FELINES ARE WONDERFUL

In Which Cora And Shadow Join Forces

2011-11-28T13:36:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-22T15:01:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-11-18T22:03:00.000-08:00

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

2011-09-18T23:22:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-09-17T21:44:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-09-01T12:14:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-29T16:23:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-06T22:38:00.000-07:00

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!)

Coraline Climbing

2011-07-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

I can't remember if I've posted this here before, but below is probably my favorite picture of Cora ever:

It's from last year and it was seriously just a "lucky" shot. As in, I pointed the camera up into the tree and pressed the button a bunch of times without having much of a sense at all of what I'd end up with. Not bad for a little Canon point-and-shoot!

But anyway. I must of course note that neither Cora nor any of the other three kitties here are presently allowed to roam willy-nilly about the garden or neighborhood. If nothing else, this helps keep my nerves intact -- the actual street my house is on is pretty quiet, but just over the back fence there's a very busy main road.

Still, Cora in particular just seems to light up with joy outdoors, so I try and at least give her a little bit of (supervised) time to romp and climb and chase bugs. One of my most fervent wishes is to someday be able to construct an outdoor play area for my cats (awesome examples of these can be found at Catio Showcase), but given the investment likely required to do it right (not to mention the "convincing partner of what a wonderful idea it is" factor) it's probably going to be a while. :P

In the meantime, the Amazing World of Outside is going to have to remain a super-special treat!

A Chance For Jack

2011-07-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

We (meaning me, my partner Matt, and his parents) have had something of a fumbling start getting the local feral cat colony into a "managed" state, but things are getting better. Sometimes I look out into the feeding area and see no less than eight or so cats -- all sleek, clear-eyed, glossy-coated, and ear-tipped (indicating their TNRed status).

We've still got a ways to go, however, and I know of at least three unspayed females -- all of whom had litters in April or May of this year. I've thus far seen two solid grey babies, three black ones, and two tiny tabbies. There may have been more but either they didn't survive or are still being hidden by their mothers. It is also hard to tell which kittens belong to which mama -- this is common in feral colonies, though, as female cats (especially sisters or mother-daughter groups) will trade babysitting duties.

Unfortunately, despite the cooperative mothering that can occur in groups of outdoor cats, sometimes kittens still get abandoned. We suspect that to be the case with the kitten below:

This little guy's name is Jack, and in this photo (taken this past weekend) he is resting on the sofa with Matt's mom. We think he's maybe 8 - 10 weeks old, but he could be older -- he is very underweight. When I held him it felt like his backbone was about to poke through his skin.

Matt's mom (with help from 10-year-old niece Julie) managed to catch him pretty easily in the back yard without even employing a trap; this is not a good sign, as a feral kitten that can't move fast enough to run away generally isn't a very healthy kitten. We'd been seeing him around for a while but he never seemed to be "with" the other kittens -- rather, he sort of hung around on the periphery, and has always (since we started noticing him) been much smaller than the rest.

Of course Jack will be taken in for neutering eventually, but right now the priority is getting him well. One reason for his alarming skinniness became apparent to me when I happened to peek under his tail: Jack's got tapeworms. Big time. Or rather, he had tapeworms -- hopefully the medication has worked by now. Various worms are capable of infecting cats, and roundworms are more common than tapeworms, but tapeworms have a pretty distinctive, um, style, and thanks to Shadow's tapeworm adventure when he was five months old I got a very effective lesson in recognizing them.

Cats get tapeworms either from fleas (which are a necessary element of the worm's life cycle) or infected rodents. I am fairly certain Shadow got his from a flea, but whatever the vector, I am quite vigilant these days about not letting anyone's monthly topical parasite treatment lapse. I learned the hard way that just because a cat stays indoors all or most of the time doesn't mean they can't get cooties. Fleas can hitch-hike in on your clothes, for instance, especially if you spend any amount of time around groups of cats, and given my feral-colony dealings I try to be mindful of this.

But back to tapeworms. The first sign of Shadow's wormage was the little pile of what I initially believed to be sesame seeds in between my sofa cushions. Which was odd to begin with, considering I couldn't recall having eaten anything with sesame seeds on it at any point in the preceding months. Later that day my uneasy feeling was validated when I noticed that Shadow had a number of what looked like grains of rice stuck to the fur under his tail.

I fleetingly hoped that he'd just, you know, sat in a bowl of rice or something -- but then I saw that the "rice" was moving.

Ew.

Thankfully, two doses of praziquantel took care of the beasties that had set up shop in my (then) little black cat. Everyone else got dosed too, of course, just to be on the safe side, and the only side effect I observed was (in Cora's case) "excessive salivation", which resolved on its own within a few minutes.

Praziquantel is available under several brand names but the stuff I got was simply labeled "tape worm tabs". I've seen it at pet stores but it's generally ridiculously expensive there; I ended up buying it online and only spent a quarter of what I would have locally.

You can't just use regular wormer (e.g., the piperazine stuff easily found in grocery stores) because that will usually only get rid of roundworms. Tapeworms are essentially like those monsters in video games that can regenerate themselves indefinitely until you get to the source, and the praziquantel does something chemically to permit the head to be digested and passed uneventfully out of the body.

In any event, the point of all this is that if you live or work with cats, I highly recommend having tapeworm meds in your stock of Kitty First Aid supplies. Because I had two whole bottles left over from Shadow's wormisode, Jack was able to get treated without delay. Yay! Now hopefully he will start gaining some weight. He's still got a stuffy nose (hence the slightly open mouth in the photo above) and might need a vet trip for some antibiotics, but he is definitely looking more alert these days.

I will be sure to get another picture when I next visit, and of course if anyone local reading this blog has been looking for a kitten, please feel free to inquire! One area I would like to improve upon in terms of colony management is that of removing adoptable kittens and finding them permanent homes. Outdoor, unsocialized cats can of course lead perfectly happy lives (so long as they've got ample access to food, shelter, etc.) but it really makes it MUCH easier to care for those that cannot be adopted when colony populations are kept on the small side.

The Cat Collar Conundrum

2011-07-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

(This post brought to you by "things that seem kind of frivolous but that I know other cat-appreciators are likely to be able to identify with, and which may with any luck generate some degree of practical discussion")

None of the four felines-in-residence here currently has unrestricted access to the outdoors. Nikki used to have daytime garden privileges, as that initially seemed like a fair arrangement given she'd been an outdoor cat at my parents' -- but I put my proverbial foot down about that after she sustained one too many injuries fighting who-knows-what last fall.

Still, they've all proven their skill at escape artistry on more than one occasion. Nikki in particular is a champion door-dasher -- often I have to exit the patio sliders walking backwards because she's so good at appearing out of nowhere and darting between my feet.

Shadow, meanwhile, let the whole crew out a few times before I finally learned how to latch the screen door properly (he knows how to paw sideways at it and push it open). And just generally I like to be prepared for the possibility that regardless of how thoroughly I fortify the house's potential exit points, someone is bound to get out every now and then.

Now, all kitties here are microchipped and registered with HomeAgain, so they've at least got that measure of identification with them at all times. But it still makes me nervous to think of them out roaming around with no visible identification. Thus, I've been trying to get everyone to wear a collar ever since the youngsters' major kitten growth spurts started tapering off.

The results of this have been...inconsistent.

Nikki has the best record so far, probably because she's so used to collar-wearing (since my parents had her wear one all the time) and because she has no interest in the vigorous wrestling matches her housemates regularly engage in.

Brodie is also pretty good about not losing his -- he's had his current one on for so long now that I can't remember the last time he slipped it.

Shadow and Cora (who seem to have morphed into tag-team mischief-makers lately), however, continue to confound all my efforts to keep them identifiable at a distance as Cats With A Home.

In Shadow's case, mostly he just loses his. It doesn't matter what type -- clasp, buckle, velcro, you name it -- give him a few days and it'll be gone, and when I find it (under the couch or behind a chair, usually) it will generally look like it's been pulled out of a war zone (because he chews on it and plays with it like a toy once it's off).

Cora also loses collars (probably for the same reasons Shadow does). I was all excited a few weeks ago as at that point she'd been doing great with a lovely elasticized orange collar -- but then I found said lovely collar buried in the litter box. Eeep. But she also has a different (and more worrisome) problem -- that is, a tendency to get collars stuck around her lower jaw. I only ever use breakaway cat collars, mind you, but I still get concerned she's going to injure herself in the process of thrashing around to free herself.

That said, right now she's wearing the neon pink number pictured below:

...and so far she has NOT gotten this one wrapped around her face. I've attached it a little more tightly than I have in the past, and now I am thinking perhaps the jaw-stuck phenomenon was due mainly to my being too tentative about tightness. As is evident in the photo above, Cora has a ridiculous amount of neck-fluff (to the point where I'm beginning to wonder if she's got a longhair gene being partially expressed, if such a thing is possible). I can still put two fingers easily between her collar and her neck the way it is now, so she's definitely not choking, but it does seem I need to put hers on somewhat tighter than, say, Brodie's or Nikki's.

But I digress. What I've been doing is putting it on her during the day (when humans are liable to be traipsing in and out of doors) but taking it off and putting it away before I go to bed at night. Kind of annoying, but definitely more cost-effective than replacing lost or litterbox-buried collars on a regular basis!

So, if anyone is inclined to discuss: does your cat (or cats) wear a collar? What type? How do you keep them wearing it? Am I overestimating the need for visual identification? Etc.?

Newbies

2011-05-29T00:02:00.000-07:00

It was weird...for a while after we (meaning me, Matt, and his parents) got three pairs of cats Trap-Neuter-Returned, it seemed like every cat we saw was already eartipped (meaning they were someone who'd already had their trip to the clinic). Thus, we've been holding off making appointments pending the stragglers coming out of wherever they've been hiding.

That said, it looks like we're going to be starting up the trapping again real soon. There are at least three unspayed females still at large, and from what I can tell, two of them recently had litters. Current calculations estimate a minimum of seven new kittens in the neighborhood.

Here is one of the newbies I managed to catch on camera the other day:

This little guy/girl (haven't been able to get close enough to determine which yet) is one of a litter of four. Two solid grey, two brown and black tabbies.

Here is a closeup of Grey Kitten #1 munching on a quail leg. No, s/he didn't catch the quail -- I very boringly got it at the supermarket. (Getting feral kittens to the point where they will even come near enough to the traps to venture inside can be a task in itself, so I figured I'd bring them a bit of quail as a friendship offering. They were, needless to say, enthused.)

The next picture actually has three cats in it, though the one in back (Grey Kitten #2) is sort of hard to see. Grey Kitten #1 is still munching away at the quail leg in the foreground, while adolescent kittygirl Dominique watches with great interest (she already finished her quail leg, and was probably wondering if the little guys were going to drop any leftovers!).

...and finally we have some actual clear pictures of Radar, who is my current number-one suspected baby-daddy to the little grey newbies (the resemblance is quite apparent).

Genealogically speaking, Radar is the son of Coal, elder brother of Cora, Brodie, and Shadow, and littermate of Suzie. Unfortunately we've not yet managed to catch him for neutering, and he's managed to become one of the current reigning toms. Whilst quite dashing and popular with the ladies, Radar is generally too shy around humans to even come out during daylight hours. I'm guessing the only reason he was out and about when this picture was taken was because, with kittens recently weaned, one or more of the local momcats has come back into heat. :/

Above, Radar is mildly startled to find a camera pointed at him. I thought he would run away, but he didn't this time.

...but as this last picture shows, he probably didn't run because, well, Buddy (another local boycat) had been dragging around a catnip-filled sock. From the looks of it, Radar found some residue from this on the concrete, because he spent several minutes rolling around and drooling and looking altogether, well, catnipped. (Which has me wondering if maybe putting catnip in/near the TNR traps might increase our catch rate! Anyone know whether this has been tried?)

When Is A Cat Not A Cat? When He's A Little Hoarse.

2011-05-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Shadow lost his voice. He's a chatty guy in general (seriously, he yells more than Nikki these days, and she's the Siamese!). Something tells me if he'd been left outdoors and, er, intact, he'd have been quite a hit with the ladies, given his fabulous vocal range and capacity to project! But apparently even his magnificently robust vocal cords have their limit -- as he actually managed to recently meow his way into a mild case of laryngitis!

Basically he got so excited following a particular trip to the Magical Land of Back Yard that he spent the next couple evenings meyowling (whilst staring pointedly at the back door). I am thinking he must have meowed all day the following Tuesday as well because when I got home from work* he was obviously trying to meow, but all that came out was a raspy, squeaky "miiiiiiew!"

Initially I thought he might be angry at something because the sounds he was making bore a vague auditory resemblance to the growly thing some cats do as a keep-away warning. But his body language wasn't angry at all; he looked normally curious and alert, albeit slightly perplexed (I am sure he was wondering where his siren went!).

Now, cats can get laryngitis for a variety of reasons, probably the most common being the acquisition of an upper respiratory infection. I briefly worried about this -- even though my guys don't have much direct exposure to other cats, I do, given my dealings with the local feral colony. As that colony overlaps with a population of half-housecats and self-socialized adolescent kittens, I don't entirely discount the possibility of my acting as a Kitty Typhoid Mary.

Certainly I do my best to minimize the risk of my carrying feline illnesses home via hand-washing and monthly application of flea-prevention medicine to my guys, but still. If Shadow had not regained his voice as quickly as he did -- he was back to full volume within maybe two days -- I most assuredly would have called the vet. Since he had no signs of URI...no runny eyes, no sneezing, no lethargy, and no change in appetite, I figured "watchful waiting" was appropriate, and in this case things did indeed resolve on their own.

But anyway. The most interesting result of Shadow's temporary voicelessness was how it affected Brodie. Generally speaking, Nikki and Shadow alternate in the position of Spokescat for the household. Their agendas and priorities differ somewhat, but they're both plenty concerned with getting breakfast on time, and thus they usually switch off as far as who is going to go scratch and howl at the humans' bedroom door at early-o-clock in the morning.

Apparently, though, Nikki decided to take the day off on one of the mornings when Shadow was still too hoarse to howl.

It took me a few seconds to even recognize the voice I was hearing when the meowing started up that morning. It sounded a little like Shadow, and even a little like Nikki (oddly enough) but not exactly like either. Turns out it was Brodie.

Brodie has never been silent, but he's nowhere near as vocal as either of his siblings, and seems to save his mewing for very specific occasions. And until Shadow's laryngitic episode, Brodie never stepped up to Morning Door Duty.

Now, though, he actually seems to have worked himself into the rotation! Which is both surprising and unsurprising, if that makes any sense. Brodie is a bright guy -- his mechanical skills occasionally rival Cora's -- but his personality is (in general) more passive than that of either of his siblings. He takes longer than any of the others to figure out certain kinds of social cause-and-effect where humans are concerned, and seems to have a tendency toward quietly observing situations for a long time before engaging with them.

