Cat House Sitting

It is absurd to be writing this today, because I am on the last five days of a six-week house-sitting stint. I am living at Peaceable's neighbor's house -- 40 steps from front door to front door (have to walk around the snow drifts, or it would be fewer). They are in Italy, at an enviable writers-retreat at Bellagio, overlooking Lake Como. (I don't know the name of the place they are staying, but from her brief glowing email descriptions, this is similar). Mrs. Neighbor won the month-long retreat for her writing or her teaching (I can't remember which -- she wins a lot of prizes). These last two weeks, their college-aged daughters are with them and they are touring the country.

In the meantime, I am watching their cats. Another title for this blog post could be, More Cats I Have Slept With.  Anyone who thinks cats don't have personalities, hasn't spent any time with a cat. All three of these cats are much nicer than my two, accepting and even-tempered.

Moo is the dominant cat of the family, a few months older than the other two.  She is a Leader of the Band, and in temperament a lot like Fred. Moo is suffering cabin fever -- but the winter weather is not breaking, and every frigid night she takes one step out onto the concrete, then turns around in the doorway growling and hissing, and attacks her sisters.

Vince comes next in the pecking order.  Vince, a Maine Coon, was a timid kitten, but large for her age (Maine Coons tend to run large, and have all that fur to pluff them out further) -- hence, the name for a Mafioso tough guy, which she has totally not lived up to.  (She was thought to be male when they brought her home -- she's still referred to as "he" by the family, but she looks so like long-dead Maine Coons Maude and Natasha that she's definitely a she to me.) She is a Secret Admirer -- doesn't like to be held, but generally sits nearby for easy petting.

Hazel is bottom of the hierarchy. She mostly lives upstairs, and if allowed outside, scrambles immediately to the graveyard of birds and chipmunks under Peaceable's porch (graveyard to small birds and rodents, nirvana to carnivores).  She is sweet-tempered and loving -- a Sidekick.

On Thursday, I move back to Peaceable's house.  I won't promise to write another blog entry in the next weeks, but maybe I will.

Midnight Kitty Madness

With Gandalf gone, the house has been catless. This is strange for all of us, but particularly for me, used to not just cats, but lots of cats.

This weekend we had Lily, the Skier's Dog, to visit, while the Skier was casually knocking off another practice ski marathon (in prep for the Big One: the American Birkebeiner, February 26, 2011). Lily is great, and gorgeous. Priscilla is also great, although she's a little less platinum blonde than Lily (Lily is Carole Lombard to Pris's Debbie Reynolds). But I miss cats.

Here's an ad for the Manitoba Humane Society.

Pretty Boy Floyd, 1990-2010

Floyd through the front window, August 2007. 

Notice the just-begun mural in the distance. 

Floyd is sitting on the dishwasher that had just been delivered. 

It was installed almost exactly 3 years later.

Floyd came to the household of HomoDommi and The Texan, back when they had a household without the rest of us, around 1992.  He was part of the matched set of "Amos n' Andy", a controversial pair of names for an all-black cat and his Siamese cuddle-mate.  He passed away on the morning after the Glänsa party. (He had kidney failure - the disease of all cats who live long enough -- through which we had been coaxing him for several years.)

Amos and Andy originally belonged to a neighbor, who had got them from a rescue shelter -- as a kitten, Amos had been the victim of unknown cruelties (a too-common story of all-black cats), and as a result was shy, yet aggressive, for much of his life.  I haven't many photos of him as a young cat, because I rarely saw him - he would keep to the Texan's bedroom unless the house was quiet.

The neighbor, while not malicious, was a neglectful care-taker, leaving for long periods with only a bowl of food left on the stoop for his young cats, locked out of his house.  After a hard snow, when the neighbor had been gone for several days and was not scheduled to return for another week, The Texan and HomoDommi opened their kitchen door (who already had a friendly old cat, a Siamese named Tabitha) and invited the young cats into warmth and food. Typically for their personalities, Andy-cat immediately entered and made himself at home as if he had always lived there and always would. Amos, on the other hand, held back for several hours.  Probably the twin unpleasantnesses of the outdoor cold and the potential loss of his partner were the only reason Amos finally slunk in the door.

