Quint and I . . .

The Purring Order

2011-11-11T14:48:00.000-08:00

If chickens can have a pecking order, then cats can certainly have a purring order. Mine sure do. Quint is Top Cat. Hedge gets whatever Quint doesn't want or need. Hedge goes out of his way to find places to nap and relax that Quint never uses. Never uses until Hedge occupies the space which then instantly becomes desirable space and Quint must have it. If there was a pile of rusty nails and broken glass in the house, which there isn't by the way, and Hedge was laying on it, Quint would kick him off the pile and take possession of it like it was an invaluable dragon's horde. If I am brushing Hedge in the morning, which I often do, Quint comes in the room, jumps up on the bed and watches to make sure Hedge doesn't get too much attention. No wonder Hedge is a shy and reclusive, what with Quint constantly upstaging him. Hedge takes it all with his good, sweet disposition undiminished.

Lately, though, there has been a subtle twist to the game. Quint has this refillable, catnip mouse which he carries around the house and then drops in whatever room his people happen to be occupying, or in our path so we can't miss seeing it as we move about. Hedge, sometimes, when the mouse has been dropped on a small rug, will fold the rug in on itself and bury the little mouse. Last evening Quint dropped the mouse in the hallway and Hedge immediately proceeded to bury it. This annoyed Quint so much that he paraded around the house meowing at the top of his lungs.

I warned Quint a long time ago that if he kept up his bullying it would come back to him. It seems that it finally has.

The Strategy of Cats

2011-08-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

Since Hedge came to live with us very nearly two years ago, he has gradually become more and more social, at least as far as humans are concerned. He couldn’t help but have some sort of interaction with Quint, who thinks of himself as Alpha Cat. Hedge’s strategy in dealing with Quint has been to be non-confrontatory, submissive you might think. I thought so too at first, and perhaps he was submissive when he first arrived. As time has gone by and he has grown up into the handsome fellow he is today, I’ve seen Hedge emerge from the shadow of Quint as his mentor and dominator to become a clever, crafty and personable (catable?) member of the family.

It has been fascinating, and quite rewarding, to watch Hedge slowly figure out how to overcome his fearsome and humble origins and establish for himself a definite role in the group. He is still as cautious as ever when it comes to new people and situations, but with each encounter, he observes, he retreats, he thinks, he decides and he establishes protocols to help him deal with the situation as he sees it. Instead of submission as standard operating procedure, he will now stand up for himself so as to get what he needs and wants. He’s very considered in his choices of importances. For example, at breakfast and supper times, we feed a small quantity of canned cat food in two different bowls, the same food and quantity in each. Quint considers it his right to sample the contents of both bowls and lick up whatever juice or gravy there might be in each. He will then eat a bit of the food from each bowl and leave the rest. Hedge allows this, unless the proffered food is especially to his liking, in which instance he will pick a bowl, stand his ground and consume his share, gravy and all. Most of the time, Hedge is indifferent to canned cat food, so he lets Quint have his way, but Hedge is more than capable to moving in and taking his share. Hedge has taken his time, studied the situation and evolved a policy for getting his share of his favorite foods.

Recently, Quint has taken to kicking Hedge out of whatever bed or space that he has chosen for his afternoon nap. If Hedge wanted to nap in the bed under the window in the northwest corner of the living room, Quint would go over and kick him out of the bed and take that space for his nap. Hedge would then have to find some other less-preferable spot. Today, I noticed that Hedge has formulated a workable strategy for dealing with this most annoying problem. Instead of starting his afternoon nap in the spot that he would prefer, he lays down somewhere else. Quint, of course, kicks him out of that space and Hedge then happily moves into his preferred space and has his nap. Quint has no idea that he has just been outmaneuvered and is content to believe he has won. If it didn’t know better, I’d suspect that Hedge has been reading my copy of The Art of War.

Hedge has also observed that Quint is able to get our attention by vocalizing and then leading us to where he wants us to go. If Quint wants to go for a ride in his cat stroller, he will meow at us and then herd us over to the stroller. Hedge seeing this, decides that he, too, can “talk” us into something he wants us to do, that being petting him. Thus, he now squeaks at us whenever he wants to be petted and only stops when he is satisfied with the result.

It’s quite interesting to watch these two distinct cat personalities interact, adapt and cooperate in their efforts to get their needs met by the two distinct human personalities that they live with. It’s a daily dance with the four of us coming together in constantly changing patterns, leaping and whirling and pausing and touching. There is dialog and silence; there is laughter and contemplation; there is conflict and cooperation. What binds it all together is the love, respect and communication which we share. That’s what makes us a family.

Quint Goes for a Ride -- Stroller Cam Video

2011-06-09T21:12:00.000-07:00

Strolling With Quint

2011-05-20T13:52:00.000-07:00

Back in August of 2009, I wrote and thought about the possibility of taking Quint out for a walk. Because of the inherent dangers of city living, I keep my cats indoors at all times, so their interaction with the outside world is limited to looking out the window and sniffing our shoes when we come inside from one of our daily walks around the nearby Silver Lake Reservoir. Both of the cats seem to be content with that arrangement, though Quint will sometimes make a tentative attempt to go outside when Carol and I come in the front door. He doesn’t try to dash out into the yard, he just stands on the threshold, looks out, sniffs the air and thinks about taking a step outside. He backs up as we enter the house and doesn’t seem too disappointed that he has to stay inside, but I get the feeling that he’d like another day out with the neighbor’s two cats.

There are many, many dogs in Silver Lake and we see quite a few of them on our walks around the reservoir. There is a dog park at the south end where they can run free with their doggy friends; and there is a nice walking path, safely isolated form the traffic on the street, where their owners can take them for walks. I’ve only seen one cat in all the times we walk along the reservoir and I only saw that one in passing. The cat was in one of those expensive pet strollers. In the brief glimpse I had inside that stroller, the cat was laying down and looking out of the nylon screen at the front of an enclosed nylon tent-like structure which kept the cat from running away. I was a bit like one of those soft-sided pet carriers, but built into a stroller frame. It even had a canopy to keep the animal shaded. I decided right then that if those people could take their cat for a walk, there was no reason why I couldn’t try to do the same thing with Quint.

The first step on the road to pet mobility was figuring out what sort of vehicle to use. The pet stroller I had seen was interesting, but it had several inherent problems that eliminated it as an option for what I had in mind. All the pet strollers that I saw offered for sale were expensive (well over $200), had small wheels suitable only for smooth surfaces, and/or were made entirely of nylon cloth or some other fabric. In my view, they cost too much, couldn’t go where I wanted to go, and were too flimsy to be safe for the cat. If I’m going to push my cat around the neighborhood, I want him to be safe and comfortable. The cloth construction is too vulnerable to cat claws from the inside and dog teeth from the outside. What I needed was something that would keep the cat from running off in panic and also keep him safe from attacks from other animals. The only way to get what I needed was to design and build it myself.

I liked the stroller idea because the cat would be in front of me where I could keep an eye on him, but I didn’t have any idea how I would go about building a stroller that would fit within the parameters I had set for this vehicle: safe, comfortable, light, able to easily navigate bumpy ground and uneven sidewalks, good visibility for the cat, easy to push or pull, a design that is pleasing to the eye, and affordable. With those limits in mind I began looking for components that I could adapt to the purpose. I looked at some three-wheeled strollers but the ones I saw were quite expensive and larger than I wanted the vehicle to be. I finally decided that I would have to use a small wagon with pneumatic tires as the base and then attach a cage to the wagon bed or place a carrier in the wagon.

I explained to Carol what I was attempting to create and she expressed some enthusiasm for the project. I showed her pictures of the wagon I was thinking of using and she thought we ought to go look at one and see if it would work. After a bit of internet research, we set out on a wagon-shopping trip. The one I thought would work was supposed to be available at Target, but when we looked at one of the stores nearby, it was not in stock. We decided to try another Target store. There was no wagon in that one, either. I suggested Sears since there was one just up the street and so we went there next. Sears didn’t have the wagon I was looking for, either, but they did have a large selection of strollers in their baby department. One of them was just what I was looking for and was on sale for a price I was willing to pay. We bought the thing. It came in a big box and it was obvious that some assembly would be required. That was fine with me as that would allow me to remove, or not assemble, those parts that I wouldn’t need for my cat stroller.

When we got home, I opened the box and looked closely at what I had. The baby carrying part of the stroller was attached to the frame with screws. That made it very easy to remove. What was left was a nice sturdy little frame that appeared as if it would serve the purpose perfectly. Now I had to figure out how to create some sort of cage for the cat inside the frame of the stroller. There was a rectangular frame near the bottom of the stroller that had originally been intended to hang a basket which could hold all those things a baby night need while riding in the stroller. That frame looked to me to be just the right size to drop a cat carrier into with a minimum of alteration to the stroller frame. I wanted a carrier that had the maximum amount of visibility for the cat and that would also be large enough for him to move around inside of while we strolled. I borrowed a carrier from my neighbor that looked like it might work. That one was too big to fit into the frame, but otherwise had all the right features: visibility and safety. What I needed was a smaller version of that carrier. Off we went to the pet store to see what we could find.

We found a carrier just the right size and with a hinged wire mesh lid and a wire mesh front door which would provide the desired visibility, plus there were holes in the plastic sides that would let the cat see out and let air in. The outside dimensions of the carrier should allow it to fit into the frame, but we’d have to get it home to be sure. We bought it and, sure enough, it fit right into the space where it needed to go. Now I had to devise a way to support the carrier in that rectangular frame. I remembered that I still had some nylon strapping material leftover from another project that might work to make a cradle to hold the carrier inside the frame. I reused some of the screws I had removed when I took out the baby carrying material and created a strong and secure basket for the carrier to rest in. With an elastic strap over the top of the carrier and hooked onto the sides of the frame, I now had Version 1 of the cat stroller. Now all we had to do was get the cat accustomed to riding around in it.

I took the door off the front of the carrier and then raised the lid and tied it off so it wouldn’t close unexpectedly and scare Quint. We pushed the stroller into the living room and just let it sit there for a while. Both the cats found it interesting and examined it thoroughly. Carol put a small cat bed in the bottom of the carrier and I sprayed some catnip essence onto the little bed. We left it there in the living room for a couple of days. When Carol would play with Quint, she would play near and around the stroller at times and then move away. The plan was to gradually get the cats used to the presence of the strange machine and then introduce them to the idea that it might be fun to ride around in it. Carol worked very hard at making the cat stroller an object of interest to Quint. She showed him all the features of the carrier and explained to him what we were trying to do with him. He seemed to be quite interested in the plan. Eventually Carol got him to jump up into the carrier and then she would push him slowly around the house while he sat in the stroller with his head and shoulders above the carrier. As I watched them strolling through the house, I saw that closing the top of the carrier was going to greatly limit Quint’s ability to see what was going on around him. I needed to add a “Vista Dome” to the top of the carrier so that he could sit up and look around and, yet, still be protected and safe. I spent a couple of days thinking about just how to do that.

What I needed was a wire cage that would fit on top of the cat carrier to give Quint a little head room but still offer that safety and security we needed. I again went to the internet and began looking at small animal cages that were the right dimensions to create the space we needed. A hamster cage proved to be just the thing. It added enough height and could be hinged to the top of the carrier in such a way as to allow Quint to jump in, have the top put down, go for a ride, and then have the top lifted up to let him jump out when it was safe. We went back to the pet store where we found just the little cage we needed, and, lucky for us, it was on sale. When we returned home, I took the carrier down to my basement workshop. First I removed the existing hinged, wire mesh top from the carrier, then I devised a simple way to hinge the hamster cage to the top of the carrier. I took the assembly back up to the living room where the stroller frame was parked and set the carrier in place inside the frame. I had put the hinges on the wrong side of the cage, but it was an easy matter to go back to the shop and change the configuration so that the hamster cage would hinge open in the direction that would let Quint jump in and out of the carrier. Once that was done, it was Carol’s turn again.

Carol showed Quint the new addition to his stroller and explained to him how we hoped it would work for him. He seemed to understand. She got him to jump into the stroller with the top of the carrier open so he could jump out if he needed to and pushed him around the house. She did this twice-a-day for several days. She would have Quint hop up into the stroller where he happily rode while she pushed him around the living room, through the kitchen, into my office and back. One morning, she and Quint decided they were ready for their first trip out of the house. Quint hopped up into the carrier and Carol pushed him over to the front door. She slowly closed the little cage down over the carrier where Quint was sitting and fastened it in place with a bungee cord that was just the right length to hold the whole assembly in place. She maneuvered the stroller out the front door and down the single step to the sidewalk. She talked to Quint at each point where she thought he might panic. Together they made their way down the front walk to the street, turned right at the sidewalk along the street, down that sidewalk to our driveway, about halfway down the drive way and then all the way back along the same route to the front door. By that time, I had finished my morning shower, gotten dressed and nearly missed the entire performance. I saw them as they were coming back into the house. I made Carol take the stroller back outside so I could at least get a picture of Quint outside for the first time in his new vehicle. After that, we brought him back inside, opened the top of the carrier and let him jump out. Quint immediately went from room to room in the house making sure everything was just where he had left it. Once he had seen for himself that nothing in the house had changed, he walked over to the stroller and thoroughly scent-marked all the wheels by rubbing his chin glands all over each one. It was as if he was saying, “This is MY stroller!”

The next morning, Carol repeated the routine. This time I was there to help hold the door open and offer whatever encouragement I could. I also had my little video camera with me to document that second outdoor excursion. This time Carol and Quint went all the way to the bottom of the driveway before they turned around and rolled back to the house. Quint seemed to enjoy the experience; he kept his ears up and looked all around him as he traveled. When he got back in the house, he again checked to make sure that his indoor space was unchanged. Once reassured of that fact, he again scent-marked the stroller. That afternoon he was a bit more active around the house. In retrospect I think the two outdoor excursions in a row had made him a bit anxious and insecure, but at the time we just figured it was excitement with this new adventure.

On the third morning, Carol had a class she had to attend and so she assigned me the task of keeping up the routine. I wasn’t sure that this was a good idea, but I was willing to give it my best effort since it seemed like we were making progress acclimating Quint to this new activity. I’d never tried to get him to hop up into stroller before, so I didn’t really know how to go about it. I called him over to the stroller and tried to get him to jump in. Since I wasn’t Carol, who he was used to working with on this behavior, he was confused about what I was asking him to do. He would look at the carrier and even put his feet up on it, but he wouldn’t jump inside. I decided that I would gently help him and so I picked him up and kind of slid him into the stroller. He got the idea at that point and he tucked in his tail and sat down inside the carrier. I rolled him around a bit and then headed to the front door. When we got there, I put down the top and fastened it in place. I opened the front door, all-the-while explaining to Quint what we were doing, and maneuvered the stroller out to the sidewalk. So far, it seemed to going very well. One of the employees of the coffee shop down the street was getting out of her car as Quint and I approached the sidewalk. She noticed Quint in his vehicle. I told her that we were engaged in a grand experiment to see if it was possible to take one’s cat for a walk. She wished us luck and went on down the street to her job. Quint and I continued on the usual route down to the end of the driveway and then back up. I talked to Quint from time to time to reassure him that he was safe and to encourage him to relax and enjoy the experience. I got the feeling that he was a little overwhelmed by the whole thing but he didn’t seem to be too uncomfortable. As we got back up to the top of the driveway I pushed the stroller up past our house and into the neighbor’s driveway where we turned around to go back down. A man in jogging clothes walked by and said he thought what we were doing was pretty awesome. By this time, Quint was starting to look and act a little frantic. He appeared to be feeling trapped inside the carrier, which of course he was. I rolled him back into the house and let him jump out.

Three days in a row was just too much too soon for the little guy. For the next couple of days, he wouldn’t go anywhere near the stroller. We had moved forward just a little too quickly. We decided that we needed to step back the program to just riding around inside the house with the lid open for a while. Next we’ll try riding inside the house with the lid down. Then, once Quint is comfortable with that, we can try a very, very short trip outside again. We want him to feel that the carrier with its “vista dome” is there to keep him safe, not trap him, so we’ll go more slowly to build up his confidence. There’s plenty of time. I’m confident that the three of us will eventually succeed.

Hedge, of course, stands on the sidelines and watches everything we are doing with Quint. He is very curious. I suspect that he’ll be unable to resist the temptation once he sees how much fun Quint is having. We might have to build another stroller at some point so that Hedge can go along, too. Ha! A two cat-stroller family!! Wouldn’t that be a sight to see!

Quint: Under the Weather

2011-03-31T12:28:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend Quint came down with what appeared to be a head cold. His nose was running and it was obvious that he didn’t feel well. He wouldn’t play with Carol on Sunday morning, instead all he wanted to do was lie in the sun and sleep. Of course, he’s a cat, so lying in the sun and sleeping is pretty much what he likes to do anyway, but when he won’t play with Carol, we can surmise that there is a problem. The sneezing and the headshaking and licking his upper lip were also unusual activities for him, and then he wasn’t eating much either. All bad signs.

I looked through my cat books for any advice I could find on what to do about a cat with all these symptoms. The book said that if the condition persists, take him to the vet. Well, by Monday he seemed to have improved slightly in that he was eating again and slightly more active. We watched him carefully, and since he was making progress toward better health we decided not to take him to the vet that day.

On Tuesday, he was quite a bit better, and though he wasn’t jumping around and playing chase, he was much more alert and active, and he was eating well. Great, he’s improving we thought, perhaps he’ll get through this without a trip to the vet. On Wednesday, though, he had a bit of a relapse and was back to acting like he had on Monday, listless and kind of drippy about the nose. Okay, I thought, he’s not showing further signs of improvement, if he doesn’t’ perk up by the time I get back from returning the videos to the video store, then it’s off the vet with us.

He was the same when I got back, so I called and got an appointment for Wednesday afternoon. In the meantime, I tried to keep myself busy doing some writing, but I was rather distracted and worried about the little guy and so the writing was not going well. Plus, I felt as if I needed to go and check on him every few minutes to make sure he was okay. He wasn’t getting any worse, but then, he wasn’t getting any better either. The time passed slowly as I waited and worried.

When it was time to leave, Quint got into the carrier without too much resistance which is another indication of how miserable he was. He meowed at me on the way to the veterinary clinic, but he was quiet while we sat and waited for someone to become available to see us. Quint watched the other animals, mostly dogs, come and go to their appointments. I read old copies of Cat Fancy. It was a busy day at the clinic with an emergency or two, but after a half-hour wait, we finally were called to an examination room with the assurance that one of the veterinarians would be in to see us soon. One of the vet techs came in, weighed him and took his temperature. He was up to 11 pounds and his temperature was about a degree high, so I was now guessing that he did indeed have the feline equivalent of a head-cold or a mild case of the flu.

When the veterinarian came in to see us, I described the symptoms as I had observed them while the doctor was looking at Quint’s nose and inside his mouth, listening to his heart and lungs and generally poking and prodding him to try and determine what the problem was. She decided that it was the feline equivalent of a head cold, like a mild case of the flu and called it an Upper Respiratory Infection, which I guess it is, technically. She also indicated that he was a bit dehydrated and could use some fluid. I thought that was all probably about right. It certainly agreed with everything I had observed and seemed to explain all the symptoms. I started to feel a little better. Quint was likely feeling a little worse since he was sitting on a cold examination table being poked and prodded by a stranger. He didn’t know that he would soon be injected with subcutaneous fluid, stuffed back into his carrier and sent home. He just knew that his toes were cold from standing on the metal surface of the table. The vet took Quint into the back of the clinic for treatment.

I went to the reception area to pay my bill, collect the prescribed medications, and wait for Quint to be brought out. While I was there, I looked over the display of collars. They have the best collars at this clinic, better than at the pet store, better than as Target, better than any I have seen anywhere. I bought Quint and Hedge new collars. They were still wearing their Christmas collars, so it was time to upgrade to something more appropriate. Quint got a blue one decorated with little red fishes; Hedge got a white one decorated with little black paw prints. Meanwhile, Quint was brought out in his carrier and we got back in the car and drove home.

My job for the next week or so, is to administer some nasty-tasting liquid antibiotic medicine to Quint twice a day, in addition, of course, to the regular tooth-brushing and fur brushing routine. Quint dislikes the nasty-tasting medicine, loves the brushing and is improving. He appears to be feeling a bit better today. Carol and I feel a lot better today. We were both horrified at the prospect of losing Quint to some mysterious and untreatable disease. It’s much better to know what is wrong and to be able to do something to help him. We love the little guy and hope to have him around to play with and enjoy for many, many years.

Hedge: Petting Him Into Submission.

2011-03-08T18:18:00.000-08:00

Our ongoing campaign to socialize Hedge is beginning to show results. You’d have to know him well to see how much progress we’ve made, and those of us who do find it most encouraging. Where previously we were able to approach him and then pet him a bit before he ran away, now he hangs around and insists that we pet him until he decides that it’s adequate. Until recently he was unable to look at us while we were petting him and instead kept his eyes averted downward and his back to us. Now he looks up at us and squeaks his demand for attention. Progress is most certainly being made.

At the beginning of the campaign I started by picking him up from wherever he might be napping and taking him into the dining room to brush him and rub some toothpaste on his teeth with my finger. When he started running from that, we stepped back a bit and started petting him whenever we found him in an accessible place. Carol will sometimes pick him up and carry him around the house while she pets him. He seems to like that. In the morning he will often sit in the bedroom window and do a bit of bird watching, at least that’s what he wants us to think he’s doing. Really, he’s just waiting for me to pet him. I’ll walk up behind him and start to scritch him behind the ears. He’ll allow that for a short while, but then he turns around and hops over onto the bed and insists on a more thorough treatment. If I stop before he thinks he’s gotten enough attention, he’ll look over his shoulder at me and give a little squeak. When he has gotten all the affection that he feels he can handle at the moment, he’ll jump down and trot off somewhere to take his morning nap.

I noticed over the weekend that his fear of strangers has abated somewhat as well. On Saturday night we had some friends over for a dinner party. Hedge, as usual, disappeared as soon as the first guest arrived and remained hidden throughout the evening. In the past, he’d remain hidden until well into the next day, and when he did come out, he’d be quite skittish for a day or two. After our guests left on Saturday, Hedge came trotting out to eat a late dinner and to scout the floor for leftovers. By Sunday, he was back to his normal routine.

It’s gratifying to see him holding onto his progress at this point, rather than suffering the temporary setbacks he had previously experienced. Given the positive results of our current campaign, I’m thinking that Hedge’s future holds more and more of the same sort of treatment. It’s a matter of rewarding that behavior which we want to see more of and not rewarding his shy and timid side. Ultimately, we are hoping his sweet nature and his desire to become part of the group will win out over his fear. I suspect that it will.

Write About What You Know

2011-02-02T09:44:00.001-08:00

That’s what I’ve always been told. Write about what you know. Sometimes it’s a mistake to ask yourself what it is that you know. What if you come to the realization that you know nothing at all? Luckily, I found that I do know a little bit about a few things. At least there are subjects about which I know enough to write an interesting blog post or two, perhaps as many as three.

Before Christmas of last year, I got the idea that maybe I could write a story. I had an idea for one that involved a man and his cat, well, kitten in this case. I know a little about cats and I’ve learned a couple of things about people, plus I have some personal experience being a person. So, I set out writing a story. I had the whole thing visualized, more or less, I just needed to make the words describe what happened and convey the message I wanted to deliver. It wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought it would be, but I managed to get it written; and it turned out just about as I had intended.

I had done some of that sort of writing before, many years ago; and had almost gotten to the point where I might even have gotten myself published. Unfortunately for my writing career at that time, other events occurred and I had to set it aside for a while. Everything changes as time ticks along, that’s how we tell that it has passed. I changed, editors changed, doors closed, and other doors opened. The whole nature of how we get our information changed from words printed on paper to words stored on computer hard drives and flash memory and displayed on a screen. There are still stories to be told, though, and readers desiring to be entertained and enlightened, we have simply begun to change the methods we use to communicate with each other. In some ways, it is easier to find a reader now than it has ever been. It is also easier to get a story published, and because it’s easier there are many more stories available to readers than there have ever been. Anybody can write a story and with a little computer savvy can find a place on the internet to make it available to a reader. Of course, not everyone can write a good story, but that doesn’t keep anyone from publishing their story anyway. How do you sort out the good stories from the other sort? And how can you cause a good story be found by someone who will appreciate it? I suspect it’s a bit of a treasure hunt for the reader. I know it’s a dilemma for a writer. Since I’m your typical starving artist, I get my books from the second-hand store or the thrift store. They are wonderful places to find books, but it helps if you know what you’re looking for. Ofttimes I am looking for specific titles to fill in a series that I’ve been collecting, but sometimes I discover a new author and that really is the ultimate reward for this sort of treasure hunt.

