I’ve been here a month now and thought I knew the old woman’s habits pretty well. At 9 p/m she says “Bedtime!” And shuts me up in the shed. I’ve struggled but so far she has won. That could change today.
See me lying strategically in front of her on the couch? Right where she can see me at all times, to remind her that she hasn’t filled my kibbles bowl. What she usually does after cleaning my litter tray?
Before she sat down she set three bowls each with three kibbles in them as far apart in the unit as she could find, it seems like. Huh?
Oh wait! Last night when she caught me up trying to escape the bedtime routine, she said, “You’re getting to be quite the heavyweight. Is it possible for a cat to put on a kilo in 30 days? Guess you don’t get much exercise!”
I bet the new kibble bowls are a strategy to get me to walk more. I ate the ones in the kitchen. She did not leap up to give me more. I’ll just go and sit beside her on the couch. Maybe I’ll get some action then.
Would you belive I’ve been here for almost two weeks?
This is me at my breakfast. The old woman gives me canned salmon for breakfast and dinner. Sounds special, I know. She thinks I’m too bony, the breeze will blow you away she said.
But she gives me titbits to try out at lunch time and if I don’t like them she’ll hide them in the fish at dinner time.
The other day I ate a scrap of omelette I’d politely left at the side of the bowl. She does not take no for an answer. One on her scorecard.
Mind you, I had a bit of cooked chicken today and it was delish. Bring it on. Right mow she’s out there on the balcony.
At her gardening. Where’s the garden I might ask, when it’s just leggy plants in pots, so elongated they might run away. We’re waiting for grow-lights to come in the post.
There’s no real news on my name though ‘Moggy’ seems to be what the old woman will put on the paperwork. She often calls me ‘cat’ or ‘Mag’, which I understand refers to her previous cat. I with my smoky fur look nothing like how I imagine Mag to have looked.
My fur is smoke-tipped white on my back, white underneath.
My struggle to see how far I can go continues. While the old woman was out and about, I pooped on the spare bed and she didn’t discover it until several hours later. A flurry of cleaning and washing. So I think you can say I won that round!
And then, last night I almost made it out of the shed after bed-time. The old woman caught me just as I had hooked my right-paw claws round the edge of the door and was about to push my head into the gap and force my way through when … you guessed it. She caught me at it and pushed me back in. Then wedged the door in two places.
And everytime after that, when I scratched the bottom of the door to figure out how she had fixed the door so it wouldn’t slide, she said ‘No!’ I stopped counting after sixteen and just went to bed. I guess she won that one.
Today when I used the litter tray, she gave me treat afterward. I can live with that. But when she got home today, she sprinkled some horrible smelling dried leaves in the bedroom doorways.
She said it was rosemary. Whatever. I won’t be going near it.
Do I look relaxed? This was before she called me Houdini after I nearly got free.
Help! ‘Smudge’ isn’t cutting it for a name. The old woman keeps calling me ‘Mag’ and ‘Mags’ and ‘Cat’, which were all names of her previous feline. She complains because she can’t say ‘Smudgee-Smudgee-Smudgee’ fast enough. The man suggested ‘Moggy’. The name I came with is ‘Whims’. Is that a name, the boy said. What’s wrong with ‘Whimsey’? When will they make up their minds?
I have a black nose as you can see, and a black chin. And I’m not, NOT, a tuxedo as I heard someone say. I have stripes over my back hidden among the black. The kennel had a special name for that, but that seems to have been left behind as well.
My first night went very well. After diligent scratching and meowing, I finally got the old woman up from her bed at 4 a/m. She thought I was too cold in my shed. A mistake on her part as I then escaped her easily when she–after adding an old polar fleece jacket to my bed–tried to shut me back into the shed. She went back to bed and I roamed the house.
Every so often I reminded her of her failure to catch me by jumping onto her bed and breathing into her face. At her alarm at 6 a/m, I startled but jumped from the bed as if I’d been going to anyway, and hid under it where she can’t reach.
My shed is a weird little room right in the middle of the apartment. Nothing like the cattery sheds in the backyard of the kennel owners’ house. So the new shed has large white box in it with a lid that I can sit on. My litter tray beside it. There is also my open-fronted sleeping box, with blankets in it, although due the draft running along the floors, I prefer to sleep behind the box. Near to the little sink are my food and water bowls.
The door is a slider. Good for me, bad for the old woman. She dragged the cage out, muttering she’d be redesigning it. Not sure what she means by that. At about noon, the old woman caught me and tried to shut me into the shed. I turned on a coin and escaped from her intention to shut me into the shed while she went shopping. I got away easily. Under the couch is another comfortable place to hide.
At 4 p/m I let it be known that it was my dinner time. The old woman served me two teaspoons of salmon in a dish separate to my kibbles. This was the time at the cattery that we cats were served our dinners and shut up in our condos. I’m going to try to stay loose all night tonight! Wish me luck!
So far, I’ve had a look around the house. I let myself be enticed from under the bed so the old woman could shut the door to exclude me.
While they were talking, the old woman, the man and the boy, I quickly had a look at where the litter tray, the kibbles and water bowl are, I think I can find them again, and then snuck under the couch.
The man and boy went away and since then I’ve watched the old woman potter around. And she sat on the couch for a while. Now she’s up again doing whatever she does.
The structure needs a pair of stronger hands than mine, to click together the joins. It looks OK, but is pretty rickety.
An online purchase that turned out different to what was promised and how often is that the case? (Grumble grumble. My nerves are showing!)
I’ve never had the need for a cat condo before as I had a great laundry where a cat could live very comfortably during the night and when I was away longer than a couple of hours. The laundry in this place is a mere cupboard.
I’m aiming to get a platform on castors for the condo to sit on so I can wheel it outside onto the balcony. I couldn’t trust an athletic cat out there without containment as there are two roofs within jumpable distance, without there probably being a way back.
Water and food bowls ready to go
This weekend is it. My driver and his off sider both have time today to take me to the animal shelter and a Pet Barn to fetch in a few more supplies.
Rita de Heer 