Cat Diary 29

My favourite way of gathering kibbles is from this thing that the old woman built from toy bricks.

This is already the third version. It’s getting higher and today there are three things with moving parts.

This thing with the bits looking like wings took me ages to work out how to shift and she’s just added the crossbar but I think I’ll handle it. She leaves kibbles under the crossbar, or under the grey thing.

There are three sides … the front, the back and the top and I do them in that order. The front is my favourite.

The back is harder as the kibbles are always on the tiniest ledges where I need to grapple them from with my tongue.

The top is the highest it’s been yet, but not a problem. I can still reach with all four paws on the ground.

My Duplo puzzle board is my favourite kibble hunting ground!

Cat Diary/Human Input

Things are not so good between Moggy and me. I’ve been put on antibiotics, the deepest scratch is not closed yet. But my whole hand is not swollen any more.

This all happened on Saturday evening, it’s now Wednesday. Monday Tuesday Wednesday I was out of the house for hours at the time and it’s hard to ‘read’ a cat the best of times, let alone a cat who seems determined to stay a stranger.

In all that time, three and a half days, I have not tried to touch her. I’ve got admit I’m more hesitant now. She does lay in wait round the corner sometimes and lash at my ankles. Most recently, I gave her big voice and she looked shocked.

Various people in my immediate and not so immediate circles are saying I should trade her in, and that animals from Rescue Centres do not always transplant well into a home situation. Moggy was a stray rescued from the streets and was in the cattery for 100 days.

This afternoon she seemed ill at ease and down in the dumps. Is it possible cats can get depressed? I don’t know. But I thought to try to cheer her up. Got some kibbles, and spread the towel over my knees.

She jumped onto the couch without needing encouragement. Took kibbles from off my knees and from my hand, though she did flinch away a couple of times when I moved too fast and unexpectedly.

And I flinched when she moved fast. Looks like we’ve got to rebuild trust. And I have to put a few expectations out of my mind. I have a wilder animal than I had expected to get.

Of course I regret that I can’t expect cat cuddles. Or that she’ll probably never want to have anything to do with the kids. Even just stroking her is a no no at the moment. How we will get her to the vet will be traumatic. See? She does need training.

I thought at about three years old, as the cattery said she is, I thought be able to train her to accept a harness and take her outside to sit in the sun. Since we don’t have any coming into the apartment. I might get a sun lamp instead.

I thought I could train her to climb a cat tree to the new shelf I had installed, to sleep there. She barely jumps up. I’ve offered her the patio table, and I often put kibbles on a high stool on the way to the tabletop. No go. She leaves them.

Right now because of that little training session getting her to eat out of my hand, she made the tiniest purr of approval and jumped onto the back of the couch there to doze. Probably 30 cm/12 inches distance. I have to take that as a plus on the way to better things. She’s been with me for four full months.

Cat Diary 20

We had a milestone of sorts today. I had to show the old woman I just do not like to be picked up. I clawed her good and proper.

It was her own fault really, I said for her to put me down, and she just wasn’t quick enough. I let her have both sets. Of my claws, that is. She’ll have four scars!

And you wouldn’t believe the blood! She stood for an age at the kitchen counter putting on that horrible stuff she calls tea tree antiseptic. I hate it! And then bandaids galore.

She was so silent, I got bored and thought I might as well catch up on washing myself. It’s never ending.

I wonder what she’s cooking up in that silence, something that will show me that she now knows her place, I hope.

Lol, Cat Litter

We definitely have not yet hit our goldilocks moment with cat litter!

Who knew there would be so many brands and types available. I started with my usual arrogant save-the-world attitude and bought a large 10kg bag of recycled newspaper pellets. This being possible because someone else was carrying it to the car and from the car to my apartment. Newspaper pellets go sludgy.

Second was hemp pellets, left overs from the process of producing hemp for rope, hemp-crete and other products, this was another product that was going to save the environment. Hemp pellets disintegrate into a fine dust difficult to clean up and very bad for my allergies.

Third was a gravelly product made of tofu and pea flour. It is meant to ‘clump’ and so be easier to keep the litter box clean. It does clump but is also easily transported into the rest of the house by sticking between the poor cat’s toes, and is nearly as bad as the proverbial Lego block to stand on when walking around on bare feet. And why wouldn’t I?

Fourth is a tiny vermicelli-like extruded pellet made of coconut fiber and charcoal. This was probably the worst purchase yet. Very sharp, and I soon picked up a piece in the sole of my foot. Have been wearing a big band aid for a week. Apart from that, the stuff ‘clumps’ only reluctantly. The one thing going for it, it does work wonders on odors.

Above, a mix of fresh litter containing all four of the recalcitrant litter types. As by then I’d been buying a new sort every time I went shopping, and since I can carry home only the stuff I can fit on my walker, the average bag of litter weighs 5 kg.