Two photos of kids with Andy.

There were some formalities, thereafter, about taking ownership of the pair, but pretty much the neighbor was happy to have access to, but no responsibility for, his cats.  Amos' name was changed to Pretty Boy Floyd, due to his beautiful silky soft, jet-black coat, and his violent gangster personality.

Tasha never feared Floyd.

When I moved into the house in 2005, Andy-cat and Floyd were already 15 years old.  All three resident cats, Floyd, Andy and Abbie (7 years old) took violently against Harry's interloping. Harry was 2, physically larger than all of the others (and not comfortably overweight as Abbie and Andy-cat were).  Yet Floyd led the charge, tearing across a room and attacking, whipping tufts of long white fur off the back of my poor, unprepared kitten.  (Abbie and Andy were not far behind, but, since Harry was as fast as he was young, he usually had disapparated before the other two cats could get a claw in.)  Harry, although he ultimately rose to dominance in the house (to be honest, mostly by attrition), remained obeisant to Floyd until the end. Even a month before his death, as Floyd made his laborious, blind, arthritic lope to the food bowl, Harry (now a solid double Floyd's weight) jumped up and skittered out of his way.  On the other hand, Floyd had been loyal and kind (in a cattish way) to Tabitha in her later years.

Andy-cat was Floyd's anchor and safety. They slept curled around each other, groomed each other and ranged the streets together. Andy-cat (who died in 2007) was a charmer - patient with the children, always ready for a cuddle or play, with a loud, braying Siamese voice and an easy tolerance of Floyd.  Floyd on the other hand, would scratch without warning, and skitter at the merest whisper. If he allowed you to pet him, you would be punished for stopping with a scratch or a bite, as he whipped around after that hand that was moving away.  Fierce, and fiercely loyal to Andy-cat; the two cats belonged together. Most of his adult life he had a kitten whisper, but after the death of loud Siamese Andy, Floyd's meow took on caterwauling proportions, and he would let us know where he was in the house, most of the day and night.

Christmas 2008. 

Floyd still looking in his prime, but going deaf, and thus, more friendly.

In his last years, Floyd grew deaf, his eyes blurred with cataracts and he lost his sense of smell. Ironically, withdrawing from the sensual world, drew him closer.  The absence of loud noises, fast moving lights, dangerous other-cat smells relaxed the old guy, and he grew to understand the benefits of laps and long petting sessions.  Floyd spent his later years down amongst people, hanging out in living room and television room -- anywhere he would be likely to get some attention. Occasionally he would try scratching when you stopped petting, but frankly, he was by now too slow to do any damage.

Last year, when I was at home all day in a quiet house, Floyd would spend most of the day near me, lying by the windows on a fleece. His illness required many small meals throughout the day (or we had to do a lot of cleaning up), and he'd let me know with a head butt and a loud meow that it was time for a refill. We tussled occasionally about the rights to my lap (my computer, or him) but he was a pleasant companion.

Occasionally he'd share the bed during the day, but usually I kept him off it, so he'd stay with the Texan at night. Territorial boundaries must be kept. (Photo by Girl-Child)

April, 2010

It is really hard to photograph jet-black cats, at least with a cheap point-and-click digital camera.

Farewell, Floyd.

What I did today

It was a problem three years ago, after the household got a new furnace. Harry, always curious to find the highest, most secure, point in a room, particularly in those days when he was frequently harassed by Abby and Floyd, found that if he jumped up from the top of the water heater to the top of the end of the shiny newly-installed cold-air return, and then crawled between the joists on the basement ceiling, he would land in a wondrous cat-sized maze of straight metallic passages, all alike. That is, the heating ductwork for the furnace. 

(Harry, April 2007, in the rafters next to the ducts.)

One passage led him to the cold-air register in the dining room floor, where he'd sit on the far side of the grate and meow piteously to be let out (until you went to the trouble of removing the grate, when he'd turn and disappear back into the ductwork again).  Another led him to the register in the foyer. Another led him, after a confused step forward into full reflective shininess, to a 10-foot chute, straight down the metal ducting, landing on the floor of the air flow reserve area in the furnace itself. I'll be clear: he was inside the furnace.

