In Which Cora And Shadow Join Forces

Coraline and Shadow are definitely both very high-energy cats. In Coraline's case this has been apparent since she was tiny. Shadow, however, has taken over a year to get to the point of enough confidence in his environment to really express the extent of his exuberant nature. He's still Brodie's favorite snuggle-buddy, of course, and can nap like a pro when he finally manages to wear himself out -- but that can take a while!

Accordingly (and much to my delight), he and Cora have actually become much more closely bonded over the past few months. As some may recall, Coraline and Brodie were actually adopted three weeks before Shadow simply due to the uncertainty inherent in trapping from a feral colony.

Brodie and Shadow got along famously from the moment the brothers were re-united, but Cora spent the first few weeks after her briefly-estranged sibling's arrival hissing and growling at him whenever he entered her sight. Eventually she came to accept him, but for ages she and Shadow were both closer friends with Brodie than with each other. Now, though, I'm seeing something different in shape but equal in (positive) magnitude developing between this particular sibling pair.


(Above image - Cora surveys the yard this past weekend, when I let her and Shadow out to run around a bit while I worked on my laptop on the patio.)

Brodie remains the go-to sibling for cuddles and free ear-washing (and the occasional but vigorous round of CHASEWRESTLEGRR, which even cats of the Garfield persuasion enjoy sometimes) but Cora has definitely gotten to the point where she knows that if she needs a partner in mischief or someone to tear randomly around the house with, Shadow is her guy.

It's also been neat seeing these two teach each other things. Cora has always been the most mechanically inclined and apt to experiment with objects of her own accord, while Shadow took months longer than either of his siblings to get to where he'd (for instance) bat treat-puzzle balls around just-so to dispense the crunchies within. It wasn't that he lacked the brainpower to operate the treat puzzles -- he's just always had the natural predisposition toward persuading others to do things for him (a trait he actually shares with Nikki).

Lately, though, he seems to have come around to the idea that there are some things he can better accomplish without running immediately to ask for help. E.g., he's become quite the expert at opening any door that isn't latched, and has managed to sneak into the bedroom behind me quite a few times recently!


(Above image - Shadow rests a while in the leaves after a vigorous game of Garden Tag with Cora. None of the kitties here have unrestricted outdoor access but on nice days these two really appreciate a chance to run off some of their energy in the back garden.)

Cora, in turn, seems to have experienced something of an epiphany in the opposite direction, as she seems to have become a lot more vocal all of a sudden, and has even adopted some of Shadow's "super secret weapons of human persuasion" (such as what I refer to as the "kittens of the damned stare" in addition to the "Lassie move" where the cat basically orders the human into a different part of the house and looks pointedly at the thing they're interested in, which in Cora's case is usually the back door!).

Of course both of these kitties have maintained their innate inclinations toward Explorer/Engineer (Cora) and Mr. Charisma (Shadow), but it's abundantly apparent that their growing friendship has led to a really neat expansion of both of their respective skill-sets. Which is just super cool to see.

TNR News: Some Good, Some Sad

Since my last writing on this matter we've managed to get 3 more colony kitties successfully neutered and returned to their outdoor home. Which is awesome, of course -- it's definitely at the point where whenever I visit the colony, I'm liable to see unaltered cats way outnumbered by their TNRed cohorts.

So, that's the good news.

There is a bit of sad news to report as well, though: we actually brought in a total of 4 cats following the last round of trapping. While three came through the surgery fine, one of them (Tami, a little tabby girl who couldn't have been more than six months old) apparently had either an undiagnosed heart condition or sensitivity to the anesthesia because the clinic reported that her heart just randomly stopped on the operating table.

I hate reporting bad news like that, but I don't think Tami's memory would be well served by pretending this sort of thing never happens. It's rare, but it does happen, and whenever one gets involved in any type of cat rescue, one runs the risk of getting up close and personal with the occasional freak tragedy. I don't blame myself, I'm just really sorry that Tami never got to finish growing up and living a life spent running, playing, and climbing trees with her colony-mates.

