Solo Attempt

Evidently, Sable saw what Valkyrie and Moxy had been up to, but for symmetry you need two…

Symmetry

Valkyrie and Moxy in alignment…

Standing Firm

Periodically, Neville needs his bum cleaned. He doesn’t require it as often as he has in the recent past, thanks, I believe, to the better management of his diabetes giving his rear end a bit more strength: he is not sitting or falling into debris in the litter-box as much. When I do clean him, I take him to the Treatment Room (the bathroom) and, on a soaker pad, go to work with washcloth, comb and scissors. It not infrequently takes fifteen or twenty minutes. Afterwards, I give him a reward for his good behaviour (more wished for than realised sometimes) in the form of Temptation treats.

Yesterday, I carried him to the Treatment Room to find that my initial examination was misleading, and he required only a few seconds’ worth of repair. Yet he still demanded a reward for his perseverance. I was firm, since he had needed almost no work, and it was hardly the usual inconvenience for him. He too stood his ground and made croaking sounds. I said, “No!”

At last, we compromised and I gave him treats. But only three or four.

Day of the Black Cat

Today is National Black Cat Day in Canada and Great Britain. I don’t usually follow such observances, but this one presents a good chance to show off my two affectionate and sociable black cats.

Imogen came to live with me in February, 2023, when she was abandoned by her owner in an apartment of the building in which I was living. It didn’t take long for her to become friendly, and initially she was available for adoption. But I decided to keep her, partly because I thought she had already been through enough desertion. She doesn’t really care for the other beasts in the Cosy Cabin, but she does play with Valkyrie and Moxy, especially the former. They chase and affectionately smack each other, though it’s the sort of relationship in which Imo is allowed to smack a little harder; when someone does it to her, she hisses. She’s that kind of cat. She’s almost all black, but has an anklet of individual white hairs around a rear leg. Interestingly, I have read of several other black cats with that distinction. Her fur is very smooth and glossy; thus, her nickname of Miss Silky. She loves cuddling with me, and have her satiny fur stroked.

Sable was an outsider-cat, trapped and brought with us when we moved to the Cosy Cabin. She is now probably in her teens, with damaged ears, impaired hearing and a broken tail. She is nearly all black but with a diffused tuft of white hair on her chest, a rather common addition to otherwise all-black cats. She has shown her affability with one of the other cats, Moxy, and has few problems with any of the others, even Indigo grudgingly accepting her. She has fit in well and has grown quite used to me, though why she scurries away from me in some instances, and lets me pass within inches in others, I haven’t yet determined.

Three years ago, I fostered Hector, a black cat with a more prominent white tuft than Sable’s, and thirteen years before that, my first foster was a black cat, Lincoln, who had no white whatsoever. Both were adopted.

Black cats, despite their minor physical differences, can be hard to distinguish. I have seen a pair of black cats in the sunlight, when one had a red tinge and the other blue, but most of the time, they are difficult to tell apart. I dread reading of black cats who become lost outside, as the ones lost are hard to identify. Black cats also don’t always photograph well, their definition being lost in the blackness. This latter quality may be why fewer black cats are adopted than any other variety.

Even so, their personalities make up for their superficial similarity. Each is very distinct. If I initially confuse Imogen with Sable, their characters tell them apart. Hector, too, was his own cat. No one I know who has adopted a black cat has regretted it. If you are ever in the market for another family member, therefore, consider a new - or old - house panther. They may blend in to their backgrounds, but you’ll always be glad they are with you.

One Year On

One year ago today, I and the beasts moved into the Cosy Cabin. I regretted leaving the old apartment, as it had been a good home to us. But the management had changed; they were pressuring the tenants to leave by raising the rent, so they could renovate the units, and then charge still more for the improvements. There were other problems that were not being addressed. It was not like it had been. We were not the only tenants to leave, and what had been a friendly little community was broken up.

Though I regretted my departure, or - perhaps more accurately - I regretted the departure of what the apartment and the building had been, I have not regretted coming to the Cosy Cabin. I and the cats feel welcome here, and we both enjoy it. There is space, especially for the beasts, who use it daily by running through the rooms and corridors, and up and down the stairs. The house is conveniently located, the rent is low and any maintenance concerns - there have been few, and those small - have been addressed swiftly. I no longer have to worry about hiding the cats from owner-inspections and there are rooms enough for all the animals to find different spots, depending on their moods.

This is has been a good year domestically, and I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to spend it here. I well recognize my good fortune in having such a home, and quietly celebrate it today.