We could hear him meowing in there, a little scared by the sound of it, but more inconvenienced than in pain. The space he was in was perhaps 8 inches wide by 12 inches long, and 10 feet straight up. I unscrewed a grating from a vent from the wall of the duct, about 18 inches off the floor, and was able to reach in and down, and pull the cat out through a ragged vent hole in the metal -- not a job I care to repeat.

At the time, I blocked up the rafter entrance with whatever appropriately sized things we had in the basement.  The cat did not appreciate the barrier, but eventually, I piled more there than he could scrape out of his way, and the adventures in metal ductwork stopped.

Today, emboldened by new skills with power tools and wood learned in the kitchen project, and aware that potential house-buyers won't be much impressed by a pile of plastic bin covers and an empty shoebox, I made a proper barrier.  It isn't perfect -- one bit of wood split when I used it, but it's rather out of the way, so I left it as is. Certainly, it's in solidly enough that cats (and rats and possums) can't push it over.  I left an explanation for future curiosity seekers, too.

(It says, BEHIND THIS BARRIER There is a hole in the cold air return system of the furnace. Everything works fine, but cats will crawl in, ending up in furnace. (Unharmed but trapped.))

Tax Day is Tasha's "Birthday"

This is the anniversary of the first day we saw Tasha, in 2007.  Collarless, small, completely at home. I took pictures because she showed no inclination to leave (she spent the night, in fact, all over The Texan's face) and was going to put up signs in the neighborhood to find her proper home. But then Hans called over the back fence, and we were formally introduced.

She didn't like being handed back. She stayed with Hans about a week before we saw her again, and the rest is history. Every day she'd appear at the house and hang out, sleeping on the couch, following the kids around. In the evening, when I could see that Hans had come home from work, I would gently set her on the fence at a point she could jump down from into his yard, and shoo her towards his house.  My rule was I'd keep doing this until midnight, (and often had to do it two or three times) and then it was okay to give up and let her stay over.  (Despite leaving notes for him asking him to call for her at night, I rarely heard Hans try to collect her. His number was unlisted so I couldn't call him.)

After a while, the clever cat learned that if she came in through the cat flap (which at this point Harry had not yet mastered) and curled up quietly in a corner, I wouldn't notice that she was there until it was too late to kick her out. (More than once, I'd find no evidence of her in the house, but about 10 minutes after turning off the bedside light, there would be a thump and a purring furry body at my feet. She has that habit even today.)

She must really have been born sometime 15 or more weeks before this photo was shot, around Christmas, but we already had so much celebrating going on then (and Abby-cat's official "birthday" on Dec. 25) that to spread out the joy, we shifted her to this day. In her honor, tonight we are having rhubarb crisp, and she will get a double helping of Ocean Whitefish and Tuna in a Can.

Gratuitous Cat Photos Illustrating Anticipation of Slow Progress Week

(Harry stalking the neighbor's hyacinths on Sunday.)

HomoDommi flew home this afternoon after spending the morning cleaning up his tools and work area.

Tomorrow, after watching a school play starring Girl-Child in a speaking role, he and the children will drive back to Portland for a week.  FemmeDommi, who still has limited vacation time, will fly in mid-week, and she and her husband will take a belated anniversary trip to the coast (Happy Anniversary, you guys!), while I get to play with the children.

(Tasha watching warily, March 21, 2010.

I love her expression, but you'll have to click on the photo to see it better.)

We hope to get some work done next week, but don't know how the presence of juniors will affect our progress (unfortunately, Portland's Spring Break is on right now, so all their friends will be in school during the day when they are here).

How are the cats doing? you ask

We made headway today -- not as far as we'd like, but further than yesterday. We did move the fridge out of the kitchen. It was too large to fit through the doorway, so we had to open the doors to shimmy it around the frame. Which meant we had to empty it, which meant we got a good look at the bare, messy spills and coffee grounds and smashed pine nuts... so we deep cleaned it.  But after that we did move on to rough carpentry.

