Danger Zones

Cammie continues to learn about life as a blind cat, and I learn about her learning. She explores almost fearlessly now, her principal problem coming from meeting other cats. Since she can’t see that they retreat when they encounter her, the princess’s dudgeon remains high long after it needs to.

But she often treks out to the sitting room to sit on the couch, to lie on the carpetted ledge by the screen door to the ditch, or even, as I saw here, to play a little. She was gently wrestling with a ball in this picture, though she is obscuring the ball itself. She won’t play when I offer toys to her because she can’t see them, and feeling them thrust upon her is more an intrusion than an invitation. But on her own terms, she can still have a bit of fun.

One exploit had me worried, however. She found her way to the top of the tallest cat-tree. She undoubtedly knew where she was, from smell and the fact that there were so many levels. She also knew when she had reached the top. The difficulty then arose of getting down. Feeling one’s way sightless from a great height is a scary business, and it took Cammie twenty minutes to decide to descend just one level – after which she returned to the top. I was frightened that she would make a misstep and fall, and I could not stay to supervise her efforts for as long as she might want to make them. It could have been hours. So I reluctantly intervened.

The sounds and threats she made when I picked her up were unpleasant to hear, and she was not in a forgiving mood even when she reached the floor. I disliked doing this and on another occasion, when I could remain and watch her, I would not have done it. But neither she nor I are yet confident enough in her blind abilities to let her attempt such a descent.

 

Soon, though, she recovered, and was relaxing on the couch. She condescended to let the matter drop and we were friends again. I much prefer her scaling such heights as a comfy cushion on a chair.

Someday, probably soon, she will be able to do almost everything she could when her eyes worked, but not just yet. For now, her world has a few more danger zones than it once did.

Coming Around Again

Raleigh is coming around again. That ugly spaniel regressed a while ago, and started running from me, even though he had been coming up onto my lap almost from the first day he arrived at my apartment. Something frightened him and he took to keeping his distance. Then, suddenly (as cat behaviour often seems to change), he decided to approach me.

Peachy now comes over to me quite frequently, especially before meals are served. He will lean into my hand and enjoy a vigorous head-rub, especially along the bridge of his nose. Oddly, he has not taken to lying on my lap again, and he is still easily spooked, so I am reluctant at this point to try washing his face when I have the opportunity to hold him, even though that droopy countenance needs it constantly. Seizing him and picking him up are only for serious matters; he dislikes these actions right now and I’ll only perform them if I need to attend to something important. But he lets me brush him and I have brushed out a few more of the last mats on his rear right flank.

He also enjoys playing in the shallow boxes and lids strewn on the floor. His many-toed feet can’t grasp things well, but he may actually use that to have fun: I see, and hear, him scrabbling at the bottom and sides of a box, presumably trying to grab a toy.

But when by himself, he can usually be found at the screen door to the ditch. Sometimes, he is in a cat-tree, but most often, he lies or crouches on the carpeted shelf in front of the door. What he can see from that angle must be limited, but he loves the vantage point, so I won’t argue with him.

 Raleigh has turned out to be a prodigious talker. He doesn’t converse all the time, but when he does, he can be most insistent. I don’t know what he is trying to tell me, but I think it is best just to uphold my side of the discussion. He appears to be satisfied with that.

He is the only cat living with me whom I rescued. To the others I have given a home and a family, but I was less involved in the rescues than in their aftermath. The Peach was living in loose association with a feral colony, and with his FIV and stomatitis, I don’t think he would have survived our latest winter, which was a long one. He loves curling up in one of the cat-beds, and he loves his food; nutrition and comfort were two things he probably found in short supply in the wild. He plays and sometimes gives an outsider-cat what-for, because the intruder is coming too close to his home. These too are behaviours he likely would not have known in his previous existence. Inconvenient and frustrating at times, worrisome and expensive at others, I am nonetheless glad Raleigh is here. I suppose that’s good, because he may be here a while…

Adapting Me, Adapting You, Uh-huh

Cammie is adapting to her sightlessness. She doesn’t stay hiding in the bedroom but explores quite a bit. She goes searching for food or water but much of her peregrinations seem to be simply to learn the lie of her newly benighted land. I don’t know if this is true, but the princess appears to wander about more now than when she could see, and I can’t think of any other reason for it.

