lon Chaney Theater on July 5th, followed by rehearsals on the ice on July 6th, July 8th, July 9th, and July 10th!

Mommy gave a lesson during the public session at Sertich on Sunday, July 10th. When she was teaching we were off the ice playing with Torrie Krantz's REAL kitten!

DeeDee gave us a bunch of flyers to post EVERYWHERE during the upcoming week. We got our pictures back and a group photo of the cast is on the flyer.