May 26, 2006
Scoresheet
Fred 1Yesterday Fred had his appointment for his shots. It would have been his first trip back to the vet after his traumatic capture and spaying last year. We were pretty worried about our ability to get him in a carrier: he's very affectionate, sweet, and gentle, but he has certain Rules. One of them is Thou Shalt Not Restrain the Fred. When he came to live with us, he brought along some stone tablets of uncertain origin, and that little rule was inscribed #1 on those tablets. Every once in a while, when BP and I start slacking in our obligations, Fred gets those tablets out and takes us through a refresher course in his Rules.
BP & Senioritis 0
Faced with the deliberate violation of Rule #1, we consulted with the vet and mulled it over between us, and on Monday we took out the cat carrier, opened the door, and set it down beside the cat food dish, Fred's fave place in the house. He was fine with that: went in and investigated the carrier as if he'd never seen it before and had no issues with it.
Actually, the cat was hosing us, making us complacent. Piece o' cake, we thought. So when Thursday came, BP started petting Fred, who was up on my desk, while I quietly went and got the carrier. And as I approached with the carrier, BP scooped up the cat, who immediately began struggling, and wrestled him into the carrier.
That's right, we did get Fred into that carrier. Trouble is, we couldn't keep him there. Before we could slam and lock the door, he was outta there. That cat turned into 13 pounds of dynamite and exploded out of there. And then, of course, he wasn't about to be lured back in. Instead, he ran away from us, bushy-tailed and growling like crazy.
So we skulked down to the vet with Luigi alone, to get her checkup for her urinary infection. We had to face the vet and confess our failure.
He says we should try again. Whenever we can get The Fred into the carrier during office hours, he'll work him in and give the lunatic his shots.
Well, I gotta say, we're not going to be trying again in the immediate future. All of us need to come to terms with yesterday's fracas before any renewed efforts.
The good news is that Fred forgave us pretty quickly. He's back to normal, polishing our legs, cuddling us, getting petted, and generally behaving as if nothing happened. And why not? After all, he's the winner.
Posted by senioritis at 04:14 PM | Comments (6)
April 20, 2006
Observations
- Editors are wildly grateful when you actually give them chapters.
- Bike mechanics are fundamentally interesting, wonderful people. And when you explain that your hands are losing their strength; what used to be a one-minute tire change now takes 10-15 minutes; and that you're therefore conservative about replacing tires when they begin to develop dry rot, they may start rooting around and finding just the right tires for your circumstances.
- With no speaking engagements in the immediate future, I can quit trying to look like a grown-up and instead indulge my childlike delight in bright nail polish. As of this afternoon, my fingernails are a vivid orange, and my toenails a disturbing shade of oogy blue.
- On April 16, 2005, the compost pile was still frozen.
- On April 19, 2006, the compost pile was steaming.
- On the day after a trip, you can't get nearly as much done as you thought you could. But as the evening wanes, you'd better find the wherewithal to go change those cat boxes, or Luigi will leave boom-boom on the library rug tomorrow.
Posted by senioritis at 09:41 PM | Comments (2)
April 12, 2006
Nature
So at the moment we have five cats. Four are indoors cats, and then there's Geraldine, a feral-in-residence. (Which may or may not be more alluring than an artist-in-residence. We probably wouldn't be allowed to touch one of those, either.) We've been feeding Geraldine for more than a year, but over the past couple of months she's decided that she lives here, and she's allowed us to get quite close to her—if we have food in hand.
Geraldine is apparently sterile. We've observed that she goes into season, but she doesn't have kittens.
But now that she's our feral-in-residence, when she goes into season, the Seventh Fleet lands in our back yard. My desk overlooks the back yard. So for the past three days I've been treated to one scene after another in which Geraldine entertains the Seventh Fleet, especially Boss, Tiny, Romeo, Chesty, and Boston Blackie. She seems perfectly amenable to all this, but the cat must be exhausted. As a person who's always neutered her pets, I have very little experience with females in heat. So I don't know how long this will last, but I'm hoping it's drawing to a close. Because indoors, two spayed females, Ruth and Luigi, are making life hell for our neutered male, Fred. I guess spayed females are kind of the Andrea Dworkins of the feline world, and they are punishing the nearest available male for the sins that his gender is inflicting on theirs.