When I made the decision to pursue writing as a career, forsaking all other endeavors, I had to start from scratch. I began with this blog, since, as I said, I know something about cats. Soon thereafter, I started a blog about my car building and repairing adventures; and then I needed to write about what was happening in my life on a more personal level and so I started a blog about me. I enjoy writing all the blog posts, but even though each blog has ads included on the page, they don’t generate any significant income, and therein lies one of the primary problems with this “career.” It just doesn’t pay well, which means that it mostly doesn’t pay at all. And then I recalled that, at one time, a few years ago, there was the possibility of selling some short stories. So, I decided to give that sort of writing another try. The result, so far, has been two stories, both about a man and his cat. Hey, don’t laugh, they tell you to “write about what you know.” After I finished the first story, which I called “The Christmas Kitten,” I realized that, because Christmas had nearly arrived, I’d either have to wait until next year to get it published in any sort of print medium, or I’d have to post it on the internet somewhere.

Getting your story published on the internet is easy. Getting readers to pay for your story is not so easy. The reasons are legion. First of all, very few people know who I am and, thus, are not looking for stories written by me. Second, of the people who know me, only a very few would expect to pay for a story written by me. Third, most of the places on the internet that offer to publish your story, don’t offer a way for you to get paid by readers. The list goes on, but you get the idea. So, now I have to learn marketing, public relations, distribution, in other words, the publishing business. Help!! All I wanted to do was tell a simple story and exchange whatever value it has with someone who agreed that it was worth reading. That’s when I discovered Amazon’s Kindle.

I was aware of the electronic book as a product and knew that there are a few versions of the thing made by a several different companies. As I browsed around the internet, it looked to me like the Amazon product was the most accessible for someone like me. I looked through what others authors were offering and decided that I’d give it a try. I set up my account and then I discovered that each book or story offered should have an image to go with it, like the image on the dust jacket of a book. I’ve dabbled in drawing from time to time, so I decided to try to draw something that might work as a illustration for my story. I sketched out my idea, scanned the drawing into my computer and the cover for “The Christmas Cat” was done. I uploaded the whole thing, words and a picture, to my Kindle account and then announced the publication everywhere that I could: Flickr, Facebook, my e-mail signature, and, finally, right here. I haven’t sold too many, but I have sold a few and I’ve got lots of other story ideas. I’ve already written a sequel to “The Christmas Cat” called “The Lost Kitten,” and that is also available on Kindle.

And there you have it. I’m writing and publishing and promoting stories about a man and his cat. It’s something I know about, thanks to Quint and Hedge and all their feline processors. If you get a chance, and have an interest, you can find the stories at Amazon’s Kindle site. Just search for the titles and you’ll find them. There will be more stories to come, and more blog posts, too, here and on the other blogs. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

Write About What You Know

2011-02-02T09:44:00.000-08:00

Hedge Gets Brushed

2011-01-25T12:23:00.000-08:00

How I Brush Quint's Teeth

2011-01-06T20:38:00.000-08:00

Decorating the Ceiling

2010-12-11T08:02:00.000-08:00

The main thing about cats is that they are insatiably curious. Anything new must be sniffed, tasted and poked to find out of what use it might be. Usefulness for a cat falls into three categories: sleeping, eating and playing. Thus, any new object must be immediately placed into one or more of the categories of usefulness. For example, I would fall into all three categories since I provide warmth when sleeping with or on, I supply food upon demand, and, not only am I the provider of toys, but often the animator of them as well, in that I toss them about for the kitties to chase. This makes me very useful to Quint and Hedge.

Newness for cats can be either a newly acquired object that has been brought home from the store, an item that has never previously been part of the household, or it can be a toy whose existence has been conveniently forgotten and has now been rediscovered. In the case of the former, the categorization process must be engaged immediately. For the latter, the category has already been established, but newfound delight can be experienced as a result of the rediscovery process.

All of the previous information is quite pertinent to the upcoming season, that being Christmas. Over the years that we’ve been together, Carol and I have acquired a great many Christmas decorations, including a lovely artificial tree and lots and lots of decorations, some handmade, some purchased and a few that were received as gifts. Some of these decorations are quite unique and delicate. At Christmas time we enjoy unpacking all these things and using them to create a festive atmosphere in the house. Two years ago, when we first adopted Quint, we decided not the put up the tree so that he wouldn’t get himself into trouble by behaving in a way that is natural for kittens. The year after that, Hedge became part of our household, and so we applied the same logic and chose to forego the tree again. This year, we decided, once again, to take the pro-active, preventive route and left the tree in its box. At this point, we’ll probably continue this strategy indefinitely, more because we like our solution to the problem then for any mistrust of our now fully-grown cats.

Two years ago, I had this brilliant idea. Since our house has quite a high ceiling which is spanned by lovely wooden beams, I thought it might be interesting to decorate that ceiling, putting all the delicate decorations out of reach of the curious kitties, but still allowing us to enjoy them by simply looking up. It has worked out wonderfully. We like our decorated ceiling and the cats don’t get in too much trouble over the holidays. It’s also a challenge to find new and interesting ways to create that festive atmosphere, and still maintain our kitty-safe environment. Part of our responsibility in living with cats is to let them be themselves as much as possible and, yet, still maintain a shared environment that works for all of us. Decorating the ceiling has proved to be a nearly perfect solution to what could have been quite a problem. The only drawback in the scheme is that I have to be very careful not to fall off the ladder while I’m putting up the decorations. So, far, I’ve succeeded.

The Undercover Cat

2010-11-26T18:13:00.000-08:00

Despite having a very nice fur coat, cats are heat-seeking little creatures. Quint is certainly no exception, so when he trots into our bedroom at around 6:00 a.m. each morning to fulfill his duty as Carol’s alarm clock, he’ll often end up crawling under the sheets and blankets of our bed to snuggle with us for a while before someone gets up to feed him. Once he settles into a warm spot somewhere near the small of our backs, he decides that breakfast can wait for thirty minutes or so and that an extra morning nap is the perfect thing at the moment.

After that thirty minutes of warmth and closeness, the backup alarm trots in. Hedge is the backup alarm clock. Once he realizes that Quint his again succumbed to the lure of the safe, warm people-nest, he jingles into our room and warbles a query to Quint who responds with an answering chirp and a lashing of his tail. Quint’s tail lashing is soon followed by Hedge’s leaping up onto the bed. This causes Quint to crawl out from under the covers and begin the morning game of Chase. Chase continues in and out of our bedroom until someone gets up and serves breakfast.

Throughout all this, Quint still carries out the primary alarm functions, the tail lashing, the dashing across the bed, the trampling of Carol and I, and the jumping onto the floor with a loud thump. Hedge doesn’t thump, or trample, due to the fact that he is so light footed that if it weren’t for the bell on his collar we would rarely know where he is. The only way we know that Hedge is on our bed is when he lies down and leans against us. When he jumps down, he makes almost no sound. But for the jingle of the bell on his collar and the occasional chirrup, you would never know he was around. You can be putting cat food into dishes in the kitchen and, seemingly from nowhere, suddenly there is a black cat rubbing against your ankles. Hedge, if he were allowed to go outside, would be the perfect hunter; a fast, silent and deadly killer whose prey would never become aware of him until his needle sharp claws had found their mark. He has a bit of the Cheshire in him, too, in that he appears and disappears at will. He sits within a shadow, completely concealed and perfectly camouflaged, until you see a pair of glowing yellow eyes peering at you out of the darkness.

This morning’s wake-up call was particularly memorable. After a lovely Thanksgiving get-together with friends and family yesterday afternoon and evening, Carol and I, after we had returned home, had stayed up late and watched a movie. This morning was a perfect morning for sleeping late and so we did. Quint and Hedge are understanding about this sort of thing, but only to a point. Breakfast must be attended to and indulgence of human sloth can only go so far. Quint had crawled into bed with us and fallen fast asleep, willing to be as slothful as his human companions. Hedge, though, was hungry and leaped up onto the bed to let everyone know that it was past time for breakfast. Quint began the usual tail lashing and Hedge commenced an attack on Quint’s tail as it writhed about under the blankets. I chuckled and surrendered. Hedge was right, it was time to get up and start a new day.

Unlocking the Kitty Code

2010-10-21T12:11:00.000-07:00

I received a book recommendation a short time ago from, Rachel, an on-line friend and reader of this blog. She said that she was surprised that I hadn’t read “The Silent Miaow” by Paul Gallico. Not only hadn’t I read it, I’d never even heard of it. I love a good internet research project, so I began my search for information about this book. I quickly found it on Amazon.com and, after reading a summary, knew I had to have it. There are two versions of this book available; the original, which features black and white photography by Suzanne Szasz and her husband; and a more recent version with color photographs. I chose the original version and when it arrived I knew I had made the right choice.

“The Silent Miaow” is an instruction manual for cats written from a cat’s point of view. The author claims to have translated it from a manuscript written by a cat who he suspects is most likely Cica, the cat who owns Suzanne Szasz and her husband. After reading the book, I suspect that it was indeed authored by a cat. It has the ring of authority and authenticity that only one who is experienced in the field can lend to this sort of manual. Those of us who live with cats should be grateful that this information has been made available; those who haven’t read it, ought to waste no time in finding a copy of this book and absorbing this vital information.

Not only is “The Silent Miaow” as wonderful source of insight into how cats think, it is also a lovely collection of candid photos of the everyday life of a cat. So lovely, in fact, that, upon finishing the book, I immediately set my camera to “monochrome” and have been following Hedge and Quint around for the last couple of days snapping endless shots of them as they perform their daily routines. I’m finding that the black and white photos show more of the form and feeling of the cats without the distractions that come with all the pretty colors. It is also proving to be a superior way of capturing images of Hedge. It seems that the black and white setting works better for photos of a black cat.

Thanks to Rachel for the recommendation and thanks to Mr. Gallico and Ms. Szasz for the book. I’ve not only gained useful knowledge of my cats, but I’ve gotten a bit of artistic inspiration as well. This may well be the best $4.00 I’ve spent in a very, very long time.

Hedge and I

2010-10-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

Hedge is beginning to be my cat. In the same way that Quint is Carol’s cat, Hedge is mine. Certainly, both cats are fond of Carol and I, but when Carol is inside the house, Quint is with her. If she’s at her desk, he’s lying on the towel next to her keyboard, the towel having been placed there for just that purpose. If she’s in the dining room, he’s in the cat tree right above her head. If she’s on the couch watching TV, he’s there, too, within reach of her hand so as to be available for any petting that might be forthcoming. If she’s in the kitchen, he’s there at her feet, often bringing with him a toy mouse for her to throw and for him to catch. Quint loves Carol. At bedtime, Carol tells Quint the hour at which she desires to be awakened. The next morning, Quint promptly appears at just that hour and sees that she gets up on time.
I’m not saying that Quint doesn’t like me, too. It’s just that he really, really loves Carol. Quint and I have a different relationship, more businesslike. I’m in charge of brushing his teeth each day after dinner and he will come and remind me of that if I get busy or forgetful. I’m also in charge of refilling his food dish if the kibble supply should run low, and he reminds me of that as well. If Carol is not at home, or busy around the house, Quint will come and sit next to me on the couch if I’m watching a movie, but he prefers to be with Carol. I don’t blame him. She’s a much more pleasant person to be around than I.
Hedge, though still very much the skittish and shy type, will, if he’s in one of his rare confident moods, seek me out and insist that I pet him. He does this by coming into whatever room I’m in, squeaking at me and then walking deliberately out the door with a glance over his shoulder to see if I’m following. If I’m not, he’ll squeak again and insist that I come with him. I then must follow him until he’s in a space that he feels is the proper one to receive his petting. With Hedge, you can’t just get down on your hands and knees and pet him. No, you are only allowed to pet him if you remain standing and bend over at the waist to pet him, otherwise, he’ll suspect that you are going to try to pick him up and he’ll run away. He dislikes being held, but he loves being petted. He doesn’t seek out Carol for this since she loves to pick him up, instead he comes to me. My inclination, like Carol’s, is to pick him up and hold him while I pet him, but I know he doesn’t like being held, so I do things his way. By accommodating his needs, I’m hoping to help him get over his shyness. We’ll just have to wait and see if my strategy will be effective. It may take a very long time.
I like Hedge, and I think that he likes me. It used to be that the only individual in the house that Hedge really liked was Quint. No matter what Quint was doing or in which location he happened to be, Hedge wanted to be right there with him. Lately, though, Hedge has become a bit more independent of Quint and doesn’t have so much of a need to be with him constantly. They’ll often be found, now, napping in separate rooms. If I have time for an afternoon nap, Hedge will sometimes come and join me. Quint will come in the room to see what’s going on, but he usually goes off and takes his afternoon nap somewhere else. I understand Hedge. He doesn’t like to be restrained in any way, instead he wants to approach you and deal with you on his own terms. If he lies down with me for a nap, I don’t try to hold onto him or even touch him very much, a couple of scritches on the head are enough. For Hedge, even a slight desire for human companionship is progress in my eyes. If I make it safe for him to want to be with his people, he’ll eventually get better at being part of the family. I like him just the way he is and I’ll take whatever affection he’s willing to offer. If he feels safe and wants to offer more, I’ll take that, too, but I’m perfectly content to just let him be. He’s doing the best that he can and, considering his origins, that’s not too bad.

The Spirit of Cat

2010-09-10T14:45:00.000-07:00

I have acquired a whole stack of books on cats, some came as gifts, some came from the used book store, and some I bought new. I have books on Cat Philosophy, Cat Behavior, Cat Psychology, Cat Humor, Choosing a Cat, and Caring for Cats. Some of them are written by veterinarians, the scientists of the cat world. My favorites are written by people who actually own and care for cats, sometimes those people are also veterinarians, sometimes not.

If you are trying to figure out exactly where to cut your cat's claws, go with the veterinary science approach to cats. They'll tell you where to cut so that you don't get into the living tissue inside the claw. For medical advice and treatment of physical problems, again, go with the veterinarian. That's what they do. They are the cat mechanics. They understand how the cat's body works and can help you fix it when it's broken. They can drain an abscess, stitch up a wound, pull a tooth, remove a growth and prescribe medications. I don't go to the scientists, though, for information on why my cat follows my wife around, or how to play with my cat, or how to communicate with my cat. With rare exceptions, that's not what the scientists are good at. Scientists think everything is a machine and that everything can be explained by mechanics and genetics.

If you are looking for all-around good advice about choosing, caring for, feeding and understanding cats, I recommend looking to the cat lovers for the best information. Cat lovers know that to understand cats you must look beyond the mechanics, beyond the bodily functions and instincts, beyond the genetics. You must look to the unique spirit that is the essence of each individual cat. There are no two the same. Just as no two souls are the same, no two cats are the same. Ask a scientist why your cat behaves the way she does and you'll get some answer that involves instinct and hard-wired genetic behavior. Ask a cat lover and the answer will be, "Because that's what the cat decided to do, of course."

You can't account for a cats behavior by only looking to genetics and instinct. Some of the things a cats does are quite obviously motivated by conscious decisions made by your cat after he has evaluated all the available data. Cats are usually quite rational about what they choose to do or, even, what they refuse to do. Sure, there are some pretty darn neurotic cats around, but most of them are not. A lot like us people, each cat has had life experiences that color its behavior. Animals that have been abused are often cowed, submissive and prone to hiding under the bed. Animals that have been raised in a safe, loving environment are normally sociable, friendly and fearless. Animals that grow up without any human contact tend to be aggressive and wary. Change the environment and you can change a cat's behavior. Take a wild, street cat and put him in a safe, loving home and you'll very likely end up with quite a good companion. The same goes for abused animals. If you show them that not all humans are trying to hurt them, they'll eventually figure thing out. It might take some time, but it most certainly can be done.

There's a reason that cats, like ourselves, respond to kind and loving treatment. It is because cats, like ourselves, are not simply a body with a brain. They, and we, are spiritual beings that just happen to inhabit these bodies. This is why, when we live in a safe, comfortable environment surrounded by people who care for us, we thrive, and why, when the opposite conditions prevail, we wither and diminish. We feel better when we are around people who love us because it lifts our spirit. People who love and care for cats, or any animal, know this. Wise veterinarians and human physicians know this as well. Beware of those who don't acknowledge, respect and nurture the spiritual nature in humans and animals. Sure, take care of the body. Keep it healthy, well fed and well rested, but also make sure that you provide nourishment for the spirit. Providing a loving, happy, playful and interesting environment is a more essential factor in maintaining good health than anything else you can do for yourself or for your cat. Keep this in mind when you are reading books about cats and be sure to take into account the spirit that is your cat and not just the cute, furry little body that the spirit lives in.

In the Company of Cats

2010-08-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

In the company of cats there is warmth -- physical and emotional warmth. There is head-butting, ankle-stropping, lap-sitting, affection-demanding and attention-attracting warmth. Sometimes it arrives exactly when you expect it and sometimes it comes as a surprise visit in a quiet moment. You'll hear the jingle of a tiny bell and then feel a presence at your feet. You reach down and give a little scritch behind the ears and you are rewarded with a happy warble and the twitch of a tail. You take comfort in the warmth of your affectionate companion because you know that you have to earn a cat's love and trust. You can never take a cat's affection for granted, but like many things on this planet, you reap what you sow. Love, care and affection invested in your cat will pay dividends in excess of anything you might imagine.

In the company of cats there is laughter. Whoever said that cats don't like to be laughed at was correct. What you weren't told was that to laugh with a cat is perfectly acceptable. Cats know when they are being funny and they appreciate a responsive audience. Cats can provide countless hours of wholesome family entertainment, and they work for kibbles. All you have to do is encourage the entertainer within your cat and you can disconnect your TV. It is sage advice, though, to never laugh at your cat. When a cat occasionally misses a jump, or falls off a perch, or otherwise makes a mistake, it is best to just pretend to ignore it. (However, do note such behavior and, should such accidents become more frequent, get your cat a check-up, it could be the sign of a health problem.)

In the company of cats there is friendship. When your cat joins you wherever you go in the house, either he is hungry or he likes being with you. If it's not meal-time and your cat still wants to be near you, you can be sure that it's because he likes you, otherwise he'd be elsewhere. Cats are the kind of friends that you don't have to constantly talk to when you are together. Just being in the same space is enough. There's no need for constant physical contract or emotional reassurance, it's a simple matter of being happy in be in each other's space.

I'm grateful to be in the company of cats. I don't like cats more than I like people, I like cats differently. That's really all they ask from us, that we like them for who they are. Sure, cats appreciate regular meals, just like the rest of us, but mostly they want someone to like them, just like the rest of us. What makes the relationship with cats so satisfying is that a cat will almost always return your affection in kind and in abundance, whereas people sometimes will not.

Feline Protocols

2010-08-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

It appears to me that there must be a set of cat protocols for dealing with nearly every situation that might arise. How else can I explain what happened around my house while Ebony was living here, and what happened after he passed on?

When Ebony first arrived from his most recent home where he had lived with a menagerie of other cats and dogs, he was old, thin and grouchy. During the time that he was with us, none of that changed very much. As the time went by, he seemed a bit less grouchy, but, like anyone who is not feeling well, he didn't particularly welcome large amounts a frivolity. Understandable, of course, however, why should that effect the way in which Quint and Hedge behaved when they were not interacting with Ebony?

The behavior change wasn't drastic, Hedge and Quint would still play chase with each other and tended to nap in many of the same spots as they had before, but there were some things that they stopped doing and areas that they would come to avoid. Initially, it may have had some relation to the huge quantities of fleas that Ebony was depositing wherever he went. After we got the fleas under control, though, Quint and Hedge still avoided or only briefly visited some areas where, previously, they had been quite comfortable. They stopped climbing in the cat tree, napping on the bed, and they avoided some the window perches that Ebony favored.

Now that Ebony has left us, the boys have resumed all of their briefly suspended behavior and we have risen back up to the playful and affectionate group that we had been before.

It seems that once Hedge and Quint figured out what was going on with Ebony, i.e. that he didn't feel well and was in a rapid decline, they adopted a set of "sick-room" protocols that they then applied while Ebony was living with us. Since he was unable and unwilling to engage in play activities, and not the least interested in becoming part of the feline "herd," Quint and Hedge left him alone for the most part. They let Ebony have those areas of the house where he felt most comfortable and accommodated themselves to the needs of their ailing housemate. I believe it's analogous to our own behavior when we find ourselves in the presence of the injured, sick and dying. We don't have a party or do much laughing and joking when we visit someone that isn't feeling well. It just doesn't seem appropriate, most of the time. I know that it is difficult to feel very much joy, or maintain a sense of humor, when your attention is on enduring whatever your body is trying to inflict upon you. Us humans get that and adjust our behavior accordingly. Cats get it, too.

I appreciate the efforts Quint and Hedge contributed to helping make Ebony's last few months as pleasant as possible. It was a very kind and generous thing for them to do. Today, though, it made me very happy to see them getting back to their happy-go-lucky lives. I like it when we can all share a happy moment. I missed that, and I'm glad to see those moments have returned to our family.

The Hand-Me-Down Cat Moves On

2010-08-13T18:11:00.000-07:00

I knew yesterday what I would likely have to face today. That didn't make today any easier. It was out of my hands and in God's, but I still had to make the decision and say the words. I told him before we left this afternoon that it was time for him to leave his failing body behind, that it was time for him to move on and seek a new life in a new healthy body. He seemed to understand. I hope he did.

Ebony stopped being able to eat yesterday. What he did eat or drink came right back up tinted red. We discovered today that he had a giant growth inside his abdomen that hadn't been there just a couple of weeks ago. That, combined with his hyperthyroidism had reduced his quality of life to an intolerable minimum. I couldn't bear to have him end his life in pain and starving, so I asked the veterinarian to put him to sleep. I would have wanted him to do the same for me. Just so you know, though, that doesn't make it any easier a decision.

It's not like he and I didn't try to get him feeling better, though. We tried pills to get his thyroid problem under control, but they only made it worse. They we tried some transdermal medication applied to the inside of his ear. He got his last dose of that yesterday evening. It wasn't helping. Still, I medicated him and brushed him and put antibiotic gel on his gums and cleaned up after him. It was difficult, trying to help him and not seeing any results, but I didn't really mind. He seemed a bit more comfortable and I think he was happy to be getting all that attention, even if it wasn't helping him very much.

I think he was ready to move on. He seemed to be okay with my explanation of what to expect this afternoon. I know it was the right decision, but that doesn't really make it any easier. I miss the little guy. He was grouchy and whiny and petulant and he didn't really like to be touched unless he was in your lap, but he made himself at home here as best he could after a lifetime of being moved from place to place, and if you held him in your lap and brushed his thin little body gently, he would purr and purr. He was a good companion to Carol's mother and father for many years, and that is his legacy. I am grateful that we were able to make his last few months as good for him as possible. He got as much love and care as he could handle, and he was blessed with interesting, good-natured companions. We should all be so fortunate.

So, goodbye, Ebony. You had a good long life surrounded by people who loved and cared for you. You got to live in lots of interesting places and meet lots of wonderful people. Be at peace now. Take a moment to rest, and then move on to your next life with renewed hope and a healthy body. Farewell, Ebony. You will be missed.

Quiet

2010-08-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

It's quiet in the house. Afternoon is naptime for the cats, Carol is at her job in Burbank, and the neighbors aren't engaged in any major construction or gardening projects for the moment. I like the quiet. There are no distractions now and no demands on me other than those I place on myself.