I thought I'd give a little update about the cats, given that this is Cattus Dommus, after all.

Old Floyd -- we aren't actually sure if he is even aware of the changes. He's very deaf, so he isn't bothered by the banging and sawing and the tromping of strangers through the house (he even walked up to the plumber, laying stretched out on the floor while pulling pipes through a hole from the basement, and sniffed his feet).  Floyd keeps returning to the exact spot where he has waited (and eaten) his food for two to three years -- between the refrigerator and the dishes hutch.  He'll sit at that spot whenever he's hungry, even though the hutch was moved out of the room over a month ago, and the fridge has been migrating around the kitchen (and house).  We've been feeding him in the dining room since early February, in fact, and to feed him now, often requires picking him up from His Spot and taking him over to his new food.

Tasha, as always, wants to watch. Our Personal Assistant Cat, taking notes. She is skittish -- HomoDommi turns in her direction and she's out of the room -- but she'll always come back.  Today, she found a comfy spot in the garden just outside of one of the windows in the basement, and interestedly watched us go up and down the stairs. I've tried to take photos, but she moves so fast and so much that  she's usually blurry. Like this:

She did lie down for a moment today. It looks like she was comfortable, had been lying there for hours, but she was there for under 3 minutes. The dot of pink a foot away from her is the latest camellia she brought in (continuing her charming habit of bringing us flowers and leaves).

Harry, on the other hand, has gotten used to much change (I like to rearrange the furniture 2-3 times a year (easily bored), and he used to get very upset as a kitten. Now as a jaded 6-year-old, it's just another of Amy's freaks.)  He is around, but clearly uninterested in us or the kitchen work, during the day -- usually asleep in his customary chair in the living room (before it was moved to make room for the fridge), or up in my bedroom.  At night, he investigates the most recent changes.

Cat of

I haven't written much about Cat of.  He's a black Maine Coon cat (read: rangy, long-haired, huge platter eyes -- the kind you see in Halloween pictures, with tufts of extra fur between his toes and the tips of his ears).  I haven't written much about him because he is, I say with no false modesty, in his own form of Cat Heaven, so he hasn't interacted with me much during the day.  Cat of, not long after I arrived, recognized a kindred spirit (read: a personal human slave).  I am far more cat-centric than Cranky and Bride of (not that they don't like the Cat, just they are more Dog People than Cat People, whereas I am more Cat Person than Dog Person).

Being in Cat Heaven means, to a cat, sleeping in a heated bed, eating fresh food, and being petted on command. Since Saturday evening, Cat of has spent 23 hours a day sleeping on my bed (which happens to have heated mattress pad, although I only turn it on for a couple hours, to warm the sheets). The remaining hour is taken up with brief ablutions, and then a quick visit to the food bowl (kept fresh by the slave).  I have also taken the Furminator to him, which fortunately he enjoys (my own cats don't) so his fur is particularly glossy and smooth.  The rest of the time, he is to be found in my room -- where I am not, except at night.

Psychic Cat Caught on Camera!

Our intrepid photographer captured on "film" a moment when a cat was intent on secret cat mind control!

As this photo was taken (ostensibly of the hanging ornament), the photographer was overtaken by a need to dish up a fresh can of stinky cat food, and to provide appropriate feline adoration in the form of chin-scratches and behind-the-ear tickles.  She began to suspect foul play when the cat attempted to bite the camera strap -- he must have known she caught the evidence.

Notice in the close-up, you can see the mind-rays emitting from his eyes.

Girl-Child's Window Art

Last summer, Girl-Child and I ran across a Crayola product -- "crayons" for coloring on windows (washable).  We purchased them, because the threshold for art supplies with Girl-Child is understandably low.

Girl-Child immediately set to work on the dining room windows.  We love these pieces, which were in place from mid-August until yesterday, when I finally washed the windows.  Which I regret, while simultaneously appreciating the treasure of the ethereal.

A melange of images, signed by the artist herself, representing the conflict and counterbalance between urban decay and natural wonders.

The feline residents, at the time. Note Fredness's fierce expression and Harry's fluffy whiteness. I hung a sheet behind the window to capture the line drawings -- otherwise, it had a similar background to the photo above.

