Happy Thanksgiving Once More

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. As always, I try to be grateful every day for what I have. But the holidays – holy days – focus my feelings. While this year has been bad for me in several ways, I recognize that it has also been good in others.

I am still employed and, if I haven’t had a raise since Pearson was prime minister (or thereabouts), I still make enough money to supply my needs, and those of and my cats. I have a very nice and cosy apartment, and I have no debts.

I have been afflicted by the on-going covid-19 crisis but, to be honest, in only minor ways. I am healthy, for my age. (Yes, I’m at the point at which I must add that phrase; like the Great Pyramid looks good, for something going on four and a half thousand years.) I have not had covid-19, as far as I know, and no one with whom I am acquainted has had it. My local activities and travel have been curtailed no more than they have been in the last few years by a lack of funds; the corona virus has simply given me a more fashionable reason for staying home. In this subject, too, I have been fortunate.

I have been able to trap and sterilise more community cats at my work-place, including the elusive Bauble. She may have kittens to capture now, but if they give me as much trouble as their mother, I will be very surprised.

My cats are doing well, for their ages. Neville’s diabetes is being managed and, if he fears my approach with his twice-daily needle, then that appears his worst problem here. Tucker’s blood-sugar  numbers are consistent: that is to write, they are consistently all over the place, to a maddening extent. Yet the roly poly acts as if quite healthy, so I won’t complain too loudly about his glucometer readings. Renn is his usual strong self and Josie is comfortable as the days pile upon her.

I lost two of my cats this year. Cammie and Raleigh both died on May 15th. I am grateful for the time they were with me, and I am grateful for what they taught me.

Cammie lost her sight a year before her death; almost exactly a year. She had a stroke and, while she recovered to a great extent, she was blinded by the attack. My princess then showed me how well a sightless cat can adapt to her world, and how she can still enjoy it. She learned very swiftly to climb the stairs that were provided for her, and continued to repose on the bed as she had previously. It was there she would lie on my chest and purr. She learned to find the windows in her darkness, and breathed in deeply the scents that the invisible world brought to her. Blind cats can enjoy life, if we help them, and can live fully and happily.

Raleigh had FIV, which, I think, hastened his demise. But cats don’t know about such a sentence of death; if they did, they probably wouldn’t care. Peachy enjoyed his life, too, while he could. I recall him scratching at the corner of wooden furniture when he was hungry. And he would crouch as if still eating when I took his empty bowl away; if he remained hungry, he would quickly sit upright, with a short trill, when I brought his re-charged bowl to him. Raleigh was with me twenty-one months, and I don’t regret giving him a home. No one should be afraid of adopting cats who might not live long: you will very likely give them the best time of their lives – and they may give you yours.

These are my reasons for gratitude this Thanksgiving Day. If I could have more, I could certainly have fewer, so I am well pleased.

Smell a Mile in My Shoes

I bought new carpet slippers a month ago, and started wearing them this week. They are supposedly made of leather; they are comfortable and soft. I have noticed that the cats like them, and will sniff them and rub against them to some extent.

With Renn, that extent is considerably increased. He will lie by my feet and rub his big head against my new slippers. He moves this way and that, pushing the top of his head against them, the sides of his head, his brow and his nose. Whenever I sit down, I can count on one of the beasts interesting himself in my footwear and, if my big boy is near, I can count on having them forced back and forth, up and down, by his attentions.

I suspect that, once the novel smell, whatever it is, has worn off, this interest in my shoes will wane. Until then, however, I will have to be used to my slippers receiving rather more attention than I do - at least from Renn.

Bauble's Revenge

After half a day of feeling quite elated at my successful trapping of Bauble, and further delight at the swift and successful spaying thereof, I received back the cat in question and took her to my apartment to recover. But I learned a piece of news that rather disturbed my equanimity. The revelation itself was quite mundane, but the conversation could have run something like this…

 

“A swift and successful spay, eh, Doctor?”

 

“Indeed. Everything went well.”

 

“Bauble is in all respects healthy?”

 

“Oh yes. There’s nothing to worry about, though…”

 

When there is a short pause from such an interlocutor, there is usually a longer one from myself. So I partook of this opportunity. But since the conversation thereupon flagged, I prompted it.

 

“…Though…”

 

“Bauble is nursing.”

 

“Nursing…”

 

“Yes.”

 

Being such a fan of the English language, I decided that I should take advantage of it and determine precisely what was meant.

 

“By ‘nursing’, you mean that Bauble has recently been assisting in the care of the sick and injured in a hospital or clinic.”

 

“No, I do not.”

 

“By ‘nursing’, you mean, perhaps, that she was aiding the medical authorities in the comfort of covid-19 victims.”

 

“Alas, no.”

 

“By ‘nursing’, you mean, then, that she was helping to raise young English boys and girls, to an age at which they would be passed to the tutelage of a governess.”

 

“I’m afraid not.”

 

“By ‘nursing’, you mean that Bauble has been spending her time in a bar, something from a Eugene O’Neill play, a glass of beer or whisky in front of her, her consumption thereof being unusually prolonged.”

 

“Bauble has recently given birth to kittens. They are probably at least a month old now.”

 

Just after this, I beat the doctor severely with a rolled up poster that proclaimed ‘you’ll be happy that you spayed your cat.’

