The Swifter Changes

This is the sunrise from last Thursday. It was a rare cloudy day here in southern Alberta, but that’s not the point of the photograph. I took it while I was bicycling to work, which means dawn was breaking just at that moment. It seems less than a month before that the sun had been already a sixth or so of its journey across the sky by that time of day.

Every year, I experience the same phenomenon: that the days appear to shorten after the summer solstice much more swiftly than they lengthen before it. The days get lighter slower in the mornings and darker faster at night in the year’s second half than they did the opposite in the year’s first. If you know what I mean.

I won’t say that I am sorry to see the summer wane. I enjoyed its advent. The spring, with its increasing light and warmth, becomes still lighter and warmer, the nights are pleasant and balmy, their moonlight appears something from a story. But then, the trees’ leaves which are bright and fresh in May turn dull and waxy; the air heats tremendously with soaring temperatures; it sits stagnant or blows with a dirty, hot force like an Egyptian khamsin. Reinforced this year with the smoke from hundreds of horrible forest fires, the summer literally stank.

But I am being particular. This summer was regrettable in its meteorology, and I hope for better things from autumn. Even so, in general, the stunted days mean another season is ending, more months gone; all disappeared in a matter of days, it seems. Soon, I will be riding to work in the dark, and going home in the dark, too. The world has a schedule to keep that’s more rigid than any human routine, and it won’t be distracted.

I just wish it would dally in increasing its darkness as much as it seemed to when it came to increasing its light.

Time and Distance

The boys are still wary of Portia. She will swat at them sometimes as they pass, but usually only if she is lying in her box. And if she rushes at them and they run, she will chase them, which accentuates the problem. But that problem is a minor one, and things are much better than I had thought they would be when Po first arrived. Even so, one afternoon I found the boys in the bedroom.

Where was their foster-sister?

Whither Do You Wander?

Each morning and early evening, the community cats outside my work-place gather for meals. There are usually six to nine of them, all of them neutered and spayed now, and familiar faces. But some whom I caught and had fixed show up no more. Then again, there are those who vanish for long periods and then re-appear.

This is Auvergne, easily recognized by his distinctive moustache. According to my blog, he was neutered at about a year of age, in September, 2018. I would see him periodically thereafter, though have not for at least a year now. But I saw him again yesterday. Though I was not able to take a picture of him (thus the photos from when he was captured), he looked good, slender but not gaunt, with a smooth coat and no noticeable injuries.

Where had he been all this time? Had he journeyed to the far end of town, found a better source of food and stayed? Was he taken in by a kind human? Did he fall in with another colony? And if any of these, why did he come back to his old stamping grounds?

Feral cats seem to do this all the time. I have not seen Sable for many months. She would come quite often to my apartment for food, though she seemed not to need it from me. She had a habit of disappearing for the summertime, so I hope that she is safe and unharmed, and will let me know come the autumn. I am more worried about Arliss. He too has been missing for a long time, and has not Sable’s history of vanishing for a time, only to come back.

I don’t have any regular outsider-cats now, except a tiny grey girl called Ninja. She, however, has a home and visits to eat my food, in addition to her own. Other cats have been seen and, I think, have stopped in for a meal at Café Cosy now and then. But for quite a while, my customers have been principally birds.

Lucky Fellow

It took a while but Portia stayed with me for much of movie night this past Saturday. She lie on my lap purring and receiving pets, alternating with brushing, for about twenty minutes. Then she curled up, closed her eyes and eventually fell asleep. This was the first time she has slept on my lap.

She snoozed for another twenty minutes or so, before waking, stretching and leaving. Portia has a ways to go with her sociability; it’s not that she isn’t social, but she could be friendlier. She may never be, or it may be a matter of time. She can be especially contentious in the mornings.

But she has shown me that she trusts me enough to sleep on my lap, to be completely at my mercy, completely defenceless. Instead of being alert and watchful, Po preferred sleep. I am a lucky man to be so trusted.

A Burst of Neville

After describing in yesterday’s entry how Portia likes to play, I thought I would offer evidence that my other foster-cat, Neville, is not the laziest cat I’ve ever had living with me, though much of the time it would seem like he is.

While the Nevsky will play with a string-toy now and then, it always seems to be a grudging action, more from annoyance with my attempts to involve him than from delight in playing. Now and then, however, he experiences a burst of energy that is startling in its appearance and exuberance.

