Happy Birthday, Wennie!

Today is my calico cat Rhadwen's twelfth birthday!

Here she is, as pretty as ever.

I'm not absolutely certain-sure that's the exact day in 1998 when she was born on the acreage outside Cedar Bluffs, Nebraska, but I seem to remember the family who gave her to me as a kitten telling me that's when her mother gave birth.  So it's a good day to commemorate.

I'm afraid we didn't do much to celebrate.  I forgot to buy tuna at the store, and, due to lawn chemicals on the grass, I couldn't let her spend the day in the back yard.  (Oh, I heard from her about that!)

She's doing very well, regardless of her age, and is the best hunter in the family.  She brought me a live chipmunk a week or two ago that I would not let her bring inside.

So, many Wennie happy returns!

Resolutions

I really should make a resolution to write something for this puppy at least once a week. It's not that I take my critters for granted, it's just that they are so consistently cute that I don't find myself jonesing to write about it. And when they're naughty . . . well, it's not really nice to talk in public about the rude things your kids do, is it?

Nevertheless . . . here's some pictures to be going on with.

Rhadwen in the red leather chair.

Rhadwen on the dresser.

Llewellyn and Huw exchange schmooz.

Gwenith keeps my ankles warm.

Like adoptive mom, like son.

That's good for now. This'll give me time to decide whether to tell about how this morning I discovered down the basement that the kittehs had pulled the big new bag of cat kibble to the floor and torn it open, and how it's heavier than I'm supposed to lift yet, but I lifted it anyway to put it away safe . . .

Degrees of Diffidence

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, is even now sitting on my lap, kissing my chin.

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, is helping herself to the Cheez-Its in the bowl on my computer table.

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, tries to help herself from my plate at the dining room table, practically every time I sit down to eat.

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, pounces on me every night after I've pulled up the covers and turned out the light, stalks up my body, finds my face and kisses me goodnight, then curls up next to me and settles in to sleep.

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, blocks my path in the morning as I come up the stairs from the shower in the basement, insisting I pet her every three or four risers.

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, has learned the word "Treats!" and comes running to join her four-legged siblings wherever the goodies are on hand.

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, is currently lying over my left wrist as I type, wondering why I ate all the Cheez-Its and didn't save any for her.

She still runs and hides when any visitor comes; except on the stairs she still won't let me reach down and pet her; she still insists that any advance she makes be at her own initiative and while I am sitting, lying down, or otherwise restricted. But considering where we were a few months ago when she'd run if I barely looked at her, I'd say this was progress.

Definitely Not J. R. R. Tolkien's Elves

Before the Christmas season is over, I should send out this greeting from the House of the Flying Furrballs, courtesy of the people from Office Max and JibJab.com.

I think today it's time for the Nine Ladies Dancing. OK, one lady, three cats, and a dog, but who's counting?

Adorablol Goggie

How can you not love a face like this?

She Seems All Right

Here is Rhadwen on the floor of my study this evening.

Usually, this pose means she's feeling fine and is at peace with the world.

Hope it's the same now. She seems all right. She's been taking her ulcer medicine on schedule. Not willingly, but resignedly. No more blood thrown up, that I've been able to see.

Watch and wait is all I can do.

But-- touch wood!-- things look promising just now.

Nighty-Night!

My bed is a full house of a night. And a lively one as well.

(Hmm, that sounds dodgy. Oh, well. Let it pass.)

Last night, Rhadwen was on the bedspread, up by the pillows. That's her usual spot. I push her over a little, get in, and she hunkers down next to my shoulder.

A few minutes go by. I'm not asleep yet. Anon, I am not asleep at all. In streaks Gwenith! In flies Huw after her! They land plank! plunk! on the foot of the bed! They engage! In all the fury of sibling rivalry they wrestle, they battle, they fight!

MeeyowyowyowowowowMeeeeeeiiiiiiOOWWWW!!!! The din of feline howls rends the air!

"Shut up, kids!!"

The noise subsides, and Gwen settles down, effectively immobilizing my feet and ankles.

Huw, however, isn't ready for sleep. He stalks up towards the head of the bed and plops himself down right in the face of Big Kitteh Rhadwen.

