The Direction of Age

It seems that I have written a great deal lately about Neville’s aging. I think it comes from keeping an eye on him and his health a little more than I do on the others. Thus, I see the changes that come rather more often to an old animal than would to a middle-aged one, who has settled into a routine arrangement with his body.

Every morning, Neville walks his slow way down the corridor to the cat-room, which I open up as I prepare everyone’s breakfasts. There, Nev eats from Millie’s hard-food bowl. She has a different kind of food than others do; she’s used to it and, while the supply that came with her lasts, she will receive that. The Nevsky seems to like it.

But many days, he stops at the bedroom, the door of which comes first to anyone walking down the corridor. He sometimes comes in and wonders where the food-bowl is. I have to re-direct him to the cat-room.

This is a slight confusion, but one nobody else suffers. Neville’s mind is still strong, I believe, but I think he can become confused if he thinks of other things than the task at hand. He handles every other chore and desire well, but I see a bit of fog creeping in at the corners of his mind. Even so, to paraphrase what I once read, dementia isn’t forgetting where the food is, it’s forgetting what it is. The delight my old lion expresses when he sees his soft-food bowl being carried to him every meal shows that he’s a ways from that stage yet.

Another Unpleasant Time for Valkyrie

Valkyrie went to the veterinary hospital today. She has been pooping liquid crap for a couple of weeks now. I haven’t taken her to the doctor sooner because in every other respect she has been well. She runs and plays, is active and alert, is eating and generally being herself. I tried eliminating different foods from her diet, as the start of food-trials to determine if one kind is causing a problem, but so far, that has not worked. And if it were something in the nutrition that is bothering her insides, then it is a sudden change, as she hasn’t been eating anything new.

She is currently eating a gastro-intestinal food which, surprisingly, she likes. It is being laced with Metamucil - or a local brand of that product, since I couldn’t find a variety of Metamucil that wasn’t flavoured. To my further surprise, Valk is eating that, too.

We will keep her on this routine for the weekend, and see if there is any improvement. Though I am pleased that she is eating the veterinary food, I have my doubts as to whether this will cure her problem.

As an aside, it was difficult to take a picture of Miss V at the hospital as she was nervously on the move the whole time.

Sources Confirm...

At the grocery store, I ran into an acquaintance who used to live in the Cosy Apartment’s building, and who remembered Sable. She was pleased that I had Sabe with me, and that she was friends with Moxy. The acquaintance told me that she recalled that Sable was a kitten at the time of a specific house-fire in town. That was in 2013, so this puts Sable’s age at twelve or thirteen, depending on how old a kitten she was at the time.

Ferals have an average life-span of six years. Sabe’s life had been extended no doubt by the food she received from the residents of the apartment building she frequented. And if she is twelve or thirteen now, she may yet live an insider-cat’s lifespan, and perhaps, with luck, when she is very old, she may let me pet her.

Too Good to Last

I have determined that, while most veterinary supplied food is detested by all cats, there are some items that everyone likes, everyone to the exclusion of the one for whom it is meant.

Neville is usually served Recovery soft-food, but others, especially Valkyrie, will consume all of it on offer if she has a chance. That I understood. But it seems that Neville’s gastro-intestinal hard-food, which I credit, at least in part, for reducing his vomiting, is a favourite of other cats, as well. I have seen Sable eating it, and now have witnessed Indigo making one of her rare excursions from the bedroom just to indulge her taste for it. I knew something was up when whole bowls-full were disappearing while I was at work: Nev doesn’t eat enough to accomplish that and, if he did, would leave half on the floor, the result of his largely toothless - though ultimately successful - attempts to eat.

I want to leave this food out, so that Neville can nibble during the day. How to keep those who don’t need it from vacuuming up the expensive delicacy in his stead is the unanswerable question.

Not To Be Repeated

Long-time readers of this blog may recall that the rescue-group of which I am a member once took cats available for adoption to a local pet-supply shop for a few hours once a month, to show them off to potential adopters. That stopped with covid-19, and it didn’t start again, due to limited time and manpower within the group.

We thought we would try it again, just once. We don’t have as many out-going cats as we had in the past, but we thought Valkyrie would do well today. Unfortunately, that did not turn out to be the case.

Poor Valk was unnerved by the noise and the preponderance of strange animals, especially dogs. She was very nervous and did not show herself at her best. This was understandable. We did, though, meet a number of nice people, including one young boy who was very interested in cats and already knew quite a bit about them: a possible rescuer in the future.

Despite her reaction at the shop, Valkyrie was not permanently scarred. As soon as she returned to the Cosy Cabin and was released from her carrier, she began purring, and running about the house to make sure everything was where it ought to be. In a few minutes’ time, she was at the front window watching birds.

While a useful adventure for the rescue-group, it was, perhaps, not worth Valkyrie’s discomfort, so she will not be required to repeat the adventure. From now on, she will have to restrict herself to charming people from this blog.