At the present we’re trying out the mix of sawdust and wood-splinters. And when I go shopping in a few minutes I will probably–out of sheer pernickety recalcitrance–buy yet another of the still untried possibilities.

Having to send untold bags of used cat litter to land-fill is also not ideal. Before, when I lived in freestanding houses, the used cat litter went into the compost bin, or was buried in the garden and helped to build up my low-lying yard. I’ll be asking Brisbane City Council why apartement blocks don’t get green bins. It’s not as if we don’t produce any organic waste!

There has got to be a better way!

Cat Diary 8

I confess to being completely stressed for the two nights that we had a visitor staying.

First there was the getting the place ship-shape, with no peace to just lay up and relax while the old woman worked through her usual routines.

No. We had putting away. Dusting. Airing the pillows. Wrangling bedsheets onto the mattress. Finding linen in the linen cupboard by first reefing things out, then putting most of them back.

This is how I prefer at least some of my day

But there wasn’t anything like sleeping on the couch for three days! because after our visitor arrived, I had to be totally on my toes. Not that the two women ever sat on the couch, they lounged about at the dining table.

And they mainly ignored me. Even the old woman ignored me. I didn’t get even one game out of her, and the kibble game might as well not have been invented. Very exasperating!

The first night I was shut in my den by 8.30 p/m! In vain I tried to tell her that she was making a mistake. Bedtime is at 9.30 p/m! She ignored my entreating look, where I begged to stay up longer. I was so shocked I didn’t make any further attempts to communicate.

The following night I decided to get back at them. Our visitor slept next door in the guest room made over from the study. I set my internal alarm, and putting my face right by the crack left by the door not quite closing, miaouwed every hour.

She had hardly any sleep, she said. Unfortunately, the old woman had a great night, she said. That’s when I discovered that when she takes out her hearing aids, she can hear very little. Certainly not a few little miaouws.

All was good, though. The visitor left at 9.20 a/m and my routines have been restored.

Cat Diary, 3

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.

Cat Tales 18

When it rained lots and lots, and it was close to summer, the pernickety old woman ran around putting buckets in the backyard to catch rainwater. Even when it stopped raining, she left them standing where they were.

Even as the Hand-of-God, I was mystified as I went round smelling at them. Just rainwater, half a bucket full, that I couldn’t reach to drink. What were they for? Couldn’t be for animals to drink from. I just proved that.

When the buckets were about half-full of rainwater, the pernickety old woman dipped her hand in the frog pond, scooped up a handful of azolla water weed and carried it dripping to the buckets and dripped a bit of the weed in each.

I think there were five buckets. The stuff grew like—well, a weed—and soon all the buckets had an island of green floating in them.

That evening, a clap of thunder! I raced for my favorite hiding place in the bottom of the bookshelves. Another thunderstorm. More rain.

The pernickety old woman loved a good thunderstorm. She stood laughing in the open laundry door, only slightly sheltered. “Smell the petrichor?” she said.

When the storm faded away, and the rain fell only mistily, the down-pipes from the roof started to boom. Or maybe call it a belling. A loud insistent kind of ringing echoed from ours, and all the ones in the neighboring yards on both sides. A racket!

“That’s them,” the pernickety old woman said. “The green tree frogs. The rain woke them, flushed the leaves from their hidey holes, and they’re sitting there—each under his own pipe—calling loud enough to bring any green tree frog female happening to be about.” She laughed.

Ah, I thought. They sit under the down-pipes to have their calling amplified. Smart. I miaowed and joined my human at the laundry door.

“Tomorrow we shall see what we’ll see,” she said. “The buckets will be in all night demand, I’m thinking.”

It was a dark night. I didn’t see a thing peering through the glass doors in the sun-room. I was so curious by the first morning light, I scratched at the pernickety old woman’s bedroom door. She didn’t let me sleep with her for this very reason. She being a night owl and I preferring to be up at the crack of dawn. All I heard was a groan. I think she meant for me to go away.

I did. For about five minutes. Scratched at the bedroom door again. “Fine!” I heard from the bed. Then it creaking.

The pernickety old woman grumbled from near the wardrobe. I understood her to be clothing herself. Humans are so bereft without fur. I skipped back to my position at the glass doors.

My human came bleary-eyed from the bedroom. Dressed in her usual long pants, cotton shirt and kimono loose over the top. She yawned. “Let me put on a pot of tea first.”

“Miaaoow!” Let’s go see outside first, that meant.

“Might as well, I suppose. Water won’t boil for a bit. Beautiful sunrise, all said and done. Wait till I grab my camera.”

She walked. I pranced to the first bucket. We peered into it. “Ah ha,” my human said. “I think we have a jackpot. Look at that! I think a whole clutch. Green tree frog spawn for sure.”