Who's in Charge Here?

My cats have succeeded in bending me to their will.  Not that I resisted very much.  Okay, I cooperated quite willingly.  Still, it has been fascinating to observe and experience the way in which my cats have trained me to do what they want me to do.

Quint is the least subtle of the two.  When he wants something, he simply meows at me until I figure out what that something is and either do it or supply it.  When he wants a kitty treat, he sits by his “egg” and stares at me until he gets one.  The “egg” is a plastic, egg-shaped toy that is hollow on top and weighted at the bottom so that when he bats at it, is spins around, wobbles a bit and then rights itself.  The two halves unscrew from each other and you can load small treats into the top.  There is a small hole in one side of the hollow top where the treats fall out as the egg spins around.  Quint is very good at pushing the egg around the kitchen to get the treats to fall out.  So when he sits by his egg, I know exactly what he wants.

I keep a length of string in one of the kitchen drawers.  Quint likes to have me drag the string around for him to chase.  He will sit on the kitchen floor directly below that drawer and meow for me to play with him.  When he wants someone to throw one of his catnip mice around the house for him, he will knock down the one he wants to play with from the shelf where we keep them and start batting it around at our feet.

At mealtimes, he demands to be fed on time each morning and evening.  He comes into the bedroom in the morning and wakes up my wife when it’s time for him to be fed.  In the evening he trots into the kitchen, looks to see if there is fresh wet food in his dish and, if there is not, meows loudly, letting whichever of us is there know that it is time for supper.

If he wants to be taken out in his cat-stroller, he will come and find me, meow at me, and then lead me to the living room where the stroller is parked.  Often he will jump up into the stroller, sit down inside and look up at me, waiting for his ride.  Other times, he will sit alongside the thing and wait for me to put him inside so he can get that ride.

He usually does each of the activities at around the same time each day, but I wouldn’t ever say that he does anything automatically, or as part of a training pattern.  I firmly believe that, at any given moment, he knows exactly what he wants to do and makes sure that if it’s not something he can do for himself, he gets the help he needs to do it.  I believe this because at other times, he’ll play by himself, or he’ll start of game of chase with Hedge.  He calls on me when he needs or wants me to help him.

Hedge is less demanding and much more subtle in getting what he wants, but he, too, knows how to get us to give it to him.  He likes the new Tumbler treats from Temptations and he’ll come into the kitchen in the evening looking for someone to roll a few of them to him while he runs after them.  He still only likes to be petted in certain places, but when he thinks it’s time for him to be petted, he is quite insistent that I stop whatever I’m doing at the time and follow him to whichever location he’s chosen and pet him right then.  Depending on his mood, this can happen several times a day.  He doesn’t always squeak at me to come and pet him, sometimes he’ll just sit outside of the door of whatever room I am in and wait for me.  When I get near him, he will then lead me to the spot where he wants to be petted, looking over his shoulder to make sure I’m following.

Both cats here their special times when they get brushed.  Hedge gets brushed in the morning as soon as I am awake.  Sometimes he waits until he’s sure I’m about to get up and then jumps up on the bed about the time my feet hit the floor.  Occasionally, he’ll have something else he’s doing in the morning, like bird watching or eating breakfast, but as soon as he hears me moving around, he’ll find me, squeak at me and lead me into the bedroom for his morning grooming session.  Quint gets brushed in the evening.  He gets both his teeth and his fur brushed right around supper time.  He’s flexible about exactly when that happens, as long as it does happen eventually.

There are times when my schedule requires that I be away from the house at the times when the cats are used to having me around.  They are very forgiving when that happens, but I do get scolded and reminded that their needs really ought to come first.  Mostly of the time, I agree with them. I like being a servant to my cats.  There’s no monetary reward in it, but the purrs I receive are priceless.

