I am grumpy and grouchy and don’t have anything to say, so I will distract you with a picture of my cat watching lions on TV. He also enjoys shows about fish; he watched about five minutes of Blue Planet the other night.
Category: Da Cats
Jordana and Samang came over to my place last night, which means that the cats got to see their first baby. They were fascinated, Freddie especially. He looked her over, startled at the noises she made, and did not seem to understand that she was in fact a human. To be fair, he’s never seen a human the same size as he is, so I can understand the confusion. He seemed to like the way she smelled, though, and in the end tried to get her to pet him by headbutting her hand. He also licked her, perhaps to find out if she was edible. The best part of the night was when we had put her down on the bed for a nap, and Freddie (forgettting she was around because she was quiet) jumped up on the bed to get to his window perch, saw the baby kick and jumped a foot into the air. Because “Holy shit what the hell is that!!! Why is it on the bed??? Oh, wait. It’s that thing. The thing that makes noises and doesn’t pet me.”
Joe, in typical Joe fashion, took longer to warm up to her. (I think he’s also seen a baby or two in his long life, so he knew to be wary.) Late in the evening though, when the baby was still napping, I put him up on the bed to see her. She had gotten an arm out of her swaddle by this time, and when he got close to sniff her she whacked him upside the head. He looked at me to verify that I had seen this abuse, and then lay down at her feet to keep guard over her and protect her from that other miscreant, Freddie. Or maybe he just reasoned that the feet were still swaddled and less likely to make contact with him. But when I asked him if he liked the baby, he meowed. I take that as a good sign.
Baby-2, cats-0.
I have some really deep posts rattling around in my head…well, maybe not really deep, but deeper than this is going to be. Because today I don’t have the time for a deep post. Sorry ’bout that. On to the bullet points:
- Freddie thinks he’s a dog. He has taken to gnawing on our sandals, this morning going so far as to gnaw on my Tevas while I was wearing them. All of my sandals and now Rick’s as well have tiny teeth marks in them. And yes, I do put them away when I’m not wearing them, however
FidoFreddie can open closets as well, so we are screwed. - Somewhere in my upgrade to WP 2.2.1 or whatever it is, I lost my Flickr e-z uploader application. I’m sure there is an upgrade for that as well, but the computer at work doesn’t like it when I use FTP. So I have to do it at home. And we all know how much I have been at home lately. So instead I just have to point you towards this the old-fashioned way: my LOL Cats.
- My undergrad college made news all around the planet today, judging by the number of news sites I’m getting by typing in the words “Meadville wrecking ball” on Google. Apparently a wrecking ball broke loose from a crane and rolled 3/4 of a mile down a hill, damaging cars and injuring people in its path until it came to a stop in the trunk of a Taurus. Here’s an in-depth article. (I especially like the part on the second page about the guy who was injured when he “attempted to stop the wrecking ball by throwing bricks in its path.” Only in Meadville.) Here’s a picture. Meadville in the summer is slower than slow, so I’m assuming this will provide plenty of water-cooler talk at least until August.
- It is hotter than hell here right now, so rather than let the little kitties suffer while I’m gone, I left the a/c on in my house for them. Al Gore can’t bitch, though, because the thermostat is set for 81* and they’re on energy saver mode. I can hear my mom asking me why do I even bother having the a/c on if I’m going to have it set that high, and the answer is “Well, 81* is significantly cooler than the 107* it would reach in the apartment otherwise, so there you go.”
- I got a ceiling fan on sale at Home Depot for $37. It has no lights, but as we have no ceiling light there anyway, and I just bought CFLs for all of my lamps (yeah, Live Earth, making a difference), it’s all good. The Landlady is having an electrician wire it up for me, although I told her we could just swag it over from the corner. She is apparently unconvinced of mine and Thabiso’s swagging skillz.