That said, he never fails to come through for his feline housemates when the need arises. And I am beginning to see a pattern wherein Brodie seems to learn much of what doesn't come naturally to him by doing what does come naturally to him -- which is to say, being closely attuned to other cats and helping them out in any way he can.

* I've been employed part time as a hardware tech since January 2011, forgot if I mentioned that here already. It is tremendously fun. I feel like an anime fix-it girl!

Random Recent Photos

2011-05-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a few more substantive posts, but in the meantime, here are some photos! Of cats, naturally.

First we have Brodie sitting on my desk. This was a lucky shot -- it always amuses me when cats "forget" momentarily to put their tongue back in after grooming themselves, but generally I don't manage to get the camera out before they go "oh!" (in Cat, of course) and put it back in. :P

Next, another rare moment: Nikki and Shadow snuggling on the window seat. Normally their interactions consist of Shadow being a pain in the arse (he quite enjoys jumping out at Nikki when she walks by) and getting hissed and paw-whacked in response.

That said, despite the vast differences in their ages and personalities, I've come to notice that these two actually do share a particular type of...intensity in how they interact with the world (which of course includes their human and feline housemates). I suspect Nikki might be willing to take him as her protege' in certain areas. He's got a tough road ahead of him if that's the case, but something tells me he can handle it!

Oh look, it's another photo of Nikki snuggling with a boy cat! This time it's Brodie. Who adores Nikki (in the "worships the ground she walks on" sense). He was the first to persuade her that he and the other youngsters might be okay to live with, and it shows.

(At present, while Shadow can sometimes nudge his way in next to her without her protesting, Brodie is the only other feline-in-residence Nikki will actively come up and initiate any sort of snuggery with. Which is what she did just prior to my taking this picture.)

The next picture shows Cora the Explorer, checking out a hole (from whence Matt recently removed a large juniper stump) in the back yard. I was so happy to see how quickly she bounced back after her recent gastrointestinal scare...she has such boundless curiosity, and it was so apparent both when she lost it due to not feeling well and when she got it back once everything was sorted out.

...and here Cora continues her yard adventure by sniffing a blade of grass. (I love her expression here, she is so intent!)

Shadow is also a big fan of Outside, as long as there are no mailmen present (and yes there is a complicated and rather embarrassing story there, which I might relate on here someday. Hint: it involved my learning that when sufficiently freaked out, cats can do something described in the literature as "evacuation of the anal sacs".)

Okay, moving along...here Mr. Shadow is trying out his new harness (while simultaneously testing the thermal conductivity of the new concrete pavers Matt and I put between the garden beds). I had to get him a medium-sized dog harness recently, as apparently manufacturers of cat-specific products don't have giant dudecats in mind. And I love how he looks like King of the Yard here.

Okay, this last one isn't technically of a cat. But it is related to cats in that it shows a whole heck of a lot of catnip. I wish there was something nearby that offered more of a sense of scale in this picture, but seriously this plant has gotten to be close to three feet high. This after originally coming from a seed planted last year and surviving the winter. I am very pleased that it is looking so healthy. It's a great dual-purpose plant: cats enjoy it (well, not Nikki, but she's Nikki) and the flowers are apparently good bee forage (thus good to have in the garden).

Plumbing Issues

2011-05-15T20:01:00.000-07:00

(TMI warning applies to this entire post, by the way.)

The photo just below is not a picture of a cat. Rather, it is a picture of my front yard taken last Tuesday.

Normally my yard doesn't look like this. And, just in case anyone was wondering, no, it has not been invaded by giant gophers.

The large mound of dirt, the cones, and the caution tape are all there due to Major Plumbing Activity. You see, we've got this great whopping sweetgum tree in the front yard that's nearly as old as the house, which was built in 1954. The tree provides lovely shade and turns a splendid array of hues in the autumn season (yes, we do have some trees in California that actually change colours!). Its roots, however, can pose quite a bit of an issue for sewer pipes, especially old segmented clay and cast iron pipes.

Anyway, to make a long story slightly less long, recently Tree won a significant victory in the longstanding Tree Versus Pipes battle, and the result was, shall we say, unpalatable. Essentially we had raw sewage backing up into the yard whenever anything went down a drain anywhere in the house. Initially it was just a little backup, and the flowers by the porch certainly seemed happy about the extra water and fertilizer, but over the past few weeks it started getting to the point where you couldn't step out the front door without stepping in The Partially Disintegrated Toilet Paper Wad That Time Forgot.

Which, you know, I figured was setting up to be an environmental hazard in addition to being monumentally disgusting.

Needless to say, plumbers were called.

Thankfully they arrived promptly and by Thursday afternoon everything was fixed up and filled back in. The yard looks remarkably unscathed, and we aren't stepping out the front door into any unpleasant surprises anymore. I will be very happy to spend the next hundred years (or whatever the lifespan of the new plastic pipes is) NOT thinking about my sewer lines, let alone stepping in the effluvia thereof.

Which brings me back to cats. The photo below is of a cat.

Specifically, it is a photo of Coraline, taken last weekend. She was feeling okay at that point -- in fact, she'd just finished a vigorous session of "leaping after the feather toy" -- but apparently sometime between then and Tuesday evening something (not tree roots, though!) clogged up her plumbing, leaving her unable to poop effectively.

And as gross as the mere concept of poop is, it's pretty important to be able to produce it if one happens to be alive (and wishes to stay that way). Just as there can be no light without darkness, there can be no eating without pooping. (Which is one reason my little niece's simulated kitten-care video games, wherein you get to feed the cats but never deal with a litter box, baffle me endlessly. But that's another topic entirely.)

As far as how I came to realize Cora wasn't producing...well, when you live with multiple cats and scoop their litter boxes on a daily basis, you kind of end up getting to the point of recognizing everyone's, er, deposits. And Cora's have always been rather distinctive inasmuch as no matter what she eats...let's just say if there were a prize for "superior feline stool formation", under normal circumstances she would be a grand champion. Not so much last week, though, as pretty much all the recognizable solid matter I scooped had clearly (based on known dimensional attributes and scent signature parameters) emerged from Nikki or the boys.

Mind you, I don't think Cora ever got completely obstructed. I did find a few of what are colloquially referred to around here as "poopflakes" in the box, and I will let you use your imagination to figure out the etymology of that term. Moreover, she was able to keep food down despite an obviously diminished appetite, whereas total colonblockery tends to result in projectile pukesplosion shortly after meals.

Most alarming, though, (aside from the pooplack, of course) was how her whole demeanor was just off. Normally, Cora is extremely active (in the same sense that the sun is extremely hot), but on Tuesday evening all her movements seemed very slow and tentative. She also only made half-hearted attempts to jump and climb the way she usually does, and showed no interest whatsoever in her favorite toys.

So, I called the vet's office with my concerns. They agreed that something didn't sound right, so first thing Thursday morning Matt and I bundled her up in the carrier and took her off to the clinic. We ended up getting assigned to a different doctor than last time (again) due to scheduling constraints, but that turned out fine as this doctor was pretty awesome (at least as awesome as the one we'd previously seen and liked a lot).

Moving along, though, the bottom line (heh) is that Cora did indeed, per the vet's examination, have a traffic jam in her lower intestinal zone. Thankfully a single Super Colon Cleanse (read: enema) was able to dislodge the backup, and all this entailed was a mild sedative (as opposed to general anaesthesia, which would have been needed if they'd had to "go in manually") and monitoring at the clinic until around 5:30 PM.

The vet undoubtedly dealt with the most buttfountainous aftereffects of the enema, for which I am thoroughly grateful. Nevertheless, things were still fairly...messy when we initially got Cora home. The sedative had mostly worn off by around 4 PM (when the vet called me, proclaiming that my cat had "pooped beautifully") so I can completely understand why Cora was returned to us with her entire back end, tail, and legs soggy and smelly.

Trying to give a fully-conscious Coraline anything resembling an effective bath is probably marginally more difficult than trying to perform a one-handed backwards cartwheel through a swarm of bees. And I would rather deal with a bit of yuck than have my cat sedated a second time solely for cleaning purposes.

Nevertheless, I didn't want her getting infections (or tracking Ass Flavored Smoothie all over the house) so Matt and I did the best we could to soap and rinse her lower half while she proceeded to claw her way up my chest and attempt to surgically attach herself to my face.

That went about as well as you can imagine it did.

Luckily I only ended up with a few holes in my neck, and none of them bled that much.

Really, though, my primary emotion Thursday evening was one of pure relief. Poor Cora. I can't imagine how much it must have been hurting her to be that blocked up. I was so happy when she got home, and she seemed to be as well, though I had to decline her friendly tail-swipey-leg-weaving greetings at first!

That said, ye gads, I honestly hope I never have to see anything like that coming out of a cat ever again. Granted most of the scariness was due to the fact that I'd been feeding her robust doses of hairball gel and petroleum jelly for a day and a half prior to her vet trip, but it was nonetheless disconcerting to have the contents of the litter scoop jiggle like some sort of earthquake-evaluation medium.

But anyway. Three days following her ordeal, Cora appears to be none the worse for wear (and Shadow, who has a severe Vet Phobia, has ceased hissing at her hind end). I put her in "quarantine" in the spare bedroom for only one night following her Great Rectal Waterslide Adventure. She was very quiet that evening, but by mid-morning Friday I figured she was fine to rejoin the household proper, given that she was shoving her paws under the door and trying to tear off pieces of the wood by that point.

The cause of her epic pooplog backup is thus far unknown, but the current primary suspects are (a) hairball material stuck in transit, and (b) her apparently "highly efficient" colon.

In other words, apparently Cora's tendency toward poops-so-perfect-they-almost-look-fake is actually a sign that her body is really good at extracting things (including water) from whatever is passing through. This isn't a disease, mind you, just a physiological predilection of sorts.

Cats evolved to be extremely efficient in this regard and as Cora is already like a more intense version of a regular cat to begin with, I guess it's not surprising this goes all the way down to the intestinal level. But it's something that needs to be managed, as cats Cora's age (less than two years old) only rarely get this badly blocked up. I have been instructed to (a) add 1/8 tsp twice daily of polyethylene glycol (a laxative, commonly sold under the brand "Miralax") to her food, (b) stop feeding her any dry food (aside from the occasional crunchie-treat), and (c) start brushing her every day (at least while we're in the midst of Super Shedding Season).

Adding more fiber to her diet may be something to think about as well, but the vet cautioned against going overboard here given that additional "bulk" could make things worse.

So yeah. Last week was pretty epic, and not in a cool fun way. I will certainly never again take any form of waste-pipery for granted, whether said pipery be part of my household sewer line or my cat's intestines.

Nikki and Cora Disapprove Of The Roomba, But Approve Of Chairs On Tables

2011-05-10T12:11:00.000-07:00

Matt got me a "Pet Series" Roomba vacu-bot for my last birthday. I was mightily pleased, as it does a great job of cutting down on the inevitable cat-fuz tumbleweeds (fuzzleweeds?) that occur when you've got four mainly-indoor felines in residence.

The cats, however, while they don't take off in mortal terror upon hearing the Roomba start up, are...not exactly fond of it. Sometimes Nikki yells at me when it's on in a manner that can only be interpreted as, "TURN THAT THING OFF!" But mostly they all just avoid it. And sometimes they find very creative ways to do so.

Case in point: I often put the dining chairs up on the table in order to make it easier for the Roomba to sweep underneath said table. Last time I did this, I left the room for a moment and came back to find both girlcats had taken full advantage of the situation.

Technically, kitties are NOT allowed on the table. But as they are allowed on the chairs, I figured I couldn't in all fairness shoo them down. So I took a picture instead. :P

Tall Cat Is Also Loud

2011-04-27T22:50:00.000-07:00

Observe!

I finally managed to get a semi-decent video of Shadow making some of his characteristic conversational noises.

(He has actually been even chattier than usual lately -- all the kitties here have a major case of Spring Fever, owing to the hordes of birds and squirrels that have been congregating on the back patio lately. But I am glad I got this video because it really shows his level of extremely vocal and personality-laden "interactivity" -- along with his insistence on acknowledgment. Apparently he's been taking lessons from Nikki!)

Tall Cat Is Tall

2011-04-26T21:27:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my last post relating my joy at finding a cheap, suitably sized litter box, Brodie and Shadow are growing up to be pretty big guys. Sometimes it even seems like they might still be growing! Which is cool, of course. I've never understood people who get all disappointed when kittens grow up. Tiny babycats are certainly totally darling, but big strapping grownup cats have their own particular brand of awesomeness, and my guys have more awesomeness than you could shake a stick at.

Observe below, as Shadow awesomely tries to get a head start on his dinner:

It's hard to convey a sense of scale unless photos are taken with the cat standing next to something of known and/or obvious proportions. The above photos do a pretty decent job of illustrating Shadow's impressive tallitude, though: note that the kitchen island Shadow's got his paws on here is 36" (about one meter) high. Meaning Shadow is that tall standing up (as in, measured from top of head to bottom of back feet). Clearly I'd better be careful what I leave near the edge of the counters!

Litter Box Score!

2011-04-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

My previous post on litter boxes is now out of date inasmuch as the "Box #3" pictured therein -- which was actually a cement-mixing tub -- broke a few months ago. As in, it managed to snap nearly in half when I was trying to get it out of the closet to clean it. Whoops.

I replaced it immediately with the largest plastic bin I could find at the tiny hardware store down the street, but there wasn't much of a selection and the one I ended up with had this annoying groove around the inside bottom edge.

I dealt with it for another few months but finally got tired of digging litter-concrete out of said groove, and for the past 2 weeks have been poking around in search of a bin with a completely flat bottom -- as well as sides at least 12" high. Brodie and Shadow are big, tall guys and Brodie in particular is a bit of an elevator-butt pee-er, and we've had a few instances of, er, overspray lately. Thankfully I'd thought to install plastic floor-protector stuff under the box so none of the wee actually hit the hardwoods, but still. Ew. Apparently this is not to be a household with ANY low-sided litter boxes.

But (as usual) I digress. None of the "big box" hardware stores nearby had anything that quite fit the bill, but today I totally scored. There's a Container Store a few blocks away from where I live, and while in general the prices there are WAY out of my budget, the clearance section can be a veritable goldmine of cheap. Thus, today's bounty (see below)!

Of course there's a cat (Brodie) in it -- I can't bring anything home that's jump-inable without someone jumping into it within the first few minutes of its arrival. You know how that goes. I think this box will do the job perfectly -- Brodie is a substantial 14ish pounds, and he looks practically lost in it!

And now, a closeup of the pricetag:

Seriously! I got a normally-$21.99 item for $2.27! Just because it was missing the lid, which would have been useless to me anyway. Wootness!

So yeah. I've since gone at the new box with a hacksaw to make a little cutaway on the side (the youngsters would probably jump over the edge but Nikki prefers to step in more daintily) and placed it in the Box #3 location. Really glad I found it. And just FYI, the Container Store is one of the few places I've been able to consistently find flat-bottomed storage containers...Ikea is another but that's a bit of a trek to get to so we don't go there very often.