What this sort of thing really drives home for me is the extreme need for more support for TNR clinics. It's great that the local Humane Society has a low-cost spay/neuter program at all, but over the long term I'd really like to see a bit more pre-op health screening become standard. If Tami did have a heart condition she might still be around if someone had been able to diagnose and treat it, and if she had a problem with one type of anesthesia, perhaps a different one might have been used.

Obviously it doesn't help anything to sit here dwelling on what could have been, but I'm not the sort of person who can just go "oh well, these things happen!' in response to this sort of thing. So I'm at least trying to look at what I can learn from the situation to help avoid it in the future. For one thing, I want to make sure that next time we bring in any cats that we at least REMIND the clinic of what happened to Tami. If nothing else that might prompt them to take a bit more care during surgery prep and watch more closely for signs of something being wrong, given that I know some heart conditions are familial and lots of cats in that colony are "cousins" of some degree.

…and on that note I will end this entry (and I promise the next one will be less sad!).

The Mousie Howl...Caught On Film!

Firstly, yes, I am still alive! Life just got very busy for a while there (I'm back to working again, yay!) and I just fell out of the habit of making any sort of regular updates.

That said...since I've been away so long I figured my first "hey I'm back" post had to be EPIC. And...well, while the video below is by far not the most epic example of what it depicts that I've every seen, it's the first-ever footage I've ever managed to secure of Cora making the Mousie Howl.



Basically, it's this sort of...repetitive MRRWOWOWOWOW! MRRWOWOWOWOW! MRRWOWOWOWOW! thing. My friend Amanda reminded me of it when we were on Skype chat recently and we (as in, the two humans) ended up cracking ourselves up ridiculously trying to imitate the noise. Her cat does it too sometimes and I've heard of a few others that do as well so it may not be THAT weird, but it's still rare to be able to capture it. Usually when Cora sees me looking at her mid-howl she drops the toy and looks at me like, "What? Nothing to see here..."

...anyhow, though, from an evolutionary standpoint I am *fairly* certain this noise is hunting-related, though in their cattish way, cats who employ it probably add their own individualized meaning and purpose to it. To me it comes across as being something like "CHECK OUT MY AWESOMENESS FOR I HAVE PROCURED A DINNER!" I could also plausibly see it being related to something mother cats would do when nearing the nest, so their kittens would know they were coming. And in some contexts it almost comes across as a (probably mild or even mocking) *threat*, e.g., "Keep it up and you're next!"

But of course, all that is just speculation. I fully expect Cora has other reasons for doing what she does that simply don't translate to human. It's just such an interesting, specific noise, though, that I'm sure it means *something*!

EDIT: Found another cat on Youtube making a similar noise...while playing with what appears to be a REAL dead mouse! Of course she's doing this on what appears to be her human's bed, too. :P

Short video of Shadow and Cora as themselves

Here is a video that shows Shadow being very Shadowish (and Coraline being very Cora-ish partway through):



Video picture quality isn't the greatest because I didn't realize how bad the lighting was during recording. And anyone who's lived with cats should know that if they're doing something you want to film, it's almost a given that filming conditions will be sub-optimal -- and that the more time you spend trying to set everything up perfectly the more likely you are to miss whatever it is you were trying to film.

That said, I am still happy I managed to get this particular moment on camera -- it is just so, so illustrative of Shadow's personality, and Cora's, and the way they relate both to each other and to me. (Brodie and Nikki were off napping elsewhere during filming and
thus do not appear in this clip).

I also tried taking some still photos of the scene as it unfolded but only a few came out even marginally post-able (the rest were too dark or blurry to see much of anything):







And as a bonus, below is a picture drawn by 8 year old nephew Jake (he left it as a present for me and Matt at his grandparents'/Matt's parents' house). Apparently this is what happens when Auntie Anne (NOT THE PRETZEL LADY) lets the kidlets play with her ipod touch all evening:



(He's spelled NYAN wrong but this is completely made up for on account of POP TART SPRINKLES!)

