EvilJulie.com

Freddie loves everyone.  Freddie has never met someone he doesn’t like.  Freddie would probably love even the possums in the fields, if given the chance.  He follows us from room to room, to see what we’re up to, what we’re doing, and if there is the slightest chance he’s going to get food out of it.  Because when push comes to shove?  What he really loves is food (this is why he would love the possums in the field – hey!  food!).

I can understand this.  If I was only being fed three ounces of raw food twice a day, I would want more food as well.  The first day we let him out of the bathroom, he raided Joe’s food bowl.  I was not there, so only Rick knows how much he ate on top of the small handful of Purina One that I had already given him.  It was enough to give him diarrhea.  So yesterday we scaled back.  Only raw food, Joe’s food bowl was put up out of sight.  Freddie didn’t have diarrhea yesterday, but Joe was understandably grouchy – he’s used to being able to nosh when he feels like it, not when I’ve put Freddie in the bathroom for five minutes.

At about 9 last night, after he’d been fed for the night, Freddie decided that he was interested in the cake I was eating.  Okay, good a time as any to table train him.  I told him no and removed him from the table many many times, but eventually it seemed to work and he left me alone.  He might have just been bored, though, because he started aggravating Joe right about then, too.  I praised Freddie for doing a good job.  I put him down, and about five minutes later, I hear that he’s into something on the kitchen table.  I turned around, and my little chowhound was trying to get the Saran Wrap off of the cake pan.  Um, no.  We don’t roll like that.   I moved the cake to the counter so he couldn’t get it.

Today, I mixed in some Purina One with his raw food.  Cross your fingers that it works out, because if we don’t get this cat onto dry food which I can leave out all day, there is going to be trouble.  If not from Freddie, then from Joe, who is going to show us all the true meaning of “pissed off.”

Final confirmation that Malik was a stupid name for a cat: I told Thabs that’s what the cat’s old name was and he said “Hmmm…that’s pretentious.”  Exactly.  TFFKAM is responding well to being called Freddie, although sometimes when he is being a ball of mush I look at him and think “Are you really a Freddie?”  And then I pet him someplace he doesn’t really want to be petted and he nips me with his teeth or claws and I think “From lovey boy to bitch in two seconds flat, yes, yes you are a Freddie.”  And somewhere above, Freddie Mercury is laughing at me and the cat.

Freddie the cat found his voice last night while stuck in the bathroom.  I’m keeping the cats separated for the time being to make the transition a little easier, and apparently Freddie wanted to be out with the rest of us instead of cooped up in there.  He started beating on the door with his paws and then yowled at intervals.  He would give a few meows and stop to listen if anyone was coming.  The silence for a few minutes, then more meows.  At one point I opened the bathroom door enough for him to see Joe and they just sniffed at each other through the door.  No hissing, growling, or anything, despite what the clinic vet tech told me – I think Freddie just didn’t like the clinic.  Can’t say as I blame him, he was in a smallish cage for a while surrounded by other unhappy cats.  They treat them well there, but who could be really happy in a situation like that?

The one slight snag we have is that Freddie has been placed on a raw food diet, which apparently straightened out his diarrhea while he was at the clinic.  But raw food, it is expensive.  A four pound bag of it cost me $18.50 last night, and it will probably last two weeks.  We’ll give him a couple of days to adjust to the new surroundings and then start transitioning him over to the Purina One that Joe eats.  I know some people are very into the raw food diet or wet food diet for their cats, but we just can’t afford that stuff.  If the option is 65 cents for a can of cat food that will last one day, or $5.99 for a bag of dry that will last weeks, well, you do the math.  Joe’s been on Purina One for 15 years with no problems, it will be just fine for Freddie as well.

And now onto work…I’m only here until 3 today – Jesus died not only for our sins, but so we could leave work early!  (And if you took offense to that, chill.  It was a joke.  Later I will write about my knowledge of Jesus relying largely upon “Godspell.”)