Posted by senioritis at 09:49 AM | Comments (4)
February 10, 2006
Working ferals
I've heard of working dogs. But working cats? That's new. It makes sense: neuter a feral so it doesn't reproduce; give it food and shelter; and it will keep down the rodent population. But a question: how do you persuade it to stay where you are? All of our ferals most definitely come and go. Geraldine is with us most of the time, but Bart and Boss appear and disappear unpredictably, and Gloves and Chesty have apparently disappeared altogether. Granted, they aren't neutered, and that might make them less the roamers. But still. I'm skeptical.
Not that I don't applaud the funding-challenged Syracuse humane folks from working on innovative solutions for the feral population tragedy. Good for them. And I'll bet they know a lot more about what they're doing than I do.
And I understand why they say this:
While the adopted cats will do a great job of controlling the rodent population and may eventually lose their fear of the person who's feeding them every day, they will never be house cats.—It's good advice and almost always true. I would certainly never try to adopt Geraldine or Boss as a housecat; it wouldn't work. But if you pay close attention and you're fairly experienced with cats, you can identify ferals like Fred and Bart who are actually interested in people. We didn't have space to take Bart in, but Fred is now a very happy housecat, a brown butterball who gets lots of petting and play and who spends some of his nights in bed with us.
Posted by senioritis at 08:13 AM | Comments (1)
January 21, 2006
Fun with Ferals
After a year of feeding ferals, I'm beginning to figure something out about them: they come and go. They will suddenly disappear, and after several weeks you figure they're gone. They've met their Maker or they've found a home. And then, inexplicably, they show back up on the porch, waiting for the next meal, as if they were never gone. This is the pattern with Chesty, Geraldine, Gloves, Boss, Bart, and now Dally.
It was not, however, the pattern with Fred. Once we began feeding him (and he's the reason we began feeding ferals), he moved in and stayed. He took up residence in the barn, he never missed a day with us, and finally we just captured him, had him neutered, and began the process of taming him as an indoor kitty.
And tame? I should say so. That cat is fat—he eats constantly—rather like Joanna's Dude (see comments), who, I am pleased to know, abides. And he gets petted constantly. He still has hysterics when we try to pick him up, but less so all the time. We often wake up and find him in bed with us. Fred is special. He's feral, but he's a feral who was born sweet and companionable. He's where he ought to be.
In Fred's honor, we continue to feed the ferals, until there's some compelling reason not to. We feed them like we feed the birds, and we enjoy both.
Okay, back to Chapter 19. Once I get it under control, I get my first outdoor excursion in a week. Who knew a trip to a country grocery store could be so thrilling?
Posted by senioritis at 08:38 AM | Comments (2)
November 05, 2005
Feral fantasies
Gloves, one of our current coterie of feral freeloaders (the others are Geraldine, Bart, Chesty, and occasionally Boss), has come up with a new place to sleep, one that seems to suit him very nicely. Yesterday morning when I raised the blinds just at dawn, I saw to my horror a heap of cat at the foot of the birdfeeder. Oh crap, I thought, a cat has died there and now we'll have to figure out what to do with the remains.
But when I went downstairs and began rustling around, the remains stirred himself from under the birdfeeder and went to his post at the back door to await breakfast. Gloves does like to hang out under the birdfeeder (hoping a goldfinch will just drop dead and fall right between his paws, I suppose). And our yard is only now being raked—yes, the annual anguish is upon us once again—which means that nice soft leaves were lying thick under the feeder. And behold, even now I can see the depression in the leaves that was Gloves' bed on Thursday night. I'm betting he had great dreams whilst sleeping in that locale.
Beloved Partner, however, is out there whacking away at the leaves today, which means Gloves' bed will alas soon disappear.
While I work on Chapter 30.
Even though I'm way behind in responding to students' papers.
My Beloved Blog, by the way, is one year and one day old today. Collin was right: I did find something to write about!
Posted by senioritis at 11:04 AM | Comments (1)
October 07, 2005
Fabulous Furry Fred and his Friend
Teakettle (see below the fold) now has a friend, her first: Fred. They play together. Teakettle is eight years old; she found me on the streets of Fort Worth; and she has spent her eight years pretty cautious of everything, including other cats. But she and Fred are pals.
AND Fred is now experimenting with getting up on our bed at night. He doesn't stay long (Luigi makes sure of that)—so far.