I think the thyroid medication is helping Ebony. He's been calmer these last couple of days. It's good to see him feeling a bit better. He seemed so desperate when he first arrived here. Desperate for affection, for companionship, for nutrition, for relief from his ailments. He's getting what he needs now and that is beginning to show in his behavior. He's basically a good kitty, he just hadn't been getting the kind of treatment that would let his better side show. We're starting to see that now, his kinder, more playful side.

Yes, it's quiet, but I can feel the life all around me. We all feel more secure when we're together. We all know that there's someone nearby who loves us and will care for us. Knowing that adds a calmness to the house. And though we may appear to be oblivious to what's going on around us, rest assured that we're all alert and ready to spring into action at the least possible sign of threat, each of us in our own way. Quint would immediately investigate, Hedge would find a safe, dark corner to wait out the crisis, Ebony would stand his ground, and I would stand ready to defend us from whatever might befall. We not only take comfort in each other's presence, we gain strength from each other. If Carol were here, she would be on the front line, too. It's that kind of family.

Right now it's quiet, though, and there is no need for us to stir from our repose. Just know that we can and will man the battlements should the need arise. Beware the quiet man and his cats.

Cat People

2010-08-03T17:52:00.000-07:00

Carol and I spent the weekend in Denver attending her high school class reunion. I won't tell you which year her class graduated, just assume that it was a while ago. We had a lovely time talking to some old friends and getting re-acquainted with some of her classmates whom she hadn't seen for a great many years. We also spent some time with my family, most of whom live somewhere relatively near Denver. For me, the best part of traveling is getting back home where my bed, my desk, my kitchen, my cars and my cats wait for me.

We have the perfect cat-care arrangement with our friend, Stephanie, who lives in the house at the back of the property. She takes care of our three while we're gone and we do the same for her two when she goes away. As I said, it's the perfect arrangement. We know that our kitties will be well cared for while we're away so we can relax and enjoy our trip.

On Friday night, the first reunion event was a casual mixer at the Lakewood Elks Club. At one point during the evening, I was showing off some of the cat pictures I had brought along to one of Carol's classmates and explaining how we had ended up with Ebony, our hand-me-down cat. As I related how he was adapting to life with the much younger Quint and Hedge, I heard from over my shoulder, "We couldn't help overhearing your story. We're cat people and we are just about to introduce a five-year-old cat to our already cat-full home and were wondering if you had any advice on how to go about it?" Of course, I'm always ready to talk about my cats to whomever will listen and I have more than once successfully introduced new cats into my own cat family, so I explained to them my successful method. I also recommended that they read Warren Eckstein's book, "How to Get Your Cat to do What You Want," which has some great advice on the subject. I told them that what I have done and what Eckstein recommends is to put the new cat into a room where you can close the door between the new guy and the cats who already live in the house. Let them sniff each other under the door for a while, maybe a month or so, and then gradually let them come into contact with each other in your presence so you can break up any major fights should such a thing occur. Or, I told them, you can do it the way I just did with Ebony and just throw them all together and hope for the best. The only reason throwing them all together worked this time is because Quint and Hedge are so good-natured. They are perfectly willing to share their house with another cat, if that's what we ask of them. If you don't have the Quintessential Cat and his pal, Hedge, at your house, you might be well advised to go with the more gradual method.

What people would ask me what I did for a living, I told them I was a writer. Oh, they would ask, and what do you write about? Well, mostly I write about my cat, I would say. Oh, really? Most people just laugh and start to move away at that point, and then I say, "And my cars."

"Oh, and what kind of cars do you have?"

"Old Volkswagens."

"I had a VW Beetle when I was in college . . . . ."

Everybody had a VW Beetle, or knew someone who had one. I'm one of the few people who still has a few, well, three, to be exact. Since, I didn't go to high school with any of the people I met, we could talk about cats and old Volkswagens.

The same subjects got me through the afternoon with my family. Between those and stories about my new acting career, I have enough material to get me through nearly any social event. If I have an attentive audience I can tell the story of the Cat Named Room 8, or Ebony's latest trip the vet, or how I built my dune buggy, or how Quint and Hedge came into our lives. I'm discovering that I have a whole lifetime of stories I can tell, some are rather interesting, like the time I got lost on the canoe trip, or how I lost my left eye. I might have to start another blog just so I have a place to tell those stories.

Quint and Ebony were happy to see us when we came through the front door after our brief trip to the Mile High City. Hedge was a little nervous, but he soon realized that it was us and not some strangers moving in and he's back to normal now. Stephanie continued with Ebony's new trans-dermal medication while we were gone and I see a bit of improvement in Ebony. He seems less distracted, less frantic, and a bit more aware of his environment. I didn't ask her to apply the anti-biotic gel to his gums, you really ought to know what you're doing before you put your finger into a cat's mouth. It's easy to get yourself pinched by accident. I've resumed the treatments since we returned and I think he's liking the gel. I imagine it soothes his raging gums a bit and that's got to be a relief.

I'm glad to be back home with the boys. We'll be cat-sitting for Stephanie for a few days this week, so I'll be spending time with Tiki and Ginger in the evenings, as well as with my boys. Looking back over the weekend, I survived the airplane flight, got to talk about my cats and my cars, got to see my family and some old friends, and got to spend some time with Carol, so, all-in-all, a successful trip with only good things to report. That's just the way I like it.

The Hand-Me-Down Cat Makes Another Visit to the Vet

2010-07-29T09:55:00.000-07:00

Ebony is slowly finding his place at our house. For an old, deaf cat with a thyroid problem, he's doing amazingly well. Our first trip to the vet was too much, too soon for the old guy, though. Plus the meds we got only made his condition worse, so I just let him settle in for a few weeks. Nowadays, he's keeping what he eats in his stomach, most of the time. He was pretty stressed out there at the beginning, and that, combined with the hyper-thyroid thing and the new meds was just too much for him. He's better now.

He's joined the 6:00 a.m. kitty alarm-clock squad, adding his very loud vocalizations to Quint's and Hedge's hopping up on the bed and jumping up and down on Carol until she wakes up to feed them. Carol is very good natured about the whole thing, lucky for them.

Once I could see that Ebony was feeling at home, and holding his own, I made another appointment with the vet. I wanted to see if we could get him on some medication that would help handle his thyroid and not make him throw up all his food. As I remarked to the vet, "It really doesn't make sense to me to have him starve to death just to keep him on the thyroid medications." So, now we're trying some trans-dermal stuff which I smear on the inside of his ears. He's supposed to absorb the medication through his skin. I hope it works. We're on the second day and all seems to be well at this point. I'll take him back in about three weeks and see if it's helping.

I also wanted the vet to look at his teeth. They looked bad to me, but she seemed to think that they were in fairly good shape for his age. I wanted to see if we could get them cleaned, but old cats with thyroid problems often don't survive being knocked out for dental work, so that isn't an option for him. He's got some gum disease problems, too, but I've started him on some topical anti-biotic gel, the same stuff I use for Quint's gums. Ebony doesn't seem to mind, so I'll be working on getting his gum disease under control as well. He's been really good about letting me put stuff in his mouth and he's getting used to me smearing stuff in his ears. I spend a bit of time brushing him when I medicate him, so he's starting to see the whole process as a good thing. I don't want the other cats to get jealous of all this attention that Ebony is getting, so we're working on spending equal time with all of them.

Still no major cat fights, though Ebony is still a bit grouchy. Perhaps he'll lighten up as we get his thyroid and his gums feeling better. I'm very glad that Quint and Hedge are both so good natured and accepting of old Ebony. I hope Ebony will come to appreciate what a great environment this is, and what great friends he has in our family. Time will tell. It always does.

My House is a Cat Playground

2010-07-20T15:31:00.000-07:00

It's true. Anyone who visits our home will observe two obvious things. One, we own a lot of books. Two, our cats dominate our lives. We have a friend with whom we trade cat-sitting duties. We take care of her two guys when she's gone and she does the same for our three guys. I was talking to her the other day and she remarked that our house was quite the complete cat playground.

We didn't really plan to decorate our house around the entertainment needs of our cats, but it seems to have evolved into that sort of environment. There's a great picture window in the living room and when we first moved in, I built a foot wide, carpeted bench that runs the entire length of the window, just at the height of the sill. It's a perfect place for a cat to nap in a sunbeam and still safely keep track of what's going on outside. That bench proved so popular that we have added window-ledge shelves wherever we can -- in the dining room, in our bedroom and in my office. We have even gone so far as to hem the curtains in the living room a foot short of the bottom of the window so the cats have an unobstructed view out.

There also seem to be cat toys in every room except the bathroom. In the kitchen there are a number of small toy mice that we keep on a little shelf just above kitty eye level. When it's play time, Quint will drag down whichever of the mice he wants to play with and we'll throw that one for him to chase. The living room contains the biggest collection of toys, some in a basket on the floor and many in the space under the glass top of our cocktail table. There are cat sized openings around the bottom of the table so the boys can reach in a grab a toy whenever they need one. The toys from the living room eventually get scattered around the rest of the house, so we gather them up from time-to-time and return them to the toy box.

We also have "napping towels" scattered all over the house. Whichever spot in the house, except for the dining room table and the kitchen counters, that a cat picks for a napping spot gets a towel placed upon it. This makes for a softer little bed and helps to keep the unattached cat hair under control. We've also covered most of the furniture with towels and blankets for the same reasons. On laundry day, we just gather up all the towels and blankets and run them through the washing machine and dryer. When we have company, we uncover the furniture and our guests don't get completely coated in cat fur when they sit down. Of course, there's always some cat hair on every exposed surface, but the towel and blanket method does help to keep it to a minimum.

And then there are the scratching posts and cardboard scratching blocks which we also have in nearly every room. We have one of each in the living room and bedroom. In the kitchen we have this nifty little cardboard scratcher shaped like a fish that I found at Cost Plus Imports. There's no room in the bathroom for any cat accessories, and, for some reason, none of the cats seems to find my office furniture appealing to the claws, so those two rooms don't have scratchers in them.

For quite some time, we'd been debating the merits of a cat climbing tree. Part of the reason for the delay was figuring out where the heck we would put one. When we finally decided to go ahead and get one, we found a three level, carpeted climbing tree that more-or-less fits in our dining room, right next to a window. For the first couple of weeks, the tree was the napping, climbing, and playing location of choice. Hedge would occupy the topmost shelf, with Quint one tier down. Eventually, though, the novelty wore off and they have gone back to napping in the more usual spots. The novelty has also gone from the kitty jungle gym, though it still resides in the front entryway. It was fun for a while, back when Quint was an only cat. Now it seems that he has better things to do.

The best entertainment for the cats right now is each other. At least for Hedge and Quint that is the case. Ebony is still trying to figure out his place in the family. Hedge and Quint, though, spend quite a lot of their awake time chasing each other and playing together. Hedge is very often the instigator of the games and will seek out Quint and poke at him until he agrees to play for awhile. It is great fun to watch them interact as they change roles back and forth from aggressor to victim, all it good fun, of course. They never growl or hiss as each other, no matter how serious it looks, and no one every seems to get injured.

I do seek them out at various times throughout the day to pet them and tell them what good boys they are. They know that I mean it and I want them to know that it makes me happy to see them getting along so well. One thing is missing, I think. I'm going to get them one of the those play balls inside of which you can put cat treats that will then fall out when the ball is played with. I believe that would be a fun thing to have.

Conversations with Cats

2010-07-14T16:14:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but I talk to my cats, and I'm pretty sure that they understand a lot more than most folks think they do. I know for a fact that they understand "Get off the table" very well indeed, since when I say it, they immediately jump down. I'm also sure that they understand "Stay off the table" and simply choose to ignore it. Cats practice what I call Selective Listening. I think they understand a great deal of what is going on in the house, but are very selective about what they acknowledge.

Willful, that's what cats are. And Stubborn. And Contrary, sometimes. But, of course, their defining characteristic is their legendary Curiosity. They like to know what's going on, even if it's none of their business -- especially if it's none of their business. If Carol is wrapping a present for someone, the cats are right there overseeing the whole process. If I'm slicing vegetables for soup, the cats have to stop by from time to time to see how I'm doing. That must be the reason, since they certainly don't like vegetables, except for Cat Grass.

As an example of Contrary, my cats will drink water out of anything except their own water dish. Carol always keeps a plastic pitcher of water on the kitchen counter to use for watering houseplants. The cats love to drink from that pitcher. One time we bought a little fishbowl and put some of those blown-glass fish in it as a decoration for the cocktail table in the living room. That bowl soon became their favorite place to drink. So much so that ultimately we removed the little glass fish and now just keep it, there on the cocktail table, filled with fresh clean water for their convenience.

The question I most often ask the cats is: "What?" One of them will walk up to me, look up and make a little sound. "What?" I ask. The default answer to nearly every question I ask them is, "Feed me." For Quint, though, sometimes the answer is, "Play with me." For Hedge, the answer is often, "Hey, there's a cat outside the in the yard. Come over and see." Ebony, who is deaf, mostly says, "Feed me NOW," though, of late, I've occasionally had him just walk up to me to say, "Hello."

There is one thing both Carol and I always tell them as we are leaving, whether it is for a shopping trip or for a weekend get-away, and that is: "Guard the house." Laugh, if you will, but it has worked. We've not been burgled since we've had the cats policing the house. I also think it's good for the cats to have something to do when we're away, something useful and helpful. It keeps them busy and productive. The best part is that they don't have to do anything that they aren't already doing. Guarding the house, for cats, mostly consists of checking all the doors and windows regularly, and they already do that. If they're on guard duty, though, it gives their normal activities a bit more purpose which is very good for their self-esteem. However, now that I think about it, I've never really seen a cat with a self-esteem problem. Still, I like to think that giving them a job while we're away is good for them.

When we get home from wherever we've just been, we always acknowledge them for a job well done. I know it always makes me feel better to get praised for doing something well, why should cats be any different? A little, "Well done, guys!!", takes so little effort and, yet, if it makes your cats feel better about themselves it is worth it. If you add, "Are you hungry?" to that greeting, you'll likely receive a reply on the order of: "No problem, always glad to be of service. And yes, a little snack about now would go down just perfectly." So, talk to your cats, and give them a little tasks to do around the house. You'll all be much happier as a result.

Frank, the Gregarious Cat

2010-07-07T08:57:00.000-07:00

I met Frank when Carol and I were living in Hollywood a couple of years after we moved to Los Angeles from Colorado. The house we were in at that time was in a lovely little neighborhood within walking distance of Griffith Park. There was a large avocado tree in the back yard which meant that every other year we had about as much guacamole as we could eat. I loved that house. The owners lived in San Diego and were wonderful people.

Frank found us and the next door neighbors at about the same time, and, for awhile, both families were feeding him. He was an orange and off-white cat with beautiful markings, but what really made him special was his personality. He had an ability to make friends instantly with anyone, including other cats and even most dogs. He was fearless and so full of self-confidence that he was not intimidated by anything. He was just one of those animals that assumed everyone would like him and operated on that basis. Friendly. That's what he was. Friendly.

I'm not sure why we won the battle for his affections, but eventually he moved into our house and we adopted him. He fit right into our household which already included two cats, Max and Müss. Frank and Max soon became best friends. Frank, though was a free spirit and would roam around making new friends and visiting old ones. When people would go by with their dogs, on a leash of course, Frank would walk right up to the dog and go nose-to-nose with it. The dogs never seemed to mind. Frank just wanted to say hello and the dogs were okay with it most of the time.

When we had to move from that house to where we live now, it took awhile for Max and Müss to adapt to their new environment. Not Frank, though, he immediately went around and introduced himself to the neighbors. Everybody loved him, even the people who didn't much care for Carol and I. People would stop on the sidewalk in front of our house and wait for Frank to come out and say hello to them. Some people were known to make a special trip just to say "Hi" to Frank. He made himself useful, too. He kept the birds from nesting in the eaves of one of the neighbor's houses, which the neighbor told me he appreciated. He was perfect.

He took to roaming a bit too far, though, and that proved to be his downfall. When he took up visiting the neighbors on the other side on the street, his fate was sealed. One evening I heard screaming coming from the side of the house. It was Frank. He had been hit by a car and every time he tried to move his back legs he would scream. We rushed him to the emergency veterinary hospital since our regular veterinarian was closed at that hour, but all they could do was make him comfortable. When we moved him over to Highland Park Animal Hospital the next day, we learned that his hip was broken and was pinching his sciatic nerve when he tried to move causing him extreme pain. Every time I heard him scream, the sound went right through my heart. The wonderful people at Highland Park referred us to the Animal Specialty Group. We took him there to see if they could help us. If they couldn't, it was likely that no one could.

I was working as a sort of paralegal at the time and had to run around during the day getting signatures on contracts and legal documents for a case I was helping with. All the while my attention was on how Frank was doing. I kept hearing that scream and my heart would ache and the tears would well up in my eyes. It was one of the worst days I've ever had. I got the signature I needed, knocked off for the day and went to visit Frank. The vets at the Animal Specialty Group had decided that they would try to fix his hip. I talked to him before he went into surgery. He tried to crawl towards me and there was that scream again. I told him to hang in there, that the surgeon was going to try to fix him.

He didn't make it. As soon as they put him under the anesthetic, he gave up his little body. They spent a consider amount of time and effort trying to revive him, but he'd already gone by then. I'm sure he just wanted to be free of that pain. I wanted that for him, too. Still, it broke my heart when I got the news. It breaks my heart still today. It is very difficult for me to even tell this story. The people at the Animal Specialty Group were angels. They went to extraordinary efforts to save Frank and I am grateful to them for their efforts. After all they did, they never even sent me a bill, only a lovely, heartfelt card to express their sympathy.

Time has helped to heal the heartache I can still feel from the loss of Frank, but I have Quint now, and he has all of the best characteristics of Frank and more. And I have Hedge, who has grown up into a sweet, handsome fellow who makes me smile with his antics. Finally, for contrast, I have old, grouchy Ebony who loudly informs me that he's hungry several times a day. Life goes on, so the saying goes, and time does help to heal those old wounds, but I still miss Frank. Next to Quint, he was my favorite.

Help!! Vampires are Eating My Cats!!

2010-07-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

After I brush Quint's teeth each evening, I then brush his fur. That's what I was doing last week when I noticed a whole lot of little black spots on his face. I wondered what he had gotten into and proceeded to brush his face to remove them. That's when one of them moved. Yikes!! He had fleas on his face. He's an indoor cat, how did that happen?

After I considered this quandary for a moment I figured that the fleas must have arrived with Ebony. The person who had been taking care of Ebony before he arrived at our house apparently hadn't been dealing with his fleas. When Hedge and Quint first arrived, I immediately had the vet give them all their immunization shots and dose them with a flea killer that also handled ear mites and intestinal worms. Since both of them had come to us from being wild outdoor cats, I suspected that they might be infested with any number of parasites. Ebony, on the other hand, had come from a household, and I wrongly assumed that any potential flea problem would have been taken care at his previous home.

For some reason, fleas don't bite me, but they do bite Carol. She had complained, a few days before my discovery, that she was getting bitten by something and suspected it might be fleas. This is California and there are fleas everywhere so I thought that her bites had, perhaps, come from fleas in the grass out in our yard. I just couldn't imagine that my indoor cats would be infested with bugs. They were.

This called for drastic action. I needed to get some flea killer immediately. The next morning I was scheduled to meet with a hair stylist who was working on fitting me with a wig for a TV role for which I had been hired. Since I had to drive to the San Fernando Valley to do the wig fitting, I also had planned to visit the final resting place of Room 8. I added a trip to the veterinary hospital to my schedule for that day, and picked up the flea killer before I drove back home. As soon as I walked in the door and put down my camera bag, I went looking for cats. I quickly found and dosed each one.

By the next morning, I saw a complete change in all three cat's behavior. I hadn't really noticed it before, but all the cats had been increasingly restless and rather frantic over the past few days. Now they were more relaxed. They were quite relieved to be rid of the vicious, six-legged vampires that had been feeding on them for the past couple of weeks. Quint and Hedge resumed their normal pattern, playing chase all morning, napping all afternoon. Ebony seemed a bit more relaxed, though still grouchy toward the other cats and very demanding of Carol and I. I gathered up all the towels and pillow cases that we use to cover the furniture to keep the cat hair at a minimum and ran them through the washing machine.

We're still seeing a few little jumping vampires around, but, as time goes by and they don't have any host to feed upon, they will die off. Next time we adopt a cat, I will not fail to make sure that any flea problems are handled right from the first day. Lesson learned.

Room 8, The Cat With Purpose, Chapter 3

2010-06-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

As I continued my research into Room 8's history and legacy, I discovered a few unexpected and quite delightful treasures. One these was Roger Vargo. On one of my internet searches I came across Roger's website, Explore Historic California. There, I found a first-hand account of Room 8 from someone who actually knew him as a child. His story is filled with quotes from Room 8's surviving friends and a litany of extra-curricular activities whereby Room 8 reached out into the community and the world as an example of the best of human-animal relationships. I also found the Room 8 Memorial Cat Foundation, a no-kill shelter and adoption agency for special-needs cats in Riverside, California. The Historic Echo Park website has a short article on Room 8 which features a lovely photo of one of the students and the cat being entertained by one of his guitar-playing neighbors. He even has his very own Wikipedia entry. All this for a cat who passed on over 40 years ago.

Why does a little elementary school, hidden away in Elysian Heights, still celebrate the life and the accomplishments of a simple alley cat? How did such an unassuming little animal come to be so beloved, not just in his community, but around the world? What was there about this cat that endeared him to everyone who met him or even knew about him? Perhaps it's not just a quality in Room 8 that created this phenomenon, but a quality that all of us humans possess. Certainly, Room 8 had qualities which we humans admire -- loyalty and independence, certainly, but aloofness, too, and an ability to wordlessly express affection, distain, satisfaction and love. But what human quality caused the staff of the school to break the rules and adopt a cat? What need in all of us is fulfilled by such relationship? Do we have an inherent desire to nurture the helpless, to give shelter to the homeless, to adopt the stray animal, to return the baby bird to its nest, to rescue the cat in the tree. Perhaps we do.

Perhaps humans at their best are kind, generous, helpful, happy and loving by nature. If that is the case, then someone, or some cat, who needs help would appeal to the best in human-kind. Room 8, it would seem then, became the focus of this impulse to help and, thus, brought together a school and a community, the effects of which spread across the world via the print and electronic media. Room 8 got just what he needed, a very large, loving, extended family. His worldwide family in turn received the satisfaction of seeing the object of their help and affection go on to thrive and live a long, rich life as a result of their efforts.

It is a perfect example of what can happen when people get together with a common goal to do something good, good for themselves, good for Room 8, good for their city and good for their world. When your goals move you toward survival, toward a better life for yourself, your family, and your friends, it is very easy to get lots of other people to help you. That impulse to help, to do something good, is what Room 8 brought to Elysian Park Elementary School. That impulse lives on in the memorial etched in the concrete around the school, in the classroom where Room 8's story is read to students each year, in the Room 8 Memorial Cat Foundation, in Roger Vargo's Room 8 story on his website, and in every mention of Room 8 in articles and guidebooks. That is Room 8's legacy, that is why he came to Elysian Heights Elementary School. He brought out the best in his human companions, he enriched their lives, lightened their hearts, made them laugh and, then, left them to carry on his work.

The last thing I found in my quest for the history of this extraordinary cat was his gravesite. Room 8 was buried in Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in 1968 after he passed away at age 22. I drove out there the other day to see for myself the final resting place of this remarkable creature. His monument stands in the middle of the well-tended cemetery, under some beautiful trees in Calabasas, California. It's a bit off the beaten path, but it was well worth the trip to find the ending place of the main character in this story. As I approached the stone, a sparrow, who had perched there, flew off into one of the surrounding trees. I stood in front of the stone and thought about all that I knew of this cat and was struck by how much joy and purpose this one animal had brought into the lives of so many people. I thanked him then, turned and walked back to my car. May the memory of Room 8, and the legacy he left, never die. The world is greatly in need of you, Room 8, now more than ever. So, thank you, Room 8, you've gained another fan. Keep up the good work.