- Speaking of Thabs, Samang turned one month old on Sunday. Where the hell did this past month go? Now we just need to get set for her little blessing/not-christening which is going to be next Saturday. I need to figure out what I’m going to say at this shindig. Crap.
I think that’s it. Or enough, at any rate. Now to go do work for a bit until 2:30, when I leave, head into the city, grab some scripts (did I mention I’m on the nominating committee for my theater’s playwriting award? I am.), and head to the Port Authority. The bus leaves at 5 and gets in at 9:20. I’m betting I will get through at least three scripts in that time period.
I vacuumed my apartment tonight for…well, for the first time in way too long. There were crunchy things on the carpet and I’m still not sure if they were (a) kitty litter tracked in from the bathroom, (b) cat kibble crumbs, or (c) none of the above. I’m hoping it wasn’t c, because I walk around here barefoot. Ew.
And less than fifteen minutes after I had finished vacuuming and even sweeping and mopping (kitchen and bathroom don’t have carpet but were just as filthy), the sounds of Kitty Armageddon float over to me from the living room. There are fur tumbleweeds on my freshly vacuumed rug, floating in the breeze from the a/c. Fucking cats. Why do I even try? Oh yeah, because I couldn’t deal with UCC – Unidentified Carpet Crunchies.
Last night Freddie took cat ownership to all new highs. Or lows, whichever.
I had just made dinner and was dividing it between a plate to eat then and a Gladware container so I could have the rest later in the week for lunch or dinner. As I was scooping the potatoes O’Brien into the Gladware, Freddie started to hork. He was on the kitchen table as he does this. I have crap on the kitchen table which does not need to be horked on. I quickly put the pan of potatoes down and picked Freddie up to deposit him on the floor. He horked on the go, essentially projectile vomiting.
I dropped him on the floor and grabbed paper towels to clean up the mess that was left by raw food nuggets in reverse, but I was puzzled. There should have been more hork. More hork definitely left his mouth than what I was finding. Maybe I was wrong. I shrugged and tossed the paper towels in the trash, and went to finish scooping potatoes O’Brien out of the pan into the Gladware. And that’s when I realized that Freddie? Freddie’s got good aim. Because the missing hork had landed right in the pan. Good thing I had already gotten 90% of the potatoes out of the pan already.
If there’s one thing that could have improved the joy that is cat vomit, it was cat vomit target practice.
Freddie has a naughty streak in him. Even when he knows he’s not supposed to do something he still does it, because he is wildly intelligent and must use that intelligence for evil. My stove is Freddie-proofed right now because he was pulling a Spider-Man and climbing up the handles on the front of it. We took the knobs off of it because Goddess forbid the little shit climb up on the stove while I’m at work (as I’m sure he does) and turn on the gas. Or start a fire. He climbs up the stove to get at the nook over the sink where the treats were, by the way. Hope spings eternal.
I just walked in the door, and on the surface, things seemed normal. Joe waiting at the door, yowling to tell me something. Freddie a few steps behind. I walked into the kitchen, put my backpack and jacket down, and that’s when I saw it. A bag of kitty Greenies on the floor. With a hole in it. A chewed hole.
Freddie had apparently gone up on the kitchen counter to the little nook above the sink where I keep their treats and helped himself. The bag of Greenies was still mostly full, my guess is because I interrupted him. However, there was also a bag of Pounce Meaty Morsels missing. I looked all around the kitchen and dining room and didn’t see it. I was beginning to think he’d eaten them bag and all. And then for some reason I went into the bedroom and picked up a book I had left on the floor beside my bed last night. And that’s when I saw it.
Someone (who shall remain nameless, but whose initials are obviously Freddie) had torn the bottom off of my box spring and made a cat cave. And in that cat cave? The mostly empty bag of Pounce. Y’all, I have a kitty scavenger on my hands.
