The Loneliness of Distrust

Raleigh is making more progress all the time. Lately, I have found him in the bedroom, on the cat-tree next the window, late at night, after I have gone to bed. This is because I leave the window open, if only a  fraction of an inch, to have fresh air while I sleep. Peachy has discovered this and comes to smell the outside fragrances. The significance of this is that he was afraid to come into the bedroom while I was present, not so long ago.

He enjoys his chest-rubs. He probably likes them more than any other physical contact though, for a shy cat, he does enjoy being petted and stroked. I can give him a chest-rub any time, but he expects it after his snack in the evening. He will stop waiting for more food (demonstrating that he is full for the time being) and come over to me, talking. And the point of this, at least so far as this current entry is concerned, is that Raleigh will allow me to do anything while I am rubbing his chest.

I have cleaned his eyes and even cleaned his bum while rubbing his chest. It isn’t easy, but I’ve done it. (Just as it’s not easy taking a photograph while I am rubbing his chest…) Other times, he would not be content with me trying something like that. Indeed, to pick him up and cut his claws is still a chore - though not a difficult one - because of his dislike of being held.

It is interesting not just that he trusts me, but that he trusts me to do anything so long as I am doing a certain something else with him, which is itself a sign of trust. I am happy that he has arrived at this place in our relationship. I hope to see him on the bed at night in the future, though that may be a while yet.

When I think back to how he behaved when I first saw him outside, scared and hungry, and then, when I learned how much he wanted to belong to someone, I think that among the many kinds of loneliness, one of the worst must be the loneliness that comes from not being able to trust anyone, a loneliness reinforced by fear, even despair. Raleigh will never know that loneliness again. Perhaps one day, it will become a stranger to all homeless cats and dogs.

With the Wind My Rival

Southern Alberta is famous - or notorious - for its wind. It’s often a ‘chinook’, the name for the region’s föhn wind that, in winter, sweeps down the leeward side of the Rocky Mountains, raising the temperatures, melting the snow and drying the moisture. The wind can be very strong, sometimes blowing as fiercely as 100 kph (62 mph), though more often 50 to 60 kph (31 to 37 mph). This winter - in fact, even the late autumn - has been the windiest most people here can remember. In terms of the number of windy days, the number of consecutive windy days, and the strength of the wind, this season has been exceptional.

There are several spots on my bicycle route to and from my workplace that are prone to particularly strong blasts of wind. One is the bridge that crosses over railway tracks. I sometimes must lean against the wind which blows perpendicularly against me and threatens to knock me against the railings, or over the parapet all together.

Yesterday, I was riding along the bridge when a gust struck me. My front rain-fender was not, as they were when I was a child, a metal semi-circle bolted to the hub of the wheel, but a plastic shield snapped on to the under-side of the frame where it faces the front tire. I write that it was, because the wind caught it, pulled it off its snaps and threw it down the street. I halted and turned, not long enough even to get off my bicycle, never mind to retrieve the fender. I was, however, in time to see the wind scoop it up from the asphalt and throw it off the bridge. The last I saw of it, it was sixty feet away and thirty feet in the air, flying off eastward over the trains stopped under the bridge. I watched it until it was a spot in the early morning sun, and wished it a fair voyage.

Though we are accustomed to harsh wind here, it seems, like weather everywhere, different this year, more extreme. I’ve never seen it abduct a bicycle part before, and think it may be only a matter of time until it takes the whole machine, and the rider with it...

Words for a Cat

A person’s cat is the source of anxiety, frustration, revulsion, delight and joy, sometimes alternately, sometimes simultaneously.

Cammie is a good example. As some of those who have read this blog for a while know, my princess has a severe allergic reaction to almost any food; it causes her to throw up. It often happens late at night, long after she has eaten the offending food. I have been successful for some months in keeping her episodes at bay but they have occurred without her eating anything of which I am aware, so I am always fearful of hearing her wretch.