She can't resist. She starts out by whapping him across the nose a time or two, then works herself into a looonnnnggg campaign of grooming him. Liklikliklikliklik!! Liklikliklikliklik!!

Then, just for variety, she commences to groom herself. Liklikliklikliklik!! With her plastered to my side the vibration shakes me and shakes the bed.

I am still not asleep. Or anywhere near it.

I contemplate how it would be with three or four more kittehs, all sleeping on the bed. All sleeping on me.

Oh, gosh, no. I'd never drop off, and once I did, with the weight of them I could never get out of bed in the morning.

Well, the bed could be even more full. Llewellyn the dog could sleep up there, too. But he's never been invited and he's never tried.

He's a huggy dog, but I'd say that's just as well.

Sumer Is Icumen In

You want signs of summer? Here are the signs of summer around my house:

First we have calico cat on the half shell:

What was that? Water? What does Rhadwen need with water?

Me? No, of course I wash my hands in the bathtub!

Always being careful, of course, not to slop one brown tabby. Huw enjoys basking in a tub bottom as cool as he is.

Open windows are a summer attraction as Gwenith displays her blonde sophistication to an admiring world.

And for Llewellyn? For him, summer means birds, and squirrels, and all manner of wildlife to point at and chase. Lhude squawk cuccu!

Free Range Kittens

The kennel I borrowed from my friends Hannah* and Steve* (which they borrowed from his parents) is a handy thing to have. It keeps the kitten paraphrenalia--food and water bowls, sleeping baskets, and litter box-- in one convenient spot.

But that doesn't mean the kittens needs to be kept in there.

So for the past few days I've left the kennel door open and they have free run of the bedroom. They do like hiding under the bed: stands to reason, they haven't totally gotten used to being here yet. But when I come in, in a second or two Rhys(?) will venture out, and after a minute or so more, there is Gwenith.

And let the games begin!

Fostering Service

The kittens are presently with me, enscounced in their wire kennel in the guest bedroom.

I spent the afternoon preparing the room, covering up a duct opening I'm sure they'd be thrilled to explore.

Well, sorry, kiddos, you can't.

When I came over to my friend Hannah's* house this evening, the kittens were taking the air on the side porch, out of the way of the last of the moving operation. As we shifted food bowls and prepared to dismantle the cage, I asked Steve* what their working names were.

"Oh, the striped one we call 'Tiger,' and the other one is 'Cream o' Wheat, because of his color.'"

Good enough handles, if you don't know yet if they're boys or girls.

He said, "I've got somebody who'll take Tiger, here. Think you might like to take Cream o' Wheat?"

And the wheels are going in my head: Rhadwen is almost nine years old. I'd hate to be without a cat when, God forbid, she goes. If I'm going to bring a kitten into the house, I'd better do it soon, while she can still keep up with it. But I was really hoping there would be a calico. Do I want a pink cat that looks like Puff in the Dick, Jane, and Sally books?

Oh, well, I'll think about that later!

Once everything-- including the surprisingly docile kittens in their carrier-- were loaded into my car, I drove to my place, quickly set things up in the guest bedroom (No, Rhadwen and Llewellyn, you mayn't come in and see!), then ran up to the PetsMart just before closing time for Science Diet kitten food and some kitty toys they might like. Hannah gave me what's left of the food she was feeding them, but I think it might be the adult cat food they had for their older cats, and there's not much left of it, anyway. I'll blend it with the Science Diet as prescribed.

Thursday, they have an appointment at the vet's for their initial checkup and shots. At that time we should find out what sex they are. I hate guessing.

I've put baskets with towels in them in the kennel for them to sleep and feel secure in. Hannah told me she kept finding them curled up together in the litter pan. I'd say that's because that's the only thing they had with a semblance of walls or shelter, there in the desolate family room with the debris of moving all around. I seriously doubt it's because these kittens like sleeping in sh1t!

(Yeah, that's a very Lutheran way to put it. But the alliteration is wanted.)

They really are sweet. I didn't bother them this evening by holding them much, but when I did, they were both very good at keeping their claws in.

This looks promising.