Coal

2011-04-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

I found a picture of her! An old one, from around 2006. She was/is very hard to photograph. The only reason I got this photo was because one of her kittens (at the time) was pretty bold and decided he wanted to nurse RIGHT THERE RIGHT NOW.

...and here's a clear closer view of her face:

...and here are some photos of Shadow where the resemblance to his mom is pretty evident:

Coal seems to have passed down a lot of her overall face shape to Shadow, and Brodie for that matter. They've all got the big triangular ears and the squarish muzzle with the little "pinch" under the cheeks (though Shadow is Mr. Muscles these days, so this is becoming less evident on him). The long tail and body shape both Shadow and Brodie exhibit also seem to have come down from Mom.

Coal's eyes are positioned differently than her sons', though; hers are more straight-set whereas Shadow's go up at the edges like angled almonds (though Brodie's do this even more). I actually only just noticed this looking back at these photos.

When I manage to glance Coal IRL, usually most of what I see of her is her shape. The picture above of her face was a VERY rare and lucky shot.

So yeah, just a random bit of kitty-genealogy there. Which I always find interesting.

(I'm thinking Cora must have gotten a lot of recessive genes as far as physical shape goes, and very likely she had a different daddy than either of her brothers. The main thing she seems to have inherited from Coal is her insufferable cleverness. :P)

Shifting Feral Colony Dynamics

2011-04-12T12:51:00.000-07:00

I've definitely observed a shift in colony dynamics over the past two weeks or so. The last few times Matt and I have stopped over at his parents', I've gone on little expeditions around the neighborhood and tried to take a bit of a "cat inventory". Most of that area is houses, but there are also two parks within easy walking distance and a number of large-ish fieldy areas -- it is apparent why so many cats choose to live there, given the amount and type of space available.

Anyway, the "shift" I'm noting seems to have to do with which cats are likely to be found where -- in addition to which cats are likely to be found at all.

I saw one cat come right into the yard whom I've never seen before -- a strapping young tabby tom who proceeded to prance around, spritzing shrubs and whatnot, and altogether looking quite pleased with himself. No clue where he came from, but I'm definitely glad we managed to get four of the females spayed prior to his arrival!

I also spotted something like five or six black cats, spread across several yards and lots. There are a LOT of black cats in that colony (which I've read is common in random-bred populations; over time you start seeing coats default to brown tabby and black, because those patterns confer the best camouflage, or something like that). I can tell them apart pretty readily once I've seen them a few times, by way of differing face/body shapes and movement patterns, but I am nonetheless becoming really appreciative of ear-tipping, given the fact that some of these kitties really only ever grace us with rapid-fire cameo appearances every now and then.

Speaking of which...at one point (when we were standing in his mom's living room) Matt motioned out the door at one particular black cat and said, "That one looks like Shadow". I glanced out myself and lo and behold, Coal was slinking out from under a car!

I was REALLY relieved to see her because frankly I'd actually gotten to the point of presuming she was probably dead. She's the mother of my three youngsters, Suzie, Radar, and, well, probably a whole lot of others who've come and gone over the past few years (Coal herself is six or seven years old). She's very distinctive-looking, though, especially given that she's extremely large for a female cat. Not fat-large -- if not pregnant she tends toward the wiry/rangy side -- but just big, long, squarish bone structure. And Shadow is the spitting image of his mom in a lot of ways, especially in the face.

So yeah. Coal is one tough lady. And she's smart. She's had to be both to survive as long as she has. I would dearly love to trap her and get her spayed but something tells me I'm going to have to build another drop trap in order to do that, because she's way too cautious to get anywhere near the cage-type traps that we've been putting out. But in any case, it is good at least to know she's alive, albeit looking rather ragged.

I've also twice now seen a cat that I think is supposed to be black...but who seems to be missing all his/her fur on one side! S/he is very skinny but ate like a horse during the last feeding session I observed so I'm guessing there's something skin-related going on rather than a worse, systemic thing, but it was still pretty alarming to see. My tentative guess is that this poor kitty has flea allergy dermatitis, given that s/he looks a heck of a lot like this, but it's hard to tell for sure.

Either way, if s/he ends up in the trap that will enable closer inspection as well as administration of some sort of topical flea treatment. In the meantime, though, I am seriously wondering if there's something safe we might be able to sprinkle on the food that could help reduce the parasite load for the ferals. Any suggestions would certainly be appreciated.

But back to my original point about shifting colony dynamics. I really shouldn't be surprised to see this sort of thing at all. I tend to think of spay/neuter purely in the sense of it being Kitty Birth Control, but it also impacts hormones. Which means that it will also likely impact the social organization of the colony, what with far fewer cats engaged in courtship and mating and all that accompanies those activities.

The newbie tabby male I described above has probably just moved in to fill what he sees as an opening. I didn't realize before the extent to which Blue was "guarding" the yard over the past few months (in addition to guarding his adopted babies). With him gone, and with JB/Tuxie neutered, there's been a decided drop in testosterone as of late. And I never noticed this until now, but in general it seems like the majority of long-term colony members are female, both spayed and unspayed. There's a much higher "turnover rate" with the boys, and quite a few have just seemed to disappear as mysteriously as they've appeared.

Sunday Evening PicturePost

2011-04-03T22:25:00.000-07:00

I just realized I've been writing so much about feral cats and the ongoing local TNR project lately that it's been a while since I posted any new pictures of Cora, Brodie, Shadow, and Nikki on here. Time to remedy that!

(1) Nikki on one of the dining chairs (which I am sure the cats think exist just for them -- there's something about the height, the cushioned seats, and the fact that they allow a nice little nap-cave when the chairs are pushed in that seem to attract felinekind).

I am sure she thinks I'm a bit strange for aiming that weird silver thing at her (i.e., my camera) but she nonetheless occasionally grants a clear view of her eminently distinguished countenance.

(2) Cora in the kitchen, watching sunbeams and shadows. Something about her is definitely looking more grown-up these days.

(3) Shadow watching the back yard, out the kitchen window. Lots to see out there (birds and squirrels in particular) now that spring is officially here!

(4) Brodie after having stolen a fig from me! (Hence the little black bits on the floor in front of him). The lighting is a bit harsh here because I had to use the flash so that's kind of annoying but it was the best recent picture I had of him and I wanted to include one of each cat in this post.

But anyway, yeah, Brodie is very adventurous in his eating habits and seems to have a peculiar and particular fondness for figs. He once stole two fig cookies practically right out from under my nose, and I figured (heh) maybe he liked the butter in the cookie part or something, but no -- he also steals whole dried figs if he can get at them!

Needless to say I don't give them to him regularly (I don't even want to know what the litter box would look like if I did...) but his occasional thievery doesn't seem to be hurting him. Maybe it's a texture thing?

I didn't want to write this update.

2011-04-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

...but I got the news from Matt's mom earlier today that Blue didn't make it through the night. He went into what sounded like some sort of respiratory crisis, which makes me suspect he probably had pneumonia or even heartworm.

He tested negative for FIV and FeLV but apparently something else -- something we couldn't see or diagnose in time -- was wrong. He may well have been sick even before he and Dominique and Michelle showed up in December. And it could be he got exposed to some random germ at the clinic during neutering which he couldn't fight off due to an already weakened immune system. And he could have been much older than all of us thought.

At this point there's no way to know for sure. I keep wanting to blame myself anyway -- as in, maybe I should have pushed to get the runny eyes checked out prior to taking him to the TNR clinic. But given I've seen many, many cats with runny eyes turn out just fine it just didn't occur to me that Blue's condition could be that serious. And the clinic people apparently didn't notice anything egregriously amiss either. So whatever it was, it only reached critical badness levels over the past two days. And none of the other cats seem to have similar symptoms right now so I doubt it's going to turn into some horrible epidemic.

In any case I guess I am at least glad Blue got to see "his kittens" to the colony, where they will both hopefully go on to lead much longer, healthier, and happier lives now that they've been spayed and (by the looks of it) accepted into the feline social network.

I wish Blue had gotten to enjoy a "new lease on life" for more than the few months he spent with the colony, but I imagine he was glad to spend the time there that he did.

Rest in peace, sweet Protector of Kittens. You will be missed.

[Oh and BTW just because I realized the date just after initially posting this...I would NEVER EVER write something like this as an "April Fool". That would just be horrendously evil.]

TNR Report #3: Herding Cats, For Real! Also, Mr. Mom.

2011-03-31T14:26:00.000-07:00

Whew, what a week! Short version: two more cats have been TNRed at the time of this writing, which means six cats total from the colony have been spayed or neutered since the beginning of last week.

Not bad, and definitely a good start, but I was really hoping for eight (especially given we had eight appointments reserved). The Humane Society folks assured me that this sort of thing happens all the time, as you can't really guarantee you will actually get the number of cats you've made appointments for, but still. Color me annoyed.

Monday night's session went well: we managed to catch Dominique's shy sister Michelle (who is all black with a little white "locket" on her chest):

(Michelle watching me and the camera from a table)

...and a little marble tabby girl we haven't named yet who may well be one of Mimi's siblings judging from her size. So that was good.

(Tiny tabby girl with the high beams on -- this is actually the clearest picture I've got of her thus far)

Wednesday night's session, on the other hand, was...chaotic, to say the least. Matt and I stuck it out monitoring and attending to traps well into the late eve‌ning, but ultimately had to admit defeat (our own kitties were home waiting for their dinner, after all!). Matt's parents said they would monitor the traps for a while after we went home and I am sure they did, but I haven't heard from them yet today and I'm not optimistic that anyone actually ended up being trapped.

See, things started out promising. I began by cleaning the traps and setting up all four of them (three regular-sized and one kitten-sized) out in the general area frequented by the cats. At that point it was still light out, and as they'd not been fed yet, kitties were starting to mill around the patio area anticipating their dinner.

Then, just as I started getting ready to actually bait the traps, Toby (former rescue kitten, now the resident Territorial Boss Lady) decided for whatever reason to go around and spritz her signature scent on said traps.

(Toby disapproves of this ridiculousness!)

And when her (feral) younger brother Gryff got wind of his sister's aromatic graffiti, of course he had to go and overmark it with his own eau-de-pheromone.

Anyhow, since Toby's determination to mark the equipment wasn't evident on trapping days prior, my guess is that this time I didn't clean the smells of the other cats (not to mention the "clinic smell" which can be a major feline anxiety trigger) off the traps well enough. Needless to say, lesson learned! Prior to the next session I will most assuredly make sure the traps are liberally sprayed with enzymatic cleaner and thoroughly wiped down and air-dried.

[The newer enzyme sprays ("Nature's Miracle", "Anti Icky Poo", and similar) are really good at destroying the proteins or whatever the stuff in cat urine is that flashes up a giant SPRAY HERE! sign once applied to an object, but you really have to give them time to work, and last night I didn't get a chance to do that in any more than a cursory manner. ]

I may also try to corral Toby in the house or garage next time, seeing as even when she wasn't spraying she seemed determined to meddle in every way possible with what I was doing (she ended up IN a trap at one point when her curiosity got the better of her). She is very much like Nikki in that once she sets her mind on something there's just no arguing with her.

Mind you, of course I don't think ill of Toby for her actions. From a feline standpoint she was acting in accordance with perfectly sensible Cat Logic, and in general she's this awesome sweet bossy ladycat that I am always happy to visit with. She just needs to stay the heck away from my traps on TNR days!

So...I repeat, what a week! I am not sure when the next trapping night will be. It has to be relatively soon if we want to really stabilize the colony population, but given the mess that was last night I am proposing waiting a week or two before trying again. Between Toby's meddling, the neighbor's loud motorcycle (which arrived next door at the worst possible moment, when the ferals were just starting to emerge from the shadows), and assorted other Elements of Certain Chaos I wouldn't be surprised if the shyer cats we really need to start targeting will take a few days to re-establish their routine. And the routine (especially as it pertains to feeding) is really important for successful TNR.

All that said, one thing I am happy with that we managed yesterday was getting Blue into the house.

(Blue on the patio, looking apprehensive)

Blue has been fighting an upper respiratory infection for a while now, and while it seemed much better on Clinic Day, it looked much worse yesterday evening.

Like worse with eyes practically crusted shut, nose completely sealed off by matted dried mucus and hair, and breathing through the mouth due to nasal blockage. Matt's mom, awesome lady that she is, said she'd take Blue to the vet if she could get the obviously under-the-weather kitty inside, and this didn't end up being very difficult at all.

So anyway. Blue went to the vet. The diagnosis of "respiratory infection" was no surprise at all -- but we were all REALLY surprised to learn that "she" was really a "he"! You'd think the Humane Society would have mentioned that little detail, as I presume they neutered (as opposed to spayed) him last week, but still. Wow. Clearly, Blue isn't actually Dominique and Michelle's mother after all, despite the fact that he was sure as heck acting like Mom to them.

And as for how the other boy cats were treating him -- I'd thought they were doing the chase-and-grab thing as part of whatever passes for feline courtship, but now I'm guessing they were trying to fight him.

Anyhow, I really do wish sometimes that I could learn the stories of all these cats that show up. Who knows what kind of environment Blue and Dominique and Michelle came out of, and who knows if (or how) they are even actually related?

Blue is definitely a Siamese mix of some sort (he's got snowshoe points), but he could still be the girls' littermate or older brother. Litters of random-bred kittens can easily be comprised of both "pointed" and non-pointed cats, and as I've noted before, littermates can even all have different fathers due to the manner in which feline reproduction works. And Blue isn't that much bigger than the girls.

Or -- and at this point I'm considering this the likelier case -- Blue could just be an unrelated boy cat who for whatever reason "adopted" the girls he showed up with. Despite his being a relatively little guy, something about him just feels older. I'd picked up on that somewhat even when I thought he was the girls' mom, but still hadn't figured on her (his) being more than a year or two old.

Now, though, I wonder about that estimate. True he's sick right now so that might be adding a layer of confounding weariness to his bearing, but still, at this point I wouldn't be shocked to find out he was seven years of age or even older. And if he's younger than that, ye gads, I don't even want to imagine what he's likely been through.

That aside, it's not unheard of for male cats to occasionally choose the nursemaid role, though I guess it's sort of unusual for an un-neutered male to do this.

Either way, he's been a great nanny/protector to Dominique and Michelle and while again there's no way to objectively confirm this, I get the sense that all three of them had it pretty rough wherever they were before this past December. I have definitely seen cats band together in times of great stress and it really looks like that's what happened with this little family.

TNR Report #2: Dominique and Mimi

2011-03-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who offered well-wishing for Wednesday's trapping session...it ended up going just as smoothly as the first session, even though it started raining just as I was getting ready to set the traps. Woot!

Getting the first kitty this time felt kind of like cheating because it was Dominique (who decided a while back of her own accord to start hanging around with the local primates and even occasionally gracing us with purrs and head-butts). I think she picked up on the fact that something was going on, though, because usually she runs right up to me when she sees me and this time she sort of hung back and eyed me warily.