Again, with a sheet background, a foray into the veldt.

My personal favorite portrait of the whole wall of images.

Mapping the Cat Brain

FrenchKate recently posted carefully mapped drawings of the anatomy of male and female (human) brains, and one of dogs.  I can't post an image into her comments (or rather, I don't know how to), so here is a response -- the anatomy of a cat brain.

Clearly there needs to be more research using up-to-date technologies, because this early work shows no Bringing Home Dead Things Sulcus (which lies close to the Swatting and Tossing Near-Dead Things Lobe) , nor the vast areas of cerebellum devoted to Ear Angling and Tail Twitching, which have direct connections with the emotional centers in the amygdala and is on the Sleep Neurotransmitter System.  Also, have they not found the Loyalty Particle or the Memory of Litter Box Location Molecule?  And where is the Godhood Cortex?

The Rainbow Bridge

I picked up Winnifred's ashes from the vet's a couple of days ago.  A little faux-wood coffin; this vet is classier than the one who cremated Jammer -- then, we only got a tidy cardboard box.  In the photo, Fred is on the left of Jammer (who died in 1999) and Jersey is at the back/on the right. (Yeah, I know what you're thinking. The ones we carry with us. For those who think that it is more creepy than loving to keep the ashes of my deceased pets in my closet, comfort yourself that it's Halloween.)

The box comes with a folded piece of faux-parchment attached to it with rubber bands  The fold is off-center, so that the title is exposed of whatever is written on the paper: Beyond the Rainbow in suitably overwrought, Victorian-style font.  I keep looking at it -- the paper is sitting next to my keyboard as I type this -- I had intended to copy it out for your amusement -- but I can't bring myself to unfold it.

When we got Jersey's ashes back last winter, I unwittingly pulled open the faux-parchment similarly attached, and read it. I was prepared to be amused, because we had already received a well-intentioned, but misguidedly form-filled sympathy card.  That card, with a cover showing people playing with their pets (dogs, cats, horses) in muted, respectful, colors, reads:

Dear Amy,

The College of Veterinary Medicine recently learned from [our vet] that your cherished cat, Stray Cat, passed away.  In recognition of your loss, Dr. D-- S-- made a generous donation to the Pet Memorial Program at the Oregon State University College of Veterinary Medicine...

Companion animals are dear members of our families; their loss hurts. We can't replace the bond between you and Stray Cat, but we hope you will find some solace in knowing that the friendship and feeling you shared with Stray Cat [is] being extended to other animals through the Pet Memorial Program.

I giggled when I read it then, and I giggle still. So, I expected the folded faux-parchment on Jersey's coffin to be a similar poignant absurdity, like a Monty Python sketch.  It was called The Rainbow Bridge, and I read it expecting an extended pablum banality about unicorns and pink ponies.

The Rainbow Bridge

There is a bridge connecting Heaven and Earth. It is called the Rainbow Bridge because of its many colors.  Just this side of The Rainbow Bridge there is a land of meadows, hills and valleys with lush green grass.

When a beloved pet dies, the pet goes to this place.  There is always food, water and warm spring weather. The old and frail animals are young again. Those who were maimed are made whole again. They play all day with each other.

There is only one thing missing. They are not with their special person who loved them on Earth. So each day they run and play until the day comes when one suddenly stops playing and looks up. The nose twitches! The ears are up! The eyes are staring! And this one suddenly runs away from the group!

You have been seen, and when you and your special friend meet, you take him in your arms and embrace.  Your face is kissed again and again and again, and you look once more into the eyes of your trusting friend.

Then you cross The Rainbow Bridge together, never again to be separated.

 - author unknown

Which it is. Carefully non-denominational, nothing specific as to species of "special friend" or even gender. Personally, too, I don't even believe in heaven, animals allowed or not.

But, boy, does this little story make me sob -- maybe because it doesn't hesitate to pull out all the stops and be, simply, what it is. It should have been particularly, cynically, funny in Jersey's case, since he never had a special person, and his final hour was hissing and clawing at the humans who trapped and ultimately chose to kill him. But in that magical land at the foot of that bridge, Jersey would, I tearfully suppose, be trusting, and happy, and grateful for the heat and food we accorded him against his better judgement.