(And now I must go to bed because this many parenthetical statements and this many ALL CAPS in this short of a post definitely indicate brain = in need of sleep!)

Termite Termination...without evacuation!

Yep, the termites have been thwarted...without any need for humans or cats to vacate the premises! There was a bit of a miscommunication at the pest control company -- the only reason we'd initially been asked to leave for the duration of the treatment was because someone at the firm had been under the impression they needed to spray aerosol stuff in the crawlspace (under the house). But since they were just injecting insecticide into the dirt under the garage, there was really no conceivable way for any of it to get on or near any of the resident mammals. Which meant we got to stay in the house -- I shut everyone (myself included) into the computer room while the exterminator did his work, but even that was mainly to avoid getting underfoot.

I am sure the cats were NOT disappointed by this turn of events -- I mean really, they got to do exactly the same thing they usually do on a Friday afternoon (which is to say, sleep), no need for anyone to be shut up in a carrier and carted across town. Hooray! But by the same token, the experience of trying to plan a short evacuation has led me to figure it might be a good idea to have a "drill" once in a while, just in case we all ever DO need to get out of the house for any length of time.

Termites. And a Field Trip For Cats.

Matt (the SO) and I recently began some electrical improvements in our garage -- basically the wiring in there was really old and crappy and scary (definitely NOT to code in places) and the lighting was poor, and there was nowhere to plug in a washer or dryer, and Matt needs more and beefier outlets for all the machine-shop stuff he would like to eventually install. It's been a project long in the making (or at least in the wanting), so it's nice to be finally getting to it.

As for how it impacts the cats here -- well, that's an interesting and somewhat convoluted matter. See, while the electrical part of things is going quite well (Matt even did the responsible thing and went and got permits from the city! And we are doing fun awesome things like bending conduit and attaching it to the walls! OMG!), we found a few subterranean termites attempting to set up shop in the wall framing.


(ACTUAL GARAGE PICTURE. WOOD DAMAGE IS REAL. NOMMING TERMITE IS A DRAMATIZATION.)

The damage we discovered was mainly just tunnels left by long-since-fumigated buglets, but still. We saw at least five or six live ones and that was enough to prompt calling the exterminators. I mean I know the termites are just trying to survive and all, but I am unwilling to let them eat my house toward that end. Left unchecked, termites can literally do this, and if it's all happening sight unseen (as it typically is), conditions can become quite dangerous for anyone entering the structure. Which means that the critters have to go, and that apparently (per last week's inspection) entails the exterminators drilling holes around the perimeter of the garage and injecting insecticide into the dirt underneath the slab there.

Anyway, the cat-relevant part of this ordeal is the fact that, despite the fact that the house is NOT being tented (this is just very localized application of liquid insecticide), the exterminators require the structure (meaning the whole house, as ours is an attached garage) to be vacated by all resident mammals. Thus, while Nigel the goldfish gets to stay happily swimming in his aquarium in the computer room, Matt and I and the kitties need to be elsewhere for approximately four hours on Termite Death Day.

We've scheduled the thing for one of my non-work days (currently my schedule only has me out of the house three days a week) so someone will be there to let the exterminators in. Matt will be at work, and I have plenty of places I could go locally that would get me out of the house...but the cats are going to be another matter entirely.

I can't just take them all out into the yard with me as the termite guys need to do some stuff outside as well and the yard isn't huge (meaning there's no way to get the requisite distance from the extermination work area). I REALLY don't want to board them, as they would all hate it, and plus it just seems like overkill given it's only for 3-4 hours. I had a friend offer to let my kitties hang out in his guest room but he lives a few towns over and my non-driving self wouldn't have any way to get there (let alone with four cats) during the day.