No Injuries at Play-time

Brazil is well on his way to recovery. Last evening, he played. He was no doubt helped by the medicine he’d been given a few hours before, but he was active and alert, even pulling and biting at the string-toy, using his mouth.

Later during play-time, I was enticing Moxy and Valkyrie with the all-day-sucker-coloured streamer on the couch. The Mixer was wrestling with it when Valk decided to do so, as well. She leaped up on to the couch, directly onto the bigger cat (whether by accident or design, I can’t say). This not unnaturally startled Moxy, who jumped side-ways - right into me, knocking me back into the cd cabinet behind me. There was a great deal of clatter, and cats scattered, but no one was hurt. We all re-assembled a moment later to continue the fun.

Brazil’s surgery is finished. Mine almost began…

Fewer Teeth for Shimmer

Yesterday’s dental appointment for Brazil resulted in seven of his teeth being removed. This was certainly more than I expected. In fact, since he is only three and a half years old, I didn’t think that he would need any extractions. Some teeth were bad, others were ‘mobile’, by which is meant ‘loose’, the kind of looseness, I imagine, that most humans recall from their childhood, wiggling a tooth until it at last came out. In a cat’s mouth, however, I suspect that it could lead not just to further trouble, but to a reluctance to eat. In any case, they were a problem and had to go. With teeth that unwholesome at such a young age, the doctor figures it is a matter of genetics. It may presage further difficulties in the future.

But for now, and probably for some years, Brazil will feel better. He was of course out of sorts yesterday, but he ate some of his currently favourite soft-food, groomed himself to remove the hospital smell, and spent some time under the bed. The other cats didn’t appear to mind any odd aroma about him, and Moxy, kind-hearted fellow that he is, offered to clean Shimmer’s fur for him, but he wasn’t in the mood for help.

Brazil will receive anti-inflammatory/pain medicine for four days. He must have been in some discomfort for a while, and I hope its removal will bring my orange boy positive changes.

A Day for Teeth

Today, Brazil will go to the veterinary hospital for his dental surgery. He may need a few teeth extracted, and he definitely needs a cleaning.

What a change from the first time I had to take him to the hospital. I recall following him about the apartment; not chasing him, but trying to corner him, or wear him down. It took me twenty minutes before he went to ground in a litter-box. Now, he knows I want to capture him for some nefarious purpose, but it takes only a half-minute or so before he stops and resigns himself to his fate.

Even giving him medicine is easy. The rescue-group’s doctor prescribes a mild sedative for many cats going into surgery. Shimmer had to have a dose last night and another this morning. I don’t think it is needed in many cases, but it probably wouldn’t hurt Brazil to have a little artificial calm; he is a very nervous and - among strangers - stressful cat. Unlike most of my beasts, he not only took the liquid medicine quietly, he didn’t leap out of my hands afterward in disgust at the crap he had to swallow. He has come a long way.

At his age, I don’t expect any trouble from the surgery, and this will make him feel better and keep his mouth in good shape for years. My boy will be back home late this afternoon.

The Changing Menu

I want to give my cats as wide a variety of food as possible, within certain restrictions that some have. The more or greater the restrictions, the more I try to find variety, since being confined in terms of what one can eat can become tiresome.

Valkyrie cannot eat chicken. Well, she can, but it gives her runny feces, which she then throws about in her commendable though messy efforts to stay clean. She is enjoying her Fussie Cat fish varieties; right now the ones with anchovies are popular with her. In the category of hard-food, I have a few varieties that she likes enough to go off like a police-car siren whenever she wants me to bring out the bowl.

Nonetheless, a new variety can be a bit of a challenge. The Eternal Kitten loves the Natural Balance salmon-and-green-pea. I mixed with that a new bag, one of duck-and-green-pea (Natural Balance seems to have an obsession with green peas). This alteration caught Valk by surprise.

First, she sniffed the contents of the bowl. Then she looked at me. Satisfying herself that the change was not a joke on my part, she carefully pulled one kernel out onto the floor. It was olfactorily examined individually, then cautiously tasted. It passed her test well enough for a second kernel. After that, she ate normally; the new flavour had passed muster.

Still, it doesn’t appear to be as favoured as the salmon-and-green-pea. I have another bag of that all ready, and will mix it with the newer variety at a proportion of three to one. This should encourage her to continue eating, even if she finds morsels of the lesser fare in the bowl.

It’s tough managing a restaurant when one’s clientele is the most finicky species on the planet.

Sunday in the Kitchen with Brain

Consciousness: The vegetables are in a pot with some water. The pot is on the stove and the element beneath it is heating the water.

