Cats

There are 63 posts filed in Cats (this is page 4 of 7).

Cat Time

When Kris and I lived in Canby, we had a summer ritual. During the evenings, when it was warm, we would take a walk through the neighborhood. We’d head down Sixth street, take a right on Fir, stroll over to Eighth or Ninth, and then head home once we’d reached the highway. It was a pleasant, familiar pastime.

It didn’t take long to become accustomed to develop rituals. Kris would stop to look at the gardens that particularly pleased her. I picked up flyers from in front of any home that was for sale. But our top ritual was the counting of the cats.

I’m not sure how we began, but soon after starting our walks, we discovered that there’s a certain part of the evening that might be dubbed “Cat Time”. After dinner, about an hour before dusk, when the heat of the day has begun to fade, the cats came out to take their ease. They sat in the grass, or under cars, or by the curb. In some places they would gather in twos and threes, but most often they would sit alone, watching.

We would count them as we walked. In fact, we would place bets as we started out. The first person would pick a number, and the second would call “higher” or “lower”. The fewest cats we ever saw during Cat Time was seven — the most was twenty-nine.

Kris would stop to pet her favorite cats. At one house on Ninth there lived a cat we called Cookie. Cookie was a whore. When he saw Kris, he would prance down the driveway and roll at her feet. I would sigh and sit on the curb as Cookie and Kris exchanged their affections. There were other cats who were glad to see her, too.

Cookie was not this cat’s real name. His real name was probably something like Tom or Mario or Bubba. We named him Cookie ourselves. We’ve always named the cats we meet if we don’t know what they’re really called. So, along our walk, we had names for the thirty-or-so various cats we encountered on a regular basis.

Spurge was the cat next door, so named because he was always in our yard, like a noxious weed. Thirteen was the beautiful orange cat that lived on Fir. He got his name because the first time we saw him, he was the thirteenth cat on our walk. Otot looked just like Toto. Dee and Dum were the twin Persians that lived near the Bemises. Sad to say, I can’t remember many of the other cats’ names, though at one time I knew all thirty.

I mentioned this story to introduce the concept of Cat Time. For fifteen years, we’ve been under the impression that Cat Time was about an hour before the sun set. Not so.

I’ve been rising at 4 a.m. for the past week. I tumble out of bed and immediately head out the door for a walk around the block. After seven days of this, I can assure you that Cat Time does not occur during daylight. Cat Time is 4 a.m. You would not believe how many cats I see in my sixteen minute stroll through the neighborhood. Where do they all come from?

This morning I passed a gang of cats. There was a cluster of five or six of them sitting in the middle of Arista, sitting near each other, but not too close. (Those of you with cats know what I mean.) They were having a meeting about something, and I could not help but think that their subject was me. “What should we do with the interloper? How can we get him to stay in bed? He’s violating our sacred hour! Let’s speak with Simon about it. Maybe he can do something…”

There’s good news and bad news on the sugar front. I made it through my week without sugar. So far it’s the most difficult thing I’ve done on my list of goals. It frickin’ sucked.

I allowed myself to eat fruit, but that was about it. No cookies, no candy, no cake. No white starchy foods. No condiments.

So I made it through that week of hell. That’s the good news. The bad news is that my wellness coach, Lauren, has asked me to do this for two weeks instead of just one. So, I’m just half-way through. Argh!

I just had a grapefruit for breakfast, which was a pleasing combination of sour and sweet, but it’s just not the same as a couple of delicious Sno-Balls, you know?

Peace in Our Time

See this image?

Do you know what is absolutely remarkable about what you see here? I know some of you have already figured it out. No, it’s not the gross amount of fur you see clinging to the blanket in the foreground. No, it’s not the clothes draped all over the footboard.

What’s remarkable about this image is that Toto — the black cat — is curled up asleep next to Nemo (the Siamese, who is rolling to demonstrate how cute he is) and Max/Meatball (who is stretched long, trying to stay as far away from Toto as possible).

Nobody is growling in this scene. Nobody is hissing. In fact, these three had been asleep together for a couple hours before I thought to grab my camera.

I wish I could report that the truce held, but Toto returned to her surly self moments after I took this photo. “Why the hell am I sleeping on the bed with my brothers?” she asked as she hissed away…

When Cats Dream, They Dream of This

Imagine you’re a cat. What’s the most exciting thing you can think of?

Today when I got home, Toto and Meatball, as they are wont to do, told me that they didn’t have enough food. They begged and begged and meowed and meowed, but I ignored them. “Wait until your mom gets home. She’s the one who feeds you. She always feeds you.”

Instead, I came up to my office to practice podcasting. (Holy cats! I have a lisp! Why didn’t anyone ever tell me I have a lisp? How do I get rid of my lisp?) While I was fiddling with things, recording various old foldedspace entries, I heard a ruckus in the other room. I ignored it. There are always ruckuses in other rooms. Meatball is always wrestling with somebody (or something).

I continued working.

But then the ruckus came again, and louder than before, as if it weren’t cats wrestling, but dogs. We don’t have any dogs. “What is going on?” I wondered, and I went to look.

There, in the spare room, I found three cats — Meatball, Toto, and Nemo — flailing about in a flurry of paws and tails, hurtling themselves madly at a bird, which was desperately trying to dodge their pointy ends. Somehow a pigeon had found its way upstairs, down the hall, and into the spare room. (Or, more likely, it been carried there in a cat’s mouth.) The poor thing was flapping its wings, lurching around the room, trying to avoid the maelstrom of cats below.