It will come from nowhere. He will be sitting, staring, as if in thought. I will speak to him and, with a grunting ‘errr’, he will turn and shoot off toward another room. Once there, he will often pause, then rush off in the other direction. If he runs into the sitting room, he will more frequently than not bounce off an armchair on to a cat-tree. His enthusiasm is greater than his aim at times and he will throw himself chest first into the side of a platform. This doesn’t slow him down, however, and he will arrange himself on one level or another and wait for events.

Sometimes, those events include me coming up to him, at which point Nev will twist himself about, watching me from an angle. I may approach him from under the platform, making him grunt and turn about to view me better. But then I pop up from the other side, resulting in the same response.

This weekend, the game lasted longer than usual, and included my boy whapping my near by hand with his paw (claws in). This was repeated numerous times until, at last, he was tired from turning this way and that, guessing where I would materialize next. He attacked a fuzzy mouse or two that I tossed at him, but his energy was finally spent, and he subsided onto the carpeted platform, purring. A minute or two of head-rubbing and the game was done.

I’m not sure why these episodes come over him, and can never predict their advent. But Neville undoubtedly enjoys them and, rare though they may be, if he finds pleasure in them, so do I.

To the Victrix, the Spoils

My foster-cat, Portia, likes to play now and then. She isn’t the sort to chase things - her girth testifies to that – but she is active to a degree. She enjoys playing by herself for a few minutes at a time, batting about fuzzy mice and wrestling with the rings off plastic milk jugs.

When I play with her, it is usually with a string-toy. I have other toys, but they don’t arouse any interest in her. The string-toys are two in number. One is a simple shoe-lace. She seems to like it, and will grab it, pull on it and hold it under her paw, daring it to try to get away.

The second string-toy with which chubby Po plays is a fake bug attached to a string on a stick. This one angers her; I don’t know why. She will fight it eagerly enough, but will very quickly become annoyed, even infuriated, growling and hissing at it and its attempts at combat.

It’s as if she respects the shoe-lace as an opponent, someone who adheres to the rules of the game. The string-toy is another matter, a scoundrel who cheats, certainly no gentleman. Or maybe it just smells funny.

But no matter the toy, after the fun palls, after the games grow repetitive, Portia considers herself sated, and turns to relaxation. After all, if one battles successfully against one’s opponents, one has the right to enjoy the fruits of one’s victory.

Contentment, Perhaps

I don’t recall if I wrote it in a blog entry or just talked about it with a friend, but a while ago, maybe in early June, I described Portia as being unhappy. She was displeased at having lost her home, being placed in this strange environment, having to live with other cats, and with an unknown human – a man, at that. I think she was angry much of the time.

This was to be expected. Certainly the confusion and distress of being wrenched from a home of many years would afflict any cat brought into a completely different setting. Being a very sensitive and intelligent calico may have affected Portia more than it would otherwise.

But I believe things have changed for her. Po has adapted to her new home. She has found favourite spots, and she has developed a routine that fits within the general routine of the Cosy Apartment. She no longer hisses at the other cats. Neville and Tucker walk past her without much concern, though sometimes the latter hesitates for a moment. Renn is still quite wary of her because he took her lunges and hisses more personally than did the other two boys; that, however, is his problem rather than hers, and he is dealing with it.

Portia’s new attitude is also shown in how she is using her small world. After ignoring the cat-trees since her arrival, she has begun using them on her own (subsequent to some prompting by me.) I have found her several times this weekend on the taller cat-tree in the sitting room; she seems to prefer the middle-level platform, and likes using it as a vantage point to peer out the glass doors.

She likes to lie under the cat-tree, in the full blaze of the sun on hot, late afternoons. She dozes there amid a jumble of toys with which she plays periodically. She retreats under my bed less often, though it may just be a quiet, cool spot for her now, rather than a refuge from discouragement.

It is in her behaviour toward me that I see changes, too. She likes our time together, usually in the evenings, when, seeing me go into the library for my own reasons, she will follow me and expect me to provide her with a lap. Sometimes I will do the inviting. Other times, she will be lying on top of the short bookcase, under the window, and refuse my invitation to join me on the couch. I can sense a difference in her refusal: instead of a low grumble or a hiss, my offer will be met with a slight pause of consideration, before it is declined. (“Not just yet. Maybe later.”)

And she let me cut her claws on Saturday. She wasn’t happy about the process, and I couldn’t achieve all of them at once, but it was done, and she didn’t hold it against me.

Po undoubtedly misses much of her old home, and will continue to do so. But I think she has made the decision to live in the Cosy Apartment. She doesn’t look to the front door whenever she hears voices in the corridor; I believe she no longer expects her former humans to show up and take her home. She has, I think, resigned herself to the apartment being her home.

And she has, perhaps, found a little contentment in that realisation.