Still, she walked right into the trap as I sat next to it, just like her mom, Blue, had on Monday. Of course I don't know this for sure, not being privy to her (or any cat's) innermost mental processes, but it looked to me like she KNEW she'd get stuck if she walked into the trap but ultimately decided the sardines were worth it!

(Whole Foods, while colloquially called "Whole Paycheck" in these parts for reasons obvious to any non-millionaire who visits the store, actually carries a surprisingly inexpensive line of canned cat foods. The "Sardines in Jelly" variety is probably going to be my go-to trapping bait of choice from now on, because ye gads, the kitties go utterly batty for it. After trapping I put the rest of the can out on a paper plate for the other colony cats to finish off and I swear it was like sharks at a feeding frenzy!)

Kitty #2 (who has since been named Mimi) was by necessity trapped in the more traditional "bait trap, set trap, walk away, and watch from a distance" manner. She (and we only found out she was a "she" when we brought her to the clinic) was a very shy but thoroughly scrappy little girl kitten. She's solid black and a bit smaller than Dominique -- probably three or four months old. I'd been seeing her occasionally for about a month, and always alone, which is pretty weird. Usually feral kittens initially show up with their mothers to eat, but I have no idea who Mimi's mom is, or if she has any siblings. She looks very healthy and not emaciated or anything so it's doubtful she was orphaned; more likely she's just got a very wary and secretive mom, and possibly littermates even more shy than she is. But in any case, she doesn't need to worry about becoming a "teenage mother" now.

Anyway, both Mimi and Dominique came through their spay surgeries just fine, and have now rejoined their companions and family outside. Stay tuned for further updates of next week's sessions -- we're repeating the same routine next week -- and (hopefully) pictures!

TNR Report #1: Blue and Grey

2011-03-22T20:51:00.000-07:00

Hooray! I am happy to report that two cats were successfully trapped last night, and taken to the Humane Society for spaying/neutering today.

I really wanted to try and get three cats in (seeing as I've now got three traps -- four if you count the smaller "kitten trap" that came with one of the bigger ones) but the HS has a 2-cats-per-appointment limit right now except on special clinic days. I was surprised and somewhat disappointed to learn of that limit, though I can understand it from a resource standpoint. And I will definitely be on the lookout for the "special clinic days" where apparently you get to bring in more cats at one time.

On the major plus side, though, spay/neuter for feral cats is free this month (March 2011), so even though we're "only" going to manage to get four cats total done this week, that's at least $100 saved. The normal $25/cat fee is still pretty manageable as long as we work in increments, but still, kudos to the HSSV for offering the service for free even if for a limited time. It's this kind of thing that demonstrates and helps set a new example for shelters and animal-welfare organizations, in line with the realization that the goal should be fewer cats being turned over to shelters in the first place.

The cats we got last night were Blue (the ~~female~~ male Siamese mix who showed up with ~~her~~ his two "adopted" kittens around Christmas 2010)* and a feisty grey tuxedo boy (the same one shown here with his very protective mom, only he's a lot bigger now!).

Matt's little niece and nephew have been calling the grey and white kitty "Tuxedo" (or "Tuxie"), but I really think he needs a better, less generic name. He's probably only about eight months old, but he's clearly got quite the personality already: he's brash, bold, and insufferably charismatic. He just has this sort of swagger to him, like he's just totally awesome and knows it.

As one of the "braver ferals", he was pretty easy to trap: I had him chasing a feather-wand toy, and with that I was able to entice him into Matt's parents' house, wherein I managed to corral him in the bathroom. He panicked a bit when he realized the door was closed, and proceeded to literally climb the wall, right up to the top of the medicine cabinet (which is mounted next to the window -- which, much to Tuxie's dismay, was closed). When he realized he wasn't getting out, he climbed back down the cabinet and onto a shelf. He sat there, all scrunched up on a folded towel, until Matt came in and picked him up in a blanket and sort of eased him into the trap.

I should note that this is NOT an orthodox trapping technique, and in general, it is NOT advisable to try and pick up unsocialized cats. I was actually really surprised Matt was able to do it...my idea had been to just put the trap in the bathroom, cover it with a blanket, and then wait for Tuxie to enter it on his own (which he most likely would have, given the trap would have been the most 'cave-like' space available).

But it worked out fine in the end, and we got to at least spare Tuxie the sudden BANG-SLAM of the trap door closing behind him (which, though cats seem to "get over", freaks them the heck out to the point that they often wet themselves). There is no way the "corral in bathroom then place in trap" technique is going to work for the warier colony kitties -- they're just going to have to deal with the BANG-SLAM -- but in Tuxie's case it made sense to do it the way we did.

Blue (whose name fits ~~her~~ him somehow even though it's a "color" name -- more on ~~her~~ his personality in a bit) was trapped somewhat more straightforwardly, though plenty of sheer luck was certainly involved. After Tuxie was safely secured in his trap in the bathroom, I went outside, to where I'd put a second trap about an hour prior (though I hadn't set it...I'd just left it out there for the cats to sniff and examine). I crouched down next to the trap and went about preparing and setting it: opening the door, lining it with puppy-training pads (softer and more absorbent than newspaper), and pushing a small plate of sardines (nice and smelly!) to the back of the trap's interior.

Lo and behold, Blue came right up and sat watching me do all this. For whatever reason, the other cats (there were about 10 outside at that point) didn't bother coming over; apparently there was something more interesting to them on the other side of the yard. And once Blue smelled the sardines ~~she~~ he got very excited about ~~her~~ his discovery and walked straight into the trap as I sat there next to it. ~~she~~ he did actually step on the trigger, but by then I'd already released the catch manually and was thus able to at least reduce the volume of the BANG-SLAM for ~~her~~ him.

The rest was uneventful: into the bathroom ~~she~~ he went, ~~her~~ his trap placed a few feet away from Tuxie's and covered with a blanket. ~~she~~ he meowed a little when I moved the blanket to check and make sure the interior of the trap wasn't covered in sardine (as that would have made for a seriously stinky situation, come the next morning) but was otherwise quiet.

(In general ~~she~~ he seems to be a fairly quiet, subtle cat, and I don't think it's just because ~~she's~~ he's been living outside for however long. It's like ~~her~~ his entire bearing is quiet and watchful. ~~She's~~ He's very curious and has a playful side, but part of ~~her~~ him seems to be constantly in "analysis mode", making sure ~~she~~ he doesn't get carried away in any particular direction. ~~She~~ He comes across as very centered and mature, I guess, even though I'd estimate ~~her~~ his age to be no more than a year or two.)

Initially I had been thinking of putting the traps in the garage overnight, and that would still be an option if the need arose (due to managing appointments for more than two cats at once, etc.). Matt's parents' garage is a large, well-constructed building that has its own plumbing and everything, so while it's not heated, it definitely offers plenty of protection from the elements (and from any suburban predators, humans included). But the bathroom easily accommodated two cats, so there they stayed for the evening.

Then, this morning Matt's dad took the kitties to the clinic -- he generally gets up early anyway, so that worked out fine. He also picked them up this afternoon post-surgery, and they will remain in the house until the anaesthesia wears off (probably overnight at least).

So yeah. Overall, the first round went so smoothly that this whole project is looking a lot more doable. Hopefully tomorrow (Wednesday) goes just as well, because we get to do it again (albeit with different cats this time)! I am not sure which cats we'll try for, but I am hoping to get at least one of the less bold ones, and I imagine since we were able to trap last night's pair so quietly and unobtrusively the shy kitties won't have been startled away from any willingness to investigate the traps.

* As I've noted previously, Blue is more likely a "nervous stray" than a wild-born feral cat. However, given that ~~she~~ he is still so relatively wary, and given that she appeared to have a whole cadre of admirers following her around last night, I figured it made more sense to just go ahead and get her spayed BEFORE she got pregnant again!

[UPDATE/EDIT: Blue turned out to be a boy, as noted in my next post with more supporting detail. I was pretty surprised by this but in any case it certainly suggests a re-interpretation of why so many other boy kitties were following him around...my guess now is that they were trying to challenge him to fight!]

On The "Helping Homeless Cats" Class

2011-03-13T20:30:00.000-07:00

So, per my prior post, I attended the "Helping Homeless Cats" class at the local Humane Society last Thursday. It was definitely an interesting experience, and I am really glad I went.

The turnout was pretty low -- I think only three names on the sign-in sheet, and maybe six or seven people in the room total (including presenters). I already knew a lot of what appeared in the informational part of the presentation (e.g., "how to set a humane trap"), but I also learned a few new, useful things (e.g., "make a list of all the cats in the colony, describe each cat, and include a picture if possible").

I was also just really pleased to see that Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) is apparently in the process of "going mainstream". It took a long while for shelters and adoption agencies to get a clue in that department, because for so long the default for "unadoptable" cats (a group with includes the vast majority of ferals) was to simply put them to death in order to "free up space" for socialized, more extroverted felines.

What seems to be finally getting into more people's heads is the fact that shelters and animal-control facilities are simply inappropriate for feral cats, period. Shelters are designed for displaced domesticated animals (for whom, hopefully, the shelter will serve merely as a stopgap between homes), not wild ones. And by the time a feral cat becomes an adult, it is likely that he or she is running an entirely different "operating system" than a domesticated cat. In other words, just because cats CAN be tame* it doesn't mean that all non-tame cats are suffering for the mere fact of not being inclined to sit on human laps.

Yes, they may face dangers such as cars and other predators than companion cats who spend all or most of their time indoors-- but in this regard feral cats are no different from other medium-sized wild animals (e.g., raccoons and skunks). And you don't generally come across anyone suggesting that raccoons and skunks all ought to be killed "so they don't suffer outside".

Okay, wow, that got a bit tangential. Where was I? Oh yeah. At this meeting I saw what was probably the MOST DEPRESSING VIDEO EVER. Seriously, I had to leave the room partway through it because I started crying. :/ I know it had a purpose -- that is, to show the contrast between what happens to cats who get picked up by animal control vs. the happy, healthy lives they can live post-TNR.

But GAH. I don't ever want to see anything like that ever again. I mean, I KNOW what goes on in shelters and animal control when they've got "too many" feral cats. I don't fault the people who made the video -- they didn't DO the horrible things shown, they just documented them in order to jolt people out of complacency. But I wasn't complacent to begin with, so for me it was just like...staring into a bottomless pit lined with graphic images of everything that is fundamentally wrong with humanity.

Again, I can see why the organizers felt the need to show a video like that. And it did ultimately end on a positive note (i.e., happy kitties congregating around their food in a well-managed colony situation). But I figured I would mention the nastier bits just in case anyone reading this ends up going to a similar meeting -- basically, be aware that you may be in for some absolute nightmare fuel if they start up a video about "homeless cats in your neighborhood" or similar.

But again, despite having occasion to get extremely upset partway through, I am still very glad I went to the meeting. I did, after all (as I'd hoped) get to meet some folks with actual trapping/TNR experience and ask them a ton of questions (I wrote copious notes beforehand).

Also, I was quite relieved to learn that no, you don't HAVE to actually go in and trap all the cats in a colony at once. I'd read on various sites that it was BEST to do things that way, but apparently I was taking it too literally. Getting everyone TNRed in one go is the ideal situation -- however, it isn't the most realistic one. Mass trapping days are notoriously hard to organize and while they do tend to make the papers when they occur, they're more the exception than the norm. It's a lot more common to just have a few traps and maybe one or two people helping out the cats.

So now I at least feel like the project I have in mind is actually doable. Because between Matt and his parents, there are certainly enough vehicles and drivers to take in three or four cats at a time in for their surgery. The parents also have a nice garage (not a drafty nasty one...it's got indoor plumbing and plenty of space) where the cats could presumably recover overnight. And I can definitely handle the trapping part myself...that's just a matter of putting the traps in logical places and attending to them once they've been sprung (i.e., covering them with a blanket so the caught kitty can calm down).

On that note, after the meeting I also had a bit of an epiphany about traps, and THIS I think is going to really help make things more feasible. One of the things that was previously making the project feel ridiculously daunting was the fact that I would likely need to rent or borrow additional traps (I've already got one) from the Humane Society or similar place. Which would mean I'd have to work out transportation first to pick up the traps, THEN to transport the cats in them to their surgery appointments, THEN to bring the cats back to the colony, and THEN back to the shelter empty once the cats were released. And just THINKING about the logistics of all that was turning my brain into something resembling melty unflavored gelatin.

But! Then it dawned on me: if it's okay to bring in maybe three or four cats at once (rather than twelve or fourteen), maybe I can just...get a few more traps! I can't afford the really fancy, sturdy ones, but there are plenty of perfectly functional, less expensive models out there. So I did a bunch of Amazon searches using different terms and criteria and eventually found THREE traps (one single and one kit of two) that wouldn't break my budget. They should arrive next week, which means we could be trapping by next weekend, depending on when we can get appointments.

I figure I will just make appointments for as many cats as I have traps and hope I can get one in each. And then there will only need to be two trips made: one to bring the cats to the clinic, and one to bring them home, rather than four trips minimum. That should make things WAY more manageable. Plus, with four traps I may end up being able to help out other locals doing TNR -- I may not be able to drive, but I will certainly be able to lend out my traps!

(Above: Photo of two feral cats from the local colony. Rosie, the grownup cat, is already spayed and ear-tipped so that people can recognize her on sight as a TNR-ed kitty. The small black kitten -- who still needs a name -- is one of the next in line for TNR.)

OH. And also. The Humane Society is going to be having some days this month (not sure which ones, I will have to ask) where feral cats can get spayed or neutered for FREE. Which is just awesome, awesome news. So yeah. It may be raining outside right now, but things are definitely looking brighter on the kitty-assistance front!

* Re. the word "tame"...I actually kind of dislike the notion of cats being called "tame", but when I use it here all I mean is "socialized to humans". In general, though, for me "tame" has icky connotations of passivity. And I think that anyone who thinks socializing cats means making them passive or tolerant of being yanked or tossed around by small children, etc., has WAY the wrong idea. But it's shorter to write "tame" than any of the other, more complicated explanations of what I mean by "socialized to humans" so I do it sometimes. For what it's worth.

I'm Going To Feral Cat Class!

2011-03-09T11:49:00.000-08:00

Some heavy brainstorming ensued after my prior post on the currently burgeoning local feral cat colony I am trying to help get TNR-ed. One thing I've determined absolutely is that somehow, more people (hopefully some with experience!) need to be involved. The problem on my end is finding those people -- meeting other humans offline and establishing any sort of productive contact with them is not one of my strong points.

Nevertheless, my optimism is up a bit today, seeing as I happened upon an announcement on the local Humane Society website yesterday for an evening class entitled Helping Homeless Cats in Your Community. It's being held this Thursday and I've already RSVPed. Luckily, I should be able to get there on transit pretty easily from the lab (where I'm doing part-time biotech work). I figure at the very least, there are liable to be some folks in attendance who might have ties to local feral-cat advocacy groups and/or volunteers who might be able to help trap.