More Adventures in Cat Sitting

I did a bit of cat sitting for a friend over the holidays.  Here's a video of the highlights:

Zombies, Cats and Heroes Giveaway

Starting today, September 23, through Saturday, September 27, 2014, I'm giving away my post-apocalyptic novel, Zombies, Cats and Heroes.  Please feel free to grab yourself a copy, share the link with your friends and read it to your cats.

The book is the cat-lover's version of survival in a dangerous new world.  Get your copy here.  Enjoy!

The Fear: Biography of a Black Cat

For the last couple of days, I have made my newest short story available as a free download on my Kindle site. It is Hedge's biography and I thought it was a story worth telling. It seems that at least two of the people who read it, thought so, too. They posted very nice reviews of the story. It is still available for free until tomorrow, August 13, 2014. Feel free to get a copy for yourself and share with your friends. Hedge is a wonderful creature and I am happy to be able to share his story this way. Here is a link to the Kindle store where you can download the story: The Fear

A Free Story

This is the cover for one of the short stories I have available for sale on Amazon.com. Today, August, 1, 2014 through August 5th, 2014 the story can be downloaded for free. It's in the Kindle store, but if you don't have a handheld Kindle reader, you can download the free reader app from Amazon for whatever device you might be running. Here is a link to the Amazon page for the story: Bastet

Qunitessential

When we gave our cat the name “Quint”, or rather when he named himself, we had seen only a brief glimmering of what he would become. Even then, though, we knew that he was something, or someone, special. He had that spark that not every cat contains, that extra bit of life, that extra measure of awareness, of curiosity. He is what I call Cat-Plus. There are cats that are just cats. They are adorable and they do all the things that a cat should do – chase a string, bat their toys around, climb into boxes and bags, dash about the house in a frenzy of imaginary hunting, purr, demand attention, leave the occasional wet hairball on the floor right where I’ll step on it with my bare feet, and all the other common cat activities. And then there are those cats that are a bit more than cats, the ones that have something to say to you and manage to find a way to communicate it to you despite the nearly insurmountable language barrier. It’s that undefinable extra bit that distinguishes the normal, everyday house cat from Cat-Plus. I have one of each. Hedge, the black cat, has potential, but something horrible happened to him before he came to us that scared and scarred his little cat mind so thoroughly that he may never be completely free of it. I try to help him, but whatever happened to him is never very far from his thoughts and just about the time I think he might start to act like a normal, playful cat, the horror takes him and he has to go to one his “safe” places to get it under control. Whatever he sees when the horror takes him, makes him very afraid. He is the most submissive cat I have ever known. And he desperately wants everyone to like him, but he’s afraid of everyone but Quint, Carol and I, so his circle of friends is very small. Quint is Cat-Plus. He smart and sensible and insatiably curious. He knows what he wants and he has learned how to tell us what that is. He has to know what is going on in the house at all times. He wants to know what we’re having for dinner, who we’re speaking to on the phone, where we’ve been walking, what’s in any bag or box that enters the house, what movie we’re watching, even what we’re reading. He doesn’t want to participate in any of our human activities, he just wants to know what we are doing. When there is something that he wants us to do with him, he comes to us and reaches out with a paw and taps us on the arm to get our attention and then tells us what he wants. I’m not a fluent in Cat as I would like to be so I don’t always know what Quint is saying to me, but most often it has something to do with grooming, feeding or playing. He likes having his fur brushed and, when I am sitting in my chair at the dining room table, he will insist that I brush him before I do anything else. I try telling him that I am eating and that he should wait until I’ve finished. He doesn’t listen. He keeps poking me on the arm with his claws until I pick him up and brush him. If he wants a ride in his stroller, he will jump in and sit there staring at us until we take him for a ride. Very often, he’ll just walk up to me and meow. I know he wants something, but it’s hard to tell just what that might be. I’m sure he thinks I’m too stupid to understand what he’s saying. He’s probably correct in that. I’ve never been very good at foreign languages, or even accents. I just don’t have an “ear” for them, I guess. I find myself saying, “Could you spell that, please?” what I’m talking to someone with a heavy accent. Poor Quint can’t spell and that makes understanding him all the more difficult. I can understand some Cat words, like “Hi, I’m here!!” and “It’s dinnertime,” plus “I like that,” and “Leave me along, I’m busy.” Each cat has his/her own dialect which makes understanding them even more difficult. Hedge has a sound that means “Follow me” which is different from the one Quint makes to express that same concept. Since the cats can’t even agree among themselves what the sounds mean, I don’t feel badly about not always understanding them. Quint has his own language and his own ways of making us understand what he needs and that is part of what makes him extraordinary. But he also has a presence that is immediately evident to anyone who meets him. There is something extra about him that isn’t easily describable. I think of it as a confident awareness of not only himself as a cat, but an awareness of himself in relation to his environment and the other inhabitants of that environment. He is himself and he knows it and he knows what that means. Quint lives up to his name, which comes from quintessential. The word “quint” means five. “Quintessential” means, essentially, the fifth element. If the four elements are earth, air, fire and water, then the fifth element is the spirit. Quint is the spirit of Cat, the best of his kind. Okay, maybe you think your cat is better, smarter, more clever. You may be right. But Quint has that something extra that sets him apart from every other cat I have ever known. I consider him the quintessential cat. If you ever meet him, I believe you will agree.