And Winnifred's joy, as she runs towards the base of the bridge, might be alloyed when she notices, also bounding away from the group, all of the other pets I've had through the years. She was not a cat who liked to share her special people or her space with other cats. But that inconvenience, too, might be alleviated by the Bridge's magic.

Relief

Well, finally some good news - Tasha is back.  She just was there, eating food out of the bowl left for strays on the neighbor's porch, early this afternoon.  Since then, she has been sticking pretty close to me. When I started work at my desk, she roosted on the top of the cat-tree (a very secure spot) and since then has been deeply sleeping -- whiskers twitching at dream mice.

Who knows where she was. She is definitely thinner, but does not look otherwise the worse for wear. (Fred's demise does put things into some perspective.)  Her return was cunningly planned on my part; today is the first sunny day since her disappearance, and I made sure that I would be in the front garden doing late fall leaf cleaning all afternoon -- because she has always liked to keep us company when we're working outside.  And before that, I walked around the neighborhood, up and down every street in a 3 block radius (they say cats will tend only to go about 2 blocks, but I figured that she might have stayed away because she got chased out of her familiar area).  I called for her and shook a treat bag, and as a result got to know all the other cats in the neighborhood (and a couple of dogs).

At one point, I could swear I heard her meow, but I couldn't see her -- and another cat came up for a treat, so it might have been him meowing.  And moments after I returned home from my walkabout, someone called to say he had seen a cat fitting her description -- about half a block further than my furthest meander.  By the time I got there, no cats were visible any more -- but she showed up at home only about 30 minutes later, so it's possible she followed me home from there.

Anyway, she is home now. Maybe we can keep her here for a bit.

(Uncharacteristically solemn, for Tasha. She's drooping with sleep in this photo.)

Fun with Cats Can Still Be Had

From Youtube.com, an excellent interpretation of a cat's thoughts.

Quite Unexpectedly the Top Blew Off

 

In one of those cosmic ironies that fall out of the sky and remind you to value those things you have over the potentialities that you don't have, Winnifred was struck by a car this morning and killed. Boom, just like that, right in front of the house.

The driver knocked on the door, and then tactfully disappeared when I ran upstairs to get dressed (I was still drinking morning coffee). She had at least appeared to be genuinely shocked and saddened to find out it was my cat (I think she was hoping it was some unloved stray).

Fred was probably chasing a squirrel -- I had watched her hunting one in the neighbor's yard across the street not five minutes earlier.  She was so excited to be out and about, after having been penned up in the house for 20 hours while we hoped Tasha might come home.  She had early greeted Mater and me over coffee by rolling on the morning newspaper on the table, attacking the Editorial Section.  The car bumper hit her with a severe and direct blow to the head -- Fred did not probably even feel it.

A week or so ago, trying to remember the title of a Robert Frost poem about a wave hitting the shore, I came across this poem by Archibald MacLeish on the Internet.  I had recited it in High School -- went to State Finals with it, in fact -- as part of a typically teenaged view of "serious poetry"; my theme for recitation was The Apocalypse.  I hadn't thought of the poem for decades until last week, and I find today it is running through my consciousness.  It isn't the End of the World at Cattus Dommus -- instead,  the resonance is with the excited circus, like a calico's coloring and her pent-up energy, followed by the suddenness of nothingness.

Tasha is still missing, too.


The End of the World

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.

-- Archibald MacLeish

Day Five

Tasha is missing. I last saw her on Thursday, come in late afternoon to nose out some stinky food from Floyd's bowl, her favorite eating spot.  However, Thursday also brought HomoDommi and Girl- and Boy-Child(ren), in from Boise for a long weekend to celebrate Girl-Child's 9th birthday.  The children are hungry for pets, in their pet-less rental home in Idaho (except for the fish), so all the cats, including Tasha, were greeted with open arms and much enthusiasm.  It appears to have been a little too much for Tasha, already hounded by Winnifred whenever on the property.  She tore out of the house before eating anything and did not return.

