I think he’s settled in
What he doesn’t know is, he’ll be neutered Wednesday. Or, as the vet bluntly called it, castrated.
But after that, he can go out into the world and he wants that more than anything. We’re still in contact with the woman we got him from. She confirmed to me that her living room was the only place he’d ever been.
She’s a very nice lady, but that was never going to work. I think this guy is going to be a bruiser.
If only he would tell us his name.
Have a good weekend, everyone. Remember your clocks change on Sunday (we have another couple of weeks). The sun had some real strength and virtue in it today, and no rain. Hold on!
p.s. does the pope coronavirus?
March 6, 2020 — 9:34 pm
Comments: 22
I always hated the ‘be patient’ part
I wanted them to interact through the cage for a few days so they could get used to each other in safety, but little Noname escaped this morning.
When big cat isn’t around, I can coax the kitten out to play, but they’re at the point of the intercat relationship where they sit three feet apart and scream at each other. Funny, big cat has a little high pitched voice and little cat has a deep growl.
Anyway, home late tonight. That will have to do. We’re getting there!
February 13, 2020 — 10:21 pm
Comments: 6
Glimpsed through the bars
Our new puss.
It’s a sad story, as it turns out. Recently widowed, her sons talked her into getting a kitten for company. Now she’s developed a terrible allergy to him. Her doctor has given her inhalers and strong drugs and everything. She’s not well generally, so in the end she had to give up.
The cat is clearly very sad. The woman is, too. He’s six months old and they were obviously attached to each other. He’s hiding in his pet carrier and won’t be consoled. She was just on the phone seeing how he was getting on. She’d been crying.
He’s an absolute stunner. All ginger with no white on him, beautifully proportioned and healthy. He will make a fine cat.
But I’ve never taken an animal out of a loving home before. Turns out, it’s a real downer.
February 12, 2020 — 8:58 pm
Comments: 12
It shouldn’t be this hard!
Kitten shopping. Nobody has them in stock.
I’m taking two weeks off work, so I thought it was the perfect time to add a cat, while I had time to fuss over it and help it adjust.
Yes, we started with the local shelters, of which there are many. Brits like their cats and dogs and all of their shelters are private and no-kill.
Two problems there. First, they nearly always try to home them in pairs. It makes sense if the two are very attached, but I don’t think that’s always the case. We definitely don’t want two.
Second, most of the shelters do home inspections. Do they do this in the States now? I think it’s completely mad. There’s even advice online for passing your inspection (like hiding the wine bottles). I am not inclined to put up with that for the privilege of taking in an old stray moggie.
So now I’m burning up the classified ads. Most of those, as you can see, are purebred animals with eye-watering prices. But check out that first little sweetie — an ordinary tabby-and-white and they’re trying to get £250 for her. There’s a lot of that going on.
So far, everyone I called had gotten rid of the cat ages ago and didn’t bother to take down the ad. Or they simply haven’t returned my call.
How can it be this hard?
December 19, 2019 — 8:42 pm
Comments: 21
Location: my lap
Kitteh has decided he can’t bear to sleep anywhere but my lap. Must be a winter thing. He wuv me soooo much.
It’s really buggering up my hips and knees. I prop my feet up on a footstool and he settles on my upper thigh and it’s bending my joints wrong. Little dude is getting heavy.
Anyway, I’ve escaped for a moment (he’s gone outside for a wee) to wish you a good weekend. Good weekend!
December 6, 2019 — 9:18 pm
Comments: 8
Half an hour ago…
Because it’s not obvious, his location is my lap. Also not obvious: his other side is soaking wet. Equally not obvious: we are both seated in the only comfortable chair in the whole place.
We fight for it. I bought myself a little second hand tablet computer specifically to use as a Kindle when I sit in that chair, but the cat usually wins.
As for the wet, it has rained here every day for weeks. Everything is soaked. The ground is all slippy. My chicken runs are mud and the chickens are miserable. I’m thoroughly sick of it.
The weather isn’t always like England in England, but sometimes it’s the most England place imaginable.