This she did; in fact, twice, at about the same time (approximately four o’clock a.m.) on two mornings, several days apart. Upon hearing the sound, I immediately woke and jumped from bed to see who was upchucking. It was Cammie, and my heart sank. I couldn’t return to sleep after that, for her episodes almost always include two instances of vomiting close together. Fortunately, nothing further occurred. I don’t know what caused the incidents - and twice, at that - but she ate well at breakfast, and her behaviour denoted no cause for alarm. (Anxiety)

Cammie has also taken to wetting in front of the litter-box that is placed in the library. I have two in the store-room and one in the library, in case the others are in use and someone needs to go right away. Cammie will usually amble into the storeroom and use the boxes there. She is not suffering an infection or obstruction; she just has her spot in front of the library litter-box. I had placed, even before she commenced this habit, a soaker pad in front of the box, if only to catch the grains of litter thrown out. She wets in the same spot on the soaker pad, the choice of which alternates among six that I have. (Frustration)

Late one night, I heard her get up from her heated bed. I knew where she was going, so I headed her off, directing her to the storeroom, and closing the door to the library. (I don’t do that all the time as it severely reduces the amount of space six cats have to avoid each other.) I heard her digging in the litter in the storeroom, so I returned to bed. The next morning, I found that she had indeed wet in the litter-box. And pooped on the rug outside the storeroom. (Revulsion)

Then there are the days when I am at my computer and she will decide she wants some time with me. She will sit on the edge of the bed, leaning toward where she knows I am sitting. She will periodically squawk and walk away, only to come back. This is my signal. I quit what I am doing and lie down on the bed. Cammie crawls onto my chest, bumps her head against my chin several times, lies flat and starts purring while I pet her and we talk. (Delight)

For all the problems that they give me, the financial worries, the messes that I must clean, the anger at endless choices of food disdained, the fatigue that comes from going to bed too late and waking too early because of their needs, I require only to think that some day they will all be gone, and I will be without them. That’s when my cats’ presence has the final word. (Joy)

Constant Change

Change can be good or it can be bad. I’ve learned that when something is working, it’s best to leave it as it is. Business companies tend not to do that because they want to make ever more money, and improvements are always being engineered to make customers buy more. Whatever the reason, there are usually problems when a food that a cat is enjoying - or at least eating - is changed.

This has happened with two of the foods consumed in the cosy apartment. I am most apprehensive of any alterations to Cammie’s food. With her allergies, she can eat only hydrolised nutrients; she is made ill by anything else. She can have only Z/D food, though fortunately, she likes both the tinned and the kernel varieties. Imagine my concern then when I saw this on the latest bag of the hard-food I purchased for her.

The formula had changed, and so had the size and shape of the kernels. I decided not to mix it with Cammie’s older food at first, as I wanted to see what effect the unadulterated new version had on her. The first thing I noticed was that Cammie seemed to like the taste of the new formula better than the old. Nonetheless, if it wasn’t made right, it would cause her to vomit - and keep vomiting.

But it stayed down. The new formula worked the way the old had. Since my princess liked it rather more than the former flavour, she ate more of it. I was relieved. In this case, a change had been an improvement.

I recently bought a case of Blue Wilderness ‘turkey’. After his initial period with me, this became  the only tinned food Neville would eat. He consumed quite a good amount of it at every meal, then would take himself to the hard-food bowl for his second course.

The most recent purchase, however, showed a change. The food, a pate, was less smooth than previously, and grittier. Nevsky continued to eat it, but in decreasing amounts, and with reluctance. During his time of eating the Blue Wilderness turkey, I had been experimenting with a wide range of food, to see if Neville would try something else, in case he went off his staple. Fortunately, I found that he likes another turkey flavour, that produced by Koha. Though he could subsist on hard-food, the soft has a better effect, aside from the nutrition.

The point is, of course, not that Nev likes another food, but that he stopped liking his former favourite. The formula had changed, at least so I believe. It may just be the case that I bought, and I will buy individual tins later to test the theory. I would prefer to be wrong.

The changes wrought by manufacturers, for whatever reason, double the difficulties in feeding felines caused by the finicky animals themselves. Sometimes I wonder if the makers of cat-food know much about the animals at all.

My Day of Remembering

Today is my Day of Remembering. I have lost three cats and, considering the ages of my current beasts, I will lose more, relatively soon. Rather than commemorating their lives separately, on the dates of their deaths, and thus collecting a sombre catalogue of memories, I will remember them together, on this day.