Sub-conscious: I sense the water is boiling under the pot’s lid.

Consciousness: We don’t want it to boil. Boiled water draws out the vegetables’ nutrients. We want it the water hot, and the vegetables to simmer. I will lift the lid and see if the water is boiling.

[Sub-conscious throws the lid violently down. It clatters on the stove-top, startling and frightening the cats, some of whom run.]

Consciousness (astounded): Why the heck did you do that??

Sub-conscious (loudly): The lid was searingly hot from being on the pot full of boiling water. We almost were burned.

Consciousness (incredulous): The lid is not searingly hot. It’s merely warm. See? I can lift it without pain.

Sub-conscious (with less conviction): It was searingly hot.

Consciousness: You thought it was because you thought the water was boiling. You were mistaken. If you had let me lift the lid first, we would have seen that all was well.

Sub-conscious: The water might have been boiling.

Consciousness: It wasn’t. You can’t simply jump to conclusions like that.

Sub-conscious: It’s what I do.

Consciousness: Then tell me, and I will decide what to do about them.

Sub-conscious: All right. Do those vegetables look right to you? They may’ve gone bad.

Consciousness: Shut up.

Wide Cuddles

It may be the colder weather, it may be that he realizes he’s been with me for a year now; whatever the reason, Moxy is becoming more cuddly. Though, when a cat is as heavy and dense as the Mixer, ‘cuddly’ is a rather expansive term compared to that used with small and lithe cats.

A Hungry Lesson

I had to be tough with Sable yesterday.

At meal times - breakfast, dinner and snack - all the cats gather in their usual places: several of them in the sitting room, a couple in the kitchen, a few more in more remote spots. Sable’s habitual place is under the dining table. Yesterday at dinner-time, she remained downstairs. I called her several times; she knows the routine, she understands what bringing out the dishes means and she comprehends the word ‘dinner’. I even went to the library where she was lying on the couch to encourage her to come upstairs. She chose not to.

I am certain that she was not feeling poorly. She had been playing with a fuzzy mouse not long before, and later she was grooming herself calmly and normally. But she didn’t want to come up for dinner. Consequently, she missed it. She went without.

In the past, I would take food to her, wherever she was: in the library, under the bed. But Sabe has been eating in the kitchen for months now. She is past the point of belonging to the group enough to dine with the rest of us. To allow her to eat elsewhere now would, I think, be a danger of allowing her to slip out of her progress. To be honest, I think she was just being finicky. Nonetheless, if one of the others refused to appear for a meal, they too would go without; Valkyrie is mercurial enough to do that from time to time. Setting rules for Sable is part of her socialisation. And, except for certain times - at night and between dinner and snack - there is hard-food available that all are able to eat and most enjoy. No one starves.

At snack-time, Sable appeared as usual, waiting under the dining table for her bowl. She ate a little more than her normal amount. I don’t know if she learned a hungry lesson, but she’s smart, so I hope she got the idea. What she may think of me won’t be mentioned.

An Inviting Spot on a Cold Day

It’s time to buy another heating pads for the beasts. This is Millie sitting over the heating vent in the cat-room.

Don’t be misled. It is not cold in the cat-room, and Mills just as often lies quite comfortably on a cat-tree. But the season has now shifted from warm autumn to chilly autumn, and the cat-room, with its single heating vent - and the door closed to keep the other cats from coming in to agitate Millie - can become cool. Though she has her suitcase-house, which is enclosed and very snug, and I believe she enjoys the warmth of the hot air rather than needs it, I think I should buy her a heating pad and set it up on the couch. If she likes it, it will encourage her to lie next to me more frequently, when I am present. And you can’t have too many inviting spots on a cold day.

My Gratitude

Today is Thanksgiving Day. I try every day to be grateful for what I have and have had, but today is when we acknowledge our gratitude more explicitly.

I am grateful for many things: my life at the Cosy Cabin, the shelter and warmth it gives me; my employment, the funds it gives me to survive; my friends, who have helped me more than I have been able to help myself, I think.

I am grateful for my last minute capture of Sable, on the Thanksgiving weekend last year. Yes, Sabe has been with me a year now. I worried that I was doing the wrong thing by bringing her inside. But she has progressed faster and better than I had hoped, thanks in part to her friendship with Moxy. She still won’t let me touch her, but I can come closer than ever now, and she sleeps on the bed, not even jumping off when I move or get up in the night.