She sits at windows to sniff the air. If she has any vision at all, it must be very limited, perhaps to vague shapes and movement. She doesn’t use the saddle at the top of the taller bedroom cat-tree anymore. That was where she would view the world most often. Now, her preferred spots are the bed or the towel that serves as a blanket on the floor in a corner of the bedroom.

Since she is most often there, I wanted to provide her with easier access to water. She has climbed up on to the ledge that runs under the bedroom windows, where there has always been a bowl, but that’s a bit of an ordeal for a blind cat. So I have given her a small bowl in the little shelf (intended originally for a vertical computer) of my desk. She resorts to that bowl often, so I feel that she is maintaining her water-consumption adequately. She also still drinks from the larger bowls by the bedroom door and in the corridor.

I think my princess is most unnerved by the other cats. She doesn’t appear to be overly annoyed at constantly bumping her head against walls or the edges of doors; the fact that she does so now more than immediately after her stroke makes me wonder if her sight’s damage increased, or perhaps ‘consolidated’, over the last three weeks. Her movements are slow and deliberate, and she is learning as she goes. But she never liked proximity to the other beasts, and the fact that she can come upon them without warning angers her. Of particular trouble is Raleigh, who is not shy about inserting himself into another’s food. (He is not aggressive about it; he acts as if he thinks the other cat would gladly share. How he survived any time in the wild is beyond me.) However, I am still confining Cammie to the bedroom during my work-days, so she has ample and unshared access to her food, water and litter-box.

I intend to find another set of steps for the bed. Cammie uses the set at the bed’s foot, especially for descending, but she just as frequently leaves by the sides, especially if other cats are on the bed, and this represents a bit of a scary drop for her, executed without grace. If she knows that there is an smoother method of leaving the bed, she will undoubtedly use it.

So we are adapting, she and I. Cammie of course has the more difficult task; mine is to make hers less so. She deserves to have a contented, normal life, even if its normality is somewhat different than what it once was.

His Name was Parker

The casket I chose for Parker’s ashes is a simple one. The selection was not large, and I didn’t want anything rococo. There is meant to be a photograph inserted; instead I put his name in the space, the label’s hue being taken from his smooth and soft coat.

Parker’s remains came home last week, but I wished to find the right picture frame for his memorial photograph before setting out the casket. (I noted that I wrote almost exactly the same thing after Tungsten’s death.) I found it late this week and finished printing out and inserting Puck’s picture.

I still find myself suddenly remembering that I had not prepared the orange-boy’s insulin syringe, or wondering where my sixth cat is when I count fuzzy heads before leaving for work. I suppose these habits will fade.

What won’t fade are my memories of this marvelous little fellow. I recall that Tungsten had a minor temporomandibular joint disorder, which would make her jaw click when she yawned. A sound like that even today makes me think of the tiny terror. So it is with certain sounds or actions with regard to Parker. He could leave a bit of a mess when he ate, especially latterly, so I would use old pieces of paper as place-mats. When I would take one from where I kept it on top of the refrigerator, he knew that I was about to serve his meal. The sound of a single sheet of paper being ruffled in that way will, I think, always bring my sturdy-boy to mind.

I am grateful and pleased that so many people followed Parker’s adventures, through good and bad, especially through those four short months subsequent to his diagnosis of cancer. He refused to live his life differently than he had, enjoying what he could, right up to his last day. He is gone now, yet still with me, as I am, I hope, still with him. As Dr Bellen said, “I will always be with you.”

His name was Parker. He was my friend, and I will remember him.