Bear-Bear died on this date, six years ago.

This long and very friendly mancat came to stay with me in April, 2013. He had been found, a vagrant, wandering around an apartment building. He seemed healthy, and was neutered. He loved people. I suspect he had been abandoned.

He turned out to be not as healthy as he appeared. He was anaemic, and so could not have stood the anaesthetic of a dental procedure he needed for his gingivitis. Eventually, it was determined that he had cancer. He died on February 25th, 2014.

What I recall most about the BB is his friendliness. He would have been such a good family cat. He would have been perfect for children. He got along with my beasts, though they didn’t really care much for him. He talked quite a bit, and when he spoke, it was in a conversational tone. Even on his last car-ride, going to the veterinary hospital to leave me, he spoke casually, as if discussing the weather. It was a sunny day; Bear-Bear liked sunny days.

It is always sad when death takes a living creature, but it is particularly regrettable when it takes one who would have been made happy so easily, and who could have made others happy so easily. It angers me that more people didn’t know Bear-Bear, and were unable to meet such a marvellous fellow. They missed their chance, and in so doing, caused him to miss his.

But I knew the BB, and he will survive in my memory. To me, he was ‘the ugly brute’, my conversationalist. Now and then we still talk, he and I.

Tungsten died thirteen months later. She was my first cat, and suffered from my ignorance of feline ways. But she was stoic about it, for the most part, and very forgiving. She taught me a great deal. Despite my lack of knowledge, she and I became good friends.

She was very little and light to hold. She never weighed more than seven pounds, I think, but even in her middle age could leap five feet straight up, if she wanted to be somewhere. She liked to be on my shoulders, often jumping there, sometimes when I wasn’t prepared. It was a good thing she was light…

On my shoulders she lie facing left. On my lap, it was to the right, usually curled clockwise. She loved being on my lap, with my hand on her tummy. She would curl around it. She would lie there while I read, or watched tv (I had television in those days.) At night, she would slumber in my hand, or in the crook of my legs. She enjoyed my company.

When I brought other cats to live with us, Tungsten established that she was top-cat. She was the ‘tiny terror’ and, though not dictatorial, she let the others know when they had done something wrong. She became chums with Renn; the only pair of my cats who were friendly toward each other. The big and the small, they sat and lie together, and groomed one another.

Tungsten had hyperthyroidism, which we were able to control. But she had something else, probably cancer, and she became sick and died on 26th March, 2015. I think of her often, and miss her always, the feline queen of my heart.

My sturdy boy. That’s what I called Parker. This hefty orange fellow came to me in January, 2017, because he was having trouble managing his diabetes. He and I and his doctor worked on it, and were able to drop the dosage of his insulin from seven units twice a day to four, and that, though still high, seemed to work for him.

He was friendly with me from the start but I knew a threshold in our relationship had been crossed when I picked him up from his dental surgery a few months into our acquaintance. He was brought in his carrier from the operating room of the hospital; his back was to the cage’s door. When he heard me talking to him, he turned around and rubbed his face against my fingers through the carrier’s bars. We had become friends.

Parker tried to be amiable to the other cats, but it was rough going. In fact, he and Tucker had a knock-down brawl at one point. It was only after Raleigh was introduced into the household that Puck, as I sometimes called Parker, and Tucker settled down to making the best of each other’s presence.

He loved his food - he could eat half or even two thirds of a big tin of food at a sitting (I loved to see him put it away) - and he enjoyed playing, but his real joy was being outside in his harness. He knew the sound of it and would paw at the door, purring with anticipation. Once outside, he would talk, delighted in being in the fresh air. He liked meeting people on his walks, and was widely admired for his handsomeness.

In February, 2019, he was diagnosed with cancer. The doctor said that Parker had a few weeks to live. My tough little Die Hard defied death for four months. Even the day before he left me, he was outside, no longer sturdy, not walking much, but loving the early summer’s air and the cool grass. He didn’t want to go when his time came, and I didn’t want to let him go, but it was undoubtedly his time. I will always think of him outside, in his orange glory.