 

Well, perhaps the truth is a bit different. But not the part about Bauble nursing. I figure that the kittens will be meandering about very soon. The good news is that the group that is helping facilitate the trapped cats’ sterilisation always agrees to take in very young kittens, for adoption elsewhere. Well, that would be good news, except that they, along with every other rescue-group in the province has been inundated with kittens this year, and won’t, in fact, be accepting any of Bauble’s kittens. Depending on how many of these little newcomers there are, I may be changing the title of my blog to something like “I Have Ten Cats”…

But this morning, I saw Bauble waiting for the food we provide for her and her fellows. She moved well and looked good. She actually had some words for me, though I won’t repeat them. She may have had some even worse words if she knew that I would be soon attempting to capture her children, the little brood I like to call Bauble’s Revenge...

The Fugitive Surrenders

Two years ago - in August of 2018 - I began Operation Slim Pickens, my first attempt to trap and have neutered or spayed the cats in the colony behind my work-place. I was able to capture quite a few, the majority kittens but, importantly, several adults. In October, 2019, I launched Operation Doctor Moreau, to capture five older kittens who had appeared in the same location. In this endeavour, I was successful. Then just this past June, I opened Operation Raffles, intending to catch still more ferals. This effort too achieved results.

Through all of these attempts, over more than two years, after an endless series of mornings and evenings of traps set out and baited, the cat Bauble, possibly mother to many kittens, has eluded me. Irregularity and infrequency of appearances, wariness, fear of enclosure, knowledge of traps, all had given her a seeming immunity to my plans. That ended today.

It was a tense few minutes. I had evolved a plan using Temptation treats, and the fact that Bauble waited close by for her meals. I set two traps, each with treats on two dishes, one with a few treats half-way into the trap, and the other with more at the back, to draw Bauble in and onto the trigger. Then I sprinkled treats at the entrances. I tossed individual treats toward Bauble, so that they would land increasingly near the cages. Another difficulty, though, was that the other cats who gathered for breakfast were also interested in the treats. I had to throw treats behind those beasts to pull them away from the cage. If one of them triggered the trap, it would not only catch the wrong cat but probably scare Bauble away for good.

But, for once, all worked as it should have. Bauble came closer to the trap, then entered deeper into it. There was a possibility that the trap’s trigger would not collapse under her and shut the door; that had happened before. The chain connecting the trigger-platform to the door sometimes sticks. I watched the whole drama from just yards away. I don’t think I breathed the entire time.

Bauble’s surgery has already been arranged; it will take place at mid-day. She will then stay over night at my apartment, and then be released tomorrow. There is a chance that she has had kittens recently; if so, I don’t want to keep her away from them for too long. If there are youngsters, they will be old enough to survive without their mother; their capture will likely not be an ordeal (at least not for me).

But, as far as I can determine, there are no more cats in the colony who need to be fixed, certainly no adults whom I have seen. With Bauble’s capture, at long last, I can close down Operation Raffles. I can relax. For now.

Are You Finished Yet?

While my cats will consent to lying next to each other on the bed, even touching each other, inadvertently, different rules apply for different locations. Josie has taken nicely to the heated cat-bed in Cammie’s Corner. She spends most of her time there now; Cammie’s Bowl, with its ample water, is near by.

But she is not the only one who likes drinking from that source. For some reason, Renn feels the water from that bowl is superior to water elsewhere, and so resorts to it frequently. This causes some disruption in my Chubs’s comfort. She won’t always get out of bed to avoid my big boy’s proximity, but it occurs. And if she has been elsewhere, perhaps eating some of her food, she will wait until Renn has drunk his fill before resuming her repose.

Here you can see her waiting, more or less patiently, for her brother to leave. Even so, I almost expected one of her feet to be tapping, and to hear her say, “Are you finished yet?”

Tails of Tolerance

This entry is just a short sequel to the one immediately previous. It’s to demonstrate that sometimes even Tucker doesn’t mind proximity. The bed is often neutral ground, where cats tolerate closeness that they would not elsewhere. Perhaps it has to do with comfort. Once one is settled down and in just the right position, there is no point ruining it just for a protest.

In any case, they stayed like this for quite a while. I was pleased.

 

Uneasy Lies the Bum

As I have written before, relationships among cats fascinates me. With the exception of Tungsten and Renn, years ago, none of mine has become a friend with another. They have, however, reached accommodations, and settled down to a peaceful co-existence. This, as I long ago determined, is good enough; many readers of this blog agree.

It’s good to see the newest cat and the most resistant veteran reach that stage. Tucker dislikes most new cats on principle - the principle being that he does not intend to surrender his position as second-lowest in the hierarchy to any newcomer. Thus, he will growl and hiss and swat at a newcomer for longer than any other of my beasts does, if any other does. The newest in question this time is Neville.

The Nevsky has been coming into the bedroom and lying on the bed for some time now. Jumping up, he’ll never know for certain what, or who, he will find. When he finds one of the others, he will usually remain, albeit cautiously. The breakthrough came when Tucker started coming up onto the bed knowing that Neville was already there. Instances of seeing him with Nev and others on the bed are common now.

What was unusual this past week was seeing three of them in this position. Neville appears the most relaxed, which is odd, because he will still rush by Tucker if the latter is lying near a doorway, or seeming to be guarding passage from one space to another. He hurries by the roly poly with an ‘errr…errr’ sound, as if expecting trouble. But these days, Tucker rarely tries to whap him.

On the bed, the roles are reversed. Neville is more at ease, and Tucker rather uncomfortable. Renn, too, is ill at ease here, as may be seen. He normally doesn’t mind another cat touching him while he snoozes, but that cat is usually Josie. Here, the three backsides are almost in contact, and everyone is remaining in place. I was pleased to see them stay like this for about twenty minutes. If the Nevsky was the only one who actually rested, the other two at least did not hurry off, or even move away.

There are still scraps and rows, but nothing serious. Everyone has accustomed himself to the new norm. The Cosy Apartment is tranquil. Maybe it’s time to bring in a new cat…