Too Smart the Cat

Valkyrie is a very smart cat. I’ve described before how she and others use the ‘lazy Susan’ cupboards in the corners of my kitchen as secret rooms. They push in one side and it of course opens the other, allowing them to walk - or, in the case of Valkyrie, run - in.

But something the other day struck me about Valk’s interaction with the revolving cupboard. She pushed in one side as usual, but did not push it enough. There wasn’t sufficient room on the other side for her to slip in. Instead of forcing her way in, she pushed the first side again, causing the other to open more fully, allowing her greater access.

I thought about this afterward. There is a subtle difference between her latest action and others. It demonstrated something about Valk’s intelligence. It is one thing to know that an action causes a certain reaction. It is something more to understand the mechanics behind it. She realised that pushing one side of the cupboard would open the other, and that pushing one side more would open the other more. It is not simply the application of a greater - or second - force to achieve a result; it is the comprehension of how something works. Not every cat would do that; this I know from experience.

I think this is often the reason for mischievous cats. They are not more troublesome than others; they simply know how to apply their trouble to a more constructive - or destructive - end. Every day is a minor excursion into the curiosity that fuels them, and the intelligence that propels them. This is Valkyrie.

A Sign of Affection and Trust, or...

Indigo doesn’t like the other cats, but she likes me. She has decided to show me in another inconvenient way.

At night, she always sleeps next to me. Right next to me. She likes to keep her face so close to mine that her whiskers tickle me and keep me awake. But now, she’s added something else. Indigo has taken to putting her paw on my nose or mouth.

It’s one of those actions that is probably a sign of affection. Or she’s trying to smother me in my sleep. In any case, I am loathe to restrain her, as she wants to show that she likes me, or thinks of me as a kind of security. It is a gentle reminder that I am her only friend; she purrs when she does it, so she must feel some pleasure at her display of trust. Or she’s trying to smother me in my sleep. It must be rather a lonely world Indie inhabits, disdaining the company of other animals. That’s why I endeavour to spend a little time each day with each of the cats, so they won’t feel ignored, and to let them know that I reciprocate the feelings they have for me.

Even if one of them is trying to smother me in my sleep.

On Guard, Sometimes

Saturday was a chilly, rainy day, better spent indoors than out. But the birds were finding little tidbits in the eavestroughs of the neighbouring house, and Moxy, for one, was keeping a close eye on them.

Later, he saw more a little farther away. One has to be on guard all the time at the Cosy Cabin. Well, whenever one isn’t sleeping.

Millie is Small

Everything about Millie is small.

She is very light-weight, though she doesn’t seem under-weight. She has a little mouth that talks more than one would think - but in a tiny voice that can barely be heard; even her hisses are subdued. Her paws are minuscule, and it looks like she’s walking on little pins. She threw up a hairball the other day; it was the smallest hairball I’d ever seen: not more than half an inch long. Everything about Millie is small.

Except sometimes her eyes.

Watching the Complexity

Relationships among cats are interesting to observe. I have commented recently about the friendship between Moxy and Sable, probably predicated upon their acquaintance previous to coming to live with me, which may be one of the reasons why Sabe hasn’t developed any significant comradeship with Brazil and Valkyrie, while Mox, priorly an insider/outside cat, has.

Something I have noticed about Sable and Moxy just recently is that Sable seems to have more invested in the friendship than does Moxy. While the latter will approach the former, brush up against her, sniff her, Sable is the one who usually initiates physical contact. I have watched her numerous times as she comes up to the Mixer and pushes her head against his, and even licks his face. She also ‘talks’ to him; giving her distinctive short yelp several times when she sees him.

Is this the natural progression of the comfort that came from a familiar face in a strange environment? Moxy, much more socialised than Sabe, was correspondingly comfortable with being in first the Cosy Apartment and then the Cosy Cabin, and less reticent to accept as friends other cats that he found there. Sable, on the other hand, has been chased a couple of times by Brazil, and seems to have interpreted Valk’s attempts to play with her as vague threats.

And so Moxy’s appeal to Sable is understandable, just as is Moxy’s less needy response to the other cat’s displays of friendship. I don’t expect Moxy to grow tired of Sable; he doesn’t appear to be the sort to shed relationships, but rather the sort to collect them. This dynamic, though, will give Sable the time required to explore the possibilities of growing closer to other felines, and to me, while giving her an anchor in her new world.

It is clear that those who claim that cats are naturally aloof and distant simply haven’t observed, or couldn’t be bothered to observe, how these fascinating animals interact with each other. Though there may be the loner among the species, cats, like humans, enjoy and thrive in friendships, and I am fortunate to experience them in the Cosy Cabin.

Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day, everybody. Today is going to be hot here; the cats have already found their cool spots. I have the day off of work, of course, so will spend most of it with the beasts. They care little for nations and the affairs of mankind, so as long as they receive their rightful portions of food - which are rather less than they actually get, according to them - they will enjoy the holiday, as well.