So yeah. I will definitely report back on the aftermath of that meeting, and hopefully it will lead to a healthier, safer future for all Cora, Brodie, and Shadow's "cousins"!

Gooseberry Green

2011-03-07T15:21:00.000-08:00

Apparently there's an actual name for Brodie's eye color: gooseberry green. I learned this while reading about Egyptian Mau cats. My guys are mutts, not Maus, but seeing as the distinguishing features of all known cat "breeds" came from random-bred populations originally it's totally unsurprising to see modern random-bred kitties expressing traits commonly associated with particular types of cats.

It's difficult to get good photos of cats' eyes, but the one below (of Brodie, if that wasn't obvious!) is pretty accurate color-wise:

Cats' eyes commonly change color as they grow. My youngsters all had greyish eyes when first adopted, and like most kittens probably had blue eyes at birth. Now they've all got different hues going on in the ocular region: Cora's eyes are a deep amber, Shadow's are bright yellow with greenish bits toward the center, and Brodie's are, well, gooseberry (or, as I've previously described them, "clear limeade green").

Brodie also does actually look vaguely Mau-ish in other respects too...these Flickr Mau-cats remind me of him a fair bit. He's more striped than spotted but he's definitely got the long body and the wedge-with-rounded-points head shape.

Anyway, definitely a frivolous observation but cat traits and genetics are just something that fascinates me, so I thought I'd post about it.

Santa Clara's Feral Cats Need Help!

2011-03-05T20:40:00.001-08:00

Above is a typical scene in my SO's parents' neighborhood (about 2 miles from where Matt and I live, in the same town). As I've noted previously, Matt's parents live at the epicenter of a pretty robust cat colony, and between their efforts and mine and Matt's, we've managed to get a total of nine (counting my three youngsters) cats spayed/neutered over the past three years or so.

And while that's certainly had some positive effect (as the nine cats in question are all currently alive, healthy, and either living happily in their adoptive home or outdoors with their companions)...well, the colony needs a lot more help. There are at least seven more cats out there of reproductive age who aren't yet fixed, and at least six kittens (including the two adorable little black ones in the photo above).

Plus, unfortunately it seems that some humans apparently think it's okay to abandon cats in that area. Right around Christmas 2010 a mother cat (a Siamese mix we've been calling "Blue") showed up with three babies in tow. And it's clear that Blue is not feral, but rather, a very nervous stray. Her coat is all scruffed up (that's one way you can tell a stray from a feral cat -- ferals are accustomed to taking care of themselves outdoors, but strays have a rough time of it), and she will approach humans...but she seems very leery of hands, which makes me wonder if maybe she was not only abandoned, but abused wherever she used to live (or, if she was lost by accident, mistreated by other humans before she found her way into this neighborhood).

Picture above shows Blue in the foreground. Her daughter Dominique is in the background.

Anyway, to make a long story short, there are at least thirteen cats in this colony that we really want to take in for spay/neuter (and rabies shots if possible). If all these cats end up reproducing again for even one generation, that's going to be...well, a lot more cats than the neighborhood can reasonably support.

And it just terrifies me to think of someone deciding to call Animal Control to round up and kill them. It's not their fault they're out there, after all, and in general they're no trouble to have about. But they would all live much happier, safer lives if we were able to take them in for Trap-Neuter-Return.

And I am sort of at my wit's end right now trying to figure out how to make that happen. The logistics are, in a word, daunting.

Thus, this post is mainly a call for advice, especially (though not limited to) from people who might have a clue about relevant groups and/or services in California's South Bay area.

Mind you, I know full well that the Humane Society of Silicon Valley supports TNR and offers trap rental, etc. for feral and stray cats. That's where most of the currently fixed kitties in the local colony went for their checkups and surgery, in fact. But how to get thirteen cats there in one go? I haven't the faintest.

I also know that Silicon Valley Animal Control has a low-cost spay/neuter service. But I don't trust them. Matt's parents initially tried taking Toby there (as a tiny, sick kitten) and almost immediately they said "Well, we can put her down for you...". Needless to say, Matt's mom left THAT place in a hurry (and today Toby is a lovely, healthy almost-4-year-old ladycat).

(I also recently confirmed, after contacting someone who works with Animal Control locally, that they are still pretty quick to indiscriminately kill. E.g., they will kill any kitten under four months old simply because they're too young to receive a rabies shot, and they will also kill adults who appear to be at all unwell, even if their illness is treatable. So while they may offer inexpensive spay/neuter surgery there is NO WAY I would bring any animal in there unless I got to bring at least two other people with me, at least one of which was really good at communicating/advocating in realtime and would be able to help guarantee that the animals would NOT be killed, and that if AC planned on killing them, we'd get a chance to take them elsewhere.)

But anyway. All that aside, here's the critical stuff I am attempting to work out:

1.) Transportation! I personally don't drive (can't, for neurological/disability reasons). Matt can drive, but his car is extremely small (a two-door Focus hatchback) and we'd only be able to fit maybe two or three traps in there at most.

Thus, really, what I am wondering is whether I might be able to find/hire an experienced driver with a van or something who has actually dealt before with transporting large numbers of cats at once. Like is this the sort of thing one could put an ad on Craigslist for? Or even better, is there some local feral-cat advocacy group that for whatever reason I've not personally found a way to get in touch with yet?

2.) Scheduling! Every clinic I've been able to find any information on locally says you need to have an appointment. But if you want to bring in a bunch of feral cats, it's sort of hard to GUARANTEE you're going to have a particular number of cats. It depends, after all, on how many end up walking into the traps! So if anyone knows anything...phone scripts for talking to clinic reps or anything else...that might make the appointment-making go more smoothly, PLEASE feel free to comment with that info (or point me at it).

3.) Help with trapping! Part of this ties into "transportation", as Matt's parents have only one trap and we'd thus need to rent a whole bunch more if we wanted to get the whole colony (or as much of it as possible) in one go. Then there would be the matter of monitoring the traps, covering them (so the cats won't be as frightened) once they're sprung, etc. I can do this myself for a few traps, but if we really want to go and do the Big Difference-Making Mass Trapping Day, we'd definitely need some additional humanpower.

4.) Event Planning! This one is kind of...optional, but definitely something I'm looking for information about. Because I've heard sometimes communities have "TNR events" where a bunch of vets will volunteer to spend a day doing spay/neuter surgery on kind of a mass basis. How does that kind of thing get initiated, though? I can't imagine it's just a matter of one person going in and talking to their vet.

So yeah. I would REALLY TREMENDOUSLY appreciate ANY input on any of the above matters. Note that I am NOT asking or looking for money here, just advice and/or links, contacts, and resources. All I ask is that people please not just tell me to "call the humane society" or "contact animal control", because I've tried doing both those things and neither led to any sort of help at all with transportation, trapping, etc.

I guess the bottom line is that I keep reading all these random news stories from various regions with headlines like "Local Feral Spay Day A Success!" and I keep wondering how the heck that sort of thing gets orchestrated and how it could potentially happen in my community.

Social Maturity (Or The Beginning Thereof)

2011-03-02T21:49:00.000-08:00

(Photo above shows Cora, Shadow, and Brodie snuggling on their new favorite shelf-bed.)

One subject that's been on my mind rather a lot lately is social maturity in cats. Small felines reach reproductive maturity anytime between about four and twelve months, but social maturity can come considerably later -- usually sometime between two and four years.

Why has this been on my mind? Well, mainly because Coraline, Brodie, and Shadow will be two years old in August, and it is clear that things are shifting within the Kitty Social Order around here, as well as with respect to individual cats.

All three youngsters seem to have gotten considerably more confident and more sure-footed over the past two months or so. This has been dramatically in evidence for Brodie in particular. Cora (who has always been the boldest and most assertive of the three) is thus having to deal with two brothers who no longer just defer to her when it comes to who gets to sit on the softest bed or the highest perching spot, or who simply aren't agile enough to get to such places.

Brodie, meanwhile seems to be reveling in his newfound assertiveness. While he is still very shy and cautious around unfamiliar humans, Brodie's interfeline negotiation toolbox now includes such items as "challenge sister for the top perch on the cat tree and chase her until she decides to give up and go sit somewhere else".

It is a wee bit odd, I must say, to see that sort of thing from someone who is generally such a polite cat. But given nobody ever has a scratch on his or her person following such a scuffle, I'd wager these tiffs are just a bit of sibling one-upmanship as opposed to serious fighting.

According to author Pam Johnson-Bennett, writing in Cat vs. Cat: Keeping Peace When You Have More Than One Cat:

Much like human adolescence, social maturity is the prime time for cats to jockey for social positions. This may cause subtle and not-so-subtle shifting in the pecking order in a formerly peaceful, well-established cat family. This can be a time when a cat feels more confident and views an opportunity to elevate his status.

In other words, as cats near social maturity it is perfectly normal for them to start asserting themselves more. Thus, so long as nobody is getting hurt (which they aren't) and as long as nobody seems to be showing signs of undue stress (which I'm also not seeing) I figure it's probably best to just keep an eye on things and not worry overmuch.

After all, in amidst the "position-jockeying" Cora and Brodie continue to share napping spots on occasion and play cooperatively. They're very closely bonded still, something which is evident even in casual contexts (like in the picture below, when they were both watching a toy):

I am really beginning to see the benefits of raising littermates together in all this...clearly Cora, Brodie, and Shadow have managed to learn the finer points of claw-sheathing and bite-strength moderation. Kittens taken from their families very young may have issues later on with biting, etc., because they've not gotten the social experience that lets them learn what actually hurts vs. what simply makes a statement.

As for Shadow specifically, what I've noticed there is that he has recently gotten a lot quicker to assert his opinions to his siblings, as well as much bolder when it comes to standing his ground with the human members of the household. E.g., whereas before all I needed to do was look at him if he jumped onto an off-limits surface (such as the stove) and he would get right down, now he will stare straight back at me and hold his position until I literally get up and walk over there.

I have also lately been wowed repeatedly by Shadow's growing talent at anticipating and reading the actions and moods of his housemates (human and feline alike). He's gotten particularly adept at figuring out when I am about to give Nikki food in "her" room (she prefers to eat privately), sneaking in, and hiding under the futon. Of course Nikki knows when he's there even when I don't and generally she lets me know, but still.

It is amazing to consider the tiny little cues Shadow must be picking up on in order to determine "hey, if I go hide under here now, maybe I'll score some extra crunchies!" Because he just seems to KNOW what I am going to do, even before I get up to do it. He really does run circles around me (figuratively AND literally sometimes!) in this department. And his sense of humor (which is very much of the "trickster" variety) is developing in leaps and bounds. E.g., where he used to just randomly chase Nikki around the house (something that she did not appreciate), now he's more liable to do a kind of "fake-out" move wherein he simply jumps or runs in her general direction but then alters his course just prior to breaching Nikki's personal space boundary.

Nikki, meanwhile, nowdeems him worthy of close-range pillow-napping (he used to get away with cuddling up to her occasionally before, but usually she'd swat him if she "caught" him making such an attempt. Now she knowingly lets him sit near her. Hopefully he realizes what an honor that is!):

...and of course, he and Brodie are still total snugglebuddies:

Coraline, as noted above, has always been a very confident cat, so her recent advances in that area (while there have certainly been a few) haven't been as dramatic as her brothers'.

Cora, looking lioness-like as she captures the feather toy

Primarily what I've observed with regard to her lately is that she's gotten more strategic. I've had to go through yet another round of cat-proofing in the house: securing shelves, moving items that could be knocked down, and applying non-skid material to surfaces that weren't necessarily intended to be for kitty-climbing (but which, I figure, I'd better make safe for such activities since it seems they're going to happen anyway!).

Additionally, much to my utter bewilderment, Cora seems to be trying to befriend (or at least develop some sort of mutually amicable relationship with) Nikki. Nikki now lets her much further into her substantive "personal space bubble" than previously:

(The above picture was taken just after Cora had made a "brrrt!" greeting-noise at Nikki and rolled over on her back.)

Cora will happily challenge her brothers for a favored path or resource, but somehow, it seems she's come to see Nikki as someone meriting a certain degree of deference. Which is something I am kind of relieved about, given the very strong personalities of both girlcats here. Upon introducing them I figured someone was going to have to start granting the right of way. And it does make sense it would be Nikki, given her seniority and relative worldliness.

Anyway, needless to say, I am very glad I managed to outfit my desk area and office closet with a whole new set of climbing, perching, and napping-spot opportunities recently. Since currently none of the four cats here (not even Nikki, since being injured fighting outside late last year) have unescorted access to the outdoors, it is really important that they have sufficient indoor territory, especially as they continue to mature and seek their place(s) in their home.

In Which Brodie Knocks Toy Mice Off A Shelf Repeatedly

2011-02-01T21:44:00.000-08:00

(This one is especially for Comrade PhysioProf)

No heavy theorizing here from me on this one. I think it's safe to say Brodie was doing this because it amused him. :P

Oh, and the Joni Mitchell song playing in the background has absolutely nothing to do with the visual content of the video. Matt just plays random MP3s all the time and that was just what happened to be on. More pleasant than the water heater going BANG BANG BANG at least!

Some Photos Of Cats Enjoying Warmth, Sunbeams, and High Places

2011-01-23T23:14:00.000-08:00

Well, the office closet cat-shelves seem to be getting more and more popular these days. Here are Brodie (rear shelf), Shadow (front upper shelf) and Coraline (lower shelf) enjoying the view from up high:

One of the first things I thought to myself when I first saw my current home (before actually moving in) was "this house needs cats!". And a primary reason for my sentiments in this direction was the fact that there are so many HUGE windows built into the structure. Below all four kitties are relaxing in the sunbeams coming through into the kitchen:

(Also...notice the way Brodie is licking Shadow? Adorable, right? I thought so too, until I remembered that I'd just given Shadow his monthly dose of topical flea-prevention treatment. Which you apply to the back of the neck specifically so they can't lick it off themselves! Apparently whoever came up with that strategy hadn't accounted for meddlesome sibling teamwork, hence, I had to shoo Brodie away from "helping" his brother after I took this photo. :P)

Still in the kitchen, but now Cora is hanging out in close proximity to my sweater:

Next, we have Brodie next to my desk in the "cat-nest":

What is a "cat-nest", you ask? Well basically it's what happens when you pile up a bunch of blankets and bedding material in one place because you're not entirely sure what to do with it all yet...but which you end up leaving as-is because the cats insist on sleeping there.

And finally, Cora is shown demonstrating one of her new favorite resting spots:

...right on top of the living room heat register.