Thus far, the best option that has presented itself is for Matt's parents to pick me and the kitties up on Termite Morning and bring us to their (local, in-town) house for the day. This still makes me nervous for about a zillion reasons (most of them named "Nikki", who is going to -- and I don't use this term lightly -- flip her shit when she sees/smells that OTHER, UNFAMILIAR CATS LIVE THERE) but at least it wouldn't involve any of the kitties having to deal with totally unfamiliar humans. I will probably just see if I can put my guys' carriers in the parents' spare bedroom or something and hope they will sleep for a while. It won't be fun for them but it should at least be safe and minimally horrible.

All that said, I guess I am pleased that this situation has at least prompted me into action on something I should have taken care of a long time ago -- that is, last night I went ahead and ordered two more cat carriers. For a long time we only had one, because the kittens were so little they would all fit. Then the kittens stopped being so little (read: grew up into massive muscled strapping Beasts of Awesome) and so I got a second carrier in order to make for more efficient vet trips. Really, though, if you have four cats you should have four carriers -- I mean, in case of an emergency evacuation or something you REALLY want to be able to pack them up properly for maximum safety and whatnot. So now I will have four carriers, and that should not only make transporting them off on their field trip easier, but give me additional peace of mind in the emergency-preparedness realm.

Finally, I also have to admit that I am a teensy bit curious about seeing how the kitties react to "going visiting", especially given that most of the cats currently traipsing through Matt's parents' house are Cora's, Brodie's, and Shadow's cousins and probable half-siblings. I mean I don't expect them to remember specific individuals given that they were only 7-10 weeks old when they were last over there, but I am wondering if anything will at least smell familiar, and if so, what they will do. So as much as I am not looking forward to the logistical ordeal of this whole thing, and as much as I feel bad for having to put the cats through it in the first place, it isn't liable to be boring, that's for sure!

Communication Crossover: Canine Edition

This past weekend I visited some longtime friends (a couple) who have no cats, but who do have a dog. His name is named Skip, and he is about eight years old.

Skip and I have somewhat of a turbulent history, in the sense that when my friends first adopted him (at about a year old) he was so intimidatingly hyperkinetic and gregarious that I frankly had no idea how to handle his presence. I spent many a visit following his arrival in my friends' household trying to avoid Skip and silently attempting to will him away from sticking his nose in my food (or my butt, for that matter).

My instincts were also apparently more than a little bit "off" because somehow at one point I got it into my head that if I gave him my pizza crust he would leave me alone. As you can probably imagine, this is NOT what ended up happening. What ended up happening was that Skip determined I had to be the world's biggest pushover, and thus for as long as he's lived with my friends he's had a tendency to follow me around, well, like a puppy dog.

Now, of course I don't literally believe humans can be divided into "cat people" and "dog people" in a strictly binary sense. I've known plenty of folks who've lived happily with both species (and also with rabbits, goats, chickens, and even llamas in the case of my grandparents!). But in general I am quite comfortable describing myself as, by and large, a Cat Person. Cats have always just seemed a lot more respectful of others' personal space, "oh hai, here's my butt in your face!" moments notwithstanding.

They also generally smell better than dogs (superficial, I know, but it's true...most dogs I've met smell disconcertingly like stale cheese, whereas cats smell like lavender and autumn leaves and fresh earth to my admittedly atypical olfactory system) and they're (generally speaking) a lot more inclined toward the "parallel play" type of interaction I tend to prefer with most living creatures, at least when I'm expected to remain in the presence of said creatures for any length of time.

With cats, you can just be in a room doing your thing and they'll be doing their thing, and even without constantly being in each other's business, there's this wonderful ongoing invisible-reciprocity thing at work. Of course there are exceptions to this (I actually just sat down again after a brief but intense game of "run madly around the house" with Nikki, who had been pestering me with her most emphatic "I AM BORED, COME ENTERTAIN ME, HUMAN!" door-scratching routine) but on balance I meet far more "parallel-inclined" cats and far more dogs who seem to want and need a heck of a lot of "face time" and very direct forms of acknowledgment.

