A Tale of Horror

It's getting close to Halloween. And while I like a good tale of horror as much as the next person, that doesn't mean I appreciate featuring in one in real life.

But for a few minutes this evening, I did.

It was a little after 7:00, and I was cleaning up after a very busy Sunday afternoon. I happened to look into the living room here at the House of the Flying Furballs, and noticed that Rhadwen, my ten-year-old calico, was perched up on the sill of one of the little windows next to the fireplace. The window was open, the screen was up, and she was more outside than in.

"Rhadwen!" I called. "Wennie! Turn around!!"

No reaction.

I walked over and saw that she was hanging head and shoulders over the edge of the outer sill. Trying to make up her mind whether to jump down and explore. That's what I figured it was. It's a fur piece, so to speak, to the ground at that point; she probably was considering whether it would be worth it at her age.

Well, I wasn't going to give her the opportunity to try. I grabbed her by her furry middle and hauled her inside.

Yeeoouwwwwoauwwww!!!!! she didn't appreciate that! She howled at the indignity. Worse for her, the dog was on the scene, playing officious big brother and making sure justice was done.

She didn't claw me: I had hold of her so she couldn't. I gave her a little more food in her dish to soothe her ruffled feelings and to give thanks for not having to go out in the rain to chase her. Then I started back to my sweeping.

But wait a minute. When I'd pulled Rhadwen in through the window, she hadn't turned around and yowled at me. There was something about it that hinted she was irate at something outside.

And a few minutes before, when I'd gone out front to light my jack-o'-lantern for the first time, I'd heard something in my front bushes. I'd dismissed it then as me myself having brushed against them, but now . . .

Aw-oh! Where one cat can sit and perch and stare, two other cats can be through and away. The kittens. Where were the kittens?

"Gwenith! Huw!" I searched all over the house, from middle to top to bottom. No sign of the floofy pale pink tabby or the sleek brown and gray. Not in the box spring in the Kitten Room, not under my bed in the bedroom, not under the table in the study, not under the stairs in the basement. There were no kittens to be found, in litter box or in empty packing box, in dropcloth or ironing basket: my little cats had disappeared.

They're good at disappearing, of course. They'd disappeared all afternoon when I had company over. But now there was a strong possibility they'd apparated themselves right off the premises, through that gaping screenless window.

So out I went, tramping miles and miles through the freezing, merciless rain in the blazing cold night, searching relentlessly for my lost kittehs.

Well, no, actually, it was around 60 degrees outside this evening and I only went round to the side of the house under the living room window. But it was dark and staring to rain.

No sign of my little cats. "Huw! Gwenith!" Huw I hoped would come stalking up to me. Gwenith is more skittish: what would she do if she were spooked? But Rhadwen's behaviour told me they might be-- please, God!-- were out there. "Gwenith! Huw!"

But I found nothing.

I looked in the front border. Nothing.

Maybe it would help if I located a flashlight? Yes, perhaps.

Thus equipped, I tried again. The rain was starting to come down harder. I had to find my kittehs. "Huw!! Gwenith!!" I called. "Gwenith! Huw!"

All of a sudden, under the weeping cherry, a moving gray-striped shadow, a flash of white breast.

"Huw! Baby, come here!"

He wouldn't come. He moved deeper into the vegetation.

I moved closer, made a grab. Missed! "Huw! Please! Come here! Where's your sister?"

He turned tail and ran into the front border. I followed, stepped over the sheet-covered dahlias, and tried to secure him again. His wet body slipped through my grasp and behind the Alberta spruce.

"Huw, please!!"

I came around again, just as he made a break for it to head for the neighbors' spirea. Aaaghh!! Got him! He was slick and wet and squirmy, but I gathered him into my arms and carried him into the house, placing him in the custody of Llewellyn who doubtless gave him what-for for his illicit escapade.

But his littermate was still out there. I had to assume that. Back out into the rain.

"Gwenith! Gwen!" Had she squeezed into the neighbors' yard? She's supple enough. Had she heard the call of the wild and taken off to parts unknown? I combed and recombed the wet bushes on both sides of the little side yard, while in the neighborhood all around me the heedless households were huddled around their televisions, watching whatever it was the Steelers and the Giants were doing to one another. Dismayed, I steeled myself for the possibility that I'd have to go petitioning up and down the street for the neighbors to keep an eye out for my missing cat.

It was time to bring out the big guns: Some fragrant gushiefood in a little dish. Oh, please, please, let a bribe work! It does indoors, when she hides in the attic storage space! Please don't let her be so confused and disoriented she won't come!

One last look in the yard under the guilty window, one last admittance of futility. I set the dish down on the front step near the lighted jack-o'-lantern and hoped she'd be willing to come.

But then, I don't know what it was, something moved me to look in the bushes on that side of the house. I shone my flashlight behind each, and there, behind the boxwood shrub closest to the gate to the back yard, was an tawny oval furry shape, a dry tawny oval furry shape, huddled next to the house, the head invisible, hiding in the foliage.

"Gwenith!"

She didn't budge.

I went and got the food. "Gwenith!"

She still didn't budge.

Here was a reversal, but a happy one. I had just one chance to secure her, and I took it. She squirmed, just a little, but seemed just as glad as not to be rescued and brought inside.

She and her brother got a serving of fragrant gushiefood to reward them for-- well, for being alive and found, and their big sister Rhadwen got some, too, for staring out that open window and clueing me into what was going on.