Veturday Round II

2011-01-22T20:36:00.000-08:00

Brodie went in for his shot boosters and check-up this morning (following his siblings' visit last week). As I'd sort of suspected would be the case, he took the carrier and car ride with a lot less angst than his siblings. Even though he's the most timid around visitors to the house, he actually seems to be the bravest when it comes to things like Adventures In The Car. It's really interesting seeing how complex the siblings' personalities are in that regard...like you can't just label them as over-archingly "the brave one" or "the scaredy-cat" because they're all brave and scaredy about different sorts of things.

But I digress. Per the vet, Brodie appears to be in lovely health. No heart murmur either, hooray! The only small area of concern is that Brodie actually does appear to have some (probably genetic) susceptibility to gingivitis. He eats the same stuff as his siblings, his gums just seem more sensitive and for some reason food seems to "stick" more to his upper teeth. So in an effort to stave off further problems I am going to at least attempt to start brushing his teeth regularly. I tried it today and he wasn't entirely happy with having a little plastic thing shoved into his mouth, but he was a very good sport about it and I managed to at least touch all the relevant tooth-surfaces with the brush. Next time I might try one of the little "finger" brushes I got a while back but never really got into the habit of using on the kitties.

Oh and Brodie weighed in at a nice 13.5 pounds. Which the vet seemed totally happy with, and which looks like a good size for his overall frame (which is long and squarish but not as block-like as Shadow's).

In any case, I and the kitties are very glad to have all that vet business over with. Next up on the catblogging agenda: more pictures, and possibly some videos of the youngsters working out a new puzzle!

Caturday in Vetville

2011-01-20T10:09:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday marked the first trip to the vet in about a year for any of the youngstercats here. Coraline and Shadow went in for their vaccine boosters (rabies, etc.) and a general physical exam; Brodie will have his turn this upcoming Saturday (the "little guys" are no longer little enough to allow simultaneous triple-kittywrangling, so we had to make two appointments!).

In any case, I am pleased to report that Cora and Shadow are apparently in glowingly good health. Not that I'd expected otherwise, but I was definitely relieved to hear that Shadow's heart sounds normal, as both he and Brodie had low-level murmurs when they were babies. The murmurs resolved by the time the boys went in for neutering at the age of five months, and thus were not a sign of any worrisome illness, but it's still something I like to make sure gets checked now and then.

On another physical note, initially the vet suggested Shadow was "on the high side" weight-wise at 15 pounds, 2 ounces. She adjusted her appraisal, though, after I showed her how LONG he is. Shadow might look stocky when he's all scrunched up (he goes into this tight-crouch position when he's nervous) but when he stretches out it's really apparent that he's pretty much all lean muscle everywhere. He relaxed a little when I picked him up and thus I was able to unfurl him a bit; at that point the vet remarked that he actually did look like a 15-pound cat (as in, a cat who SHOULD weigh around 15 pounds given his length and frame). I agree, especially considering he's 38 inches long (including nearly 14 inches of tail) at a year and a half old and had a solid build even when he was otherwise tiny.

Cora, meanwhile, weighed in at 9 pounds, which (though absolutely unproblematic and healthy for her frame) surprised me a bit. Picking up Shadow is rather like picking up an elongated, silky brick, thus, in comparison Cora feels like air and fluff. She's also got rather kittenish proportions (or at least the effect of such proportions, given her fluffy cheeks and her big round eyes) to the extent that I continue to be surprised when I see her standing next to Nikki and clearly being longer and taller than her elder housemate. Of course Cora isn't liable at this point to get as big as her brothers but she's certainly turning into a grownup in her own right -- and judging from her demeanor lately, she knows it!

But anyway. One interesting aspect of this most recent visit was that the vet we saw was new -- well, new to me and the Wonderful Felines at least. She's been at the VCA clinic we go to since 2008, but I'd never seen her before. I really hope she sticks around, though, because so far I like her a lot. We started off seeing one vet when the kittens were babies and I really liked that one too, but she moved out of state in the middle of last year. So then we got assigned to a different doctor, and while she did a fine job caring for Nikki's battle wounds, she wasn't as much inclined to get down to the technical details of feline healthcare with me the way the previous vet was. Which made it a little harder for me to feel like I was actually communicating with her. But the new vet seems to have a similar analytical style to the first one and even apparently spent a number of years as a field biologist, which is just cool. I think she is going to be a fine doctor for my kitties.

I am also glad to have finally gotten the "so what are you feeding them?" discussion over with. This new vet didn't even flinch when I told her the younger cats regularly ate raw meat, and in fact seemed to be pretty well informed on the subject of feline nutrition. She just said to be careful about sourcing meat and was glad I wasn't feeding them pre-ground stuff (as ground meat has a lot more opportunity to pick up nasty bacteria before you even get it home, plus grinding allows oxidation which can destroy important nutrients like taurine).

Oh yeah. And the vet also remarked on how nice the kitties' teeth looked, which at least suggests chewing up gizzards, etc., is indeed conferring dental benefits. Yay! Of course Cora, Shadow, and Brodie are still quite young and many cats who are going to end up with dental disease don't show any signs of it until age three or so, but it's at least encouraging that they don't have any early-manifesting issues in that regard.

As for how the cats themselves reacted to their outing, it was very obvious that they were quite anxious in the vet's office -- as I mentioned previously, Shadow went into his fearful scrunched-up crouch posture and pretty much stayed that way throughout the whole visit, aside from when I picked him up to demonstrate his striking resemblance to Tacgnol. Cora also did a lot of scrunched-up wide-eyed staring but wasn't nearly as tense as her brother and did a fair bit more moving around during the whole affair, like she was clearly apprehensive but also curious.

Neither cat seemed to enjoy being in a carrier, especially when the car was in motion. Matt and I tag-teamed to get them into the carriers in the first place at home so that didn't end up being a major ordeal for us, but Cora and Shadow seemed absolutely beside themselves. :/ They both howled a fair bit, especially Shadow, for whom the carrier seems to represent All That Is Vile And Evil In Existence.

I had attempted to acclimate all the cats to the carriers by setting them up in the spare bedroom weeks ago, and putting treats in them, spritzing blankets with Feliway and laying those inside, etc. The first day I had the larger carrier (we have two: a big plastic one and a medium-sized soft mesh one) out of the garage, Shadow refused to even enter the spare bedroom. He spent most of the day hiding in the office closet! By the next day he was okay with the carrier's mere presence, though, and that seems to have stuck even post-vet-visit. I think he's figured out that the carrier itself can't just scoop him up like some sort of cavernous cat-swallowing monster, at least.

Cora was also clearly unhappy with the carrier situation, but made far fewer operatic Tauntaun noises than her brother. She was also in the smaller (soft-sided) carrier, though, which to me looks a lot comfier than the plastic one. Plus the soft carrier has a zipper opening on the top, which I was able to unzip a little during the car ride (enough to fit my hand inside and give Cora ear-scritches, which definitely calmed her down a lot). I would have put Shadow in that one given his generally greater carrier-angst, but he really needs the next size up, which hopefully I manage to acquire at some point. With four cats we really ought to have four carriers, but I didn't want to get that many before I got an idea of how big the boys were going to grow.

In any case, I could tell Cora and Shadow were very happy to finally get home on Saturday! Since they'd basically been babies last time they went anywhere in the car, I was thinking the whole time during this past visit that part of their obvious anxiety might have been due to not realizing that they'd actually get to come back to familiar territory. But of course they did get to come home, and after a day of sleepiness (from the shots) they both bounced right back to their usual level of activity. This Saturday will of course be Brodie's turn...then we shall be quite done with vet visits for a while, which I don't expect any complaints about from any felines here!

The Office Closet Desk Shelf Cat-Climbing-Gym Project

2011-01-09T21:19:00.000-08:00

Well technically this project is not actually "done" yet -- I've still plenty of organizing to do, and probably some more wall shelves to put up, but as the main cat-relevant parts of it are now functional I figured I'd blog about it.

It all started with two realizations: (1) the fact that the closet in the room Matt and I call the "office" (basically the computer room where we do work, filing, and hobby stuff) was really not being very well utilized, and (2) my corner-style desk (purchased about six years ago to fit a particular niche in my old apartment) was bugging the crap out of me.

~~Unfortunately I can't seem to find a picture of how awful the closet looked before,~~ but trust me, it was bad. Bad as in "there's a bunch of random stuff crammed in here that has nothing to do with the functionality of the room". [UPDATE: I found a "before" picture I'd forgotten I'd taken; see below. The doors are off, but the random crap and old saggy shelves and meaningless clothes-bar-holder-thing are still there, and there's so much wasted space!]

Taking off the closet doors (which were GIGANTIC and MIRRORED) helped make said random stuff more immediately accessible, but there was still just a ton of useless/wasted space. Not to mention the fact that every time I so much as ventured near the closet I risked having a roll of wrapping paper or a piece of old inherited photography equipment fall on my head (and that was on a good day.

As for my desk...while the corner design had worked okay in my old place, it was really cramping the potential of the new office (at least my corner thereof). Plus in the chaos of moving in last year I hadn't thought very well through the orientation and location of my primary home work-area and had managed to put the desk so that my back faced the door into the room. This sort of arrangement is invariably bad for me due to the fact that my peripheral vision is both very sensitive and seemingly wired directly into my "fight or flight" brain-circuits. It had gotten to the point (in around November 2010) where I was actively avoiding sitting at my own desk to use my own computer because of the constant on-edge sensation I got from sitting with my back to the door (and seeing little flickers of shadow at the edges of my visual field constantly from Matt and the cats moving around).

(Picture shows my old desk, sitting in the corner. Sure, it looked "nice enough" but I couldn't stand sitting there. Also, that nifty vintage power supply on the top shelf? Managed to fall down and almost crush my hand one night when one of the cats jumped on it. Bad news all around...)

Anyway, though, to make a long story slightly less long (and pull it back to the subject of cats where it belongs!) after gleefully getting rid of my old desk via Craigslist and pulling all the crap out of the closet and painting the walls inside a lovely-to-me shade of grey, it occurred to me: why not build feline-friendly functionality right into the new office layout? I mean, the cats already habitually climbed my desk and leaped about in the closet at night (which had me springing out of bed to see what that terrific crash had been on multiple frantic occasions), so at the very least I needed to fortify the room to be cat-safe.

(Picture shows the office closet when it was basically emptied out, post-painting)

One cool thing about making an environment cat-safe is that in doing so you've often laid the groundwork for also making it fun for your feline housemates. Cats, after all, revel in freedom, particularly freedom in three dimensions...and emptying out the office closet revealed quite a bit of vertical space that might be able to provide Cora, Brodie, Shadow, and Nikki with a fair amount more of this valued cat-commodity.

All that said, I didn't want to go out and buy some sort of expensive closet-organization or desk system. Even when I've got decent income coming in I tend toward the "cheapskate" end of the frugal spectrum, and my unemployment last year had me even more embedded in the "how can I kludge this?" mindset than usual. And in the end, I only ended up buying two more Ikea shelves (GORM units, which are inexpensive untreated pine), a few shelf brackets, a wood panel (also from Ikea) modular desktop and legs, and some miscellaneous small hardware-store items (wood stain, rope, etc.).

The rest was all scrap wood from the garage or IKEA shelves we already had (but that were not being efficiently used; basically I stripped them down and re-purposed them. Which is one thing cheaper Ikea stuff is great for...it's like parts of a big wooden Erector set.) And I have to say that wood stain is now my new best friend when it comes to projects like this. While I suffer no illusions that my new office arrangement would win any design awards, it does look significantly nicer and less patchwork-y than it would have if I'd left all the wood I used untreated.

The photo above shows the closet roughly as it appears now. The shelves still aren't really organized and the cabinet in the middle -- just an Ikea IVAR cabinet I stained and added legs to -- is actually still empty, but the basic structure is there. Note as well the orange mesh "curtains" in the lower left...these now help contain scatter from the litter box without blocking the cats' view of the surrounding area or creating a nasty "stagnant air" environment as many covered litter boxes do.

Now for the cat-friendly aspects of the closet: observe this photo, taken at a slightly different angle than the previous one...you should spot two tabby tails seemingly hanging out of the ceiling!

Moving in closer (flashlight in hand), lo and behold...

...it's Coraline! Unsurprisingly, she was the first to explore the new "catwalk" attached to the inside of that little overhanging bit of wall above the closet opening.

...but Brodie eventually got curious too!

This angle better shows how the "catwalk" is attached. Brodie demonstrates how to get down from the little cat-nap platform at the end of the catwalk:

As for my desk area, it now looks like this:

...and it is SO much more functional and comfortable now than the corner desk was! Not to mention sturdier. I think I've managed to find every wall stud in this room as a result of this project, because this thing is SOLID. When it comes to fortifying against the forces of both feline and earthquake origin, I tend to apply the Mythbusters' philosophy: "anything worth doing is worth overdoing". So yeah. The cats can run up the sides of this thing, climb the shelves, scale the walls, etc., to their hearts' content now.

(I still need to clean up the wire mess under the desk and organize some more of my work and hobby and craft materials onto the shelves, but again, the basic structure and cat-relevant bits are in place here.)

Finally, here is another view of the desk area, showing one of several possible routes for the kitties to get up to the top shelves, while also serving an important function as a scratching post (which all four felines here now use regularly):

Oh and for those curious about such things, the desk uses legs only on one side...the other side is attached to the IVAR shelf unit adjacent to the wall, which is firmly bolted to studs. Also, since the IVAR units tend to be a bit wobbly even with those metal X-things installed on the back, I used a piece of oak floorboard (stained to match the shelves) and some metal angle brackets (which you can't see at all unless you look up inside the shelf) to maintain the shelving unit's rectangularity even in the event of enthusiastic kittyclimbing.

So yeah...so far I am very happy with how this new office layout is improving my own productivity and cheerfulness levels in this room, and the cats seem extremely pleased with their new climbing/play/sleeping structure. I've still got a fair mount of work to do organizing the human stuff, and will perhaps be able to get some nicer pictures when that happens, but the cat components are pretty well in place, at least until I think of something else to add!

Holiday Miscellany

2011-01-01T22:10:00.000-08:00

Well, the holidays ended up being far too hectic to allow much time (or brain-bandwidth) for blogging, but now the bustle has somewhat subsided I figured it was about time for some more photos!

First we have Cora here eyeing the pile of presents (for two sets of extended families, and yes, there were a few for the felines!) near my and Matt's little tree.

Speaking of which, the cats did great with the tree this year. Not only have they matured considerably, I think it helped that we got a smaller one and clamped it (in the back, invisibly) to an end table unlike last year when we had a 6 foot tree just standing in the middle of the living room.

Considering 2009's antics included all three youngsters taking flying leaps INTO the tree I was not about to risk a repeat of that, not with everyone at least twice the size they were last year. But the table-mounting thing worked out wonderfully for both humans and kitties...I put one of their beds under the end table with the tree-blanket draped over it and that became one of the most coveted spots throughout the holidays.

I'm not perfect about this but I always try and make sure the cats get regular interactive play with toys like this feather-on-a-string thing even when chaos (such as that induced by holidays) is monopolizing the majority of human attention. Here is Shadow waiting for the feather thingy to enter pouncing range.