I’ve been kicking around blog posts for a few days, but I just don’t have the energy to write them.  It’s sad when I can’t even muster up the energy to write a post about why I’m addicted to reality shows like “Little People, Big World” and “Deadliest Catch.”  I just feel like they’re head and shoulders above shows like “Survivor” and “The Apprentice.”  Because in the end, I care about the Roloff family, I care about the crew of the Northwestern, I couldn’t give a shit less that Trump is making people degrade themselves and sleep in tents to be his apprentice.  Hey, that post was easier than I thought it was.  Tomorrow I will do a similarly half-assed one about why I don’t think I could vote for Hillary Clinton, even though she is a woman and I generally like to support other women.

Today I am trying to get the last of my audits done so that I can get out of here at 3 with a clean conscience to prepare the bathroom for its new resident, TFFKAM, who is going to be picked up at 6:30.  Finally.  I will then have this evening, tomorrow evening, Saturday and Sunday evenings with him, and then we go into tech for the show I’m working on.  Which means Julie will pop by the apartment briefly each night next week, then go to tech rehearsals until 11.  Perhaps by the end of the weekend I’ll be able to allow the cats to mingle so they can keep each other company while I’m gone.  We’ll see.

I’ve been trying to get Joe an evil cat friend for a while now.  The one I picked out first has a brother and has to stay with him, so we can’t pull that off.  So then I found another one.  His slave/shelter name is Malik.  He’s white with grey spots and is tremendously friendly and cuddly.

I’ve been trying to adopt Malik for three weeks now.  I was all set to pick him up the weekend before last, and then Jeffrey died and all bets were off because we had to figure out what to do with Maynard.  Last weekend I was in Massachusetts with Rick and the Youngest, so I couldn’t adopt Malik then, either.  I was set to bring him home tonight when I find out that he has worms.  He’d already been treated once, so they think these are the eggs of the first batch.  But worms means that Malik has to stay at the clinic a little longer so that he gets healthy and doesn’t infect Joe.  The girl at the clinic who I’ve been playing phone tag with for a couple of weeks says he should be ready by the weekend, but guess what?  I have rehearsal this weekend.  And a friend from grad school will be in the city as well, so no Malik before next week.

On the plus side, this means that I have more time to clean, help Rick pack up his apartment, and even go to the Yarn Harlot’s Represent event at FIT tomorrow night.  But I’m starting to feel bad for the little kitty who has been stuck in a cage for going on three weeks.  Especially since he’s been stuck being called Malik that entire time.

I’m going to visit him tonight.  To pet him and hold him and start testing out better names on him.  Like Freddie.

Well, we still have only one cat at Casa de Julz this morning.

Rick and I went out last night around 6:30 to get the cats. As soon as we got there, the friendly one bolted out to say hi, but the other one was MIA even after I opened a can of cat food (normally a sure fire way to attract his/her attention). We looked around for about 10 minutes while petting the friendly one and encouraging her to eat, but no sign of her sibling. We decided, after some talking, that taking her without her sibling would not help either of them. She would be miserable and skitsy one would likely freeze to death without her body heat to cuddle up to. We decided to go back to the house, eat some food, and come back later to try again.

Around 8:15, I set out again. I got to the building and noticed that someone had set out fresh cans of Friskies for them, and a few bites had been taken, but now neither cat was around. I called for them a couple of times, but zip. A guy out walking his dogs saw the cat carrier in my hand and asked if I was looking for the cats. I said I was, that I had wanted to take them in since it was so cold. He told me he thought they had access to the basement of the building, since the past few nights he and the dogs hadn’t seen them as the temperatures dropped. (The cats definitely had access to the tunnel under the building where the super takes out the trash, so this is actually pretty likely.) He told me this is what the feral cats at his workplace did, and it’s what the feral cats at my workplace do as well. I hung around a little bit longer, didn’t see any sign of them, and headed home.

I think they’re okay. I hadn’t realized until we were hanging around the building looking for them last night how everyone in the neighborhood keeps an eye out for them. Several other people stopped by while we were there the first time to pet the friendly one, and the cans of Friskies appear on a regular basis. They may have been abandoned, but now they’re everyone’s pets. I’ll still keep an eye out for them, though, just to make sure they’re okay.