November 7, 2019 — 8:51 pm
Comments: 11
Cat question
Ever since we went from a three cat household to a one cat household, I think the little beast is lonely. He’s a sociable animal. But I’ve very rarely gone out seeking a cat – I wait for them to come to me, and then I have to deal with whatever I get. I’m thinking I’d like to get a jump on the cat goddess and hit up a local rescue for another.
Anyone have experience of mixing cats? My tentative thoughts are: slightly younger than him (he’s just over a year) but not a kitten (I’d feel selfish, since those are usually so much more easily adopted out). Female, so she sticks closer to home (but would he find her as much of a companion and hunting buddy as a male cat?). I’m not used to having choices.
Anecdotal evidence encouraged.
September 17, 2019 — 7:23 pm
Comments: 22
You have got to be kidding me!
This thing came across my Facebook today billed as a “cat muzzle bath protection”. I do not believe it. This must be somebody’s ugly fetish.
I can tell you any cat I’ve ever owned would flip his or her shit if I tried to slip a nylon gimp mask over its face. Slinging its head around and banging into stuff. It would be all claws and screaming.
I can also tell you 100% the mask in the picture was Photoshopped onto the cat in the picture. The original was twice this size, so it was easy to spot. You have to wonder, when they don’t have the courage to use their own product.
I can’t vouch for all the pictures, though. Do a Google images search of cat muzzle bath protection and YOU tell ME what those bastards on the internet are up to now.
Rich Rostrum wins the dick with T. Boone Pickens. Dude, no – don’t post your address in the thread, yeesh! – how much unwanted pizza delivery can you handle? My email is right in the header.
I’ll go queue up a NEW DEAD POOL right now.
September 12, 2019 — 7:28 pm
Comments: 4
A fine and peculiar lady
I mentioned in a comment thread this week that my old girl Charlotte had died. I said I wasn’t going to post about it — who needs more downers in their lives, am I right? — but there is a curious fact about Charlotte’s death that cat observers will find interesting.
She chose the spot where she wanted to die weeks before she died there.
She was seventeen years old, and some of those years weren’t easy. She’d been failing for a long time: eating constantly but getting skinnier and skinnier, as if her food had no virtue. When you picked her up, she weighed nothing at all. I didn’t take her to the vet; she was old and cranky and hated being interfered with. Any kind of major medical intervention was out of the question. I was going to have to make an awful decision soon, but I figured as long as she snoozed in the sun and purred when you patted her, she had sufficient quality of life.
She hadn’t wandered outside the boundary of our yard for years, but a few weeks ago the next door neighbor called to say Charlotte was in the middle of her gravel driveway. And she was, lying curled up perfectly composed. In a drizzling rain.
That was so odd, I figured right then she had decided her time was up, but I carried her home and she ate and fell asleep in her usual spot. She kept going back, though. And I kept carrying her home. Eventually, she came home on her own to eat and then right back to her spot. Not the exact spot; it was several spots within a small radius. The neighbor was awfully nice about it.
Last week, the neighbor had a friend over. He parked near Her Spot, and Charlotte took the opportunity to crawl under his car and die. Poor man. He was so sure he had run her over. He didn’t, though. There wasn’t a mark on her.
In fact — I know this is an awful old cliché — she looked better than she had in a long time. She was warm when I picked her up and looked groomed and well. She looked so alive we held a sort of wake for her, afraid she wasn’t dead but in some kind of weird coma. But no.
And that’s my ‘aren’t cats strange’ story. Please don’t be sad for Charlotte — she had a long and interesting life, including a trans-Atlantic move. She was one of the great ones.
Have a good weekend!
August 30, 2019 — 8:47 pm
Comments: 17
A rare and wonderful thing
This is my old girl, who turned 17 this year. Seventeen very hard years, including a feral babyhood, a trans-Atlantic move and getting chewed on by a fox.
And this is my lap. Charlotte hasn’t gotten in my lap in…I don’t know. Maybe since we moved here? She’ll get in Uncle B’s lap occasionally, but never mine. She’s a world champion grudge holder and hands down the stubbornest creature I have ever known.
So. That’s where I’ve been tonight. Under the cat. Who can tell why? I had nothing better to do than take cellphone pictures of her.
July 31, 2019 — 8:20 pm
Comments: 10