Room 8, The Cat with Purpose, Chapter 2

2010-06-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

I figured that my next step in my quest for more information about Room 8 was to find a copy of his biography, A Cat Called Room 8. I looked for it on the internet, but found only a listing with no copy for sale anywhere at any price. That was unusual. Very often, even a rare book is available for sale, though likely at a price I would be unwilling to pay. There didn't appear to be anyone willing to part with their copy at the moment, so I'd have to look elsewhere.

Los Angeles recently built a new library just a couple of blocks from my house. I had visited this new library on it's opening weekend and one of the most remarkable things about it was how few books there were. I was so disappointed that I didn't even bother to apply for a library card, seeing no reason to do so at that time. Now, I thought it might prove to be a source for the Room 8 biography. Again, I used the internet and searched the Los Angeles Library for the book. They appeared to be copies available, though the ones that were nearest were in the reference section of the main library in downtown Los Angeles. There also appeared to be a couple of copies available for lone from a branch library in the San Fernando Valley. I thought I'd try the library "hold" system and attempt to get the book delivered to my nearby branch. To do that, I'd need a library card, so I walked down to the new library, applied for and received my card. I took the card home, and using the number thereon, put in a request for the Room 8 book.

Over the next week or so, I'd check the status of the book through the library's website to see if and when it might arrive. The status never changed from "pending." I decided that I would now have to drive out to the San Fernando branch and get the book myself since the hold system didn't seem to be working. I got back onto the library website to make sure the book was still at that library. It had disappeared from that library and was now back to being listed at only the downtown location. Okay, I thought, maybe the Glendale Library has a copy. I found their website and, yes, they did, indeed, have a copy. There, too, the book was only available as a reference book. Well, I'd just have to go to Glendale and read the book right there in the library.

With a pocket full of quarters to pay for parking, I drove over the Glendale. I asked at the Reference Desk for the Room 8 biography. Yes, they had one in their Special Collection. The Special Collection areas weren't open that day, but the gentleman at the Reference Desk told me that he would go get the book for me and showed me where I could sit and read it. He also told me where the copy machine was and that I could make copies from the book if I need to do so. A few minute later, he came back downstairs with the book. I recognized the illustration on the cover as he was approaching the desk. At last, I had in my hands A Cat Called Room 8.

I took the book over to a nearby table and sat down to read. What I found was a beautifully illustrated and well-written children's book about the first fourteen years that the cat had lived at and near the Elysian Heights Elementary School. The book was only sixty-one pages long and it had a illustration on every page, so it took only a few minutes to read it. When I came to the end of the story, I was quite touched by how much this big, gray and white alley-cat had come to mean to the staff and students of the school. One of the great honors for students at the school was to be chosen to be Cat Feeder. Interestingly, the cat spent his nights somewhere other than in the school building. When everyone left school for the day, so did Room 8. In the morning, when school started, Room 8 was there in attendance just like everyone else. He would spend the day roaming the halls and taking cat-naps on various desks, sometimes having to be removed from a student's desk when he was preventing that student from working. There was even a designated Cat Mover that would be called in when needed. What a delightful relationship they had, this group of people and this cat.

It was rare enough for an entire school to adopt a cat that Room 8 became rather famous, world-famous in fact. In 1962, LOOK magazine ran a three page spread on Room 8. There was an article about him in the Weekly Reader, and he even appeared on Art Linkletter's "House Party" television program. This was quite an accomplishment for a formerly homeless cat who, some years before, had wandered into the school looking for something to eat and safe place to take a nap. It's no wonder there is a concrete memorial in the sidewalk outside the school. This was a remarkable cat, but the staff and students at the Elysian Heights school are no less remarkable for sharing their lives with Room 8, taking him into their hearts and, occasionally, their homes, and giving him a long, rich life he wouldn't have had as a homeless street cat. Not surprisingly, Room 8's memory lives on in the hearts of those who knew him. I discovered one of his old friends on another round of internet research. We'll explore that in the next chapter.

Room 8, The Cat with Purpose, Chapter 1

2010-06-25T08:48:00.000-07:00

In a recent trip to one of my favorite used bookstores, I found a book called Stairway Walks in Los Angeles by Adah Bakalinsky and Larry Gordon. Carol and I like to take walks around the neighborhood and this book described several in our immediate area, so I bought it. One of the walks in the book is in Elysian Heights, which is just over the hill from our house. In reading the narrative that goes with the route instructions, there was mention of a famous cat that once lived at the Elysian Heights Elementary School where this walk begins. The book went on to describe a memorial inscribed in the concrete sidewalk surrounding the school. I was, of course, intrigued. Earlier this year, I had read Dewey, the Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicky Myron and I thought this cat might have a similar story, so I decided to find out more about this famous Los Angeles cat.

The first thing I did was to pull up a map on the internet to see how to get to the school. It seemed quite simple. All I had to do was get on Alessandro, turn onto Baxter and in a few short blocks I'd be there. One thing I didn't take into account is that road maps are flat; they don't show the terrain. I soon discovered that the section of Baxter Street that I was driving has some of the steepest paved hills I've ever driven up and down. That day I was driving our 1965 Volkswagen Beetle, a car which has a history of strange and dangerous mechanical problems, so navigating the nearly vertical hills made me a bit nervous. The car and I made it, though, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I parked on the street near the school.

I got out of the car and began my explorations. I walked around the school looking for the memorial that I had read about. I found a mural on the side of the school building and then another. I took photos of the artwork through the tall chain-link fence surrounding the school property. I still hadn't seen any memorial, though, until I looked down at the sidewalk at my feet. There in the concrete, barely visible under a layer of dust and leaf debris from the trees above, was inscribed a series of short poems and drawings in tribute to a cat named Room 8. The poems were simple and heartfelt expressions of the love that the students and faculty of the school had felt for this cat. The poems and drawings all appeared to be dated 1968, the year that Room 8 had passed away. I stopped at each well-worn slab of cement and snapped a photo. It was a touching shrine to this obviously beloved cat. I had to learn more. I got back in the car, consulted my map and found a way to return home without driving up and down Baxter Street. I figured I'd pushed my luck with that car enough for one day.

Over the next couple of days, I did a bit of hunting around on the internet to see what I could find out about this cat which they had named Room 8. I discovered that there was a book, published in 1966, about this remarkable animal. It was entitled A Cat Called Room 8 and had been written by Beverly Mason and Virginia Finley and illustrated by Valerie Martin. I put it on my list of books to look for on my next trip to the book store or library.

Three days later, I was back at Elysian Park Elementary School, this time with my wife, Carol. I wanted to show her the Room 8 Memorial and she wanted to take on the stairway hike as described in the book. I shared with her the forty-two year old poems and drawings which weather and foot traffic were gradually wearing away. She admired the mural on the side of the building, a much more recent work, and remarked that after all the years, this cat was still a very prominent figure in this school's history. I snapped a few more photos, hoping for a better shot of some of the sidewalk drawings. We went on with our hike up and down the stairways of Elysian Heights and along the edges of Elysian Park, and as we walked, I kept thinking about Room 8 and the effect he had upon the students and faculty of that school. I wasn't done with this cat, yet. I knew there was much more to learn from him and I was determined to find out as much as I could about him and his life.

The Hand-Me-Down Cat Settles In . . . Sort of

2010-06-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

The newest member of our household is starting to settle in. It hasn't been an easy transition for him. Ebony's a bit of a grouchy old man and moving in with the ever playful and active Quint and Hedge is sometimes a bit too much for the old guy. He'll occasionally hiss and growl when one of the youngsters gets too enthusiastic about encouraging him to participate in the day's activities, but, for the most part, he's doing okay, and is slowly starting to establish himself in the group.

Part of the reason he's a bit growly is probably due to his hyperthyroidism and his bad teeth. I'm working on getting his thyroid under control with medication, but I got a bit too enthusiastic at the onset and started feeding him pills before he got over the stress of moving into his new surroundings. I think he was a bit overwhelmed for the first couple of weeks. At this point, though, he's explored the house, found a few good napping spots, a hiding place or two, and is pretty sure about what time breakfast and dinner are usually served. Now that he's feeling a bit more secure, I started him back on his thyroid meds. I'm doing it gradually with just one pill a day for a few days. After we see how that works, then we'll try getting him up to the two per day he's supposed to be taking.

I tried brushing his teeth during his first few days with us, but his gums are quite sensitive and bleed very easily so I'm going to have to approach his dental problems a bit more gently at first. In the next week or two, I'm going to take him back to the vet and see if we can get his teeth cleaned. Once we get that done, I'll be able start rubbing his teeth and gums with a bit of gauze to handle the plaque and apply a bit of antibiotic gel to help with the gum problems. He's not very difficult to handle and doesn't try to bite me when I open his mouth, so with a little practice we should be able to establish a daily tooth cleaning routine just like I have with Quint.

I noticed today that Ebony is starting to mimic some of Quint's behaviors. He's begun hanging out in some of Quint's favorite places, and was even playing with Quint's favorite purple toy mouse this morning. I think Ebony has made excellent progress in settling into his new home and I have every hope that in the near future he'll be a healthier and happier cat. If he isn't, it won't be because we didn't all try to make him feel at home.

The Cat Who Forgot Where She Lived

2010-06-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

There really was no way for anyone but Carol and I and our friends to know how old Müss was, no one could tell by looking at her. You certainly couldn't judge her age by her actions. She was as lively and eccentric at 19 as she had been at 3. Just because she no longer hunted and captured socks, or slept in trees, didn't mean she had settled down to a dignified and sedate old age. No, Müss must have gotten bored, or decided she hadn't done enough with her life. Whatever her reasons, she took to visiting the neighbors with a mind to having a bit of a slumber party at their house.

She would wander off into one of the neighbors' yards and seemly forget to come home. At suppertime, we would have to go walking around calling for her. We'd find her in someone else's yard, or asleep on someone else's porch. She'd be fine for a couple of days and then she would disappear again. At one point, though we looked and looked and called and called, we just weren't able to find her. We suspected that a coyote had gotten her, or a car, but we never really gave up looking for her. After a couple of weeks, though, it seemed likely to us that she was gone for good. She certainly wasn't anywhere we could find her.

For some reason or another, in a conversation with one of the neighbors, the subject of cats came up. This neighbor said that a young cat had just wandered into her house and made herself at home. Upon hearing a description of the cat, we knew it was Müss. Apparently, she had decided she needed a new home, or forgotten that she already had one, and had found our neighbor's house to be a great place to live. We disagreed, of course. We gathered her up, took her home, and closed up the cat door.

She was quite content to be an indoor cat from then on. Eventually she went deaf, so someone had to tap her on the shoulder to get her attention when it was time for breakfast or supper. In her last year she began having occasional convulsions. Whenever she had them and I was with her, I would hold her and tell her that it wasn't time for her to go just yet. She was in her 20th year the day I came home and found her on the floor, cold and stiff. It was the one time I wasn't there to tell her not to go. I put her little body in a shoe box and put the box in the freezer. Then I sat and cried for awhile.

I just couldn't bear the thought of having her little body in the freezer, though, so I called a friend who works for a veterinary hospital and made arrangements to bring Müss's body to her that evening. I had a very hard time talking to my friend as I made the arrangements and it was very hard to drive the 20 miles or so to where the hospital was, the tears made it very difficult to see where I was going. Still, it was better to take her body to a place where it could be properly disposed of, and I felt a bit better after I left the hospital and drove back home. It was a difficult evening, but by the next morning I was at least able to talk about her without breaking down.

It's been quite a few years now since we lost Müss. I still miss her, of course.
She is a cat of legend now, climber of telephone poles, mighty sock hunter, sleeper in trees, adventuress. Her adventures make for wonderful stories that we can tell to our fellow cat lovers as we talk about our beloved pets past and present, and, thus, she lives on in our memories and in the stories we tell. I take some comfort in that.

The Cat Who Slept In Trees

2010-06-07T11:37:00.000-07:00

Müss, after she passed through her infamous sock-hunting phase, began sleeping on a variety of perches at various heights from the ground -- table tops, dressers, shelves and, eventually, trees. She started with Edges. Edges: as in as close as possible to the edge of any horizontal surface on which she happened to decide was a perfect napping place. If she was on the table, where she wasn't supposed to be, she would lay right along the outside edge. If on the bed, she would carefully position herself on the very edge of the mattress. Occasionally, she would forget where she was and fall over that very precarious edge. Whenever that happened, her body language said it was obviously the table's fault or the bed's fault that she had ended up on the floor. She would sit where she had landed and lick her fur back into order, all the while radiating indignation at the offending object. She would then avoid that particular place for a time and find some other napping place that she considered more trustworthy.

When I would see her laying on the edges of things around the house, I would point out to her the safer middle area and encourage her to move inward.

"Edge, edge, middle," I said, as I pointed to those places.

She didn't listen. Müss was a very stubborn cat.

During this Napping Dangerously period, we had to move from the house in Hollywood to our present location in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silverlake. There were, in addition to the usual furnishings inside the house, several small trees on the property. There was a spectacular Hibiscus in the yard, just off the front porch. It featured quite lovely leaves and flowers on the outside and a tangled network of bare branches inside. As soon as she adjusted to her new house and yard, Müss decided that the Hibiscus tree was the perfect spot for napping. We would often find her asleep inside the web of branches in that tree. She paid little attention to the sparrows that perched on branches nearby or to the hummingbirds that whirred from flower to flower just a few feet from her perch. At first she would sleep in branches five feet or more from the ground, but as she inevitably found herself rudely awakened by crashing through the foliage to the grass below, she wisely chose lower and lower branches for her arboreal napping. After she had fallen off all of the accessible napping spots in that tree, she'd give one of the other trees a try, always progressing from a high perch to a lower one until that tree has also proven completely unreliable.

Eventually, she retired completely from naps in the trees and chose indoor places that were softer and closer to the ground. In spite of, or, perhaps because of, her penchant for high-risk napping places and other sorts of adventures, Müss went on to live with and entertain us for a very long time -- twenty years, which is very old for a cat. The day she lay down for her last nap was one of the most difficult days of my life. Even though she turned rather grouchy in her later years, her determination and her spirit of adventure never left her. Those were the characteristics that made her unique. In addition to forgetting where she was while she was napping, later in life, she sometimes forgot where she lived. But that's another story.

Müss

2010-06-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

When Carol and I first moved to Los Angeles, we rented a room from her sister, Terry. Part of Terry's household included three cats - Max, Müss and Scooter. When Terry moved away, we took over the house and adopted the three cats. The two boys, Max and Scooter, were the same age. Müss, being their mother, was a little older. The two boys were quite normal indoor/outdoor neutered male cats. Müss, by contrast, had a few little quirks. The most remarkable of these was her affinity for socks. Not our socks, please note, but the neighbors' socks. When it was laundry day next door, the clean, wet stocks would be hung on the line to dry. Once they were dry, Müss would slink over and nab a few off the line and carry them home. She would march triumphantly into the house with a nice clean, dry sock in her mouth, mewing her little heart out to let us know that she had once again successfully brought down her prey. Yes, she would leap up from the ground and drag those socks right down off the neighbor's clothes line. I guess she thought they were alive, waving there in the gentle breeze.

We would praise her when she brought one home, telling her what a mighty hunter she was, and then we would take the sock and hang it over the fence between the two houses for the neighbors to retrieve. We thought that this was a pretty clever solution to a rather embarrassing problem and everyone seemed happy with the arrangement.

What we didn't realize was that the socks Müss was presenting to us were just a small percentage of those she was actually capturing. One day, the sink in the kitchen became clogged. I tried to unclog it from above but to no avail, so I decided to crawl under the house to see if there might be a clean-out below the floor that would allow me to clear the blockage and get the drain flowing again. With my trusty pipe wrench and a flashlight I proceeded to crawl under the house. That's when I discovered the true extent of Müss's sock predation. I would estimate that there were at least 100 socks on the ground under the house, big ones, small ones, white ones, black ones, argyles and even baby socks. I was horrified. I left the socks there under the house, but that Christmas we gave the neighbors a large bag of clothes pins to use to keep their laundry on the line where it belonged. Once they started using the clothes pins, the sock ravaging stopped and Müss found other ways to amuse herself.

A few years later, after we moved from that house, Müss took up sleeping in trees, but that's another story for another day.

The Hand-Me-Down Cat

2010-05-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

Some fourteen or so years ago, my nephew pulled into the driveway of my mother and father-in-law's house on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado. In the back of his vehicle, nestled among the suitcases and other belongings, was a momma cat and her kittens. After a few days stay, it was time for him to load the car and continue on his trip. When it came time to put the cats back in the car, one little black kitten refused to go. Rather than force the kitten into the car, my nephew left him there in Boulder. Bob and Ardis, my mother and father-in-law, had taken a liking to the little cat and he to them, so they were more than willing to adopt him. They named him Ebony.

You'd think a cat named "Ebony" would be black and, in most cases, you'd be right. This Ebony, though, wasn't exactly black. Each hair of his seemingly black fur is actually white about half way up its length. It doesn't show unless you "rub him the wrong way." Then you can see the underlying white. In bright light, he has brown spots on his fur like a panther. He's not a very big cat and he has always been rather thing, almost boney, like a cat version of a fashion model.

Ebony lived quite contently for a few years in the house in Boulder. Bob and Ardis eventually sold their home in there and moved to Temecula, California so as to be nearer to their grown children and grandchildren, most of whom lived in the Los Angeles area. From there they moved to Laguna Woods and finally to Verdugo City where they rented a small apartment. Ebony adapted to all the changes and was a good companion to Bob and Ardis through the years.

While living at the Verdugo City apartment, Ebony made friends with another cat, Lovey, who lived down the hall. He would visit Lovey quite often and sometimes stay for dinner. When Bob and Ardis would travel, Ebony would stay with Lovey and her human, Murel. When first Ardis and then Bob passed away in 2008, Ebony went to live full-time with Lovey and Murel, and when Lovey and Murel moved to Long Beach, Ebony went with them. Carol and I received periodic reports from Long Beach that Ebony and Murel and Lovey were getting along just fine.

A few days ago, we got a call. The situation in Long Beach had changed and Ebony could no longer stay there. Would Carol and I be able to take him? Of course Carol immediately said, "Yes, of course, he's family." I thought about it for awhile, after she told me about the call, and decided that Quint would be up to the task of integrating another cat into our little family and that Hedge would go along with whatever Quint decided to do, so I agreed. We'd already made Hedge a part of the family, why not Ebony?

On Saturday morning, Ebony arrived at our door, safely contained in his carrier. We set the carrier down in the living room. Quint trotted in, looked into the carrier, gave Ebony a couple of sniffs, stepped back a bit and started grooming himself. There was no growling and no hissing, so I figured it would be okay. I took Ebony into the bathroom where we had already made up a temporary litter box and let him out of his carrier so that he could take care of anything that might be necessary after his trip up from Long Beach. A little while later we loaded Ebony into our own carrier and drove to the veterinary hospital to have him checked over. Since we didn't have an appointment, we discovered that the waiting time was upwards of an hour, so we rescheduled for the following Monday with an official appointment.

We took Ebony back home and left him in the carrier for awhile again. Since there didn't seem to be any undesirable or unfriendly actions occurring on the part of any of the cats, we decided to let him out. Ebony explored a bit and then hid under a couch for awhile. He would venture out from time to time to explore different areas of the house, and then retreat back to his hideout. At one point he hissed at Quint, but Quint knows that he is the head cat so he held his ground but didn't otherwise react. Hedge did a bit of hissing back and then retired, temporarily, from the game. Still no fights, though. And so it went for the first day.

By the second day, Ebony had found a favorite spot to nap in the sun and Quint and Hedge didn't seem to mind very much, though it was one of their favorite spots, too. For now, I guess we'll have to see how it goes, but I predict that, given how good-natured Quint and Hedge are, Ebony will learn to get along and ultimately will become a contributing member of the group. Of course, Carol and I will do whatever we can to help make that happen.

So, to Ebony: Welcome to your new home.

My Greeting Committee

2010-05-10T23:31:00.000-07:00

I'm working swing shift right now which means I get home, usually, between midnight and 1:00 p.m. I try to be as quiet as I can when I pull the car into the driveway, but the devices attached to the ends of the exhaust pipes on my dune buggy, though they look like mufflers, don't really quiet the exhaust sound so much as deepen and mellow it. The noise only bothers one of my neighbors, but then all noise bothers him. I discovered some time ago that, for some reason, my very existence bothers him. Since nothing I do will make him happy, I've stopped trying.

After I get the car parked, I grab all of the stuff - books, drawing pads, lunch box, pencils - that I take to work to keep me from succumbing to terminal boredom, and I trudge up the driveway to the front door. As I unlock to door and push it open, I'm nearly always greeted by a "thump" from somewhere in the house and then the "jingle" of the bell on Quint's collar as he trots through the house to find me.

"Hello, Big Guy," I say as I put my bags and boxes down and hang up my coat. I pick up the book bag and take it into my office. Then I drop my lunch box off on the kitchen counter. Finally, with both hands free, I can reach down and scritch Quint behind the ears as he rolls around on the kitchen rug.

He's not just there to say hello, though. He's on a mission, because when I get home after work it's Tooth Brushing Time. I pick him up and cradle him along my left arm as I walk over to the dining room table. (Geez, the house sounds huge when I tell the story, but all these places are just a few steps apart.) I sit down in my chair at the table where I keep the little tray that holds Quint's tooth brush, poultry-flavored toothpaste and antibiotic ointment (for his gums). As I brush his teeth, Hedge usually shows up and begins purring and rubbing against by legs. There's no "thump" when Hedge jumps down from wherever he might have been sleeping. He's very light on his feet, but he has a bell on his collar, too, so I can hear him coming. Once I've finished with Quint's teeth, I brush his head for awhile. He likes that. Hedge will let me brush him a bit as he walks around and around by legs, but as soon as Quint jumps down, Hedge follows him to wherever he might be going.

That's my nightly ritual and I do look forward to it. It always makes me smile and I can't think of a better way to end my day.

Shadow

2010-03-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

I realized the other day that we probably should have named Hedge "Shadow." Not that "Hedge" isn't a good name for the little guy, but, in reality, he was living under a fern when he first appeared in our yard. Of course, "Fern" is a terrible name for a cat. Carnivores should not be named after plants. "Shadow," though, would have been a perfect, if trite, name for him. Not so much because he's a black cat with the ability to disappear at will, but more because of the way he mirrors whatever Quint is doing. When I saw them the other day, they were both asleep on the bed in almost exactly the same position, parallel to each other and lined up equidistant from the sides of the mattress. I quietly exited the room and grabbed my camera from the office so that I could capture the moment. They both awoke at the snap of the shutter and in a wonderfully synchronized movement looked up to see what I was doing.

Hedge eats when Quint eats, naps when Quint naps, and always is ready to play, even when Quint would rather not. However, Hedge isn't always the shadow, sometimes he the invisible presence waiting to pounce as Quint walks by. Hedge is also more inclined to play with the multitude of cat toys available to him, whereas Quint's interest in all the dead toys waned once he got Hedge to play with.

But then, Quint has always preferred to play with his housemates rather than with a toy. Quint is more of a social critter and always very curious about what is going on around him. So curious and playful that he makes it quite difficult for Carol to get anything done around the house. He particularly likes to help her wrap gifts and write in the cards. He enjoys making his mark on each envelope by perforating one or more of the corners with his teeth. Quint also seems to enjoy watching movies with us, or at least being in the room while the movie is playing. He doesn't really watch. What he does is lie down on the couch next to Carol and take a nap while we watch.

Hedge, in shadow mode, will sometimes join the movie audience briefly, but when he discovers that Quint is napping and not ready to play, he usually finds something else to do on his own. Quint continues to be a good influence on the little black cat and so Hedge is finding himself more and more inclined to be in the company of his humans. So much so, that, of late, I am able to scoop him up and trim his claws regularly. Hedge's claws grow into needle sharp little hooks that he has trouble controlling. If I don't keep them trimmed, the poor guy gets hooked on the blankets and towels that we have put on all of the furniture to keep the cat hair deposits at a minimum. A cat's natural reaction to getting a claw hooked in something is to pull back against it, which drives the claw further into whatever it is he's grabbed. I'm sure this works very well on mice and birds when you are trying to catch and eat them, but having a blanket attached to your foot makes it difficult to move around easily, so I try to keep his claws trimmed to a manageable length.