These are the three I recall, when I think about the cats I have lost. Each was unique, each irreplaceable, each my friend. I will remember them.

The Matriarch

Though Cammie’s stroke has made her feel her age more than she otherwise would, fifteen years is not the end of a cat’s life. Indeed, Josie is a year older and doing quite well (knock on wood - or the melded fragments of wood-pulp that pass for it these days).

Josie is suffering from mild kidney issues, but nothing that isn’t connected to her advancing years. She has plenty of water-bowls from which to drink, but tends to yell at me if a bowl isn’t freshly filled for her consumption. I don’t mind.

She is active enough to climb cat-trees and steps, to get where she wants to go. She even jumps from time to time from the bed to the cat-tree by the window. It’s encouraging not only that she can accomplish this but that she feels confident enough to attempt it.

My Chubs is not really chubby any more. She continues to lose weight but, as of her last measurement, very gradually. My gratitude is great for her continued appetite. As a cat ages, there is always the danger that she will lose interest in food; that, thankfully, has not been the case with Josie. She does want food in between meals. I always give in to these demands (unless it’s only an hour until the regularly scheduled dinner or snack). Her stomach may not be following the routine, but if it wants filling, I am not about to refuse it, not at Josie’s age. I am also grateful that I can offer her something she likes; right now, it is Merrick’s ‘chicken divan’, though she will eat other foods.

The Great White became more demonstrably affectionate a few years ago, and now we have certain times together. She will periodically turn around on the saddle of the taller bedroom cat-tree and, instead of facing the window to look out, she will lie down toward me, and tell me she wants some face-rubs. As well, she has her place on the bed at night, on the near side by my shoulder. If she finds Renn already there (my big boy comes to bed when I do; Josie arrives later) as she sometimes does, she will squeeze in between and lie or squat still, and very uncomfortably. Renn usually moves; I sometimes urge him away, as he has his own spot on my other side.

Josie and I have been together for more than eleven years now. She will be sixteen this summer. Despite her seniority, she is in good health and seems happy with her life. Comfy places to lie, a spot on the bed at night; water whenever she wants it - even if it isn’t always as fresh as she likes - and plenty of tasty food; even a short excursion out into the exciting corridor beyond the apartment’s front door: Josie doesn’t demand much, and enjoys what she has. I hope it is enough to make her happy, because she makes me happy.

A Little Spring in Her Winter

I think I worry about Cammie the most of my cats. She had a stroke at the end of last May, and lost her sight as a result. She is undoubtedly weaker in body because of the incident, and, lately, she seems more feeble still. I watch her and notice that she moves a little more slowly and is more uncertain on the stairs climbing and descending to the bed. My concern is that her heart was damaged by the stroke; possibly the brain’s capacity to manage the body is hurt. My princess is fifteen now and would be more than three quarters of the way through her lifespan even if in the best of health.

She spends most of her time in the bedroom, sometimes on the bed, sometimes in her heated cat-bed on the floor in the corner. It is placed on a towel on a rug on the carpet, has a heating pad in it and is by the radiator: I think sometimes she finds it too warm, but at least she won’t be chilly. She still grooms herself conscientiously and, while there are days when she eats little, her appetite remains encouragingly good. I feed her soft-food whenever she asks for it and there is always hard-food available to her.

Her blindness must limit her world tremendously, but even so she strives to enjoy what she can, which is why I am pleased that spring is approaching. Our weather here has been alternately wintry and vernal, but yesterday it hinted at April, or at least March, for a few hours. I came into the bedroom to find that Cammie had climbed one of the cat-trees and discovered the sunshine coming through the window. I opened the pane a little and let the fresh air enter. My little Siamese caught a whiff of the outside and spent some time learning from the fragrances what was happening in the wider world that she will never see.

Cats are, I think, practical creatures, and so Cammie probably doesn’t sigh too much over her lost vision. I fancy that she enjoys her comfy bed, the ready supply of food, her little water-bowl close to hand and, when the sun comes back north, the thicker rays it sends her way, and the warmer scents that slip through the window’s screen. Some day she will leave, but perhaps she will stay for another spring, another summer. She and I would like that.