Posted by senioritis at 06:38 PM | Comments (1)
September 10, 2005
Happy Pet News
Like many pet lovers, my anguish over the Katrina disaster has been compounded by the dog-and-cat situation there. I have sympathized with the plight of people who were faced with the choice of abandoning their pets or staying to face the flood. And in addition to my horror over the human lives lost or destroyed, I have been sickened by the media images of luckless pets trapped on roofs and balconies. The government failure to prevent and then respond to this disaster has meant that human bodies have been left to rot and pets have been left to die, while the too-late government assistance has had to focus on saving live humans. So images like these do provide scraps of comfort. Some pets survived, and some were reuinted with their people.
Update: And now there's some systematic efforts being made to rescue stranded pets.
Posted by senioritis at 06:41 AM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2005
Kitty quandary
I swore I wasn't going to feed ferals anymore, because I didn't want our place to become headquarters for a colony of sick cats. Friends on a farm a couple of miles away have precisely that problem. They feed 'em; they can't catch 'em; even if they could catch 'em, they can't afford to take care of them; and the colony is really appallingly sick. So once we had Fred indoors, we quit feeding the ferals. Geraldine and Bart have nevertheless kept close tabs on us all summer, hoping the food would reappear.
And yesterday I broke down. The inner door was open whilst I was feeding our four-cat crew, and then I heard some piteous meowing. It was Bart, sitting on the porch by the screen door, watching Fred eating and crying for some. Yeah, I took some food out for him. And this evening I fed Geraldine.
I really don't know where all this is going. These are gorgeous cats. Both are small; Geraldine is grey with white accents; Bart is a black polydactyl with a white chest smudge. People see them and say, "My, that's a nice cat." But nobody can take either of them in.
Including us. We have four, and hard experience has taught us that's our upper limit.
But if somebody wanted one, we could trap 'em the same way we did Fred. And Fred, after three months indoors, is an adorable, happy housecat. Somebody? Somebody? Speak right up!!!
Posted by senioritis at 07:42 PM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2005
Friday cat blogging
Boldly, where no woman has gone before, I have moved the cat food out of my study and into the kitchen. Doing the Cat Power dance is always something of a circus. The cat food has been in my study so that a succession of bottom-rungers (Zora, Teakettle, and for a while, Fred) would have my "protection" while they ate. But as Freddie has gained confidence, he's also gotten pretty busy at keeping Teakettle (the current bottom-runger) out of my study altogether.
So I've moved the food to the kitchen, to kind of keep Fred from thinking that this room is the be-all and end-all of Chez Howard. Now while Fred's in here hanging with me, Teakettle can get down to the kitchen and snatch a bite. She may have to take a thrashing from Ruthie and/or Luigi, but neither of those cats is quite as aggressive as Le Fred. (And, as BP points out, Teakettle's not exactly skinny, anyhow.)
So the upshot of this story for you Fred Followers is: the boy is doing well, flexing his muscles, getting lots of petting, feeling pretty feisty. His coat, though not yet smooth, is no longer rough. He spends very little time in the windows, calling to his old buddies. In just three months he's gone from feral to complacent.
Posted by senioritis at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2005
Friday cat blogging, up & down the East Coast
In the interests of reassuring all you cat lovers out there, I'd like to begin today's cat entry with Marie's cat. First of all, the cat is beautiful. Yes. And obviously beloved. Yes. But best of all, the cat sheds on the top of Marie's car, which is a convertible. Hence Marie is driving around with cat hair on the top of her car. The rest of us have it on our pants legs and the fronts of our t-shirts; Marie's also got it on the top of her car, and I think that makes her the World's #1 Cat-Shedding Victim. Pause, please, for a moment of sympathy channeled to everyone's favorite North Carolina photoblogger.
But then I must turn to Our Favorite Subject, Le Fred. And here he is, in all his desk-hogging glory, looking quite smug, thankyouverymuch:
Posted by senioritis at 09:03 AM | Comments (6)
August 07, 2005
Back by popular demand
Freddie! Over Thursday dinner, friends were lamenting his disappearance from my blog.
Okay, he's baaack!
There are hundreds of things I could say; the process of adopting and socializing a feral adult is fascinating. We've adopted several strays and a feral kitten, but an adult feral is a whole new ball o' wax.
Right now Freddie is across the room trying to bury his breakfast. He started this a few days ago: I open the morning can of the Good Stuff; everybody has a turn at it; and then in a little while Fred starts trying to bury it. He goes round and round the bowl, pawing at the floor and jiggling the bowl in his attempt to bury the food, presumably to hide the remainder from the other cats so that he alone will have access to it later. Mind you, there's a bowl of dry Purina right beside it. These cats n-e-v-e-r go hungry. But feral habits die hard.