We're thoroughly enjoying the interaction of the two animals, and since I'm not at home as much I used to be, I'm glad they have each other as playmates. It's also rather rewarding to see Hedge's continuing evolution from recluse to contributing group member. It's a lot more fun having him around when we get to interact with him, too.

Adjustments

2010-02-18T11:06:00.000-08:00

After my long stretch of unemployment, I have finally returned to the ranks of the employed, or the over-employed in this case. Carol and I and the cats are still trying to figure out how to deal with my swing-shift schedule. We might have been able to get a workable routine established had it not been for the understaffing problem that exists at my new jobsite. In the last few weeks, I've gone from bored at home to 52 hours my first week, 56 hours my second week and another 56 hours this week. Not that I'm not happy to have an income, but it would have been a bit better to ease into the world of employment instead of being swept into 6 and 7 day weeks and 12 hours days all at once.

All my well-established routines are no longer possible. Brushing Quint's teeth now sometimes happens at 12:30 a.m. or even 4:30 a.m. He doesn't seem to mind. If he's around after lunch, sometimes that's when the brushing happens. Most mornings I still arise between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. and Hedge still looks for me at that hour, though he's less interested in chasing the laser pointer light and more interested in being scritched behind the ears for as long as I'm willing to spend doing so. If I'm up too late and rise early to see Carol before she leaves for work, I'll try to take a bit of a nap in the afternoon. Often, one or the other of the cats will join me. One day last week, when I went to lay down, Hedge was already on the bed. Instead of his usual "hop down and go somewhere else" behavior, he stayed where he was and then snuggled up against my leg while I rested. He's still a bit skittish and we never know how he will react when we approach him. His reaction seems to be running about 60/40 in favor of moving away, but that's a vast improvement from how he was when he first arrived. He's made tremendous progress. Hedge is also getting bigger. I suppose all that food he's been eating is finally starting to do him some good. I haven't weighed him lately, but he is noticeably heavier, and it looks like he's added some length to his body as well. He may well turn out to be around the same size as Quint.

I miss my routine sometimes, but I'm sure we'll adjust to our new situation. We're all trying very hard to make it work. I've taken to driving to Carol's office a couple of times a week and walking with her over her lunch hour just so that we can spend some time together. I'm glad that Quint and Hedge have become such good friends and can keep each other company while Carol and I are away at work. We'll all just have to make the most of the time we do get to spend together. It helps that we're all willing to do that.

Forward Progress Continues

2010-01-27T22:49:00.000-08:00

In our last episode, we discussed how much fun it is to own cats. Watching Quint and Hedge play continues to be vastly amusing and nearly always causes me to laugh out loud whenever I see them at play. Actually, I don't even have to see them to enjoy their romping about the house, I can hear the galloping and jumping and the occasional crash or thud as they careen off the walls, run sideways across the living room furniture, and slide down the hallway using the throw rug as a vehicle. Periodically throughout the day, I make the rounds of the house and straighten up the pillows, flatten out the rugs, and re-hang the curtain rods to make ready for the next game of "chase" or "hide and pounce" or whatever else the two of them create to keep themselves amused. That it is amusing to Carol and I as well makes it all the more rewarding to them.

Since we last met, Quint has been to the veterinary hospital where he was transformed from a Tom cat to a house cat. I sometimes wonder if neutering a male cat causes him to retain more of his kitten-like behaviors, instead of becoming a more serious and territorial animal. I suspect that there may be something to my theory, but someone else will have to do the research to verify it. I'm content to reap the benefits of perpetual kitten-hood, especially since I'm the kid who never grew up.

Quint and I and Carol thoroughly enjoyed the holidays. Hedge enjoyed the parts where there were no visitors in the house and disappeared into parts unknown when there were, most of the time. He did make rare and brief appearances so that our friends now believe that we really do have two cats and not just one real cat and one imaginary one. Stephanie came over a couple of weeks ago and actually got to see Hedge for several minutes before his shyness got the better of him. He is making great, if slow, progress, though, to the point where often he will sit still and let us pet him for a few minutes. Recently in the evenings after I finish brushing Quint's teeth and fur, I am able to go over to where Hedge is curled up in his cat bed and brush his little face and back. It's quite rewarding to have made this much progress with him.

Quint continues to thrive and jump and play, and has achieved a healthy balance of time spent with both his human and cat companions. Hedge, at about 9 months old, is still quite a small cat, about 4 1/2 pounds or so. Quint weighs about 10 1/2 pounds, so he has a bit of a weight advantage during the wrestling matches which the two engage in. Still, Hedge holds his own and the chances are dead even as to whether you see Quint chasing Hedge or Hedge chasing Quint. I suspect that Quint holds back a bit to make the games more even. He's just that kind of cat. He continues to be a kind, gentle mentor for Hedge. It is a constant joy to have them in our lives and we are immeasurably richer for the experience.

The Family that Plays Together

2009-12-02T17:50:00.000-08:00

I never realized how funny cats can be until Quint came along. His antics made us laugh from the day he arrived and he still makes me laugh every day. Now that Hedge has joined the family, the fun has just multiplied. Not only does Hedge follow Quint around and imitate almost everything he does, but the not-so-little-anymore black cat has his own set of tricks to add to the show.

We have a cream-colored throw rug in the living room which Hedge has adopted as his toy storage area. Any small item, from feathers to little plastic animals is likely to be carried from wherever in the house he finds it and left on that rug. Today, you can find there several feathers, eight assorted toy mice, a toy squirrel with a chewed-off tail, a toy opossum, and a toy bird that chirps when moved. Neither Carol, I, nor Quint put any of those things on that rug. Those are Hedge's toys. I just can't help but laugh when I look at that ever-growing collection on the rug.

And then there's the little cat bed which is a hand-me-down from a friend of ours. It was just the right size for Quint when he was a kitten, and though he's really too big for it now, he still manages to squeeze into it and make it look comfortable. Hedge, the copy cat, decided that he should be able to sleep there whenever Quint wasn't looking. Then, finding out he could get away with that, Hedge found a way to curl up in that little bed alongside Quint. Now that was funny!

Lately, Hedge has taken to hanging around in the dining room in the evening after dinner when I brush Quint's teeth. He's only curious right now, but it's just a matter of time before he jumps up and insists that he get his teeth brushed, too.

Having Fun, Wish You Were Here!

2009-11-12T11:11:00.000-08:00

If Quint could write this, he'd be telling you about what a good time he's having these days. It's obvious from his behavior that he is thoroughly enjoying his life and it appears that he is achieving a new balance of activity that embraces all his companions.

When he wakes up in the morning, his first mission is to check all the windows he can reach to see what is going on outside. Next he hops up on our bed and wakes up Carol. Some mornings, Hedge helps him with this. Once Carol is up and seeing to his breakfast, he and Hedge romp around a bit. Both cats then gobble down a few bites of breakfast and resume their morning routine, which alternates between jumping up into the windows to look outside and chasing each other around the house with brief wrestling matches interspersed. Carol will often play with Quint in the kitchen while she's putting her lunch together, tossing a toy mouse back and forth for him to chase. I usually wake up about this time, grab a cup of coffee, turn on my computer, set the coffee cup on my desk and take the laser pointer out into the living room to play with Hedge while the computer boots up.

Quint is a bit bored with chasing the red light from the laser pointer, but Hedge loves it and will come into my office to find me in the morning so that we can play. When Quint sees how much fun Hedge and I are having playing laser-pointer chase, he'll occasionally get involved briefly and then retire to a vantage point to watch the game. I think he hopes I'll wear out the kitten so that he can get a little peace and quiet for his morning nap, but Hedge is tireless and when he loses interest in our chase game, he goes back to hunting Quint and pouncing on him unexpectedly.

As distracting as the constant pouncing and playing with Hedge is, Quint is finding time to play with his people, too. He's re-discovered his little purple toy mouse and has resumed batting it around the kitchen. To the delight of Carol and I, he's taken up a bit of jumping again, as well. I see it as an expanded horizon on Quint's part. He's becoming more well rounded, able to balance his life more thoroughly and manage his time more effectively. It's a joy to watch him playing with Hedge and jumping for the toy that Carol throws for him. I find myself laughing with him and at him. He makes me happy. Now that I think of it, that may well be what he does best.

Quint has his own Pet

2009-11-06T11:07:00.000-08:00

Though Hedge is making steady progress at becoming more of a social animal and less of a recluse, Quint has other ideas about Hedge's role in our household. I think Quint believes Hedge to be his kitten. Carol and I don't really have a problem with that concept, since we are thoroughly enjoying watching the two cats play with each other. The home furnishings are taking a bit of a beating though.

Quint wears himself out each day keeping track of and playing with Hedge, and Hedge keeps the game going as long as possible. Poor Quint has gotten a bit jumpy lately and is always looking over his shoulder, as he never knows when Hedge will sneak up behind him and pounce on his back. The games they play keep them both very busy as they dash around the house scrunching up the throw rugs and sliding into the walls. Hedge still has a tendency to seek refuge behind the couch or under the bed, but he doesn't stay hidden for long and Quint almost always knows where Hedge is hiding. When he doesn't, Quint will roam through the house making a little warbling sound that says, "Come out, come out, wherever you are. It's time to play."

Quint has only one really loud sound that he makes when he is disturbed about something going on outside. The other sounds he makes are soft chirps and warbles. Hedge, who is mostly very quiet and stealthy, is beginning to develop his own vocabulary of mews and an occasional Quint-like warble. We equipped Quint's collar with a little bell so we can always tell where he is, but Hedge's collar is unadorned and he is very light-footed which makes him rather undetectable most of the time. Hedge also seems to be able to teleport himself around the house, or at least it appears that he does since he will suddenly appear on the couch which moments ago was quite empty.

The latest development for Hedge is his finding the courage to take naps on our bed during the day, often within a few inches of Quint. That is quite a step for the little recluse and Carol and I are very pleased with his progress. Last night, as I was going to bed after Carol had already retired, I saw both cats sleeping on our bed with her. Hedge was curled up on her legs, just above her feet and Quint was asleep at the foot of my side of the bed. Adorable!! Also, lately Hedge forgets to run and hide when Carol or I walk by him, and if he does run, he doesn't go very far. I think he's figuring out that we're the good guys.

Wishes

2009-10-19T23:03:00.000-07:00

As trite a saying as it is, you really do need to be careful what you wish for or you just might get it. Take Hedge, for instance, the formerly homeless cat. He wished for a safe, warm place to live where meals appear regularly. He got us. Stephanie, our neighbor and cat fosterer, wished for a good home for little Hedge. She got me. And then there is Carol.

From the moment we adopted Quint, the quintessential cat himself, Carol thought we should also adopt a little female kitten as a companion for him. I was resistant to the idea, since Quint seemed quite content being an only cat. We had our evenings together playing in the kitchen, the three of us together. And during the day, Quint had lots of toys to play with and lots of windows with comfortable ledges where he could sun himself and watch the world go by. It seemed to me that life was going along quite smoothly and that everyone had what they needed, even if Carol didn't have everything she wished for.

But you know how wishes are, they float around looking for a way to come true. Carol's wish was out there manipulating events, changing the course of history, causing things to happen. When we adopted Quint, Hedge hadn't even been born. Because of that one little wish, Hedge came into this world. Somehow he survived his first six months of life and made his way into our back yard. He found Stephanie to help him on his way, but ultimately he ended up in my living room on that fateful Saturday, the fulfillment of a wish made over a year before. No, he wasn't a little female kitten, but with a little salesmanship on my part, Carol tentative agreed to give it a chance. Hedge and Quint bonded immediately, and though Carol sometimes gets discouraged when Hedge runs and hides from his people, she realizes that it's going to take some time for this relationship to evolve. She's mostly okay with that.

Hedge has been with us now almost a month, I guess. Hedge and Quint play together from dawn until noon, at which time they both take a nap until around 4:30 p.m. They chase each other around until dinner time and then there is a brief lull in the activity to take care of after dinner grooming and cat napping needs. Then there is more play until bedtime. Hedge still isn't much of a people cat, though he's getting better about that each day, but he's a wonderful companion for Quint. Quint is proving to be a very good mentor for Hedge, teaching him how to be a cat and showing him that there are at least two people in the world who can be trusted. I feel very certain that before too long, Hedge will be hopping up on my lap insisting that he too needs his teeth and fur brushed, and he'll be hopping up on Carol's lap for some petting and admiration.

As for me, I just want everyone to be happy. And here I am surrounded by people whose wishes are coming true. It's kind of perfect. The only thing that could make it any better is if I could figure out some way to get paid for writing about my cat. Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might . . . .

Two Steps Forward

2009-10-06T11:25:00.000-07:00

The relationship between Hedge and Quint continues to evolve, as does the relationship of Hedge to his humans. Hedge is becoming less and less of a scared and timid hidden presence and more and more of a playful, but still wary, little kitten-like creature. All of us have been working on our little family relations, each is his/her own way.

Carol, who usually feeds the cats, is now occasionally able to grab Hedge, sit with him and pet him for awhile in the evenings. As soon as he gets restless, she lets him go, but now, instead of running away and hiding, Hedge will just move off a few feet and attend to some grooming needs, or go and find Quint for some evening playtime. Carol wants a lap cat, to sit with her while she is reading or working at her desk. She also wanted our next cat to be female with a sweet disposition. Both the cats are very good natured, but they're also still very young, and ALL boy, so their lap sitting abilities have yet to be developed. Quint already often sits at Carol's elbow when she works at her desk, so I believe his lap-cat potential exists. At the moment, though, both cats are enjoying the novelty of playing with each other and don't have all that much time for their human companions. Still, I think our new tactic of just letting Hedge be and giving him time to adjust to his new home is beginning to work.

Quint still insists that he is Head Cat, and reminds Hedge of that fact whenever it seems appropriate to him. Hedge, however, frequently informs Quint that though, for the moment, this may be true, a kitten grows quickly and Quint's size and weight advantage may not last forever. Neither of the cats is at all vicious during the domination games they play. I've heard some minor squeaks of protest when things get too rough, but I've never heard them hiss, growl or spit at each other. As I've mentioned, Quint is inherently good-natured without a mean bone in his body, and he still has quite a lot of kitten playfulness left in him, so I think he's rather liking having a playmate of his own species. However, there are times when Quint misses the days when he was an Only Cat. Carol and I miss those days a little bit, too. It was great fun playing with Quint in the evenings and having him all to ourselves. Sharing him with Hedge means we've lost our evening playtime with Quint, since he'd rather play with a very much alive kitten than with toy mouse. I can see his point. So, we have to get our Quint time in other ways, petting and brushing and watching him play.

I've been working on teaching Hedge to play with his humans and not just with Quint. To that end, I've been seeking the perfect cat toy which will prove irresistible to a kitten, and I believe I have finally found it. It works, not just with Hedge, but also with Quint. It was simple when I finally figured it out. The solution was in a corner of the kitchen "junk" drawer all along. Have you guessed it yet? A six foot length of string has proven to be just the thing I was looking for. What cat, young or old, can resist a bit of string being dragged along the floor? I started the string training two evenings ago and we've all had fun with it. Hedge will chase it for a few feet and then Quint takes over, pounces on it and kills it, over and over again, while Hedge watches. I've also been dangling the string over their heads so that can bat at it. Quint shows Hedge how it's done. Since yesterday, when I enter a room where Hedge is playing or sleeping, instead of running away, he looks at me as if to say, "Are we gonna play now?" I'd call that progress.

We're growing, the four of us, in ways none of us could have imagined. We're getting closer, physically and emotionally, and we're learning from each other. We're laughing together, and playing together. We just have to remember that if we listen to each other and allow each other to be who we already are, we will continue to find ways to enjoy each other's company and bask in the love we have to give each other.

One Step Back.

2009-09-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

We're making progress with Hedge, the shy and elusive kitten, but grabbing him after dinner and brushing his teeth was a bit too much, too soon. We've backed off a little and are just letting him be for the moment, acknowledging him when we see him, but otherwise leaving him alone to find his own way into the group.

It's obvious that Hedge wants to be part of the family. Each day he spends more time out in the open, and when he does hide he doesn't run quite a fast to get there. Quint plays with Hedge whenever the little cat comes out of his cave, but Quint has also resumed some of his interaction with Carol and I as well, and both cats are less frantic about each other's presence in the house.

It's difficult to be patient with Hedge, to wait for him to accept us on his own terms, instead of enforcing the contact, but the new strategy seems to be working, so we'll keep it up until some other approach proves more effective. Quint was such a social animal from the first moment he arrived, rather easy-going and good natured, and it is a bit of an adjustment for us to take this new approach with Hedge. When Hedge first arrived, he was scared and insecure, and Quint was a bit confused by his presence and our intentions in bringing in this other cat, and probably a bit jealous. We are careful to treat Quint with extra care and attention during this adjustment period so that he doesn't feel that our relationship is in any danger and to alleviate any jealousy he might be feeling.

Slowly we are succeeding in recreating our little family around the added dynamic of this new kitten. I am very much enjoying the experience as Carol and I and Quint and Hedge learn to trust and accept each other. Any day now, I expect Hedge to jump up on the bed and sleep at our feet right alongside Quint.

Bonding

2009-09-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

Quint never ceases to amaze me. Hedge, the little black kitten we adopted last Saturday, was a scared and reclusive little critter when he first arrived here. Not even a week has passed and the two cats have already bonded. I got up to see what they were up to a few moments ago and discovered them both asleep together under the shelf in the living room where Hedge has been hiding out.

I attribute this rapid progress to Quint's basic good nature. From the first day, he just made himself at home here. He was ours and we were his from the very beginning. Now, he's not just accepted a strange new kitten into his house, but he's taken on a mentoring role and is teaching Hedge, by example, how to be a cat. Or maybe Hedge is just learning by example. Whichever it is, Hedge has been following Quint around and doing pretty much whatever Quint does. Left own their own, I'm convinced that they'd be running all over the house together exploring and playing. The only reason they don't is that Hedge is afraid of people and hides whenever Carol or I get within six or eight feet of him. If we just stand or sit and watch him he's fine, but as soon as we move toward him, he's off to one of his hideaways, either behind the futon in my office, or behind the couch in the living room.

I'm working on remedying that sort of behavior. At dinnertime, I find Hedge, wherever he might be hiding, pick him up and carry him over to his food dish. He'll eat with me hovering over him, now, so we've made some progress. After he's finished his dinner, I grab him before he can return to the hideout, carry him into the dining room, sit down in my chair with the kitten in my lap and proceed to brush his teeth and then his fur. All the tooth brushing practice I've had with Quint is paying off with Hedge. I can do it quickly and easily so it's not traumatic for him. He likes having his fur brushed and will sit still for a few moments, and then, being a kitten, he wants to get down and play. Usually he'll go a find Quint and the two of them will play for awhile. Both Carol and I have been enticing Hedge with cat toys on strings, and he is getting more accustomed to our presence every day, so I think there's some hope.

There's a downside to having a new kitten, though, at least there is right now. By the time dinner is over, dishes are washed, and Carol and I have time to play with Quint, he's worn out from playing with the kitten all day and isn't much interested in playing with Carol and I. We're determined not to let that get us down and instead hope to get both of them playing with us sometime soon. For right now, though, the dynamics of our little group have changed. I think Quint is less bored. I know that Hedge is happier having a safe, warm place to stay where there are regular, nutritious meals and friendly people to take care of him. Carol and I will just have to work with both of them so that her and I get included in the new cat group as playmates. In the meantime, it is truly delightful to watch Quint and Hedge as they learn to live and play together.

The Visitor

2009-09-21T18:24:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, a small black kitten showed up in our back yard. There are two houses on the property where we live, and three cats, or at least there were three cats. Two of the cats, Tiki and Ginger, belong to Stephanie, who lives in the small house at the back of the property. The other cat, Quint, lives with me and Carol. Stephanie noticed that there was a little black kitten living under the ferns in the space between the two houses. He was very reclusive, but didn't seem particularly feral. Stephanie has a soft spot for wayward kittens, which I suspect is why this one chose her as a possible human companion.

Once Stephanie had noticed the kitten, it's destiny was determined. It was going to have a home . . . somewhere. She set out a bowl of food and another of water near the spot where the kitten was hiding. The kitten would briefly come out from under the plants and steal a few bites of food before darting back to safety. He was very wary of humans, as well as of Ginger and Tiki. Ginger and Tiki are indoor/outdoor cats. Stephanie brings them in at night and lets them out in the morning. Tiki especially is quite possessive of his territory and he wasn't very happy about having a new citizen in residence in the middle of it. Stephanie saw that the little black kitten would most likely perish if left to its own devices, so she determined to capture it, tame it and find it a home. After a few days of stalking the little kitten, Stephanie managed to scoop him up and hold on to him. He responded well to petting and, once captured, didn't seem to mind human companionship, so she began to tame the little creature. Eventually she brought him into the small utility room at the back of her house and closed him in with food and water so that he could eat without harassment from her other cats.

Since the little black kitten had been living outside, there was no telling what diseases he might be carrying, and not wanting Ginger and Tiki exposed to any of them, Stephanie decided to take the kitten to the veterinary hospital to have him checked over. That's when I got involved. Late one afternoon a week or more ago, Stephanie called me and asked if I would like to accompany her to the vets to have the kitten examined. I, too, have a soft spot for wayward kittens, so I agreed to go along. I got to pick up the kitten and hold onto him while the vet did the examination. The little kitten was quite a submissive little guy, rather apathetic, really, but he was clean and bright -eyed and had a quiet little voice. When we got the results back from the blood test, he was certified to be quite disease free. On the way out, he had a little accident in his carrier and from the odor and consistency, the vet though that perhaps he might have giardia and so a sample was taken and sent out to a lab. A couple of days later the test came back positive, so Stephanie picked up the proper medication, administered it as instructed, and a few days later the little kitten was healthy again. She kept him indoors after that, since she now had a substantial monetary investment in the little guy. She also had an emotional investment in him and I received a couple of calls, while Stephanie was away at work, to go back and check on him just to make sure he was okay.

Now that he was healthy, the search for a new home could begin in earnest. Stephanie took some pictures of him, posted them of her Facebook page and asked if anyone would like to adopt him. By this time, Carol and I had had enough contact with the little guy that we were growing rather fond of him, too.

Carol has toyed with the idea of adopting another kitten as a companion for Quint, but she always thought that a female cat would be ideal in that there wouldn't be that male rivalry aspect of cat relations to deal with, so the little black male cat wasn't her first choice. Actually, when I first suggested the possibility, the little black male cat wasn't a choice at all. I sort of liked the idea of adopting the black kitten, though, so I was gradually able to break through Carol's initial rejection of the concept with a proposal. I would ask Stephanie to just bring him over in his carrier and see how Quint would react. Carol wasn't completely opposed to the idea and so I suggested it to Stephanie. What with getting schedules coordinated and such, it took several days for the experiment to commence.

On Saturday, Stephanie stopped by for a visit momentarily and brought over some of my favorite Whole Foods Market Seeduction bread for us to enjoy. While we were talking I suggested that this might be the right time to bring the little kitten over for a visit. It was. Stephanie put him in his carrier and brought him into the house. She placed the carrier in the living room and we all watched while Quint sniffed and sniffed and peeked though the holes. He eventually came around to the carrier door and got nose to nose with the kitten. There was no hissing, no cowering in terror, no aggression at all from either cat. We let that go on for a bit and then I opened up the door to see what would happen. Again, no fireworks at all. The little black kitten came out of the carrier and walked around a bit. Quint was mildly curious, but not aggressive, so we let the little kitten explore. Eventually he found a spot he liked in back of the couch under the shelf I built along the picture window. Quint would go under there with him, warble at him a bit, and then come back out. So far, so good. Stephanie went home, leaving the kitten with us for awhile.

