Fri 27 Jan 2006
Psst… Pass It On…
OK, you cats out there, listen up. Kitty Nap-a-thon coming up this weekend. Pass it on.
Oh, and when you go, bring a little stinky goodness for the host, too.
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Tue 24 Jan 2006
Caitie, Coming and Going
I’d advise you not to get too close to your computer right now. OK. not that I really believe I’m all that contagious, but you can’t be too careful, right?
Tired, too tired tonight to do much more than put on a DVD (Independence Day) and zone out.
But before I get some sleep, here are 2 pictures of Caitie that show her dashing around the yard a few days ago, and my well-meaning attempts to capture her in motion.
Sun 22 Jan 2006
A True Little Story, Illustrated…
Kelly starts early. I can hear him as he sits on the floor on my side of the bed.
First he says
“Mrrrp?”
And then,
“Purrpurrpurrpurrpurrpurrpurrpurrpurrpurrpurrpurr”
Followed by a LEAP — and a PHLUMPHT as 22 pounds of cat lands on the down comforter –
And then,
“PURRPURRPURRPURRRRURRPURRRPURRRPURRPURRRRPURRRRRPURRPURR”
with his face close to mine.
It’s quarter after four o’clock in the morning, Kelly.
Kelly’s belly doesn’t know any time except mealtime, and according to him, this is it.
I give up, and trudge downstairs to fill his bowl and the other 3 bowls with crunchies. In that order, too. Kelly first.
He sticks his face into the bowl and begins to gobble down the dry food.
I leave him to his meal and trudge back upstairs, thinking, “Good Cat? Hmmpf — no-good cat is more like it.”
It’s a Friday, and I take the afternoon off from work. I take it for a chance to do some fun stuff, but by 2:00 the interrupted sleep has caught up with me, and I set aside the new New Yorker and close my eyes. From upstairs, Pat soon hears me snoring on my recliner in the family room.
Awake again in a little less than an hour, I pour a glass of Diet Mountain Dew for a self-administered dose of caffeine and sit back down, this time on the family room sofa.
Kelly comes in the room, and I’m expecting him to make his usual beeline for the empty recliner, but today he walks across the rug to the sofa and climbs onto it. The big cat walks along its back to where I’m sitting, and once more it’s
“PURRPURRPURRPURRRRURRPURRRPURRRPURRPURRRRPURRRRRPURRPURR”
as he lies down, resting his head and one big paw on my left arm.
The early-morning wakeup call is forgiven and forgotten. Smiling, I scratch behind his ears and murmur, “What a good cat you are, Kelly… What a good cat.”
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I’d always rather use a photo, but it didn’t work out. As soon as Kelly heard Pat walking down the stairs, he stopped purring, and got up and left. This little drawing will have to do…
Sat 21 Jan 2006
Nicky, Stealth Kitty
There’s a grey tiger cat in our neighborhood whose humans let it run around unsupervised, and I just wouldn’t recommend that here. There was a story in today’s newspaper about a cat not far from here who met a bad end at the hands of a young, immature man.
Pat saw the cat a few days ago, and today the Good Cats told us it had been back again. 3 of them, including Nicky (above) sniffed for several long moments before Kelly backed up to the evergreen bush and sprayed it thoroughly.
Sorry About That…
Their slips were showing in 2005, and RegretTheError.com has the best of them listed at The Year in Media Errors and Corrections.
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Half a Day…
Took a half-day vacation Friday, and will have more to write about it soon. Until then, here’s one little thing — I don’t do much cooking, just the occasional grilling outside, but I like making desserts a lot. (And when it’s during working hours, when it’s during a half-day vacation with pay, so much the better.)
This afternoon, we had 3 brown bananas in the refrigerator, so I looked in Pat’s 1961 edition of the Betty Crocker cookbook and chose a recipe for banana-nut cake. Pat’s experience cooking helps — the recipe says 45 to 50 minutes at 350 degrees, but when my timer upstairs went off after 35 minutes, I went back downstairs and found that Pat had pulled out the cake a few minutes before. “Never trust the recipe,” she said, “when it comes to times and temperatures.” Her well-founded mistrust kept the cake from overbaking into a dry slab.
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Time For Change
We have 3 cats who use their litter boxes without incident. And we have Caitie.
She’s a fussy cat when it comes to cat litter. There are never any puddles anywhere else in the house, she’s not that kind of cat, but if she isn’t satisfied with the litter, she doesn’t use it.
We tried several brands before settling on the basic unscented scoopable from Pet Supplies Plus. Fortunately, it’s comparatively cheap. A 40-pound bag goes for about $7. We put a layer of baking soda on the bottom of each box (all 6 of them) then cover with litter, and it usually lasts close to 2 weeks before Caitie lets us know in very clear terms that it’s time for a change.
“Usually” is the operative word here. We’ve noticed that the last couple of times after Kelly had his little spell of being under the weather, Caitie started peeing outside the box much sooner than 2 weeks. Is it really cause and effect? Like, when Kelly’s not feeling well, he leaves an different kind of odor in the litterboxes and it’s especially offensive to Caitie?
We’ll keep it in mind. In the meantime, tomorrow will be the 9th day since I cleaned the boxes with Simple Green and refilled them with fresh litter and baking soda, and tomorrow they’re getting cleaned and refilled again.
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