And now he's given up on that and is tugging at the wonderfully long string that operates the beautiful, delicate rice paper windowshades in my study. Those rice paper shades are going to be shot to doll rags before long, but Fred will have kept himself highly entertained.
Posted by senioritis at 09:25 AM | Comments (4)
July 25, 2005
Mission accomplished
Today, Day 55, Freddie got his first petting. He was asleep on his pillow behind me, and I picked up his Barbie boot and began rubbing his cheek with it. And in a few seconds it was my hand rather than the boot rubbing. And then I was just scratching his neck and stroking his cheek, and he was loving it. Neither one of us could believe it.
What, you might be asking, is Fred's Barbie boot? It's a Barbie cat toy, given to our cats by their friend HBH, a woman with a delicious sense of humor. It's a very sturdy little cardboard high-heeled denim-covered boot, with an equally sturdy white feather at the top. All this is attached to a pink elastic string. Our other cats haven't been interested in the Barbie boot (you never know which toys any given cat or dog will or will not like), but the Barbie boot (along with the weasel that was a gift from SJ: a long brown clump of feathers at the end of a string attached to a stick) are Fred's faves. (The weasel is also Luigi's favorite. Yet neither Teakettle nor Ruth has any interest in the weasel; Teakettle likes ordinary string with a knot in the end, and Ruth likes furry mice with feathery tails and rattles in their bellies.)
Thus endeth the Saga of Fred's Socialization. He's no longer feral: he's a housecat who has toys, gets petted, and is developing a cute little bulge in his brown tiger tummy. And we love him as dearly as we do Teakettle, Ruth, and Luigi.
Posted by senioritis at 10:22 AM | Comments (6)
July 22, 2005
A Freddiepurr
I've now heard one.
While I was on vacation, BP heard Freddie purr, while they were playing. Now I've heard it: while I was fixing feline breakfast this morning, Fred began rubbing my legs (ever so lightly) and purring. That's a first for Fred-instigated contact, as well as the first time I've heard his purr.
Posted by senioritis at 08:05 AM | Comments (1)
July 12, 2005
Aerial bombardment
The cats are getting along remarkably well. Fred is a little pushy when I crack open a fresh can of cat food, and Ruth is still trying to herd him around the house. But it's going well. Luigi, who we thought would persecute Fred, is instead afraid of him.
Until recently. She's beginning to get comfortable around him, which for Luigi means she's preparing to take him on. And it's clear that a plan is forming. She has decided to become a Luigibomb; she wants to drop her 18 pounds on his 8 pounds from the greatest height possible. Feline Shock and Awe, as it were. Luigi is fixin to squish Fred; it's just a matter of time before she musters the courage to seize her opportunity.
Posted by senioritis at 07:20 AM | Comments (1)
July 11, 2005
Day 41
Fred slept in our bedroom last night—first in a basket in the window, then on the covers that had drifted onto the floor at the foot of the bed.
He also now feels very comfortable about sniffing a finger or hand that's held out to him.
And when I'm at my desk, he's on a big pillow on the floor about 3 feet away from me. He's either sleeping, or he's waiting for somebody to come play with him.
We are madly in love with him. This is the best summer ever, in part because of the delight of taming this sweet little feral. Every day we see small progress.
Posted by senioritis at 08:20 AM | Comments (1)
July 01, 2005
Friday cat blogging
To commemorate Fred's one-month anniversary as an indoor cat, I give you the Teakettle and Fred show:
Posted by senioritis at 04:36 PM | Comments (2)
June 29, 2005
The Fred Report, 6/29/05
No thrilling developments; just small daily progress. Fred no longer hides in the freezer engine nor under the bookcase. When we're moving around the room he just goes to the side where he can keep an eye on everything. Occasionally he'll sit under a chair for safety.
He also spends lots of time on the big pillow in the middle of the floor of my study, sleeping or playing.
We're working to get him to trust our hands, and we're making progress. He'll sniff an outstretched index finger, and he'll cautiously play with a toy that's being held. We should try feeding him treats from our hands; he might go for that. We figure that once he trusts our hands, he'll be pettable. As it is right now, if you touch him, he bolts. Bolts only about 2 feet, mind you; but won't sit still for being touched.
Posted by senioritis at 07:15 AM | Comments (0)