Carol and I did stuff around the house for an hour or so and just let the cats be. Still no problems, so we went out grocery shopping for an hour or so. When we got back, all the cats were still alive and un-bloodied. Stephanie stopped by a little later that evening to see how things were going. We decided to let the little black kitten spend the night. It is now Monday and the little kitten is still here in the house. We've started calling him Hedge, since that's the name one of Stephanie's friends gave him when he was living under the ferns. It seems appropriate.

Hedge continues his reclusive behavior, but he ventures out more and more frequently. Quint keeps a close watch on him and chases him around the house sometimes. Quint is also exhibiting some dominance behavior, but he's not too insistent about it and Hedge is appropriately respectful so there hasn't been any problem so far. It's fascinating to watch the development of this relationship. Hedge is currently residing under the futon in my office. Quint stops by and warbles at him occasionally. We'll just have to wait and see how it goes, but we may well have acquired another cat.

Creatures of Habit

2009-09-17T11:38:00.000-07:00

Quint and I are both creatures of habit. He wakes up at pretty much the same time every morning. I wake up about the same time every morning, too, but it isn't the same time Quint wakes up. Quint wakes up about dawn, or about 6:00 a.m., whichever is earlier. I wake up after I've had about seven hours sleep, so depending upon when I went to bed that can range from 7:00 a.m. to much later in the morning.

One of the first things Quint does is run around to all the windows from which he can view the outside world and make sure everything is just where he left it the day before. He sits at each window and makes a warbling commentary on what he sees outside and then moves to another window. After he's satisfied that everything outside is in an acceptable condition, he comes into the bedroom to wake up Carol. This usually occurs at about 6:30 a.m. He's not obnoxious about his wake-up call, he simply jumps up on her side of the bed and warbles a greeting. He knows that in order to get his breakfast, Carol has to first be awake and moving around the house, so he makes sure that she gets up and starts her day on time.

Carol feeds Quint and has her own breakfast at about the same time, and then she will throw the toy mouse around a bit for him to chase and jump. By this time, I'm usually waking up and I can hear the clumping sound on the kitchen floor as Quint lands from one of his jumps for the mouse. I also hear the clink of the spoon on the cat dish as Carol puts the cat food in it.

We use small ceramic bowls for cat dishes. Plastic bowls eventually get scratched and gouged and develop crevices that are difficult to get clean. Plastic bowls also tend to retain odors of past meals and dishwashing detergents. The little ceramic bowls have proven to be nearly unbreakable, clean up easily, don't scratch and don't smell bad. Plus, they're just the right size to hold the small portion of canned food that we give Quint twice a day at breakfast and dinner. We try to feed a mouse-sized portion to him at each meal, mouse-sized meaning not the size portion a mouse would eat, but the size a mouse would be as a meal. There's not too much meat on a mouse. We also keep his kibble bowl topped off so he can refuel at anytime during the day.

At the end of the day, there are the evening rituals of dinner, tooth brushing and playing. Quint likes to eat when we do, so he gets fed just before we sit down to dinner. Evening times are less regimented than mornings. Sometimes we go for a walk before dinner and eat late. Sometimes we eat early and watch a movie. Quint seems to be okay with our variable schedule, though I'm sure he'd like it better if he got his dinner at a more predictable time. He does demand his tooth brushing and playtime, but he doesn't insist that they happen at any particular time. He will remind me that it's tooth brushing time by walking up to my chair at the dining room table, standing up on his hind legs and putting a paw on my arm, with just a hint of claw, an implied claw as it were, to make sure he has my attention. When he thinks it's time to play, he'll sometimes bring his toy mouse into the room where one of us is sitting or working and drop it on the floor in the doorway so that we'll be sure to see it.

Other times of the day, though, pretty much anything goes. Quint catches a nap almost anytime during the day, but he's always ready to play and will wake up instantly to investigate any toy mouse rattling sounds that he might hear. Cat ears are like little sonic radar receivers and are always active. They are also selective, in that they only activate the cat when the sound constitutes a threat, a possible meal, or something fun to do. But that's a whole other subject and will probably end up being a post of its own at some point. Let me end this one by saying that, though all of us, Quint, Carol and me included, have our daily habits, we also tend to be rather adaptable, with a willingness to change our routines to fit current contingencies. I like that about us and I hope that part about changing never changes.

Saving the Toy Mouse

2009-09-07T18:25:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I bought a twelve-pack of little toy mouse-looking creatures. The package included three each of four different colored little toy mice. I just checked and, to date, we've used eight of the twelve. Of the eight we've taken out of the package, four are currently available for play and reside in known places around the house, one completely disintegrated and had to be thrown away and three have been lost. The one that disintegrated was purple colored, and Quint was devastated when I threw it away. We tried to interest him in another of the mice from the same package. We tossed the proposed replacement back and forth across the kitchen, but it just wasn't the same. He loved that chewed-up purple mouse.

I don't know what the veterinary science community current thinks about how a cat's vision functions, but I do know from experience that cats see in color. They can tell the difference between vivid purple, gray, fuchsia, and neon green. I know this because, until I opened up the package and got out another purple mouse, Quint was a broken cat. All it took was one toss of that purple mouse across the kitchen, though, and we were back in business. Apparently, he likes the color purple in his cat toys. I don't know what he'll do if he meets a real mouse and discovers that it's just a dirty gray animal. Probably he'll ignore it.

He's still playing with the replacement purple mouse, though it was lost for awhile and he had to settle for the other purple mouse from the set. The one he likes is falling apart and has no tail. During our jumping game in the kitchen he has batted it into a sink full of dishwater a couple of times which has caused the fake fur to start coming unglued from the little hollow plastic body. A couple of days ago, Carol had to sew up the seam along the bottom of toy to keep the fur from falling off. Last night I hot glued a big piece fur back on. We decided that sewing and hot glue are the best methods for re-attaching the little mouse's fur, since neither method uses any toxic chemicals. It's only a matter of time, though, until we're down to only one purple mouse, and without a back-up, I'll have to make another trip to the hardware store where they sell those particular toys and pick-up another twelve pack. I wish they sold the purple ones separately. I think I'll write to the manufacturer and see if I can order just the purple ones.

I know what you're thinking, "He's only a cat, he'll get over it and eventually settle for some other color." I suppose so, but considering all the joy and shared laughter Carol and I get from playing with Quint and his purple mouse, the least I can do is keep him supplied with them. It's a small price to pay in return for all that he gives us.

Quint is my Muse

2009-09-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

In thinking about why Quint is so much fun to play with and such a good companion, I realized that the reason is largely because he's always contributing something to the game and the relationship. When we are playing, he always adds a new dimension to the game, or demonstrates an increased ability. He'll jump a little higher, turn in the air a little quicker, or grab the toy and carry it off somewhere, only to bring it back for a whole new round of jumping and running and laughing. His enthusiasm is contagious and at the end of the game we all end up laughing and energized. Quint's creativity and self-confidence are what makes him an extremely valuable member of our family.

Thinking about things like creativity and relationships tends to get me to thinking more about creativity and relationships, which got me to thinking about relationships and friends and things I've read over the years. In one of his books, "Time Enough for Love" I believe, Robert Heinlein has the Lazarus Long character stating that there are makers, takers and fakers in the world. He goes on to say that he prefers the first category, but has assumed roles in the other two if that's what it took to feed his family. As I thought about this, I realized that my friends and those people that I respect are all of the first category - makers. They are, without exception, people who create things. Some of my friends are crafters who sew, or knit, or glue, or paint, or build. These people make things. They take pieces of stuff and they put them together with other pieces of stuff to create objects that other people value. A bolt of cloth, or a skein of yarn has value, true enough, but cut up the cloth and make a dress or a shirt, or knit the yarn into a sweater or a pair of socks, or a hat and you've not only added value, but you added utility as well. I have other friends who are writers, teachers, secretaries, professionals, business owners and homemakers, and they too are creating things. There is immense value in inspirational thoughts, or practical advice injected into the public discourse, in problems solved, in relationships improved, in young minds awakened and set free, in good service provided, in support and encouragement rendered, in chaos set to order. All these people add value to the world with what they do, and in how they go about it. That's why I value them as friends. We enrich and enhance each other's lives. We grow together, rise the occasion, look forward, move ahead.

I have meet the others, too. There are those people who delight in belittling others, who revel in the destruction of the useful, wallow in the chaos they bring, laugh at the misfortune of others, subtly destroy lives and relationships, covertly tear apart society, disparage good manners, impugn the good intended, lie, cheat, steal, burn, murder, and destroy. These are not my friends, nor are they yours, but they are among us. The news media would have us believe that they are legion. They are not. But they do exist and we should be sure to identify them when we find them. You can know them by their products, the ruined lives that surround them, and the destruction that radiates from them. They are the ones who would take by force what you have earned by your creativity and give it to someone who has earned nothing. Look behind the sweet smile, the facade of innocence, and beware the knife in the hand you don't see. There aren't that many of these people out there, but there are enough of them to destroy a culture, or a nation, if one does nothing to stop them.

You are a person of good will. Seek others of your kind, the creators, the builders, the contributors, the bringers of light, the seekers after truth, the majority. Together we can continue to build a world where success is a virtue, creativity is honored, production is rewarded, and people are encouraged to build things, overcome obstacles, conquer their fears, help their neighbors, and be responsible for their own actions.

You and I may not have met, but I suspect that we agree on a great many things. I suspect that we both believe that it is better to create than to needlessly destroy. I believe that we would both rather be surrounded by helpful, encouraging, loving friends and family than by those who would disparage and destroy us. I think we ought to expect creativity and virtue in those who claim to represent us and lead us. I think we ought to be uplifted by a leader, not leveled; encouraged to produce, not stimulated to consume; asked for help, not told to be silent; rewarded for our production, our creativity and our entrepreneurial spirit.

There is greatness in you and I. We would be better off if we were left in peace to pursue it. If we are punished for production and rewarded for sloth, which do you suppose will triumph? We don't need to be encouraged to produce. Production, the satisfaction of a job well done, the exchange of our efforts and creations for the efforts and creations of others is reward enough. We just need to be set free to get on with it. It's what we do best. Federal, State and local governments ought to just get out of the way and let us do it.

Isn't all of this what you love about your friends? They encourage you, they help you, and you do the same for them. Is it really that simple? Of course it is? The big lie on this planet is that man, left to his own devices, will tend toward evil. The evil use that lie to justify their actions, but it's still a lie. The truth is that man is, in essence, good. There are evil people, certainly, and, yes, they sometimes become leaders and cause great damage in the world, but the good people keep winning, somehow, and moving forward despite the evil and the insanity. That gives me hope. My friends give me hope. Quint gives me hope. The fact that there still remain men and women of good will who do not sit silently by, but find ways to speak truth to other men and women of good will gives me hope. Hold your friends close. Keep a close watch on those others.

The Amazing Teaching Cat!

2009-08-24T23:16:00.000-07:00

I learn new things all the time. I like the process of venturing into areas I haven't explored yet. Recently I've discovered that there are actually some history writers that take the trouble to make their subject interesting and even exciting. I wonder why we were never introduced to any of those writers during my school days. Public school history textbooks are as dry as noon on a summer day in Death Valley. They were, and I'm sure still are, dead, lifeless renderings of some of the most exciting events that ever occurred. It must have taken special talent to turn the Revolutionary War into just a series of battles, dates and places. The history textbook writers must have a special school they attend to teach them to remove everything interesting about history. On the other hand, there are historians who write about the people and what they did and why then did it in such a way as to bring a whole era back to life. I regret that I didn't discover this earlier in my life, but I am glad to have the opportunity to experience it now.

I'm learning a lot from Quint, too. He's helping me discover how much fun it is just to play. Each evening when Carol and I and Quint gather in the kitchen after dinner, we all get to change gears from whatever we were doing during the day and downshift into the simply joy of playing with each other. I didn't do very much of that sort of thing when I was a kid. I was kind of a loner, not from choice, just from circumstance. My family moved around quite a lot when I was young, from the city of Chicago to the suburb of Morton Grove to Peoria and then to East Peoria and then back to Peoria where we stayed from my junior high years until after high school. After that we moved to Idaho Springs, Colorado and shortly after that, I left home and lived on my own, mostly, until I met my wife, Carol. What with all that moving around, I didn't get a chance to develop any lasting friendships. I was always the new kid. Being the new kid sucks, or at least it did for me. You move into a neighborhood where all these kids have been hanging around together for years and you just don't have a common frame of reference to understand each other. The new kid doesn't get the inside jokes, doesn't remember the big snowstorm, and wasn't in Mrs. Brown's class last year. When I married Carol, her two boys where already five and seven years old, they already had a dad, and they would spend weekends with him fishing and all that other stuff that dads do with their kids. So, I didn't get to do much playing with my step kids.

It's not that I didn't want to play, it's just that once you're an adult there is all that making a living and keeping the cars running and working on the yard and all manner of stuff which keeps you very, very busy. And, so, finally I have arrived at a place where there is mostly just Carol and I and Quint. Oh, we have a group of friends who we like to get together with about once a month, but the rest of the time, it's just the three of us, mostly. And we play together in the evenings after dinner. We don't always feel like it at the start, but after awhile Quint is jumping around and running back and forth and Carol and I are laughing and laughing and all the nonsense of the day becomes insignificant and there are a few minutes right then when we just have fun. I'm grateful to Quint for teaching me how to properly play and laugh and enjoy a moment or two each day. Thanks, Buddy.

Listening, Learning and Creativity

2009-08-20T12:49:00.000-07:00

Quint almost always has something to say. When he makes his soft trilling sound, it means he has a question or needs help with something. Usually, it means that he has batted his little toy mouse under the closet door and needs help getting it out. Sometimes, it means that it's time to brush his teeth and groom his fur. When combined with him standing up on his hind legs, reaching up with a paw, grabbing my arm and pulling, it means he needs something right now. He's very bright. He knows that there are some things he just can't do by himself, so he asks for help.

There's a lesson to be learned from this, especially for me. I usually try to be mostly self-sufficient. This is a good thing when you're trying to get stuff done around the house, or trying to fix your broken car along the highway somewhere. It's important, though, to realize that sometimes you need help getting to where you want to go. Some things require more knowledge and expertise that any one person can have. This is true for artists in particular, I think. Artist are good at creating art. They are also good at thinking up ways to create art. They are good at learning techniques that help them create art. They are, very often, not so good at sales, promotion, public relations, organization, and networking -- those skills that would enable to artist to actually earn money from his/her art. The business of art is, seemingly, an entirely different field than the creation of art. An artist creates something and, at that point, considers his/her job done. He/she has created a communication, has said what he/she intended to say, but unless that communication reaches its intended audience, it isn't really a communication at all. It's just a potential communication, an impulse outward with no destination. Somehow that piece of art needs to reach an audience to accomplish its creator's purpose, and therein lies the problem. The solution seems to be to enlist the help of people who are good at that sort of thing.

There is this problem of finance. The artist would like to be paid for his work, usually. So, would the sales, promotion and PR people. For the artist to get paid, the work must have value to its audience, must reach that audience, and then there must be a way for the audience to reach back to the artist with appreciation in the form of money so that the artist can continue to live and produce more art. Reaching the audience and making that return flow possible is the hard part of creating art. At least, it is for me, and that's where I need help. The problem of finance is funding the promotion of the art before there is any income with which to pay the promoters. And so it comes back to the original problem. I'm good at creating art. I'm terrible at selling it. Just like Quint and his games, I'm great a doing things, I'm just not so good at opening doors.

Differences and Similarities.

2009-08-02T13:50:00.000-07:00

As Carol and I were driving toward the high desert of California yesterday, I heard an announcement of a running and walking event which was called something like Paws for the Cause. The sponsors were asking that people bring their dogs on this walk/run, pay the entry fees and support the cause. I don't recall which cause it was. That got me thinking about my not being able to bring my cat to the event, and those thoughts led to my thinking again about the differences between cats and dogs, which got me thinking about their similarities as well. Wild dogs and wild cats don't necessarily conform to my list of characteristics, though some of these traits seem to be hard-wired into each species.

Similarities:

Love to play.
Are attached to their human companions.
Can be trained.
Use their mouth as a "hand."
Can communicate some basic concepts to their human companions.
Will play by themselves, though cats are better at it.
Patience.
Territorial.
Will peacefully interact with close same-species family members.
Jumping.

Differences:

Dogs are pack hunters.
Most cats are solitary hunters. Lions are the exception.
Cats can hold and lift things with a single paw, dogs cannot.
Normally, cats will not overeat. They will leave food in their bowls to be consumed later.
Dogs will eat everything in their bowls and then look for more.
Dogs dig holes (dens), cats do not.
Dogs like to live in dens/caves.
Cats normally only go into caves when they are afraid or very sick.
Most dogs are social animals, most cats are not.
Dogs are much more easily trained than cats.
Cats are sprinters, dogs are runners.
Cats can climb.
Cats use a litterbox.

Of course there's more to this than just the above lists. Early-in-life conditions and relationships play an enormous role in later adult behavior. If Quint had never been adopted by humans, he would have grown up with a much different personality. If we hadn't started playing with him early on, he'd probably be less of a social being then he is. I don't think that cats are more intelligent than dogs, though that sometimes seems to be true. I think, to some degree, it depends upon what we expect of our dog and cat companions. Stereotypes play a role, I'm sure, as in "dumb dogs", and "sneaky cats." If a dog-owner has a basic distrust of strangers and an aversion to trespassers, his/her dog will probably reflect that attitude. Thus you have the overly guardy and aggressive dog. On the other hand, a warm, open, friendly dog-owner usually has a dog that behaves similarly. I know cats that are very distrustful of strangers and will run from anyone but their own people. I have even met a couple of cats that are very aggressive in defense of their territory. I think cats are inherently wary of strangers and of anything new, but, at the same time, they have an insatiable curiosity that drives them to explore, in spite of the possible danger. This internal conflict makes the cat a cautious, but persistent explorer. Most dogs, I think, are rather fearless when it comes to new things and strangers and will just rush on in to see what's going on. Seemingly, dogs can be trained to do almost anything. They make great companions and helpers for people with physical limitations. Cats are not so easily trained. I've never heard of a cat that will go to the kitchen, open the refrigerator door and fetch you a beer. A dog will do that. I've never heard of a guide-cat, whereas dogs make wonderful guides for the visually impaired. Cats don't seem to be bored to the degree that dogs do. A bored cat will just lay down and take a nap. A bored dog has a tendency to chew on things. You can usually leave your cat at home alone with a minimum amount of care. If they have food and water and a couple of cat toys they seem to do alright. Cats enjoy having their humans companions around, but they don't seem to need their humans quite as much as dogs do. I think dogs are more dependent on their humans than cats are for their entertainment and social needs.

And yet, I love my cat. He fits the way I live. If I get home late, the house is still in much the same condition that it was when I left it. In the middle part of the day, Quint naps while I work. In the evening, he wants to play and so do I. When Carol is home he plays with her, when I'm home he plays with me. When we are both home we all play together, or nap together, or he sits on Carol's desk near her hand and then comes in a visits me for awhile. He's perfect.

So, I guess the reason my cat and I don't get to go on the 5K Fun Run is a reflection of the fundamental differences between the two species. I suppose it's a lot more fun to run with a animal that runs right alongside of you, rather than have to carry your animal in a large plastic box as if it were luggage. Still, I might try it sometime. I'll be the one showing up at the 5K Run/Walk with Quint in his carrier.

Cats Don't Have to Look for a Job

2009-07-28T22:21:00.000-07:00

Unlike his human, Quint has a full-time job. He was born with it. Hunt for food, eat what you've caught, sleep, repeat. As an indoor cat, he finds that hunting for food is a simple matter of walking into the kitchen and seeing what's in his bowl, but that doesn't mean he is unemployed and it's no reason to rest on his laurels. Nope, he practices his craft constantly.

Carol and I call it playing, but Quint is a very serious little toy mouse hunter, very serious. He stalks that little mouse all over the house. He never lets his right paw know what his left paw is doing as he animates the little furry toy and then chases it, pounces on it and kills it, again and again, until the mouse runs under a door and into a closet. He hasn't figured out how to open the doors for himself, yet, so he depends on Carol and I to release the mouse from the closet, or dig it out from under the dresser, and then the game begins anew. He lets us know that he needs our help by coming to wherever we are and asking. He always knows right where the mouse is hiding and he will herd us in that direction as we walk through the house. If we're not around, he'll lie down outside the particular closet door under which the mouse has "run" and wait. As soon as someone comes home, he demands that we help him find the mouse.

In his more reserved moments, he will gather up his toy mice and place them on the floor beside his food bowl so that when he's ready to practice his hunting skills he'll know where they are. Quint is a pretty organized cat and likes to keep his toys neat and orderly. We have a box in the kitchen where we store some of his less favorite toys. Usually, when he's done playing with those toys, he'll put them back in the box. We like that about him. Me, I leave my toys all over the house.

The last couple of evenings, when Carol and I are playing with him in the kitchen, he'll dash off with one of the mice in his mouth, chase it all around the house and then bring in back into the kitchen, dropping it in front of one of us, ready for another round. We've started giving him treats for doing that. I suspect the game is taking on a whole new dimension.

Quint Gets to Keep His Teeth

2009-07-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

Good news!! All the tooth brushing and antibiotic applying has paid off. On Quint's visit to the veterinary hospital last week, all the vet found was a minor case of gingivitis. This is in contrast to the possibility that he would loose all his teeth due to his plaque allergy. Instead, it looks like he's outgrowing his allergy. This doesn't mean I get to stop brushing his teeth every evening, but it does mean that with my help, he'll have strong, healthy teeth with none of the complications that gum disease brings to a cat.

Actually, these days, both Quint and I look forward to our evening dental hygiene routine. As soon as he sees me grab the little toothbrush, he walks right over and lets me put him in my lap. Once we're through with the tooth brushing, we get to do some fur grooming. As we keep the routine going, he's been staying in my lap for a longer and longer time. I suppose he's growing out of his hyper-active kitten stage and into an only slightly less hyper-active teen-age cat stage. Whatever the reason, growing up or positive reinforcement, I do enjoy our grooming time each evening. Quint seems to like it, too.

Separation Anxiety

2009-07-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

Every year for the last nine years, Carol and I have packed our camping gear onto the back of our dune buggy and driven up to Big Bear Lake, California for the annual Manx Dune Buggy Club rally that takes place on the second weekend in July. Last year, we held off getting serious about adopting a kitten until after that weekend. This year we had Quint. From the day we adopted him on August 2, 2008, we had never been away from home for a whole day and night, let alone a whole weekend. Questions went through our minds. How would he react to us being away for the weekend? Would he tear up the house while we were gone? Would he be okay all alone for most of the weekend? How would we feel about not having him around to play with and care for? Would he be mad at us for going away?

Lucky for us, we have a long-standing cat-sitting arrangement with our friend and neighbor, Stephanie. We take care of her cats when she travels and she takes care of ours on those rare occasions when we are away. I met with Stephanie a couple of days before we left and showed her which toys were Quint's current favorites and went over how much and how often we were feeding him. It's good to have someone who knows about cats as your cat-sitter. I didn't show Stephanie my tooth-brushing technique. I figured Quint would be okay with dirty teeth for a couple of days, and Stephanie would certainly be much happier with whole, unchewed fingers. When we hit the road on Friday morning, we felt like Quint would be well taken care of, but I still had my questions as to how he would react to our absence. I know it's absurd that I should worry this much about how my pet feels, but if I make a commitment to something or someone, I do feel honor bound to uphold it. In addition, we'd been having so much fun with Quint and getting such joy from the relationship, I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize it. Since, he had spent some of his early months abandoned, I was hoping he would not see this as something similar, but I just didn't know, thus I was a bit worried.

In spite of my misgivings about leaving, we left. We drove the car up to Big Bear and got settled into out camp. Later that evening, after a lovely dinner and a hilarious movie viewing, I took time out to call Stephanie. She had already been over to our house and fed Quint and spent some time playing with him. It seemed as though he was doing just fine. I was relieved, and so was Carol. We called Stephanie again on Saturday night just to make sure everything was still going well. It was. Quint was still doing fine. It seems that all my worrying was unnecessary.