I am certain that she is hard of hearing. She can hear me speak at almost any distance, but my approach must be seen to be believed. At her age - at least twelve, probably thirteen - she may not have been able to stand many more winters outside, and she may not have had an assured source of food after I had moved.

So I am grateful for having caught Sable. She may have regrets, but I think she also enjoys, at least in part, being an insider cat. Warmth at night, comfort in cold weather, plenty of food, clean water, friendship and toys to play with do compensate somewhat, I think.

This year, this is the face of my gratitude.

A Lap for Movie-night

Last weekend, Millie lie beside me for a while during movie-night and we watched the film together. Yesterday, she took another step, and lie on my lap. This is the first time she has done that. It was funny: she first put her paw on my leg, and glanced at my face, as if to ask if it was acceptable. I encouraged her and she settled down for about twenty minutes. This is how she will progress when she at last has her own home, and her own person.

Good Numbers

Neville’s blood-glucose sensor lasted the whole two weeks that it was meant to do, and quit on Thursday. It did its job, providing me with a great many readings, which I recorded and passed on to the old grey lion’s veterinary. Both she and I are very happy with the results.

She had, it may be recalled, reduced Nev’s dosage of insulin to no more than two units: two if his reading was nine or more, one if it was between nine and three. Three is of course quite a low number at which to give insulin, but the doctor felt that it was necessary to accustom Neville’s body to receiving insulin twice a day, rather than missing some days, getting it others. And with the monitor, I could tell every fifteen minutes, if I desired, what level his blood-sugar was at. The prescription worked.

The highest reading Nev had over the past fortnight was 13.9. By late last week, most of his readings were in the single digits, not counting fractions. As may be seen by Wednesday’s record, though his numbers varied from reading to reading, they varied within a narrow range. A bit of food, a visit to the litter-box, a walk down the corridor; these would move the reading a bit up and down, but the greatest fluctuation was from 4.1 to 6.2 - excellent numbers. Even the 7.6 with which Nev started Thursday is within ‘normal’ range. The doctor believes Neville’s diabetes to be managed.

It’s been years since the Nevsky’s numbers have been so low and so good. Will they remain so? He has a lot to deal with, most prominently, the mass in his liver, which could affect his diabetes. But one unit of insulin twice a day has been determined to provide the best amount of medicine while maintaining good numbers. And, with the sensor no longer providing readings often, one unit is a safe amount, too; I will be taking blood from my oldster’s ears periodically, but doing so before every injection is too hard on the fellow.

I am grateful that Neville’s doctor understood the problem and was able to work with it. I think Nev is feeling better than he has in some time. He has other issues with which to battle, but, at least for now, uncontrolled diabetes isn’t one of them.

Watching and Wishing

It’s interesting that not all of the beasts in the Cosy Cabin are interested in watching birds. Neville, for instance, has never been curious about wildlife. But with some cats, no matter how different their personalities otherwise, they share a love of wishing they could kill and eat birds. Or at least kill them.

Here, sisters-in-murder Imogen and Valkyrie are silhouetted against the front window, watching their would-be prey.

Indigo Wins

Indigo and I went to the veterinary hospital again this afternoon to see if she had conquered the urinary infection. She had!

The sample used for the latest urinalysis was unusually obtained. I put Indie in the bathroom when dinner was served. It was rather too soon for her to be so collected, but if I didn’t do it when she came out to eat, I probably would have had quite an ordeal, as lately she has been going straight under the bed following her meals. This was to avoid the anti-biotics I have been giving her. (I didn’t miss a dose, though: I had been dosing her immediately before she ate. Despite this, she always showed up for a meal, so I was able to keep on schedule.)

Because she was in the bathroom too long, or because of stress, Indigo wet in the bathtub. I applaud her choice of improvised litter-box (she wasn’t given one as I wanted to encourage her to hold it until the hospital) but it nonetheless emptied the bladder that needed to be sampled. Fortunately, the urine pooled just in front of the drain; (it’s an old steel tub, and has a bit of a dip there) and I was able to siphon up a small syringe-worth. (I keep numerous syringes of different calibres on hand, for medicine, force-feeding, etc.) This I took with me to the veterinary hospital.

I wasn’t sure if they could use it, but they did. The sample was not contaminated by where it was found, and all signs of infection had disappeared. Indie was not poked or punctured; indeed, as it turned out, she need not have even come with me.

Now, we are back in the Cosy Cabin, Indigo looking forward no doubt to snack-time, as she wasn’t in the mood to eat much of her dinner. Though I don’t have a trout for her as a reward for doing so well, as the Tabbies suggested, she will receive some tuna-water from a tin I’ll be opening later…