It clung to the picture rail. Then it clung to a framed photo. It clung to whatever it could find. And the whole time, the cats were in pursuit. I joined them. I managed to grab the pigeon a couple times, but each time I did, it flew away. Finally I did what any sensible person would do: I went to get my camera.

The cats had calmed down by this time, which allowed me to formulate a plan. Fortunately the spare room has a door to the roof. I pulled everything aside, opened the door, and then coaxed the bird outside.

The cats were not pleased. “Dad, you refused to feed us, so we took matters into our own paws. We did very well, too. There was enough meat on that bird for all three of us. But now you’ve set it free. You’d damn well better feed us.” But I didn’t. I went back to work on my podcasting.

I’m a bad dad.

Cat Calendar

For years now — maybe a decade — Kris and I have had the same yearly page-a-day calendar in our bathroom. It’s a cat calendar (“the cat calendar”, as we call it), and every day has a picture of a cat, the cat’s name (and the name of its owner), and some blurb about catness. We love it.

The first three cats of the year are prize-winners. I used to take the page from January 1st and tape it over the cats’ dinner bowls. “Look at this cat,” I would tell them. “This is what you should aspire to. He’s a Good Cat.” They never listened, but they had to stare at the winning cat for 365 days. Sometimes 366. One of my money-making blog ideas is actually based around this cat-a-day concept.

Anyhow, this is all prelude to the following picture:

Why this photo did not win first prize for the year I will never know. Look at it. This one snapshot encompasses a metric ton of catness. Poor, poor Sugar Plum. What mean humans she has, to subject her to such torture. And to photograph it! The indignity of it all…

A Cat Post

I know that all you folks really want to see is cat pictures. To that end, I dug the camera out of its nest last weekend and stalked my children in the yard. First of all, for Lee, who complains that of course she can’t remember Nemo’s name because, after all, I never write about him, here’s a picture of him:

Actually, that’s Max/Meatball/Meathead in the front, looking pretty, and Nemo rolling on the sidewalk in the background. Nemo is in constant motion, which is one reason we don’t have any good shots of him. Nemo likes to bonk people. He actually has a small bald patch on his forehead from bonking all day long. He’s silly.

Oh look. Here’s a real photo of Nemo:

Toto joined us outside, too, so we actually had “family time” (which is what Kris and I have dubbed the strange nexus when all six family members occupy the same space). Doesn’t she look pleased to be with us?

She’s thinking, “I want Auntie Pam.”

In the following photo, you can see Max, Nemo, and Toto all in roughly the same spot. Simon thought this was too good to pass up, and shortly after this image was made, he began to pick his siblings off one-by-one.

First he tackled Meatball. Max was game, but is still rather scared of Simon. He beat a hasty retreat. Next Simon took down Nemo, who squawked and fled. Then, in a surprise move, he charged Toto. At the last moment, he veered off and trotted to the grass. “Psych!” he said. Toto hissed and ran inside. Simon is king of the house. Or is Toto queen?

Later, Oreo the neighbor cat came for a visit. He likes our yard. He considers this his space, a claim that Simon doesn’t much care for.

Max is rather wary of Oreo, and Oreo is wary of him.

Finally, here’s a photo from my mother’s Flickr stream. I’ve cropped it and enhanced the exposure. I think it’s fun.

Silver, the tabby, is Simon’s sibling. And Socks is Meatball’s sibling. We have this same fight in our house, but with a different set of actors.

Yay, cats!

Max and Toto Sitting in a Tree

Toto is sleeping on the chair in my office. Max is sitting on the desk, watching the mouse pointer flit across the screen. He gets bored. He walks to the edge of the desk and looks at the chair where his sister lays. He pauses.

Then gingerly he steps down next to her. Toto lifts her head and hisses. She growls. But she does not move. Max ignores her. He curls up beside her. Toto growls some more, but then she goes back to sleep. Max sits there, touching his sister, not quite snuggling, but most definitely touching.

THIS IS A MIRACLE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS.

You cannot even begin to understand how awestruck I am by this scene. (Well, those of you who know Toto may understand.)

Just now she picked up her head and licked herself. She glanced at Max, but she did not growl, and she did not pull away. They’re still touching, crowded together on the chair.

Tales of the Chicken, Video Edition

Our feral chicken cracks me up. Every morning when I go out to feed it, it comes flapping down from the cherry tree. Somehow it’s finding its way off the ground at night to roost. When I call chick chick chick it launches itself into the air and sort of half-plummets to the ground.

I borrowed Jenn’s video camera for the past couple weeks in the hope that I could get some typical Chicken behavior on film. Chicken didn’t co-operate. Instead of charging at me when I call it, as it usually does, it hung back and watched me taping it. It’s just coincidence, I know, but it was almost as if the bird were camera shy.

Still, I pieced together 2-1/2 minutes of Chicken footage for you fans:

You’ll notice that Princess has become a little ornery. She used to ignore Chicken, and Chicken ignored her. But now Princess thinks Chicken is a fun toy. Chicken longs for the days when she could eat peacefully with the kittens.

(Have I mentioned Princess before? She appeared last fall, and has made this place her home.)

Cat vs. Kid: The Showdown

In light of my recent controversial complaints about children, and the subsequent video I shared of my cats, this short piece perfectly encapsulates the foldedspace pecking order:

Jeff’s reponse upon seeing this was, “Poor kid,” to which I replied, “Poor kid nothing. He got what he deserved.” (And what about those parents? They deserve to be keelhauled.)

Ah, there’s more where that came from. How about an angry sheep:

Or a less angry (but still violent) sheep:

For Nicole, here’s a brave, brave bunny:

And, finally, for Lynn — an animal “bred for its skills in magic“:

Have I mentioned that I love YouTube?