When we arrived home on Sunday afternoon, there was Quint, acting normally and seemingly happy to see us. We exchanged hugs and greetings and he enjoyed sampling all the new scents on our shoes and clothes. In the evening we fell right back into our normal routine, none of us the worse for our brief separation. So, Quint still occupies his quintessential cat pedestal. It seems that the love and trust that we've invested in each other has paid off. I think he knows that, even if we are away briefly, we will always return and we will never abandon him.

Keeping Everybody Happy

2009-07-07T10:16:00.000-07:00

Cats, big cats, house cats, engage in a finite number of activities. In order of time spent these are: sleeping, playing or practicing hunting, hunting, day dreaming, talking, and eating. I think everything they do falls into one of those categories. The amount of time spent on some of the activities might vary a bit with each cat, but sleeping is definitely at the top of the list. Cats sleep an average of eighteen hours a day, not all at once, of course, but about eighteen hours total. Sometimes, your cat's sleeping times coincide with your own, sometimes not. Sometimes the not sleeping times occur in the very early hours of the morning, say 5:30 a.m., for example. When this occurs, you might be tempted to discipline your cat to discourage this early morning activity. It won't work.

Quint starts his day as soon as there is enough light to see the birds in the trees and the neighborhood cats and dogs on the street and in the yard. This is much earlier than either Carol or I are willing to wake up. There are only four windows in our house available that allow Quint to get a decent view of the outside environment. One of those windows is in our bedroom, right next to the bed. There is a bookshelf there where he can sit and watch the birds and squirrels in the back yard. On that bookshelf there is also an alarm clock which Carol sometimes uses to help her wake up in time to get to work. The alarm clock we used to have on that bookshelf had a button on the top that would let you turn on the radio for a time and then it would automatically shut the radio off. That button was in just the right location for a cat paw to press when that cat was sitting on the bookshelf trying to see the birds and squirrels in the backyard in the early hours of the morning. The radio sounds didn't seem to bother Quint at all, but they did wake up Carol and I every time Quint managed to step on the button. Lucky for us, that clock radio stopped working and had to be replaced. The new one isn't so easily stepped on by Quint, so that problem has been solved.

The thing about that window that is true for nearly all windows, is f the cat can see out the window, everyone else, including people, can see inside the room. Now this is only a problem for the humans, and only when they are in some state of undress which only occurs for short periods of time in the morning and late evening. Still, it had been our habit to keep the blinds closed on that window from early evening until morning, after we were up and dressed. This window blind closure period did not fit Quint's bird watching schedule at all, at least in the morning. After he discovered the joys of bird watching from this window, he would hop up on the bookshelf at dawn and attempt to open the blinds himself. This makes a very strange sound, not loud, but strange enough that it would wake us up. We tried telling him to go away and come back later. We tried spraying him with water to discourage this behavior. We tried pushing him off onto the floor. None of these were at all effective.

I realized that we were trying to discourage him from a behavior that is natural for cats. He was hunting, well not exactly, but certainly an indoor cat's attempt at hunting behavior. One morning, I suggested to Carol that perhaps, after we were done with dressing and undressing for the day, she would consider raising the blind about eighteen inches. That way Quint could see outside and not have to bother us with his attempts to open the blinds. We tried that the very next day. It worked. It was the perfect solution. Quint gets to watch the early morning activities in the back yard and we get to sleep. Domestic bliss has been restored. All it took was our realization that he was just doing what comes naturally to a cat, and make a small adjustment in our routine to accommodate that behavior.

Who's in Charge Here?

2009-06-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

Recently, the relationship between Quint and has humans has changed. A role reversal has occurred. I was sort of aware of it while it was happening, but didn't really take it very seriously until now. It appears that Carol and I are no longer in charge, instead, Quint has assumed the role of head of household. Yes, I've heard the old adage that cats have servants, but it's not quite like that. Quint doesn't expect us to wait on him. Okay, well maybe he does, but only at meal times, and after dinner at tooth brushing and fur brushing time. But now he's taken the lead at play time.

Mornings and evenings are most often the times when we are around to play with Quint. Carol plays with him after breakfast in the morning. When I get up, I grab a cup of coffee and go into my office to turn on my computer. While I'm waiting for the computer to boot up, Quint and I play Chase the Laser Pointer. After Carol leaves for work, Quint usually spends the morning napping while I catch up on e-mails or work on writing or photography projects in my office. In the afternoon, Quint alternates between napping and watching the birds and other animals out of various windows on different sides of the house. About 5:00 p.m., Quint is awake and ready to start his evening. The big evening event, of course, is Carol's arrival at home from work, when enthusiastic mutual greetings are exchanged. Then, we feed Quint and ourselves. After dinner, it's tooth and fur brushing, and right after that it's normally playtime. All of these events happen at about the same time everyday, a nice comfortable routine.

I've noticed that Quint is now enforcing the routine. After he has breakfast and plays with Carol, he will wait outside the bedroom door for me to wake up. When I do finally crawl out of bed, he leads me into the office where the laser pointer is and wants to play. Actually, he kind of herds me into the office like a sheepdog. When we first started playing with the laser pointer, I got to choose where to shine the little light and then Quint would chase it. Now, he waits for me to point it in the direction that he wants to run and ignores it when I don't. He's taken over control of the game. In the evening, when he sees that we've finished eating dinner, he walks over to where I'm sitting, looks up at me and meows to let me know that it's now time for brushing. After that, he'll sometimes make a quick check at all the windows to make sure there's nothing interesting going on outside, and then he'll walk through the dining room and into the kitchen where he will sit down right in the middle and look at us. This, of course, means it's playtime. If the routine is interrupted and either Carol or I are not near the kitchen when it's playtime, he will come and find us and let us know that he wants to play right now. He's very insistent about it. Again, he's taken charge of the game.

It's quite fascinating, his ability to take control of his life. He may well be better at it than I am. I am looking forward to seeing what other aspects of his life he learns to control.

The Way to a Kitten's Heart

2009-06-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

Sure, Quint likes me alright. He'll come and visit me while I'm at my desk, or sit in my lap while I brush his teeth, but he completely adores my wife, Carol. Whenever she's at home, Quint follows her everywhere she goes. He sits on her desk while she's at her computer. He "helps" her make the bed in the morning. He goes into the bathroom with her while she's showering, putting on makeup and fixing her hair. He just likes being with Carol. It's been like that from the day he arrived. It may have something to do with the fact that Carol is the one who most often feeds him, but I suspect that it's because Carol is just inherently more lovable than I.

It's true. I've never been much of a people person, at least not on a wholesale basis. I have my close friends, people who I'd do just about anything to help, and I have a wider group who I like pretty well and would enjoy spending more time with, but, in general, I'm not a big fan of humans as a species. Maybe it comes from being picked on pretty severely when I was growing up. My family moved around a lot when I was elementary-school age so I didn't have long term friends or people I grew up with. Having no social skills whatsoever and being the new kid in town didn't endear me to the locals in any way. The sort of teasing one encounters as an outsider tends to make matters worse with regard to the development of any sort of useful social skills. By the time we settled down in one spot, I was already fourteen years old and rather wary of people for the most part. In addition, I had absolutely no common sense at all, so any effort I made to be accepted by my classmates at school was doomed to failure. I'm not complaining, just stating the facts of my formative years. I was socially awkward to the extreme. I'm a little better now, but it wasn't until after I left home to live on my own that I learned any sort of useful people skills at all, and the ones I did learn still aren't those of a sophisticate. What people skills I have are adequate to keep me from getting into fights and for navigating small gatherings, but are useless for much of anything beyond that. I'll never be a salesman, and I don't like talking to strangers on the telephone.

Carol, on the other hand, has social graces and people skills that amaze and astonish me constantly. She loves talking to people, all people. If you sit down to a conversation with Carol, be prepared to tell her your life story. You'll find yourself telling her things you wouldn't tell your best friend, and it's not just because she has the people skills to hold conversations with others, no, it's because she's genuinely interested in you, even though you've just met. Carol is the sort of person who, had we gone to high school together, I would never have dared approach. She knew all the cool kids. Heck, she was a cheerleader. Socially, Carol is way out of my league. She looks forward to going out to large gatherings to meet new people, and when she gets there she has a good time. Almost everybody loves Carol, they just can't help it.

Quint is no exception. Quint loves Carol. He likes me, but he loves Carol. If she's home and she goes outside to do some gardening, Quint meows loudly at the window until she comes back inside. At night, he sleeps on her pillow above her head. In the morning, he wakes her up at whatever time she asks him to. I envy Carol her people skills, but I'm glad that Quint and I have her as a friend and companion. She's a civilizing influence on us both, and I don't blame Quint for adoring her. How could he not?

Keep Away

2009-06-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

One of Quint's favorite toys is the little red locking-rings that you have to remove from a one-gallon milk container to unscrew the top. The first time we dropped one on the floor, he batted it around and chased it as if it were a live animal. He played with it for hours, that first time, all by himself, all over the house. I suppose it satisfied some hunting instinct that is hard-wired into a cat’s brain, but it looked to me like he was just having fun. Like he was pretending it was alive and catching it and letting it go, and then catching it again, only to release it for another round. I like watching him play. He is so completely engaged with playing when he is doing it. Completely. It’s the Zen of a cat, that ability to be completely doing whatever activity he has decided to do. He hasn’t perfected it, as he can be distracted momentarily, or even longer, but he never forgets, and after dealing with whatever it might be that distracted him, breakfast, a noise at the window, a knock at the door, he goes right back to single-mindedly doing whatever it was he was doing before he was distracted.

Everything in his world, which, granted, is pretty small, is a potential cat toy. And until he has explored it thoroughly and either classified it as “toy” or “other,” he never gives up on it. If he sees a small object on a shelf above his current jumping height limit, he doesn’t categorized it as “unreachable,” but as “not reachable at this time.” He will go away and think about this new thing and consider his options. How will he reach it? Can someone in the household be encouraged to move it to a more accessible place? It there something nearby that can assist in obtaining the height necessary to reach the thing? I know he is thinking about it. I can see him staring off into space, imagining solutions to the problem, calculating heights and distances and traction coefficients, working out the cat physics of the problem. He never gives up, and he never forgets. If I walk over to that place, he watches me and he makes that noise that says “I want that.” I don’t always know what it is he wants, but he knows, and the “I want that” noise is only used for that demand. There are other noises for other communications.

Playing is ofttimes an individual activity, especially late at night. I hear him dashing about the house, pursuing phantom mice and rats, practicing his night vision skills, dodging obstacles in the living room, leaping from couch to love seat to floor to rug to counter top to the forbidden tabletop to the bookshelf under the dining room window. Once in awhile, he leaps up on our bed, just to make sure we are still there, and then it’s back to dashing about the house. Finally, when all the phantoms have been caught and killed and he is satisfied that all is safe within the house, he will come and join us in bed. Sometimes he sleeps on the pillow above Carol’s head, more often her curls up between our feet. That way he can make sure that if anyone moves, he will immediately know about it.

But playing is always more fun when there is someone else to play with. Since Quint doesn’t have any cat playmates, he has to settle for his human friends. Sometimes that is Carol, other times it’s me, and lately both of us get into the game. The game is a variation of “Keep Away.” Now, Keep Away as a game can be rather cruel, in that, usually the person who is being kept away is an unwilling victim. If you are unfamiliar with this game, it occurs when two people grab something valuable or necessary from a third person. The two grabbers then proceed to toss the grabbed item back and forth between them in such a way as to make it very difficult, or just barely impossible, for the victim to retrieve it. The cruelty comes into play as the two perpetrators must make it appear that there is some hope of the victim regaining the grabbed item. Of course, no such hope exists, but the apparency is important to the longevity of the game and the cruel delight of the grabbers and tossers. It ends when the victim collapses into tears and apathy, which was the purpose of the game in the first place, at least as it was played when I was a child. Usually, I was the victim.

The variation of Keep Away that we play with Quint would be better called Jump Away. There is no cruelty involved, but there is the element of danger, not to Quint, but to Carol and I. It’s a waiting and observation game, but it is also a test of each player’s reflexes. Here’s how it goes. I get on one end of our rather narrow kitchen, Carol gets on the other about eight feet away from me. Usually we are both kneeling. One of us has previously gathered from all over the house, the aforementioned red rings which he so enjoys chasing, three of them is good, four is even better. Quint, who knows this game, sits or lays on the floor between us, waiting. It begins when the possessor of the rings entices Quint by twirling the ring on the floor with a finger. When he begins to stalk the ring, but before he pounces on it and the twirling finger, you toss it into the air toward the other end of the kitchen. You see where the element of danger enters into the game. If you don’t pay close attention, your finger, hand, and arm could be mistaken for a cat toy and bloodshed can occur, not maliciously, of course, but cats don’t really understand the softness of human skin. Cats have hide and a thick layer of protective fur. When cats play with other cats, they don’t usually injure each other because of the fur and the toughness of their hide. No so with us humans, so one must be alert. As I said, this is a excellent test of each player's reflexes. Now, as the ring is, hopefully, sailing through the air, Quint’s part of the game is to catch it. He uses three different methods of doing this, the leap, the flip and the roll. The leap is the most satisfying for all the players. He jumps into the air and catches the ring in his teeth or paws, throws it to the ground and proceeds to ritually kill the poor thing. The flip is fun, too. He’ll let it sail over his head and catch it as it flies away from him, it’s a jump and turn kind of motion. It’s not as high a jump as the leaping technique, but it has a greater difficulty factor. The roll maneuver is executed towards either the beginning or the end of the game. At the beginning of the game, part of the enticement ritual involves tossing the rings to him while he’s laying on the floor. He’ll roll and reach out and grab them as they fly by. Once you’ve got him reaching and grabbing, you can proceed to the leaping and flipping parts of the game. When he gets tired of the leaping and flipping, the game goes back to rolling, reaching and grabbing. This game usually goes on for upwards of fifteen minutes or so, and is played each evening after Quint has had his dinner and his teeth brushed. Someday, someone should make a video of this activity. Someday.

The Great Escape

2009-06-13T22:10:00.000-07:00

It was a typical day around my house. I sent Carol off to work at about 8:30 or so. I had a day off, so I surfed around on the web for awhile, read a few more chapters in the book I was current working though, had a bit of lunch, and took a little nap. When I awoke, I looked around for Quint, just to see what he was up to. I hadn't seen him in awhile, but that was not unusual since he normally sleeps through the middle part of the day. It was well past that time now and I had to meet Carol at 5:00 to pick her up from work so that we could attend a charity showing of a sailing movie made by Roy Disney.

It was very quiet in the house, too quiet, as the line goes. I started looking for Quint. I looked in all the usual places, the shelf behind the couch, the bed, the couch in my office, the chairs in the dining room. He wasn't there. I made a more thorough search, Carol's closet, the linen closet in the hall, under the bed, behind the couch, in the closet in my office, and still no sign of Quint. Okay, I'm starting to panic now. Where could he be? Could he have gotten out of the house? Earlier, I had heard a commotion outside behind the house, a bit of a cat squabble. I didn't think anything of it at the time, since the cats in the back will sometimes argue with each other. Could that have been Quint fighting with the neighbor's cats? It didn't seem likely, but I went out the front door and started looking around the house and yard. I called his name as I searched the perimeter of the property. There were no cats to be found, not even the neighbor's cats who are usually hanging around the yard. Now I'm really getting worried.

I went back into the house and searched everywhere there was room for a cat to hide. It was still very quiet in the house. Quint is quite a talker, as we've discussed, so this was not a good sign. My cat is now officially missing, and I'm officially panicking. It's also getting close to the time I have to leave the house to go pick up Carol in Burbank. What to do? What to do? Okay, I decided to make one last effort to find him outside in the yard. I went back outside and down the driveway. I didn't see him. I still didn't see the other cats, either. I walked to the house in the back of the property where our neighbor and her cats live. I opened her gate and went into her back yard. I still didn't see any cats. I was calling Quint's name the whole time. As I was looking down the narrow path between my neighbor's house and the fence next door, three cats came over the fence and climbed down onto the dark path. Three cats? One of them just had to be Quint. I squeezed into the dark, narrow pathway, tripping over a flower pot and almost falling. I moved up the path toward the front of the house and out into the space between our two houses. There they were!! All three of the cats were together and moving away from me and toward the front yard. As I followed them and reached the corner of my house, they all disappeared. Now what? I headed for the front door with the hope that maybe, just maybe, Quint might have gone there to be let back into the house. He was there!! I opened the screen door and he scampered though and into the house. I started beathing normally again. I picked Quint up and tried to explain to him that he was an indoor cat now and that he didn't need to be wandering around the neighborhood. I checked him over thoroughly, looking for puncture wounds or other damage that he might have incurred in the course of his adventures, but he seemed to be just fine. I let him know how glad I was to see him again and made him promise never to scare me like that again.

I don't think he realizes how dangerous it is out there, and he'll probably go back out again, given the opportunity, so we'll have to be extra vigilant to make sure he doesn't have any more outdoor adventures.

Cat's Don't Get Called for Jury Duty

2009-06-06T22:15:00.000-07:00

It true, you know, that cat's don't get called for jury duty. When I said goodbye to Quint on Friday morning, that is where I was headed. Every other day of that week when I checked in to see if I would be required to show up, I was told that I wouldn't be needed. I figured I had it made. Why would they start a whole new trial on a Friday? Well, someone figured that there might be a need for a few more potential jurors on Friday and some random number generator in some government computer somewhere chose me. So there I was, saying goodbye to Carol and Quint and heading downtown with the possibility that someone might be crazy enough to want me to sit in judgement on someone else's future.

Quint, in the meantime, gets to sit in the window and watch the birds hopping around among the plants on the front porch, or take a morning nap in a nice warm sunbeam. Some years ago, I made this low bench to fit along the picture window in the living room just so the cats could lay there and nap or watch the birds. Carol hemmed the curtains for that window about a foot short so that they didn't interfere with the view. It's the perfect place for a cat nap, and most certainly a vastly more interesting place to spend the day than the jury assembly room in the criminal court building in downtown Los Angeles.

That's just where I was, though. I'd arrived early, about 9:15 a.m., checked in, found a chair away from the juror indoctrination meeting that was going on in the next room and opened one of the three books I had brought with me. An hour or so later, I'd finished up that book and had gotten up, walked around, stretched and returned to my chair. Nothing else had happened. Not a single one of the fifty or more people assembled there had been called to go into a court room. A few people were called to the check-in window to correct some error on the form they had filled out attesting that they were qualified to be a juror, but other than that, nothing had happened. I started a new book, Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, the "story of Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the opening of the American West," according to the subtitle on the cover. A few minutes later, a video played on the monitor in the corner telling all us potential jurors all about the wonderful places to eat and things to see in beautiful downtown Los Angeles. I went back to reading my book. At noon, they told us we could go to lunch, but that we had to be back by 1:30 p.m.

I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to get some fresh air and take a walk. Out in the hallway there was quite a crowd waiting for the elevators to take us down to the lobby. Some of the more experienced jurors chose not to wait but to take the stairs down instead. Later, I counted the flights down from the eleventh floor, but on that trek it seemed like a lot more than there actually were. I was guessing around thirty-three by the time I reached the lobby (It was actually twenty-two). I walked out of the building into some lovely Southern California weather with big puffy rain clouds and patches of blue sky and sunshine. I had put a little point-and-shoot camera in my bag when I left the house that morning. I hadn't used it much lately, so I figured that the battery would have plenty of charge left to snap a few shots of whatever downtown buildings and street life that I might encounter. A quick word of advice here: Never forget to bring your spare battery. I turned on the camera and focused on the Los Angeles City Hall and almost immediately got a low battery warning telling me that there was not enough energy to actually take any photos, but that there was plenty left to look at the photos which I hadn't yet been able to take. I found that, if I was quick, I could turn on the camera and squeeze off a shot before the camera's little "brain" realized that the batter was too low to actually do that. I got two hastily framed, bad shots that way and gave up. Nothing left to do now but walk, so I did that. I walked around the block which is uphill on one side and downhill on the other, and then walked back into the building. I had some lunch in the cafeteria on the first floor and then took the elevator back up to the jury assembly room. I found a more comfortable chair and settled in for what promised to be a deadly dull afternoon.

At about 1:50 p.m. they announced that we weren't going to be needed after all and that we could all go home. Ahh, freedom, sweet freedom. I'd done my civic duty again and now I'd be off the list for another year. I celebrated by going shopping at Target to get some wrapping paper for a birthday present we were going to deliver over the weekend. I love going to Target but I never come home with only the items which I intended to get. This time I found a cool little cat toy shaped like a bird. It's makes little chirping sounds whenever you move it. Quint loves it. He played with it all night long. No matter where I was in the house, I could hear the little chirping noises as he prodded and poked at it. I wish I had as much fun with my toys and he has with his.

Cats Are Not Dogs

2009-05-31T20:29:00.000-07:00

While I was taking one of my frequent walks around the local reservoir, I got to thinking about dogs and the people who love them, and about cats. More precisely, I started thinking about the differences between cats and dogs.

Now, I or my family, over the years, had quite a few dogs. When I was living at home, we almost always had a dog. My dad was fond of English Setters, so we had lots of those. Beautiful animals, those Setters, but boy did they like to run. Most of the time, my mom or dad would feed the dog in the morning and then let it outside and we wouldn't see it again until that evening. That was fun for the dog, but it didn't really make for much companionship for us kids. The most interaction we had was in the evening when we had to somehow convince the dog that it would be better to come inside for the night than stay out and play. Not an easy task, that convincing. Another problem with letting one's dog run loose all day is that, unless you live in the middle of a wilderness area, there are highways and streets all around where cars move at high speeds. We lost all but two of our dogs to automobiles. That's one of the ways I learned about death at a fairly early age. I learned a lot about grief, too. Despite the fact that I didn't get to see the dogs much, the time I did spend with them was fun. I got to loving those dogs, since they were much more fun to play with and easier to relate to than most of my human friends at that time. With one exception, we never had a cat when I was living with my parents. My mother didn't like them. She claimed they were unreliable and sneaky. Mostly, I think she just didn't trust anyone that wouldn't do what she told them to do, or come when she called them.

My first cat came to me from a loading dock. He didn't last long, sadly. He started following my sister around. He followed her across the busy county road one afternoon near Idaho Springs, Colorado where we were living at the time. My sister made it across, the cat didn't. She didn't understand about cats. Cats don't get the concept of streets and cars. It just doesn't make sense to them. Rats and mice and dogs and skunks and opossums and birds are things that cats understand. Pillows and towels and sock drawers and closet shelves and sunny windowsills are what cats like the best. A dog will lie down in the middle of the yard and trust that no one will run the mower over him or drive a bicycle over his tail. Cats want a place that's safe from all that for their nap. Cats want a vantage point where they can see what's coming after them, and a place nearby where they can run to if they don't feel like fighting. A dog will follow you around all day and be happy just hanging around with his human. A cat wants to have a choice about what it does. I don't believe that dogs do very much thinking and considering before they act. A cat will ponder an action for awhile, sort of mull it over, before he does it. Even when he's hunting, a cat will think about strategy, he'll wait, he'll stalk, he'll watch his prey and once he's figured all the angles, he'll pounce. It doesn't always work for the cat, but you can see that he always has a plan. A dog will love you if you feed him, pet him, play with him and make him feel safe.

With cats, you have to earn that affection. At the beginning of your relationship, a cat will love you when he needs to be fed, petted and played with, but wants to be left alone when it's nap time or tongue-bath time. If you're lucky, and you do everything right, sometimes a cat will love you all the time. He'll miss you when you're gone and he'll be waiting at the door when you get home. That sort of cat will walk into whatever room you are in and make sure you are okay. He'll then go about his napping or playing, knowing that everything and everyone is where they belong, but he'll come back and check once in awhile just be make sure. But you have to have established a mutual trust with your cat to achieve that kind of relationship. You can't ever forget to feed him, you can't ever step on him, and you try not to ever surprise him. If you treat your cat with the love and respect that he knows is his due, he will return it to you ten-fold. Quint is that kind of cat. He takes pretty good care of his humans and we sure do appreciate his concern.