Tooth and Claw, or Dying from the Kyoot

The ending of my last entry was really lame, wasn't it? All that sentimental tripe about the poor rescued feral kitten going home with my friend to be pampered and loved.

Will you forgive me if I plead that by the time she took the kitty home and I finished the blog entry, I was hopelessly, brainlessly shattered?

And that hey, the kitten did allow us to pick him up and hold him, purring away like a BMW the whole time?

But since then, I've been online, looking up the care, feeding, and domesticating of feral kittens. And oy vey, have my friend Hannah* and her family taken on a task! And right in the middle of trying to pack up and move.

A double task, too, since Monday or Tuesday, they trapped and brought home the pinky-yellow kitten's littermate: a calico, they say.

And there might still be a gray kitten hiding out in their barn. They're trying to trap it, too.

Two, even three feral kittens? In a disrupted household with a six-year-old and a four-year-old? Oy vey, again.

Everything I read on the Web tells me that feral kittens can be extremely dangerous. That they should be handled only with armpit-high welder's gloves. That they're like little animated cacti and harder to control than the Main Stream Media sniffing out a possible Republican scandal.

What on earth could possibly be going on in Hannah and Steve's* household? I haven't heard from Hannah since late Monday. She said she'd call me when they captured the gray-- maybe I'd like to adopt it, she said. I've called and left messages but I haven't heard back. Are all the family lying on the floor, ripped to shreds by the Killer Kittens? To hear what the feral cat sites on the Internet say, nothing's more possible!

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*Fake names!

Going on a Mission

This evening around 8:50 PM when I was home listening to The White Horse Inn and eating my dinner, my friend Hannah* showed up unexpectedly at my door and said:

"I came to ask if you'd go on a mission with me."

Both of us being Christians, she says "mission" and I immediately think Brazil! Mexico! West Virginia!

But for that, she wouldn't appear unexpectedly on a rainy Sunday night. It must be something more immediate.

"Sure," I said. "What is it?"

"Remember those kittens in the barn at our new house? The ones whose mother we found dead? We caught one and put it in a room in the house till we can take it to the vet's tomorrow."

Yes, the house they're working on, the house that at present has no interior doors. So they put a piece of drywall across the opening to the cat room for a baby gate to keep the little one in.

"But Stevie* [her six-year-old son] brought his little friend from across the way in to see the kitty-- and they forgot to put the drywall back."

And the kitten escaped and disappeared, most likely down a hole in the floor in a neighboring room.

"We're afraid it might be trapped down there and die. Steve* [her husband] is home at the old house with the kids. I got one of those cage traps earlier and baited it with tuna to see if it'll get the kitten to come out. I need to find it tonight: I'm afraid it will starve. But I don't want to go out there by myself in the dark. Will you come with me?"

I was game, but not optimistic. I refrained from telling her the story of that cat that got stuck in the wall of that shop in Manhattan a year or so back, where it took everything short of the Army Corps of Engineers to get the moggie out. Would tuna work for a kitten that might not even be weaned? Would a feral cat let itself be caught, no matter how hungry it was?

I foresaw a long vigil. Near misses and clever if panicked feline escapes. Weariness and scratches. Frustration and lost hope.

I kept my mouth shut.

We packed up the flashlights, a splash of cream in a plastic container, and the freeze-dried salmon treats, and off we sallied through the fog and the pouring rain to undertake the Great Kitten Rescue.

By the time we arrived at the farm, the rain had slackened. But it was still dark and uncertain outside, and even darker and more uncertain within-- somebody had turned off the electricity at the mains.

Upstairs we ventured by the beam of our flashlights. Who knew what long search lay before us? Never mind, we were On a Mission.

. . . Well, actually, no long search lay before us. The mission was accomplished: the tuna had done the trick, and the dirty but fluffy little mog was hunkered down in the humane trap, probably thinking, "I were has tuna-- too I can has cheezburgr?"

We took the little one back to my place, where we decanted him out of the trap into my bathtub, and thence into my own cat's carrier, to be taken home to be cleaned, deflea'd, vetted, and loved.
But not before the kitten indulged himself in the cream we'd brought, while my own mog and dog kept curious and whimpering watch outside the bathroom door.

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*All names changed!