As to why the living room window was open at all, that's another tale in another blog. But diolch a Dduw! my scary story ended happily.

Very happily, when I think how it's supposed to get below freezing and maybe snow tonight. Thinking of that is a real horror story.

Sh!t Eating Grin

As if to prove there is no such thing as a dog without a mind of his own, yesterday morning I learned that Llewellyn is clever and well-trained when he wants to be; other times he's just clever.

I'd noticed this weekend a couple times that my Kitten Room security system of a bungee cord hooked round the doorknob with the other end hooked to a screweye, with a doorstop (aka a flat rock) between the door and the jamb to make a gap big enough to let in cats and only cats was not doing its job. It's always worked before. Had I just forgotten to fasten the cord hook to the screweye? Had the kittens been playing with the rock and pushed it out of the way so the bungee cord lost tension and let the door swing free?

Or has the cord gotten just loose enough that Llewellyn can widen the opening and push through?

I've never caught any of us in the act. But hearing the scrape of claws on the hardwood floor of the hallway around dawn yesterday morning, immediately followed by a thump, thump from the door of the Kitten Room, and given that the door was open when I finally hauled myself out of bed to face the worst, I suspect teh goggie.

It's not the cat food I'm worried about him getting. No. It's what I know he's treating himself to when I see piles of organic corn cat litter pawed out onto the mat by the litter box. It's what I can smell on his breath when he presents himself to me with the selfsame corn cat litter festooning his muzzle.

You've heard of a sh!t-eating grin? Mai goggie, hee haz itt.

Whut shal wie du, whut shal wee doo!

No place else to move the litter box and still have one on the second floor. Get a new bungee cord? Attach a chain lock on the outside of the door?

For the time being, I've looped the existing bungee cord around back of the doorknob. Gives it more tension. It's working, so far, but give him time, Llewellyn will find a way to outsmart it. He's too clever for his own good.

A Well-Trained Dog

My dog Llewellyn amazes me by how smart he is.

I don't say that because he's my dog. I say it because he sometimes behaves better and more cleverly than even I've trained him to.

There's his practice lately of not letting me lie down and sleep on the carpet. I only do it when I'm in my study late at night waiting for things to download . . . well, usually . . . and once when I was dizzy. Anyway, I try to lie down and he forces his body under me and makes me get up.

But there's something else. Often Llewellyn will be lying or standing or moseying right in my path, right where I want to go. I command, "Llewellyn, move!" expecting him to proceed ahead of me out of the room or down the stairs, wherever I'm going. But instead he just moves to the side, more and more he's just moving to the side.

This was annoying. Didn't he know what I wanted? "Llewellyn, get going! Move!!"

And he moves. Not ahead, aside. Then falls in behind me to follow me as I pass through the door or set foot on the steps.

After that, he'll run on ahead, but not until.

And a day or two ago, it dawned on me: He's acknowledging my authority. He's taking his proper doggy place in my wake. I read something in a book by veterinarian Dr. Nicholas Dodson, Dogs Behaving Badly, where he says that "Access along corridors and across thresholds is so important to would-be leaders that these zones are typical testing grounds for dominance." And somewhere along the line, my dog has got me placed as his leader, and he's not going to let me forget it.

Now if he'd only mind and shut up when he starts up barking out the window first thing in the morning!

Ai Wantses Itt!

I wish I'd turned on my camera sooner. I wish I'd had more lights on. But for your viewing pleasure, may I present Huw and the Wadded-Up Shopping List.



He heard it land in the wastebasket, ran over, fished and fished and fished, and at last, success!!

Hhahahahahahahahahhaaaa!!!

Renovation Superintendents

Though Gwenith has an important appointment Elsewhere.

Opportunists

It's gotten chilly in southwestern Pennsylvania the past few nights, and suddenly my year-old kittens are showing me how much they love me.

All summer and spring, had immediate evacuation been called for during the night, I wouldn't have had the least idea where to find Gwenith or Huw. Once I'd retire to bed and shut off the light, they'd simply Disappear. Maybe into the fifth dimension-- I'm sure any self-respecting cat can manage a tesseract.

But now the nights are longer and frankly cold. And if Gwenith is not on the bed when I come to it, she joins me soon afterwards. Always right in the middle, usually lying right over or next to my legs. Huw joins her-- and me-- soon thereafter, snuggling in on the other side, and sometime later Rhadwen takes up her usual place by my shoulder.

And I am so bossed about and ruled by these young felines that I daren't-- dassn't!-- do anything to displease them or make them uncomfortable. If Gwenith is in the middle of the bed when I climb in, I simply have to settle for the slender slip of the bed's side, my back exposed to the breezes as the blankets, weighed down by floofy cat, refuse to extend enough to cover me properly. If Gwen and His High Velvetness her brother Huw arrive to hem me in after I have ensconced myself for the night, you can be sure that I will wake up in exactly the same position in the morning, the brown tabby and the pale ginger clamping my legs together like a vise.

Rhadwen at the age of ten is Miss Free and Easy. I could throw her across the room (I wouldn't, of course) and she'd nonchalantly march back to snuggle up to me, or to rummage through my jewelry case, or to swat things off the nightstand. We have an Understanding. ("Rhadwen, stoppit!!!")

But the young ones, I dare not cross or disappoint. After all, on a cold autumn night who could thwart such a precious show of looooooovvve??? The fact that the only central heating that's on right now is me has nothing to do with it.

Yeah, right. Opportunists!