The Educated Cat-Keeper

I know some things about cats, clues about their state of health, how to help prevent hair balls, how to brush their teeth, how to “pill” them, how to entertain them and even a bit about how to train them. I didn’t always know these things. Being a good help-mate, friend-with-the-thumbs, responsible companion to my cat, Quint, meant that I needed to learn something about him. Quint is not the first cat I’ve ever lived with, but until he came to live with us, I was a rather accidental cat person. When I was growing up, okay, well, getting bigger, I’m still not what most people would consider a grown-up. As a child, my family, when we had a pet, had a dog. My dad liked English Setters. They are beautiful dogs, but what they like to do best is run. And they were my dad’s dogs, not mine. My mom hated cats. She said they were sneaky, whatever that means. My wife already had two cats when I met her. I was given another one around that time by a bartender in Birmingham, Alabama. That one was named Juniper. We also had a German Shepard which we rescued from the pound. We had to give all our animals away when we moved from Colorado to California. We cried about that, but the place where we were going already had three cats in residence, so we found good homes for our friends and reluctantly left them behind. When we arrived in California, we met Max, Müss and Scooter. They were great cats, but we weren’t their people, at least not right then. Scooter contracted feline leukemia and died. We inherited the other two when my sister-in-law moved away. We loved Max and Müss and did our best to be good companions for them. Frank showed up about that time and he was great, smart, social, street smart and orange. We brought Frank, Max and Müss with us to the house where we live now. Frank fell victim to a speeding car and his last day still ranks as the worst day of my life. Müss lived to be twenty. She was deaf by then, and as quirky a cat as I’ve ever seen. I wrote about her in an earlier post. At the end she was having seizures and I would hold her and talk to her until they stopped. Then there was the day I came home and found her cold on the bedroom floor. I was heartbroken. Our dentist, at the time, hearing the sad story, gave us an Abyssinian already named Rocky. Poor Rocky was not bright. That was back when we had a cat door. Rocky didn’t understand about cars and streets and it was his undoing. Soon thereafter, that same dentist gave us Jasmine. She was five years old when we got her and very set in her ways. We loved her, but she was another quirky kitty. She would sit in your lap and let you brush her, but as soon as you tried to hold her she would fight you. She was impossible to medicate. In spite of that, she had a pretty good life with us until we discovered that she was diabetic. By the time we figured that out, her internal organs were damaged beyond repair. I decided I didn’t want another cat after that. That decision, and my grief, lasted about eighteen months. That’s when Quint came into our lives. I decided that I would try to be a better cat person when Quint arrived and I proceeded to educate myself and put into practice a few things I had learned over the years. First of all, I never wanted a repeat of a cat who couldn’t be handled, so from his first day in our house, I started getting Quint used to being touched. I messed with his little feet, I played with his ears, I rubbed his little kitty belly, and I put my fingers into his mouth and rubbed his gums and teeth. This has made caring for him as easy as it can be. When we took him to be neutered, the vet discovered that he has a plaque allergy which, unhandled, would ultimately have cause him to lose all his teeth. Instead, I brush his teeth every evening and not only are his teeth always beautifully white, but his allergy is under control without any dangerous medication. After brushing his teeth every day for over five years, he now knows when it’s time for his daily brushing and lets me know by standing up on his hind legs and grabbing my arm with a front paw. He doesn’t even let me finish my dinner when he decides it’s his