Dental Hygiene for Cats

2009-05-26T10:12:00.000-07:00

It is likely that there are a number of different methods we could have used to clean the plaque from Quints little teeth. The veterinarian rubbed his teeth with a gauze pad. I thought method that lacked dignity and it certainly had no element of fun whatsoever, plus it seemed like it would be pretty expensive and wasteful, what with using and discarding one gauze pad for every cleaning. If you're going to be cleaning your cat's teeth once or twice a day for the rest of his life, you better find a way to make it cheap, fun and interesting for the both of you.

We already had the poultry-flavored toothpaste, so now we needed a brush of some sort to do the cleaning. We already had a couple little brushes that are attached to a splint-like plastic device which fits on a fingertip, but they were too big to get inside a kitten-sized mouth. Nope, it looked like we were going to have to put our hands into the lion's mouth. Okay, the kitten's mouth. Still, those little teeth are very sharp, so how do we keep our fingers out of harm's way and still get the job done. Yet another flash of brilliance on my part had me heading off to the local drugstore to see if toothbrushes for babies might be the right tool for the job. It turned out that they were perfect. Baby toothbrushes are available in two colors, pink and blue. Since Quint was a boy (well, not as much of a boy as he used to be), I went with the blue color and bought two.

Armed with the proper tool and the will to accomplish the mission, I now had to create a workable technique. There are quite a few very sharp obstacles in the road to kitten dental hygiene, ten claws and lots of needle-sharp little teeth. Any technique that evolved would have to take into account the avoidance of all of them. It took some trial and error, but eventually I achieved a moderately decent accomodation between my vulnerable flesh and his lethal weapons, though I did shed some small amounts of blood in the process. One bit of good fortune that made the process easier was that Quint liked the flavor of the toothpaste, which transformed the whole process from an annoying ordeal into a bit of a treat for him. I learned to keep the claws from automatically reaching up and pushing my hand away. I learned, too, that when you apply ointment with a bare finger, it is best to keep said finger out from between the upper and lower jaws. Ouch!

I give you the benefit of my research in hopes that you will avoid some of the bloodshed which I experienced. Here's how I brush Quint's teeth. First, I always wait until he's in nap mode, or at the very least, in a relatively calm and relaxed state. Trying to brush a cat's teeth when he's only interested in playing is a recipe for pain on your part. When I first started the brushing, I would pick him up from wherever he was laying and hold him in my lap. Now, he usually comes to me after dinner and asks if it's time for his brushing. Next I let him watch me as I put the toothpaste on the little blue brush. Then, I cup the back of his head in the fingers of my left hand and reach around under his jaw with my thumb to pull back his lips at the corner of one side of his mouth. Holding his head this way lets you tilt it back to you can more easily see what you are doing. With the right hand, I gently brush his teeth as far back as I can get and then brush forward to the fangs. I repeat the process on the other side and then I let him lick whatever toothpaste remains on the brush. While he licks his lips, I put a bit of the antibiotic oinment on my right index fingertip. Using the same technique as I use for the brushing, I apply the ointment to his gums from front to back and as far back as I can get my finger, being careful to keep said finger from straying in between the jaws. I do the other side the same way. Finally, to reinforce the pleasant aspects of the experience, I brush his fur for awhile. Bushing your cat's fur is highly recommended, even if you don't brush his teeth. I use a soft brush, since he's a short-haired cat, but I also use a regular fine-toothed "people" comb which I find gets out quite a lot of loose fur. Removing as much of the loose fur as possible every day helps keep your cat from having so many hairballs to cough up and leave lying in the middle of the floor, all cold and wet and squishy under your bare foot in the dark.

Now that you know the technique, go forth and brush your cat's teeth. Take my word for this, it will save you money in the long run. Cat dental hygiene helps keep your veterinarian bills much lower, and your cat much healthier. Tooth and gum problems in cats can have all sorts of complications and cause severe damage to other areas.

Pilling the Cat

2009-05-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

"Who shall pill the cat?" - Aesop.

Okay, it's really "bell the cat", but we didn't do that until later in this story, so I thought "pilling the cat" was a clever play on words. Please forgive me, especially since we didn't really have to give Quint pills. Instead, we had to squirt a nasty-tasting antibiotic liquid into his mouth twice a day for two weeks. How do I know it was nasty tasting? Well, his reaction to it from the first time I administered it made that fact quite evident. He said "Yuk!!", and tried to shake the stuff out of his mouth, which he partially succeeded in doing, scattering little drops of the medicine all over the floor and all over me. It was great fun for both of us.

After that first dose, he was somewhat reluctant to receive any further doses, but, good natured guy that he is, he didn't actually run and hide when it was medicine time, he just moved away ten feet or so and made me go and pick him up. I tried doing the procedure on my lap thinking that he'd feel more secure that way. Once was enough for that method. After I stopped the bleeding from my leg, I tried to figure out a way to medicate him without either of us getting injured. What I needed was a corner that I could back him into that would still allow me to get at his mouth. Ahh, the bookshelf outside the kitchen door might be perfect. It was. Twice a day I would place his hindquarters gently, but firmly, into that corner with my left hand holding him by the scruff of the neck. With my right hand I opened up his lower jaw and squirted in the liquid, holding him in place until some of it had trickled down his throat and he had calmed down a bit. Immediately thereafter I gave him a couple of his favorite kitty treats and lots of verbal praise and petting. It worked. It wasn't pleasant for either of us, but I managed to survive with only minor scratches on my hand and Quint didn't completely stop liking me. It could have been a lot worse.

I think part of what made the process relatively easy was that I had determined from the very beginning to get Quint accustomed to being handled. Every day I would pick him up, pet him, rub my fingers over his teeth and gums and touch his paws. I hoped that doing this while he was young would make it possible to take better care of him when he got older. If he was going to be "set in his ways", I want his "ways" to be open to any kind of handling that might be needed. I had learned my lessons on cat handling the hard way from Jasmine.

Jasmine came to us when she was five years old and by then she already had set ways of dealing with people handling her. Mostly, she would rather not have been handled at all. Sure, she would sit in your lap and allow you to brush her. Her and I actually had a routine where whenever I was sitting at my place at the dining room table she would hop up on my lap and demand that I brush her. As long as it was her choice to be on your lap or held in your arms, she was okay. As soon as she suspected that she was being restrained in any way, she would do everything in her power and use every weapon in her arsenal, to get away. I tried to pill Jasmine on several separate occasions while she was with us. Only the first time was ever successful. After that, she knew when you had a pill in your hand and she would not allow it. Even when both Carol and I tried to pill her as a team, with one of us holding her and the other administering the pill, she would slash and bite her way to freedom. We had to resort to hiding the medicines in her favorite foods.

Having learned what happens when a cat is not made comfortable with lots of handling, I wanted to have no such problems with Quint. So, I petted him and poked at him and prodded him and got him used to being handled. I recommend doing so to anyone with a kitten. It'll make your lives so much easier on down the road.

Pre-empting Nature

2009-05-14T18:56:00.000-07:00

The decision had been made, but we still had to wait until he was old enough to undergo the neutering operation. And so life went on at our house. Quint continued to give us joy and entertain us with his explorations and fascinations. As the holidays approached we had another decision to make. Not as serious a decision as surgery, but a decision nonetheless: Do we dare put up a Christmas tree with a curious and very active kitten in the house? The visions I had of tree decorations scattered and broken all over the living room were probably somewhat exaggerated, but I felt that some damage was inevitable if we put all those tempting little objects anywhere that Quint could reach them. What I needed was a solution that would allow us to enjoy some holiday decorations, but would keep Quint from getting himself in trouble. After much consideration, I came up with an idea that may well border on genius: I would decorate the ceiling! It was the perfect solution. Our living room has a high, beamed ceiling, so I strung bead garlands across the room and hung the glittery stuff ten feet in the air. It was perfect. Everybody won. Quint had a great holiday helping unwrap gifts and playing with the ribbons and the living room got a lovely, if unconventional holiday makeover. Actually, we liked the decorated ceiling so much that we left it like that. There was no reason not to.

We figured we'd wait until after the new year rolled around to take Quint in for his operation, so early in the morning of January 19, 2009, I loaded him back into the carrier, lugged him out to the car and drove over to Highland Park. We had an appointment, so when we got there he was admitted right away. For Quint it would be a strange, busy morning, but for me there was just the waiting until later in day when we would get the call to come and pick him up. If everything went okay, he would be ready to go home after 5:00 p.m.

A couple of hours later I got a call. The vet who was working on him had discovered in the course of the pre-surgery exam that Quint had a problem with his gums. Apparently, he was allergic to the plaque on his teeth and this was causing his gums be become inflamed. If the condition wasn't remedied or controlled it could mean that he would have to have all his teeth pulled. The first step was to do a thorough cleaning, and the vet wanted permission do the cleaning while he was knocked out for the neutering. Of course, I said, "Yes, do whatever you need to do." That's just what they did, cleaned his teeth and removed his, well, you know.

Carol took off from work early so we could both go over and pick Quint up to bring him home. We had a meeting with the vet when we got there and found out what our part of dealing with Quint's gum and tooth problem would be. We were told that if we could get the plaque under control and get his gum inflammation handled, he might grow out of his allergy. Our part of that was to brush his teeth to remove the plaque and start him on food that would help scrub the teeth and gums. In addition to the brushing, we would have to spread antibiotic gel on his gums after we had brushed away the plaque. We left the hospital with a bag of the new food, a tube of poultry-flavored toothpaste, and some liquid antibiotics that we were to give him twice a day while he healed from his surgery. We were warned that the liquid antibiotic medicine did not taste good and that Quint would, no doubt, not care for it at all. That turned out to be an understatement.

A Decision

2009-05-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

It wasn't so much a matter of if but when to do it. I knew that before he got too much older, Quint would have to be neutered. Ouch! The very thought of it made me shiver. Sure, it's the right thing to do, and, yes, it will most likely prevent some sort of future behavior problems if it's done while he's young. The question is: Will he ever forgive me? Quint and I feel pretty much the same way about visits to the doctor. We both recognize the necessity in some extreme circumstances, but for the most part, we both believe that the fewer visits we make the better off we'll be, and that none at all would be the very best. I mean, what do we go to the doctor for, really? Well, we go to the doctor to find out why we don't feel well and to get some sort of remedy so that we do feel well. That seems simple enough, but we both believe that it's just better to feel well all the time and not see the doctor at all if possible. In Quint's case there wasn't anything wrong with him. He was feeling just fine. He was a normal male kitten, who, very soon, would grow up to be a normal male cat.

The problem is that normal male cats perform normal male cat activities, like finding normal female cats to help them make more cats, and marking their territory as they roam around looking for those female cats. Quint was destined to live the life of a pampered, happy, healthy, indoor cat, the keyword being "indoor." There are great many very good reasons to want your cat to be an indoor cat, rather than an outdoor, or indoor/outdoor cat. These reasons include: no fleas, no ticks, no cat fights, no being run over by a car, no gifts of recently dead small animals or birds, no expensive vet bills caused by any of the aforementioned hazards and especially no being run over by a car!! Indoor cats live much longer than outdoor cats, and can be perfectly happy doing so, given loving, attentive human companions. A neutered, indoor cat often never develops the undesireable marking behavior that would be normal for a non-neutered outdoor cat. All the logical reasons say that a neutered cat would make a happier indoor cat. Still, I wondered if he would ever forgive me when he came back from the veterinary hospital missing two of his favorite parts. We'd just have to wait and see and hope that he'd blame the vet and not me.

Learning to Listen

2009-05-08T18:32:00.000-07:00

Some cats are pretty quiet, only making sounds when they are hungry, hurt, or angry. Jasmine, our dearly departed Abyssinian, had a very soft, hoarse meow sound which she made if she was hungry. The sound was so soft that sometimes she would open her mouth and nothing could be heard, though you knew she was trying. Another of our cats had a special sound she would make when she had caught something and was carrying it home to present it to us as a trophy. It was a rather muffled mew sound that escaped around the edges of whatever she might have in her mouth. That cat's name was Muss. We didn't name her, she was a hand-me-down cat from my sister-in-law. Muss had some quirks, oh yes, she had some quirks. One of them was that she liked to hunt, kill and bring home socks from our neighbor's clothesline. She would march proudly into the kitchen with her dead sock trophy in her mouth, all the while making the muffled mewing sound. She was very proud, and we were embarrassed. We would retrieve the poor dead socks and hang them over the fence between the backyards so that our neighbors could match them up with their missing mates. One year, we gave our neighbors a bag of clothes pins for Christmas. The number of their sock losses declined drastically once they started using them. I'm not sure that this explains where all the missing socks go, but it certainly explains a whole lot of the ones in Hollywood for several years.

Quint is the most talkative cat we've every had, and has the ability to produce quite a broad spectrum of sounds. He makes a sort of warbling chirp, very bird-like, that means "Hi, I'm here. What are you doing?" There's an annoyed sort of loud ROOWWWRRR that means "Hey!! Come here! There's something outside you should see!" Then there is the MEOW? with the question mark ending that says "Is it time to play?" Of course, there is the MEOW! with the exclamation point that means "Feed me now!" There is also the long plaintive Meeeoooowwww! which can mean "Okay, enough is enough, can you please play with me!" or just "Will someone please pay attention to me now?" It's his very own language and he combines the various sounds into what I would have to call sentences, short sentences, granted, but still definite intentional sentences which we try very hard to understand. He made one statement just a moment ago which I interpreted to mean, "Hey, Carol's trimming the plants outside the dining room window, could you ask her to come in and pet me?" To which I replied, "I know, I know, I waiting for her, too. We'll just have to be patient." I'm almost certain I got that one right. Some others we have to guess at.

Kittens are Fun Wrapped in Fur

2009-05-06T21:56:00.000-07:00

It had been a long time since we'd had a kitten around the house and we'd forgotten what that was like. What a wonderful thing to rediscover! Kittens like to play -- all the time. They don't really need to sleep, although they do quite a lot of that, too, but playing is always the right thing to do. Anything that is small and not attached to anything else is a potential toy, which means that any small object that is no longer where Carol or I thought we had seen it last is probably somewhere on the floor, or under a couch. Though he wasn't very big, there would soon come a time where nothing was safe, no matter how high above the floor it rested. He was always testing his limits to see how high he could jump. He couldn't quite make it to the top of the kitchen counter yet, but you could see him thinking about it and biding his time and practicing his skills.

He soon found a favorite toy among those we offered him, a tiny mouse-shaped thing made from some sort of fur, probably rabbit. He batted that little thing all over the house. The kitchen soon became the favorite playground, probably because when Carol and I are home we spend quite a bit of time there cooking, washing dishes, making lunches in the morning, and dinner in the evening, plus that's where Quint's water and food dishes are. More and more the little mouse thing would wind up under the stove, which meant that either Carol or I had to get down on our hands and knees and poke a stick around under the stove to retrieve it. It got so bad that Quint was spending a good part of his day sitting in front of the stove waiting for someone to come and get his toy for him. I gave that problem a bit of thought and then contrived a sort of shield that would fit across the front of the stove to keep the toy out from under it. It was quite an effective solution, but sometime thereafter the tiny mouse thing disappeared and, though we searched, we have never been able to find it since, so we've had to move on to other less satisfactory toys. I suspect that someday, when we are doing a bit of spring cleaning, we will find the little mouse thing. I'm pretty certain that Quint will remember it and be very happy to have it to play with once again. But in the meantime, he was running and jumping and eating and sleeping and playing and growing stronger and longer. All of that was fun. It was fun for him to do and fun for us to watch. Being the clever kitten that he is, he found ways to get Carol and I to play with him. The best games are those where all three of us are crawling around on the kitchen floor chasing one of his toys. Yep, kittens are pure fun!

Realization

2009-05-05T17:11:00.000-07:00

It's an oddity, but still a truth that you don't know what you are missing until you have some of it. Carol and I had a very nice life during the thirteen months from the time Jasmine died until the time that Quint arrived. We went to work, had some meals together when our schedules permitted, went for walks, talked about politics, and just generally enjoyed another year or so of married life, a year not so very different from the thirty-one years before it.

We have always divided up the chores so that each of us does what he or she does best. I like to cook, Carol doesn't mind cleaning up afterwards, and we both like to eat what I cook. I know how to keep the cars running, so I do what maintenance is needed. Carol likes things neat and tidy, so she cleans and dusts, though I've been known to help out with those kinds of chores on occasion. I have had a tendency to be less than thrifty, so Carol is in charge of the finances, though, lately, I've been helping with some parts of that job. Mostly, we have a fairly even division of labor and life runs on rather smoothly around our house, with only minor complaints, and those are easily remedied. But there was a hole in our lives, something missing, a emptiness that we didn't even know existed, didn't know, that is, until Quint arrived.

Now that he's here, the house is more alive. When we go off to work, we have someone else to say goodbye to, and someone to look forward to seeing when we arrive home. Before Quint, we'd arrive home from work and it was just a house, a place where we keep our stuff. Certainly, Carol and I enjoyed seeing each other at home, but our schedules didn't mesh very well at that time, so, often, Carol would get home when I was already at work and I would come home after she was already asleep. With Quint in the house, there is someone there to greet us as we walk up to the front door. We both look forward to getting home to be with Quint, and we always make sure we say goodbye to him when we leave. Usually, we assign him a job as we leave, such as house guard, bird watcher, or bug catcher, and we try to give him an approximate time when we'll be back. It's just common courtesy, and I believe that he appreciates knowing that he has a job and that we'll be coming back at some predictable time. We're pretty sure that he understands what we say to him. He's an important part of what makes our house a home and we want him to know that we appreciate all that he does to make our lives better. I think most of all we want him to know that, of all the things that he does, making the house feel alive is the thing he does the best.

A Check-Up and a Name

2009-05-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

The second thing that crossed our minds, right after we realized how cute our new kitten was, was that we needed to get him to the veterinarian and have him checked out as soon as possible. After all, he'd been living in an abandoned house, so he was probably infested with fleas, worms, and all kinds of other horrors. The third thing that crossed our mind was that he needed a name. Now, please realize that I was still a bit reluctant to get too attached to this little guy until we found out how healthy he was, and that had to wait until Monday. In the meantime, we showed him where the litter box was and dug out a couple of toys that we had saved after Jasmine had died.

This formerly wild cat fit right into our household routine. He spent the weekend exploring every square inch of the house. He played, he followed us around, he took naps, he acted as if he had always lived with us. From that first day, he knew where his litter box was and it's purpose. He did everything right. He scratched on the scratching post, he purred when petted, he played with his toys and he made quite a amazing number of different sounds. He was perfect.

Carol and I talked about what sort of name to give this new kitten, but we couldn't come up with anything that seemed to fit. We agreed that it might be wise to give him a few days to settle in and see if something in his behavior would help to name him. So, we watched, and played and waited to see what sort of things he would do.

On Monday, Carol went off to work and I loaded up the new kitten and headed to the animal hospital. We've been going to Highland Park Animal Hospital for a great many years now and have always been happy with the treatment they've given to our cats. It's a bit of a drive, but they know us and we know them, and so, naturally, that's were we went. I had collected the appropriate samples before we left, so we could get a complete picture of our new cat's health. The kitten wasn't exactly happy about being in the cat carrier on the front seat of the car, but I've had cats who voiced their complaints at much higher volume and with much greater frequency, so the ride to the hospital wasn't too bad for either of us.

It was the most straightforward visit to the veterinarian I've ever experienced and one of the most pleasant as well. The kitten was easy to handle, the vet was pleasant and the results were all good news. His only problem was a few ear mites. After vaccinations for all the things kittens are susceptible to, a blood test and a topical treatment for ear mites, fleas and worms, I left our sample to be sent to the lab, wrote my check for the visit, loaded up the kitten and headed home with a clean bill of health. Hurray!! I called Carol on the way and gave her the good news. We, apparently had adopted the perfect cat. We got a call the next day stating that our sample had tested negative for any parasites.

Now that we knew that we had a healthy kitten, likely to live to a ripe old age, we could move forward with the naming. As we watched and played over the next couple of days, we realized that this kitten possessed all of the best qualities of every cat we'd ever know. He was affectionate, unafraid of strangers, playful, handsome and curious. He was also extremely photogenic, which I consider an essential characteristic in a cat. He really was the quintessential cat, and he named himself simply by being who he is. We call him Quint.

Homecoming

2009-05-01T15:11:00.000-07:00

In April of 2007, our Abyssinian cat, Jasmine, was diagnosed with Diabetes. By the time we became aware of her condition, the damage had been done and it was too late to save her. I was devastated by her loss. I feel it to this day. It took a long time for me to even consider adopting another cat. Carol, my wife, is a bit more resilient than I and, after a few months, she began exploring with me the possibility of acquiring a new kitten. About a year had passed since Jasmine's demise before I began to feel more amenable to the idea, though I was in no way enthusiastic about it. I do love my wife, though, and will do almost anything to make her happy. So, if she had her heart set on adopting a cat, I knew that I would eventually agree. It wasn't long thereafter that we decided it might be time to begin exploring the possibility. Thus were let loose the hands of fate. We didn't know it yet, but there was a kitten on it's way into our home and our hearts.

Carol let it be know among friends and associates at her workplace that we might be in the market for a cat or kitten. Once you put an idea like that out into the universe, there is really no stopping it. One of her friends had an aunt who had a friend who had a cat to give away. The problem with that one was that the cat was currently living in Riverside, which is pretty far away. I suggested that perhaps we should look a bit closer to home, while keeping the Riverside cat as an option. Carol kept talking to people and the Riverside cat found someone else to adopt him.

Meanwhile, Leticia, or, Letty, as she likes to be called, was still seeking a home for the poor homeless kitten living in the abandoned house next door. Now, Letty has a boyfriend named Evan. Evan's mother is named Valerie. And Valerie is one of my wife, Carol's co-workers. You probably see where this is going by now. Valerie is also part of our extended family. She and Carol occasionally meet for lunch or go for a walk over the noon hour. On one of those occasions, the subject of cats came up and, as a result, Carol received some pictures of a small kitten in her e-mail. Of course, Carol had to share the story of this kitten with me and I agreed to look at the pictures. A few snapshots of a small grey and white cat arrived in my in-box. He looked perfect to me, so we set up a meeting with Letty, Evan and the kitty to see if we all got along. Letty wanted to make sure the kitten was going to a good home. Carol and I wanted to see how he would react to us and our house.

Letty and Evan arrived at our home on a Saturday morning carrying the little grey and white kitten. Carol and I introduced ourselves to Letty, we had already met Evan, and, after all the greetings were exchanged, we all sat down around the dining room table. Letty set the kitten down on the floor and he immediately jumped up onto the bookshelf that sits under the dining room window. We had always put a towel on the top of that bookshelf for Jasmine to sit on when she jumped up there to look out the window. In preparation for the new kitten's visit we had, once again, put the towel on the bookshelf. And there he was, the new kitten, previously an unknown quantity, never having been in our house before, sitting on that towel in that window. He looked around a moment and lay down facing the dining room so that he could watch us all. That was the moment that we all knew that this particular kitten had found his new home, and that a new adventure had begun for he and I and Carol.

His Uncertain Origins

2009-04-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

Quint was born in an abandoned house in the San Fernando Valley in California sometime in April of 2008. I don't know exactly when, of course, but the vet told me, when I took him in for his first check-up and vaccinations, that he was about fourteen weeks old. So, his early kittenhood was spent in the wilds of suburbia. Resourceful, even as a kitten, he found a loving human to feed and pet him at the house next door. Leticia, the girl who lived in that house, very much wanted him to come and live with her, but there just wasn't room at her house for another cat, so she decided to find someone who would provide a loving home for him.

I think dreams and thoughts and desires have more power than we imagine them to have. Sometimes, if we want something very much, and that something might be good for us to have, then what appears to be magic can cause things to happen that might not otherwise occur. Call it fate, if you like, but an unlikely series of events brought this little homeless kitten to my wife and I, and all of our lives are better because of it.

Introducing Quint

2009-04-29T10:50:00.000-07:00

This is the story of my adventures with Quint. Among other things, Quint is a cat. He is also an entertainer, a companion, an athlete and my friend. Please join me on this adventure as he and I and his other friends travel together through life in Los Angeles, California.