Someone sighted her on Friday morning, down at the end of the block, but nothing since.  We had a birthday party with eight nine-year-olds running screaming around the house on Saturday, in-between pouring rain storms, and the family left late in the afternoon on Sunday.

She has never been gone this long before. One night: yes, two nights: much more rarely, but also yes. Not three nights. Never six whole nights. Never even 48 hours without checking in at some point of the day or night, pushing in through the cat door and walking through the whole house, meowing cautiously, until she finds me and rubs up against my knee to get her personal daily cuddle.

I am, frankly, a basket case.  Mater Familias, who is visiting, has been a trooper, putting off trips to Powells and the museum in favor of stalking the multiple organizations who receive stray and lost cats.  She has walked around the block with me after dark, with a flashlight and a treat box, shaking it like those "Trick or Treat for Unicef" nickel boxes of my youth, calling for a hungry, scared kitty. So far, as is obvious, nothing has come up. I had hopes of the vacant house behind us and five doors up, which is being extensively remodeled, and where a neighbor's cat was found in a crawlspace on Monday, but no dice.

I have been locking Fred in at night, and often most of the day, so that she can't keep Tasha away from the property. I have been nosy and for me, quite pushy, about knocking on neighbor's doors and asking them if they've seen her.  I've left flyers about her in the mailboxes of everyone on this block, and stapled signs on telephone poles in a two-block radius. I've lain awake for hours in the middle of the night, thinking I just heard her quiet, scratchy meow -- but she so far has proved not to be there.

I have mentioned before that there are 20,000 stray and feral cats in Portland. There are about 10 separate animal shelters, and there is no one coordinating place to go to find lost pets. Every morning I look at four different online lists of Found Cats -- the county site, the state site, the Emergency Hospital site (for injured animals), and another charity Animal Aid site. (I only found out about the other 7 places this morning.) We went to the Oregon Humane Society today, a beautiful facility with rooms named for corporate and individual donors. There, I saw about 15 cats (and another 30 or more who have been around long enough to be lounging in large, comfortable enclosures, hoping to be adopted). The OHS only accepts strays when it has an open cage -- today, she said, the list to get a cat into the OHS cages was 950 cats long.

At the Multnomah County Animal Shelter, which is about 15 miles east of the city in the pretty tourist town of Troutdale, Oregon, I saw at least 70 cats -- even the ones in hospital treatment -- because the aide happened to be free at the moment.  That facility is functional and concrete, with long corridors full of doors to narrow rooms full of cages of cats piled floor to ceiling. The cats are obviously cared for, but bored. They are kept for three days after reaching full health, and then sent out to one of the more public shelters for adoption.

Tasha has been microchipped, her first owner (Hans) told me. But I don't know the number -- I had intended to have the vet read it when she had her annual checkup last month. I forgot, and then put off taking her in because, well, it seemed a small thing.  Hans also told me she was licensed, but I don't know if he got the standard 3-year license or the cheaper less-faith-in-their-survival 1-year license.  If the former, any official shelter will call Hans. But he has moved away to "somewhere on 40th" I was told, (I don't even know his last name) and I haven't much faith that he will let me know she has been found. (If my cat had been absconded with by a neighbor who hadn't gone to the bother of licensing her, I wouldn't give her back.)

Our fear is that she is locked in someone's shed. Saturday afternoon, after the rains stopped, and all day Sunday, were nice enough that people were out doing Autumnal Maintenance on their yards.  She might have run in to escape a cat, or curious, and then been closed inside.  Since Sunday, it has been raining and cold, so no one has been outside or messing with their sheds. Tonight is garbage night on our block, so I'm hoping that someone will have to open up their shed to pull out the garbage can, and they'll release a hungry and pissed off little black cat, too.

Winnifred's Mysterious History

I noticed not long after she moved in that Fred had a couple of odd stripes on her back and flank. One is a white stripe from knee to bottom, and the other, a little harder to make out, is a wrinkle of a black stripe near her spine, starting near the point of the main patch of orange on her side and extending back to the base of her tail.