I think he’s probably going to be very sick before the night is over, since the regular Purina that I’m weaning him onto (off the raw food) still occasionally wreaks havoc on his little kitty bowels. He’s in the bathroom for the moment, because he and Joe were in a pitched battle that was showing no signs of stopping while I cleaned up the treat wreckage. Maybe I’ll just let him stay there for a while, just in case.
But what do you do with an animal who is so fixated on food that he chews through bags to get at it? I can’t leave food down for him because he’ll eat it all and then be sick. What do I do here? Suggestions?
…if Freddie isn’t of above normal intelligence, like Joe. Friday night I caught Freddie standing with his back paws on the handle of the broiler door and his front paws pulling up on the handle of the stove door, little nose twitching as he searched for food.  An hour later, I saw Joe with his front paws on the broiler handle, a trick which he has never done before. It’s not enough that Freddie might be smart, they have to learn from each other.
And yesterday when I came home, I found the decorative key for the entertainment center doors on the floor. Someone had hooked a paw through it and yanked it out of the keyhole. Since Joe has never had an interest in it before, that leaves one suspect.
When Joe was Freddie’s age, he learned to work the VCR and answering machine, and eventually broke both. Since Joe is the only intelligent pet we’ve ever had (others have been sweet, but never smart), we’ve just thought Joe is the smartest cat ever and that no other cats can compare. I shudder to think that not only could this not be the case, but that I might have wound up with the two most intelligent cats in the universe. I am screwed.
Joe’s biospy came back yesterday. It turns out that the lump on his gum was something called a mast cell tumor, which is a type of cancer. The doctor told me that if it was on Joe’s skin, it would be something they would consider benign, but since it was on the gum, he wasn’t sure – he’d actually never seen a mast cell tumor on a cat’s gums before. Basically, if it was on the skin, they could remove a large amount of skin to make sure they’d gotten all of it. However, since it was on his gum, there was only so much that could be removed before they hit the bone, and none of us wants a radical bone surgery for Joe.
I cried when I got this news, of course, but the vet told me there was no reason to cry. (This man never ever shows emotion.) Joe is old, he explained to me (16, by Mom’s latest reckoning), and Joe will probably die of old age rather than the mast cell cancer. But he does have to be on Prednizone for the rest of his life, and we do have to watch out for returning lumps on his gums. If we notice one, then we have to bring him back in, but otherwise, we don’t have to, at least for the cancer (thyroid problem is still in effect).
Yesterday was the first time I’ve ever contemplated a time when Joe might not be around. A time when I might have to put him down because it might be his time, although not nearly the time I would have chosen for him. I had hopes that he would live a Maynard-like lifespan – 25 years would still not be enough time, but it would be better. I can’t even begin to tell you all this little black cat has meant to me over the years. He’s been my best friend, my baby, a companion, and so much more. I love him so much.
For the time being, I’ll try not to borrow trouble. He’s alive now and sitting on my lap, purring, trying to get me to rub his chin. Excuse me while I go do that. I’ll give you the Freddie update later.
In a weekend filled with chaos, we’ve learned a couple of things:
- Jesse is 25 pounds and Freddie only 11, but Jesse is afraid of Freddie. This is probably because Freddie spent the a large part of the first 24 hours Jesse was in the apartment hanging outside the bathroom door hissing under it at Jesse.
- Freddie also hissed non-stop when we took him to the vet. He doesn’t mind the cat carrier, but he really doesn’t like the vet. Or the vet tech. Or anything to do with the vet.
- Freddie can hump a blanket from the bedroom into the kitchen. I’m still not sure how long it took him to do that, all I know is that we were gone for five hours and when came home the blanket had migrated. More proof that I named him right.
We also learned that the little growth Joe has on his gum needs to be removed. So he’s at the vet right now, awaiting surgery. I felt like the worst cat mom in the universe this morning when he was crying for his food and I couldn’t give it to him (he’ll be under anesthetic today and the food would not help that). Think good thoughts for him…he’s my buddy, and I need everything to turn out okay. I’ve had him since I was 14 and can’t imagine life without him.