At Sea

Most cats love to sit in boxes. I understand that, for some reason, they like enclosed spaces. (I understand the fact, not the reason.) Even a shallow-sided box, a lid or a shell of cardboard will attract them. They will come over to the box, step inside and lie down. This brings them comfort, perhaps even delight. But sometimes, they look a little odd, even silly, doing it.

I’m sorry to declare that my foster-cat, Kola, the king of floof, falls into the latter category. I put down a box from which tins of cat-food had been removed, and he immediately came over and got in. I certainly don’t object to this; if it makes Kola feel good, then more power to him. But he looked like a Tribble stuffed into a matchbox.

But, true to his feline nature, he cared nothing for what I thought, and continued to bob about in his little craft for an hour. For more than sixty minutes, I had to walk around and over this dismasted schooner adrift in linoleum doldrums. I think it was only dinner-time that caused him to abandon his cardboard vessel.

Sometimes, a person and his cat understand each other well. Sometimes, they are in tune, their wavelengths perfectly matched, like an expert ham-radio operator listening to his favourite foreign station. Then the beast sees a box, and all comprehension is lost.

Tungsten's Game

My oldest cat, Tungsten, has never played much. She used play at string-toys with me, and would zoom through the nylon tunnel when I walked beside it. I’m not sure whether it is age or apathy that is slowing her down these days. It may simply be disdain for my other cats foolish enough to leap and spin and chase things. But there is one activity that the orange one still likes. It’s one that I share with her alone.

When I come home from work, I go to my bedroom to change clothes. Tungsten always follows me. The other beasts will wander about, knowing that it’s dinner-time. Josie and Tucker may pursue each other. Their top-cat, however, comes into the bedroom and gets up on the bed. I spread my arms and shout her name.

Years ago, I would seize her and almost flip her over on the bed, then she’d wrestle and try to nip my hand. Now, she’s too old for such gymnastics. She will sometimes stoop, as if about to roll, but she doesn’t. In fact, she looks like she’s cowering and in fear of receiving blows from my hand. But she’s really just preparing. Periodically, she does flop onto her side - her current version of a tumble. These days, I grab her and gently ease her over. But then, she likes it a little rougher. I rub her fuzzy head until my hand is a blur, massage the sides of her face as though I were trying to use her fur to start a campfire, and finally, rub her boney sides with my fingers, while she claws at the bedspread, trying to stay in place. It looks as if she’s undergoing some painful torture, but when I stop, her little motor is rumbling.

This is often repeated several times. If I think we’re done, I will look at Tungsten. She may stoop, ready to fall over. That means she’s not finished. So we repeat the process. Then at last, I gather her up and take her to the bathroom for a drink of water, and I can feel her skinny frame vibrating.

This is our routine, something we’ve always done, in one form or another. Once in a while, a spark of youth fires through her, and we will wrestle, my hand against her whole tiny body. But mostly, she’s passive and simply enjoys the sensations, the interaction between us. I think it makes her feel good. I know it does me.

The Thanks I Get

A short time ago, I put the storm windows on my house, in preparation for the coming cold months. I wrote about it on this blog and joked that the thanks I received for working hard in the blustery chill was to be ignored by six cats all ensconced in warmth and comfort.

But in reality, this is why I do much of what I do. Pets should not have to worry about being cold or hungry. As with children, if our pets don’t take warmth and contentment for granted, then we, as their protectors, are doing something wrong. Adults have to worry, about themselves and about those under their care. The price we pay for independence (or as much as society allows us) and responsibility is consciousness of the disaster that waits to overwhelm us if we do not constantly strive to stave it off.

It’s true that I would have to work at a job even if I didn’t have cats. My own survival would depend on it. But much of what I manage to snatch from under the daily grind goes to the cats. I come home and they start demanding food almost immediately. I scoop their poop from litter-boxes in a manner that, in terms of human waste management, went out of style a century ago. I play with them and give them their medicines and arrange my time around their needs. And then, when I am done my chores and they are satisfied, they fall asleep in soft beds.

A week ago we had our first snowstorm of the season. This was the scene outside.

And these were the scenes inside. This was the thanks I got for all my efforts: the storm windows, the feedings, cleaning bums, waking up at two o’clock in the morning to run drinking-water, carting thirty pound bags of litter home on my bicycle and spending my savings on their health.

And I could not be thanked better.

Nip in the Air

Some time ago, I participated in an on-line auction and bought a cat-hammock. It is, in fact, a Ham-Mick, made by Forty Paws. A very good purchase it was, too, as it is always in use by one of three cats (Tucker, Josie, Kola) and sometimes a fourth (Renn). But Tucker, though he enjoys snoozing in the hammock, especially, for some reason, after nine o’clock at night, has a reaction that is different than the other cats’.

When the hammock arrived, it was liberally covered with cat-nip. That has a bad effect on some of my beasts (Tungsten, for instance, becomes almost comatose). But after a brief shake, the hammock was put together and ready for use.

Periodically, however, Tucker will detect a smell of cat-nip strong enough to go a little loopy. He rubs his fuzzy face up and down, back and forth. He rolls and twists, this way and that. It’s a very mild reaction and he seems to enjoy himself without getting carried away, though sometimes he ends up a little distance from the hammock, demonstrating his true roly-poliness…

And though I wrote that Tucker did not get carried away, he does sometimes push the hammock from its place. I’ve found it half-way across the dining area, on its way to the bedroom. Then I know who has been having a little fun, and that there’s a nip in the air.