turn. He keeps poking me until he gets his teeth brushed. Thus every evening, I get a good look at his mouth and gums which are very good indicators of how the rest of him is doing. I also brush him thoroughly and make sure I handle every inch of him, just in case some other part of him might need attention. It’s easy, because he loves the attention and doesn’t resist being handled. When he does need to be medicated, which hasn’t been often, he allows me to push a pill into his mouth and doesn’t hold it against me or try to bite or run away. He knows that it is my intention to help him and that I would never hurt him. I made a video of my technique for giving him doses of some nasty-tasting anti-biotic. He hated the taste and would involuntarily back up from the eye-dropper when I squeezed a dose into his mouth. I was losing skin every time I did it, so I just turned him over on his back on my lap and dosed him that way. It worked. He got his medication and I didn’t bleed. I know that not everyone will be able to use my methods, mostly because there is no other cat quite like Quint. Still, all the work I put in with him early on has paid off. He’s easy to handle, nearly painless to medicate and doesn’t get stressed about anything we need to do. I also have collected a good sized library of cat-care and cat-behavior books, all of which I have read. I don’t remember everything in them, but if I have a question, I usually know where to look for an answer. Of course, there are also a large number of resources available online and I use those, too. For example, say you want to bring a cutting of a plant from your garden into the house and put it in a vase. Do you know if that plant might be toxic to your cat? If you don’t know it’s safe, you should make sure. Many, many very common houseplants are toxic to cats on levels from making them very sick to making them very dead. We keep the indoor houseplants to a minimum. Instead, we grow a weekly crop of wheatgrass in small containers. We use two containers in rotation and grow the grass on our front porch. We have one crop available for the cats on the floor in the kitchen where it can be watered as needed. While the cats munch on that crop, we grow another crop out on the porch. This way they always have some nice fresh greens to keep their digestive system healthy. We used to buy “cat grass” at the grocery store for about $4 or $5 for a small container. Then we bought the seeds which are usually sold nearby. They, too, were rather expensive. Once I figured out that what we were buying were just wheatgrass seeds, I got on the internet and found a website where you can buy bulk seeds for a small fraction of what you pay in the pet or grocery store. Wheatgrass is very popular among the health food eating folks and the seeds are readily available and inexpensive. Cats love wheatgrass and it is good for them. It’s easy to grow. All you need is potting soil, water and sunlight. It will grow indoors or outdoors. It sprouts quickly and grows up tall and lush in just a few days. Quint and Hedge, our other cat, love their wheatgrass and will both come running when we bring in a fresh crop. A fresh crop of greens is about all that Hedge will come running for, though. But that is another story. Where I succeeded with Quint, I got only mediocre results with Hedge. But then, they came from different sides of town and had different kitty-hood experiences. Handling and dealing with Hedge is an entirely different story, but we’ll save that tale (tail) for another day. The point of this whole post is stated by that old cliché: Knowledge is power. It’s true. The more you know about your cat, the more you communicate with your cat, the better a companion you will be. The reward is all the love you get in return and the knowledge that you are giving your friend as high a quality of life as is possible. What I have learned is simple, start early, earn their trust, know as much as you can about your cat, play with your cat, keep your cat inside the house, and make the house as cat-friendly as can. There’s more, of course, but with those things as a foundation, you’ll do well with your cat.