These cardboard scratchy-pad things are HUGELY popular around here. Seriously, they are probably one of the best random bits of Cat Accessory in existence. They're just basic corrugated cardboard but apparently the texture of that material is wonderful for running one's claws across. I've usually got three or four of them around the house at any given time and each one generally lasts at least two months before being shredded enough to pop into the recycle bin.

Nikki is very possessive of the "double wide" scratcher on the sofa and can often be found sitting on it just as she is doing in the above photo.

And of course rest is important for everyone (human and feline alike) during the year's busiest bits. I am actively grateful to all the cats but Brodie in particular for his quiet but insistent reminders to take a break already once in a while.

(Here is Brodie snuggling in my hair on the couch after a very long day!)

Oh yes. And in addition to all the usual holiday-heightened activities around here, the kitties managed to endure what was a major first for me and for them: an overnight houseguest. My youngest brother stayed over for nearly four days over his Christmas break from college, which meant major routine deviations for everyone and lots of activity nobody was used to.

Of course it was great to see my brother (he and I have always gotten along really well despite the 13 year age gap) but since the younger cats hid most of the time he was here I kept finding myself missing them! Cora and Shadow also spent a lot more time in hiding than I had expected but then again, overnight guest is a very different thing from a visitor who just comes and stays a few hours. Brodie hid about the usual amount but I did expect that from him seeing as he's generally the shyest around guests.

That said, I was quite relieved to note that while the youngsters wouldn't eat dinner at their normal time, they had no problem eating at night when my brother was asleep in the guest room, which is awesome considering in the past they've sometimes not wanted to eat until they've been able to ascertain that a visitor is good and gone. Nobody had any litterbox issues either, and by the last day Cora even sat with my brother on the couch for a bit.

And all that said, Nikki had a great time during Ryan's visit, by which she was utterly and completely unfazed (after all, she already knew him from when she lived with my parents and siblings). With the youngsters holed up in their various favorite secluded spots Nikki got her pick of laps and could play with toys, etc., without being bothered by rambunctious youngsters. So in a weird sort of way us having a houseguest that was familiar to her seemed like kind of a "vacation" for Nikki. So I am happy on her behalf about that I suppose!

Anyway, as much as the holidays can be fun I am very happy things are already settling down into their usual, somewhat quieter state. I look forward to seeing what 2011 brings for human and feline alike!

Comfort Cats

2010-11-19T14:03:00.000-08:00

Right now I am sitting on the couch as I type this, Nikki on my left side and Shadow on my right side. Every cat in this household (and every cat, period) has his or her own particular skillset and personality, and both Nikki and Shadow happen to be extremely good at "reading" me. It's kind of astounding in some ways how accurate they are, seeing as plenty of my fellow humans have been known to interpret my moods and intentions and such completely wrong.

So this is not a particularly deep entry and may even seem silly and cloying to some, but I just really wanted to express how grateful I am to the wonderful felines here. I've been going through a somewhat difficult time this week with my unemployment situation...next month it will have been a year since I lost my last job (due to a plant closure shutdown, which impacted hundreds of people).

And while on one level I know I will find something eventually, that doesn't stop me from occasionally getting grumpy and discouraged, especially after looking at job postings for several hours and not seeing anything that is simultaneously interesting, local, and in line with my particular experience in certain areas (e.g., electromagnetics testing) of electrical engineering.

But then there are cats. Who aren't, obviously, going to find me a wonderful new job. Nevertheless, like I said above, I am grateful to them for just being there (and being themselves). It is practically impossible to lose onesself in an existential crisis, after all, when one is surrounded by warmth and purr.

Brodie Eating Update

2010-11-18T10:48:00.000-08:00

Good news! Brodie has been eating normally in the kitchen for the past few days, with only minimal staring at the front door. Some of this is probably due to post-Halloween anxiety wearing off, but I have also determined a few other factors coming into play and hence been able to adjust some variables.

One is that the youngstercats are probably pretty close to being full adult size at this point. This is somewhat related to what Matt was saying about the cats (and specifically Brodie) eating when they are hungry. Of course it is still important for cats to eat a proper amount of food (for their age, size, activity level, etc.) daily and cause for concern if a given cat refuses to eat at all for more than 24-36 hours. But for them to want food at less frequent intervals as they get older is pretty normal.

I've actually discovered recently, by way of offering dinner 1-2 hours later than I had been previously, that Brodie knows how to ask for food. His technique is to come up to me (especially if I am standing in the kitchen), gently brush my legs with his tail, and then jump up onto the mini cat-tree thing by the kitchen window and meow. Apparently there is a point at which he gets peckish enough to be more interested in his plate than in whatever is going /on outside the front door.

Shadow and Cora would have been fine keeping the old, earlier dinnertime (both of them have always been a tad more active than Brodie) but they've been good sports about switching, and the transition has been smoothed by my offering them some of their daily treat allotment before the meal proper. This way I get the logistical tidiness of being able to feed all 3 cats at once and nobody is in a position to be wondering why their sibling is getting food when they're not, etc.

Of course if I absolutely had to I am sure I could work out a way to feed folks at different times, and I am sure the cats would adjust fine to that given the opportunity, but I appreciate being able to just have a scheduled mealtime as that condenses the monitor-and-cleanup stuff into one small interval.

The other thing I've come to note is that Brodie seems to appreciate it if I guard the front door on his behalf. As in, he spends a lot less time looking up while eating and startles less frequently if I sit somewhere between him and the door. My house has a rather long, tunnel-like layout in which the front door leads straight into the living room, which in turn is open to the kitchen (and the kitchen opens to the back yard). So I can sit in front of the dining table or on the couch and from there be able to see the cats eating and monitor the front door as well. Works out pretty nicely! Though I have to wonder if this task (dinnertime door-guarding) is something Nikki would be interested in taking over...Brodie likes and respects her a lot, and she is Security Cat, after all.

So, yeah, for now, looks like we are back to peaceful and logistically easy suppertimes for all the kitties here. I've been told I "tend to over-analyze" things and perhaps some of this kind of writing will strike some people as evidence of an overfocus on minutiae, but the way I see it, there's no such thing as an irrelevant detail when it comes to cats! Plus I figure Brodie can't be the only sensitive dudecat out there, and thus perhaps someone dealing with a similar thing could benefit from reading what's worked in our household.

Brodie, The Sensitive Cat

2010-11-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

What do I mean by "sensitive" when using such a term to refer to a cat like Brodie? Well, mainly I mean that Brodie is keenly perceptive, hyper-alert to household goings-on, liable to seem "shy" (due to hiding when strangers come around), and very attached to routines.

(In the photo below, Brodie peers through the rungs of one of the dining chairs he likes to sit on.)

He is drawn to details (as a baby he very quickly noticed the string his dangly toys were suspended from and often found them more interesting than the object at the end) and has an extremely long memory...I've often seen him digging under the sofa cushions for toys lost there weeks previously.

He is also (as I've mentioned before) exceedingly polite and highly sociable with other cats. When Shadow first arrived home (three weeks after Brodie and Cora) it was as if the two brothers had never been separated...it took Cora much longer to adjust to yet another boy in the house. And when Nikki arrived this past January, Brodie was the first to greet her, an act which mainly consisted of him following her at a courteous distance and occasionally attempting to sniff her tail.

(Photo below shows Nikki and Brodie kittyloafing together on the sofa, sharing space across a small but respectful gap)

For such a young cat Brodie definitely seems to exhibit an uncannily high degree of subtlety and restraint. His presence in the household seems to provide a sort of harmonizing influence...I always get the sense that if he were absent (perish the thought) for any length of time, things would quickly descend into inter-cat chaos due to the other three resident felines having somewhat "flashier" personalities. Brodie, in other words, is the cat who sits between two other cats who aren't getting along, and suddenly all is calm.

So, certainly Brodie's sensitivity serves him (and the intercat dynamic at work here) quite well in a variety of circumstances. However, he also has his particular challenges, and one of those has had me doing a fair bit of head-scratching recently. Basically, he's had an upsurge in dinnertime anxiety over the past week or so. His appetite seems fine, and I can't see anything wrong with his teeth or mouth (and in general he's not acting "painy"), but he's become very fixated on the front door of the house.

For the past few days he's been going up to his food dish (I feed all three younger cats at the same time, but in separate dishes spaced a few feet apart in the kitchen), sniffing and perhaps licking once or twice at the contents, but then just standing there over his dish staring at the front door with his ears pricked up in "high alert" mode. And if he so much as hears any noise outside -- a bird rustling in the bushes, or a dog walking by -- he will run off and hide in another room.

Meanwhile, Shadow and Cora will have finished their food, and of course one of them (usually Shadow) will see Brodie's abandoned plate as open for the taking. This means I can't just leave it out for Brodie to come back to in his own time...Shadow would eat all day if I gave him the opportunity.

I've also had no real success trying to feed Brodie in a separate room with the door shut...I tried this thinking it might give him a greater sense of security if he couldn't see the front door, but all that did was confuse him because he's used to eating in the kitchen (plus he seemed alarmed at having been taken alone into another room in the first place).

Matt (the SO) thinks I'm worrying too much about this and that Brodie will eat when he's hungry enough. This could very well be true but at the same time Brodie is a large cat and I know that puts him at higher risk of hepatic lipidosis if he goes more than 24 hours without eating, or a week (give or take a few days) eating much less than he should for his size.

All that said, I actually do have a theory as to why the sudden obsession with the front door: Halloween. I tried to feed all the kitties before any trick-or-treaters showed up, and Cora and Shadow ate...but Brodie seemed to be able to tell something was "up", and refused. I had just put some decorations on the front windows and I think those made him nervous just because they looked different than what he was used to. Then we had a lot of trick-or-treaters, which meant people were coming repeatedly to the front door, ringing the bell, talking loudly, etc.

I left several closets open so Brodie could cave up in them if he wanted to, but I can imagine all that activity at the front of the house must have been like his worst nightmare. :/ And it makes sense that he'd still be worried it might happen again a week later. Hopefully this "thing" resolves soon, at any rate...in the meantime I will just make sure and offer him several kinds of food (in different rooms, so maybe he'll get used to eating places other than the kitchen) so that he's likely to eat enough each day.

Much Ado About Cat Teeth

2010-11-05T09:14:00.000-07:00

Well, Nikki went back to the vet Wednesday for what was hopefully her last visit for a good long while.

(The picture below really has nothing to do with the rest of this post; it was taken last week when she was sleeping in my bathrobe on the couch, and I just thought it was very cute.)

Anyhow, this vet visit was to get her dental stuff dealt with...Nikki needed a cleaning, x-rays, and close examination of her broken tooth. This meant she needed general anaesthesia, which always scares me (I have a possibly-irrational phobia about people not waking up from it) but according to the vet she "bounced back" really quickly after the procedure.

(This doesn't surprise me. Nikki has Constitution +5, at least. It also didn't surprise me when the tech informed me, after the fact, that until the sedation had kicked in, Nikki had given them quite a heck of a difficult time...she is nothing if not assertive!)

They also did a urine test, as they'd not been able to do that when Nikki had been in last time because she had just used the litterbox before that appointment and didn't have any pee in there for them to take!

Anyway, the urine test came back totally normal, so between that and her recent blood test values it looks like she's quite thoroughly healthy from a systemic standpoint. No sign of anything pointing to diabetes or kidney disease or any of the other maladies cats become more prone to as they get older.

As for her teeth...they're clean and polished now, which is definitely a good thing. Poor tooth and gum condition can lead to all kinds of other health problems in cats, not to mention mouth pain. I've actually been wondering for a while if some of Nikki's extremely finicky and fickle eating habits have been due to some issue with her teeth, so while I'm not holding my breath, it will be interesting to see if she eats more consistently now.

Nikki's broken fang-tooth is also gone now...I'm sorry she had to lose it, but the detailed exam revealed that the root was basically gone, meaning the tooth was "dead". It's not healthy to keep a dead tooth in one's mouth as it can result in buildup of anaerobic bacteria where the pulp used to be, in addition to the fact that dead teeth are more likely to become brittle and crack and hurt and have to be taken out later on anyway. So I am at least glad we got that taken care of now rather than later.

Also...when I went to pick up Nikki in the afternoon, once she'd recovered enough from the sedation (Matt's mom, who is awesome, provided transportation for my non-driving self), the vet tech asked me if I wanted to see the tooth they'd removed. Of course I said yes...I was really curious!

They handed me the tooth in a test tube labeled with Nikki's name (see photos below).

It's huge! Even with the tip broken off the whole thing is nearly an inch long. It's hard to believe more than half of a tooth that size actually fit in Nikki's jaw...she isn't a big cat, and (despite the noises she's capable of generating) doesn't have a very big mouth.

I am not sure what I will do with the tooth other than keep it as a weird random thing to look at, but (as I mentioned to the vet tech), wouldn't it be kind of cool to drill a hole in it and make it into a collar charm for Nikki to wear? I could just see her trotting along her patrol routes being all "I BROKE THIS TOOTH IN A FIGHT. YOU DO NOT WANT TO F&$# WITH ME!"

But I don't know if I'll actually do that. It would definitely suit her, though!

They also shaved part of one of her front legs to put the IV in, so she'll have another area of hypercolor fur in a while.

The bad part of having had the tooth removed (even though ultimately I agree with the vet it was for the best, given it was dead and hence a health risk for Nikki) is that now she has to take antibiotics for a while. For her abscessed side wound (which is actually totally healed now, thank goodness) they were able to inject a single dose of some really powerful germkiller, but apparently that sort of thing isn't given for the purpose of warding off post-tooth-extraction infections.

Hence, she is on an oral suspension of Clavamox which has to be stored in the refrigerator and shaken well prior to administration. The main annoying thing about this is that it obviously has a flavor (one that Nikki, predictably, hates) and must be given in 1 mL doses. I've ended up having to wrap her in a towel with just her head poking out in order to actually get the syringe anywhere near her mouth. Which I hate doing because she seems very obviously insulted by the whole ordeal, but I really don't want her getting another infection, least of all right in her mouth.

[I do have to wonder what those pharmaceutical people are thinking making a medication for cats in what (judging by the smell) seems to be "Banana Creme" flavor. Nikki, I'd wager, would much prefer something more along the lines of "Poached Salmon in Cheese Sauce"!]

Raw Feeding Update #2

2010-10-29T13:21:00.000-07:00

(Warning: This post contains pictures of raw meat. Squeamish folks take note.)

I just realized it's been a while since I posted a raw feeding update, and now seemed like as good a time as any to write one.

I will start by noting that via my research over the past few months, it has become even more apparent to me that some raw feeders tend to be very...ideological about the whole thing. Lots of these individuals consider commercial food to be, in general, a bad thing. Personally, though, I'm not really a fan of ideological approaches to diet, whether for cats or humans. It seems like the more one venerates ideology, the more one diverges from the scientific and/or pragmatic. And I don't see any point to any kind of dietary regimen unless you're doing it for practical, reality-based reasons.