Observing the Observer

I try to keep an eye on my cats’ habits, so I will know as early as possible when something is amiss. One of the traits of which I am particularly watchful is their trips to the litter-boxes in the basement.

Early in October, Renn appeared to be having trouble urinating. An overnight stay in hospital did not result in much but a diminution of my bank account, though I think that the doctor’s suspicion of a mild inflammation, pressing on Renn’s bladder, caused my big boy to think he had to go when he did not really need to. That has long since cleared up and all my cats appear in good health right now.

But they cause me worries nonetheless. Soon after I took Renn to the veterinary, I noticed that he was spending an inordinate amount of time downstairs. That usually means time spent at the litter-boxes - unless it is Tungsten trapped by Cammie, ready to ambush the orange one on her way up the stairs. So I waited until my big boy thumped down the staircase once more and did not return after a few minutes, and then followed him down.

He was at the litter-boxes, to be sure, but he was not interested in using them, except as a means of getting to the back of the space under the stairs where they are kept. As you may know if you’ve read my blog for a while, Renn is my scientist, a scholar of all things. He had evidently seen something that aroused his curiosity: a spider, perhaps, or a centipede. It had likely come out of or gone under the drywall there. All Renn would need is to see the object once, and he would return repeatedly to stare at the spot where he had last observed it.

Renn caused me some anxiety in this matter, and, though many of the alarms I experience in regard to these beasts are false, they are better than real ones. In watching out for the cats we care for, we have to be as observant as my big boy himself.

The Leap

Tucker is not built for agility or speed. His is not the form of a lean jaguar, leaping from branch to branch in the Amazon jungle. Nor is he like the cheetah, a blur on the African savannah as it charges after its prey. Rather, Tucker is lumpy and tubular, like those rolls of Pilsbury dough, ready-made for baking into cookies. Seen from the rear, his swiftest gait looks like an overweight dancer from the Folies Bergere trying to keep up with the front end of a pantomime horse.

So it was with trepidation that I witnessed the roly poly one contemplating a jump from the middle of the tall cat-tree in the sitting room. The platform on which he was sitting is perhaps three feet off the floor; not high, really. But Tucker, having finished looking out the window, was thinking of crossing a distance that was horizontal, as well as vertical. He wanted to snooze on the armchair, and didn’t want to go to the trouble of climbing down the cat-tree to do it. The space that he had to cover was, for a stubby-legged cat, considerable.

He hesitated on the platform for half a minute.

“I can do it… No, I can’t… Yes, I can… It’s not far… I can do this… I’d better not… What if I fall?… I won’t fall… I can do it…”

A dozen times in that period I thought of telling Tucker not to try it. I had visions of him plummeting three quarters of the way to his destination, 18 pounds of fat cat smashing onto the little round table beside the chair, or striking the chair’s arm with his chest, his baby-like forepaws scrabbling ineffectually at the fabric as he flipped over backward and fell to the floor. I think he had the same visions. But I refrained from saying anything, as I thought my outburst might catch him just as he was taking off, and throw off his balance (such as it is).

Then he leaped.

It was a perfect arc, right to where he wanted to go. He hit the cushion of the chair as though he were the arrow shot by Errol Flynn in the tournament scene in “The Adventures of Robin Hood”. Except the arrow weighed a few ounces. Tucker sank the cushion six or seven inches into the chair, and I’m sure I heard the furniture’s springs shout obscenities. But they, and Tucker, recovered quickly. He spent minimal time getting comfortable before settling down. He was probably stunned and dizzy. Then, tired out from his unwonted aerobatics, he slept.

My fur-wrapped little dirigible.

Cats and Candy

I am not a big celebrant of Hallowe’en. In its modern form, it is far too commercialized and conventionalized for me, and I have no affinity with its original pagan form. However, children enjoy it, and I like to give out candy to them because I recall being a youngster and disliking the people who were home but refused to give out treats at their houses. Besides, when there are few children, I get to have whatever candy they don't.

The cats’ reaction to the evening varied. Tungsten, of course, disdained to react at all, and spent the whole time in her heated cat-bed. The night was a pleasant one for the end of October, so there was almost no chilly draught from the door being open so often. But she is old and likes the warmth of her cat-bed at any time, so she is certainly not going to bother making a fuss over such nonsense as giving out candy to strangers.

Renn doesn’t like people coming to the door. He quickly warms to them after they arrive and, if they stay a while, he will often come and lie beside them while they sit on the couch. But this to-ing and fro-ing unnerved him a bit, so he remained in the bedroom. Josie too stayed there, but because she has a habit of checking out the door whenever it is open. She would go outside if she could. So she kept Renn company.

Kola too is a greeting-cat, and his fondness for coming to the door to see who is entering is why he was banished to the parlour for the duration. He was quite excited by it all and had his lasers on, to give the best show for all who were coming.

Cammie normally gravitates quickly toward whatever noise or ruckus is in the making, but I think the continual ringing of the door-bell frightened her a bit, so the Siamese princess took refuge on her tall cat-tree in the bedroom.

The cat who surprised me was Tucker. There was a time when he would hide at the slightest intimation of a newcomer. But he has been growing bolder - in that respect, at least. A visitor some weeks ago remarked that the roly poly sausage didn’t run and hide when she came in. Indeed, he is standing (or lying) his ground and braving whatever may come his way. So it was on Hallowe’en. Repeated ringing of the door-bell did not drive him to seek cover and, though he did not appear enthusiastic about the whole evening, he kept me company in the sitting room.

So it was not too bad an evening for all concerned. Children had fun, the cats were not too alarmed, and I got the leftover candy.