As Spring has rolled in, and she's lost her thick winter coat, these stripes have become a little more obvious (these photos were taken three weeks ago, after they started revealing themselves). It turns out that the "stripes" camouflage fairly large patches of bare skin -- a couple of squarish patches on her thigh, and a long strip of bare skin up her back.

The veterinarian says they are burn marks: scar tissue. The fur may or may not ever grow back. She said that the pattern of them is typical for cats who have curled a little too close to the exhaust pipe, or who have crawled up into the engine of a car -- for warmth, in the winter. The vet didn't say how long ago this happened -- certainly when she arrived, Fred had no active wounds. We reckon that she is about 3 winters old (although she could be as old as 6 -- but she's very playful, so I tend to put her on the youngish side).

I notice that even when Harry and Tasha sleep on the front porch during the balmier nights of summer, Fred sleeps inside. She clearly realizes a good thing when she has it.

Cats think differently!

Tasha and Harry in typical pose for warm afternoons. And cool evenings.
And warm and cool mornings, for that matter.

An article in yesterday's Guardian online reveals that cats fail a cause-and-effect test that dogs pass (pulling the right one of a pair of parallel strings to get a treat). This shows that cats are not as "smart" as dogs, if you judge smartness by ability to figure out which string has a treat on the end of it, and then pull it towards you. Now, I'm all for oddball psychological studies, and if you hadn't guessed, I am fascinated by cat behavior. But I hope there wasn't a lot of government funding spent to discover that cats "think differently" from dogs, or from us.

New Cat

We first saw him only on Sunday, cleaning out the bowl of cat food at the Neighbor's porch. That was a flash of gold, jumping into the hedge at their house, chased by Tasha.

Today I interrupted him cleaning out the food bowls in the kitchen. (We leave doors open in the summer.) He raced away, but only until he was in a secure spot, behind the studio with a hole in the fence to freedom.

We gazed at each other for some time, but he didn't come closer. He looks pretty healthy. Perhaps someone new has moved into the neighborhood, who we don't know about yet. I hope so. We don't have a lot of space for a fifth cat.

But isn't he pretty?

Ahem. Excuse me, Frederica. Winifred? Frieda?

(a bad photo, but good display of the cat's coloring)

It has been brought to my attention that most calico cats are female (that is, 2,999 out of 3,000 are). It's a genetic thing -- red and black colors (alleles) are carried at the same point on the X chromosome, and you need one of each allele. So you need two X's to get both the red (orange) and the black of a calico. White color apparently is thrown in for free, like that special watermarked tissue paper with the matching sticker that you get at the better clothing stores.

For those sticklers for statistics amongst my readers, that 1 in 3,000 male calico cat happens to have an extra sex chromosome (XXY). And only 1 in 10,000 of them are fertile, if that many.

Another fascinating feline fact is that all-red (orange) female cats are pretty rare, too. The red allele is recessive, so those girls need two red Xs, so to speak, to carry the color. Not tremendously rare, but not common.

Anyway, from statistics back to specifics. I had thought, before reading up on the subject tonight, that the all-female coloration rule only applied to "tortoiseshell" cats -- those murky, dark blend of colors that have no or very little white (as in this photo from the marvelous website forwarded to me by PeaceableKate, What Color Is My Cat?). It turns out, those are just cats without much white on them -- a "calico" is just the common name for a "Black Tortoiseshell with White", which in itself is a shorthand term for "Black with Red with White". (Calico is a US term, too, not used in the UK. I don't know about elsewhere.)

Our own pretty example has such a low and persuasive growl, and is built rather like a feline bulldog. And I've only owned male cats until Tasha turned up, so my default is male. And, if there are indeed 19,999 stray cats in Portland, there could be as many as 7 male calicos wandering about (were all those strays calicos). But I just checked (an unappreciated interruption in the pre-midnight nap), and we've got a girl. (Disturbingly, I couldn't find any spaying scars, either, so we may have more than one girl if we're not careful.)

Last but not least, I also learned tonight that calicos are considered "Lucky Cats", a.k.a. "Money Cats" -- said to bring safety to sailors and wealth to everybody else. I'd be fine with that.