Dogs, by and large, tend to put me into the same vaguely-agitated state that small children (of the age when kids tend to be yelling "LOOKATME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT THIS! WATCH!" about everything) or human extroverts (of any age) do. As if they're constantly breathing down my neck going "Why are you so quiet? Are you upset? Are you bored? Are you lonely?? Are you okay? Are you SURE you aren't sad???", and then basically proceeding to repeatedly hassle me for some intangible response that I have no idea how to give.

That said, I've known a handful of truly excellent canines, such as my grandparents' old Australian Cattle Dog, Matilda. Matilda was outgoing to be sure, but she was so polite, and I remain indebted to her to this day for helping me find my way back to the house after I got lost in the snow as a youngster one winter. But overall at this point in my life I see dogs the same way I see children: fine, as long as they're other people's, and as long as they're not constantly jumping up in my face.

Which brings us back to Mr. Skip. At eight years old he's far from being a sedate dog but he's definitely mellower, and he's gotten a whole lot more thoughtful and patient. He still follows me around and gives me every manner of piteous begging-face, but his manners have improved tremendously and he is long past the age when he would actively stick his snout into my plate (or worse).

Anyhow, this last time I visited my friends and Skip, one really interesting thing I discovered was that there is actually some amount of crossover between relating to cats and relating to (at least some) dogs. Or at least there seems to be.

My guess is that it's something to do with practice -- as in, when you live with several nonhuman creatures day in and day out, you sort of end up shifting into a mode where you very readily and automatically start seeing them as "stakeholders" in the environment you share with them.

And when you experience that perspective-shift, suddenly you stop being as annoyed by whatever actions of theirs you don't quite understand.

Or something like that, at least.

In any event, during this past visit I actually managed to have a lot of fun interacting with Skip. The coolest part was where he approached me and taught me how to play a game he liked (one which mainly involved him running around the dining table playing a variant of "keep-away" with one of his toys). His humans had no part in showing me what to do; I just followed Skip's lead and found him to be a wonderfully clear communicator.

Again, partly I suspect much of this is due to the fact that he's older now than when I first met him, and I'm a lot more comfortable with mellow(er) older dogs than with hyperactive puppies and young dogs. But I am quite sure that something else -- something on my end -- has also changed, and I would wager my cats (especially Nikki, who is probably the most regally demanding cat I've ever met) are largely to thank for it!

Cat Music, and Music Cats

The tomcats in Diane Duane's (excellent) cat-wizard novels are portrayed as quite thoroughly fascinated by song (given that this is what they view their caterwauling-at-the-ladies as being). Real-life cats also of course sometimes communicate vocally, though of course personality and circumstance will strongly influence how much and in what ways they will engage this particular channel.

That said, I've definitely noticed varying responses to human-made music on the part of my feline housemates. Cora, Nikki, and Shadow mostly seem indifferent, though it could just be I've not played anything they've had strong feelings about one way or another yet. I've talked to several humans who have described their cats seeming to despise most instances of "human caterwauling".

Brodie, on the other hand, seems to love music. If I am playing something he likes he will hop into my chair, curl up in my lap, purr loudly, and even drool on my arm until the song is over.

I have no clue what this is about, especially as it clearly isn't a feline universal. He seems very relaxed when "his" songs are on, so maybe something about it reminds him of happy warm snuggly kittenhood days?

As for Brodie's taste in auditory entertainment, that tends to run toward the "folky female vocalist" band of the musical spectrum. Bonus points if said vocalists have the ability to cover a large octave range. Far and away his favorite artist right now is Joanna Newsom, especially the song On A Good Day. He also enjoys Joni Mitchell. (And he even likes it when I sing along with what's playing, though I will not be posting a video of that!)