That said, I definitely think that my and my cats' particular circumstances quite nicely lend themselves to a number of practical, reality-based reasons for feeding raw to whichever cats will actually eat it. I don't claim that what's right for me and my cats is right for every human or every cat, and none of this is meant to be "moralizing". So hopefully it doesn't come across that way; in general I aim to be informative and expository when I write about this stuff, not political and certainly not ideological.

In my last update (way back in August!), I noted that the youngsters were eating about 80% raw / 20% commercial. I've since further reduced the amount of canned and dry commercial food Cora, Brodie, and Shadow are getting, which means they're probably close to 90% raw-fed. Nikki is still on commercial stuff but frankly given her pickiness I'm just glad she hasn't been refusing her wet food lately.

The youngsters still get a little bit of canned commercial food -- maybe 1 ounce each daily, if that. They enjoy it as what amounts to a gravy-like condiment with their raw food. They also get some dry food (EVO or Orijen) as "treats" -- I might toss a few pieces across the floor for them to chase, or into the air, or tie some into a tissue "pinata" hanging from their cat tree, etc. They all love these activities so I figure it's not a big deal, so long as I don't accidentally feed them too much (but that's pretty easy to avoid by measuring out a small quantity of crunchies in the morning for the day's treat allotment).

As for what their raw meals are comprised of, probably the largest percentage of what they eat is chicken, simply because they all love it and it's relatively economical and easy for me to get. Most of the organs (liver, kidney, etc.) they eat are from chicken as well. However, I wouldn't want to feed them JUST chicken, seeing as in the wild cats generally aren't going to get all their sustenance from a single protein source (plus, exposing them to a greater variety of proteins at a younger age can supposedly help prevent them from developing allergies).

Quail is another favorite around here and I am very happy to be able to get whole (aside from heads and feet) quail in six-pack format for a good price locally, seeing as even a smallish cat like Cora can eat pretty much every bone in a quail.

Once in a while I'll get turkey thighs but since the bones are huge it's not really practical to get it all the time. I tried getting turkey necks once but those were ridiculously hard to cut and too massive to serve whole, so I'll probably not get them again.

Lately I've also worked in beef, which everyone also seems to be a fan of -- I figured they should be eating at least one land animal that wasn't a bird. And while I don't feed a lot of seafood, I figure a bit of fish is probably a good source of Omega-3 fatty acids and such, and hence I've included smelt in the past few batches of food I've made. Smelt is a small fish meaning it's less likely to have high levels of pollutants and supposedly it's quite nutritious as well.

As for how I prepare a "batch" of food...usually I dedicate a few afternoon hours once every 2 - 4 weeks to this. The recipe I usually refer to for basic proportions is this one from catnutrition.org but I don't stick absolutely strictly to it. E.g., I ALWAYS add taurine even though I also always add heart meat, and I never grind meat or bones (all the youngsters will happily consume whole bones, so long as they're of an appropriate size).

I start by breaking 2-4 raw chicken eggs into a bowl and mixing this with some vitamin B, vitamin E, and taurine supplement. Then I chop the liver and smelt to a fine mince and mix this with the eggs and supplements. Note that the liver and smelt are the ONLY things I chop finely. Whole smelt are apparently scary -- none of the cats will eat them unless I turn them into unrecognizable mush, so I do, figuring at least that way they get their dose of fishy nutrients. As for the liver, I discovered during my first forays into this endeavor that too much liver in any one meal tends to lead to poopsplosions, and the chopping enables me to better distribute the stuff.

Also, a tip for anyone inclined to try this: liver is MUCH easier to chop when partially frozen. I find it almost impossible to chop when thawed because it's so squishy...the knife just seems to compress and push it around all over the cutting board, which is about as logistically obnoxious as it is disgusting. And it IS disgusting. Thawed liver also smells really wrong and horrible to me -- I know the cats like it but good grief. Part-frozen liver isn't nearly as pungent.

Once the egg-supplement-fish-liver glop is well mixed, I stick that in the fridge. I then get all the "main" meat, wash it (to remove at least some of the surface bacteria) and then cut it up into approximately mouse-sized chunks, bone and all (if applicable -- the beef I get is boneless, but the chicken generally isn't). For the chopping I use a meat cleaver (a fairly cheap one -- I got it for about $8 -- but so far it seems to be working fine) and occasionally kitchen shears if I'm dealing with a ridiculous amount of chicken skin.

The chunked meat all gets put into a huge stainless steel mixing bowl and mixed with the eggy glop. The result is an utterly horrific-looking medley of chunked-up animal parts. The mixed-meat medley is then partitioned into freezable plastic containers and/or zipper-closure freezer bags and put promptly into the freezer.

To serve, I simply take out a container of frozen food, thaw overnight (or all day) in the refrigerator, and present to the kitties at breakfast and dinnertime (they get two main meals a day with some treats in between). At that point it's really no more logistically difficult than giving them canned food, which was a nice discovery!

Below is a picture of the finished product, thawed and ready to serve. Looks pretty vile to me, but the kitties love it! Oh, and the really nasty-looking yellowish stuff is mostly liver, egg yolks, and fish guts:

...and here are the youngsters demonstrating their enthusiasm for this horrid-looking concoction:

As for how much raw food I feed the cats...I've never weighed the portions I give them, I just try and feed them as much as they'll enthusiastically eat in a sitting, and figure if anyone looks like they're gaining or losing an unhealthy amount of weight I can adjust accordingly.

So far Brodie has stayed stable at 14 pounds for the past few months (a good thing -- he was rather waistless for a while there, whereas now he's grown into his mass somewhat), while both Cora and Shadow have gained slightly. They're also all really solid and muscular...especially Shadow, who when I hold him feels like he's filled with bricks!

In terms of general health, as far as I can tell everyone is still doing great. Soft, sleek, shiny coats and bright eyes are the norm around here.

On the gastrointestinal front, initially I was kind of terrified about salmonella (and I am still really anal-retentive-obsessive about cleaning prep surfaces and tools and wearing gloves myself) or other contamination, but so far I've seen no evidence whatsoever that that's happening. Neither Matt nor I nor any of the cats has gotten sick.

In fact, in nearly 4 months of raw feeding we've only had two instances of Feline Regurgitation Theatre -- and I don't mean two per cat, I mean two, period. And I'm not even sure which cat it was (other than "not Nikki", as Nikki was either outside or in a separate room on those occasions), seeing as it happened in the wee hours of the morning both times.

Even when the youngsters eat grass now (I bring them in a little bunch of it every now and then so they get some roughage in their diet, and just because they love it) they don't puke. I suspect the additional fat they're getting the way they eat now has cut WAY down on hairball potential, because this is seriously unprecedented.

As far as things go at the end that doesn't meow, litterbox conditions are about as pleasant as it's possible for litterbox conditions to be. The cats poop maybe once a day, perhaps once every other day, and it barely smells like anything. They pee more than I'm used to cats peeing but that's to be expected given they get a lot more water in their diet by eating raw, and it's also healthy for them to have more dilute urine (less likely to form crystals that way).

On the activity-level front, certainly nobody seems lethargic, and since the weather's finally cooled down, I've been seeing an upsurge in "run maniacally around the house" and "chase my siblings up and down the cat tree" games. So at the very least they're getting what they need to fuel their high-energy antics.

All in all, I would say the raw-feeding experiment I embarked upon back in July 2010 is turning out to be a rousing success. Not only do the cats seem to be thriving, they act like they've just won a free trip to Kitty Disneyland at every mealtime, and it's an utter joy to see them so happy. It seems as if they enjoy the process of eating a lot more, too...when they get a big chunk of bone-in meat, for instance, it's like a combination meal and puzzle game (since they have to turn it around, bite it from odd angles, etc., in order to consume it).

I am also, I should note, spending a heck of a lot less money than I would be to feed them solely high-quality commercial cat food, so it's turning out to be a perfectly feasible endeavor despite my being unemployed. (This is especially relieving seeing as there's really nothing at the grocery store in the cat-food section that Brodie could safely eat, given his problems with corn, etc.).

All that said, there are still some things I worry about, and I definitely want to make sure and get certain lab values checked by the vet the next time everyone goes in for a checkup. I know that it's possible for cats to look and act very healthy right up until it becomes obvious that they are, in fact, very sick, and there are a few nutrient combinations and ratios that can seriously mess things up if they go askew.

The main thing that I am concerned about in this regard is the calcium/phosphorous ratio. Meat contains a fair bit of phosphorous; bone contains both calcium and phosphorous. If a cat eats a diet consisting literally of whole prey (e.g., mice, small birds, lizards, insects) this ratio sort of takes care of itself, but when you're feeding smaller pieces of larger animals (no 15-pound cat in the wild is going to take down a cow!) you're faced with the task of having to cobble together something that hopefully provides the same nutrient balance.

Commercial cat food manufacturers do this by basically starting with rendered protein (which, due to how it has been processed, no longer contains sufficient amounts of nutrients cats need, such as taurine) and supplementing it in precise amounts.

When preparing raw homemade meals for one's cats, you generally aren't using many supplements, but rather trying to balance things on a more "macro" level. It's not impossible to do this, but it does take some vigilance.

I've used a kitchen scale to weigh out liver, for instance, and mix it with appropriate amounts of muscle meat, and in my earliest attempts I actually used bone meal powder rather than whole bone so I could measure more precisely. Now, though, since learning that Cora and Brodie and Shadow actually love crunching small bones, I will do things like try and include a few quail ribs in with each meal for a few days, or alternate one day of no-bone meals with a day of bony meals. I have a rough sense of what the bone-to-meat ratio in a mouse looks like so I just try and get as close to that as I can.

I suspect that, just as with humans, the net nutrient balance they get over time is more important than what they get in a single day. So in the end I guess I'm not THAT worried that I'm screwing this up...I just think it would be good to get levels of various things checked at some point to see if there's anything diet-wise that might need to be adjusted.

Shadow in the Sunbeams

2010-10-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

The following sequence of photos was taken recently while Shadow was resting and generally lolling about in his wonderfully cattish way on the bed. His personality really comes through in these shots, I think!

Glancing off to the side, with a very solid expression. Shadow always has this look of unabashedly belonging wherever he is.

Also, you can sort of see his ghostly melanistic-tabby markings a bit here, specifically the "necklace stripe" which is obvious on Cora and Brodie but only shows up on Shadow in certain lighting. The brown tinge to his fur is also totally normal in black cats; very few are "true black".

Gazing upwards toward the window. There was probably a bird outside. And he is so SHINY! This isn't fancy camera effects...he really is that sleek-looking IRL. Probably due to a combination of spending 98% of his time indoors and his diet (he's mostly raw-fed).

Rolling playfully onto his back. Usually this is accompanied by a squeaky meyawn (meow-yawn combination), which will be repeated until the requested scritchies are delivered.

Not all cats like having their bellies touched or rubbed, and humans should never assume rolling over means a belly-rub is being requested without knowing the individual cat really well. Shadow, however, loves belly rubs, especially when accompanied by chin scritches.

I should also note that he's now (at about 1 year, 3 months) up to fifteen pounds and 38" long from tip of nose to tip of tail. Which is just amazing to me seeing as this time last year he was barely two pounds, and very easy to lose in the spare bedroom because he could literally hide behind a row of small paperback books!

This is a very "I'm quite relaxed, but would not be averse to attacking a dangly toy, should you be so kind as to present one to me" posture.

This one is probably my favorite in the set. Positively radiant with Shadowishness!

Nikki: Hypercolor Cat

2010-10-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

An interesting fact about Siamese cats is that their characteristic "pointed" fur coloration is temperature-dependent. This is related to a particular form of partial albinism, though the temperature-based aspect of that is certainly not universally found in albino animals.

In short, the enzyme activity for melanin production works differently in Siamese cats than in other kinds of cats, and this can lead to some very interesting effects when the cats experience highly localized temperature differentials (as opposed to highly localized distortions of the spacetime continuum -- sorry, Star Trek joke...).

Ahem. Anyway, Nikki had a followup appointment with the vet last weekend, and received a clean bill of health. Her wound is basically fully healed and her bloodwork looks good overall (one kidney value was apparently "a little high" but the vet didn't seem overly worried about this, so I'm just going to make sure it gets monitored). She is definitely feeling better...I can tell in part because she's gotten extremely assertive again. (When she isn't feeling well she tends to get more passive, so I've actually learned to watch for that as a warning sign.)

Here Nikki is earlier today, sunning herself on my bed, and very happy to no longer be wearing the lampshade cone:

You can sort of see the interesting fur coloration she's developed here, but it's a lot more apparent in the close-up image below:

The darkest area is right in the middle, which is where her fur was shaved closest (right around the wound). It's sort of a grey-brown color. This area is surrounded by a patch of less closely-shaved but still short medium-brown fur. This, in turn, is surrounded by the cream-white fur that is normal for the parts of her body other than the "points" (ears, face, tail, paws).

Eventually everything will grow back in cream-white on that side, but that won't be until enough fur has grown in to normalize the surface temperature across the formerly shaved area with the surrounding area. In the meantime, Nikki is just going to look rather interesting for a while.

Incidentally, sometimes I wonder if Tim (pictured below, stalking a mouse that got into the living room!), the Siamese cat I had as a youngster, was very dark overall in part because we lived in Connecticut, which got a lot colder than this part of California does.

He was an indoor-only cat (his former human had gotten him declawed, grrr...) but my parents weren't really the types to blast the heat in the wintertime so who knows. On the other hand, Tim was a Seal Point Siamese whereas Nikki is a Chocolate Point, so that could account entirely for the color difference.

Either way, Nikki doesn't seem particularly fashion-conscious so she's likely not stressing over what Matt refers to as her "bull's-eye", and certainly I'm not. Most likely both of us are just happy her injury has healed.

(Oh yeah. And the term Hypercolor in this post's title refers to a type of clothing that a lot of my junior-high classmates in the early 1990s wore, which had the interesting property of changing colors in response to the combination of the wearer's body heat and the ambient temperature. I never had any of this clothing myself but I certainly saw plenty of it and the whole Siamese temperature-based-color-changing thing reminded me of it, even though of course with the cats the color change doesn't happen right before your eyes in realtime; it's a fairly gradual process that involves the fur actually having to grow in a different color.)

Almost Almost Friends

2010-10-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a picture of this, but yesterday Nikki actually, of her own volition, jumped up on the couch and snuggled up against Brodie! At the time Matt and I were watching "Mythbusters" and Brodie was napping with his front half on my lap and his back half sort of curled up against my leg on the sofa. And at one point Nikki proceeded to jump up onto the couch, lean down, sniff Brodie's tail (which he didn't seem to mind at all), and then wedge herself into what must have been a cozy spot between Brodie and the inner surface of the couch-arm.

She's ended up in positions that look similar with both Brodie and Shadow in the past, but those have always been due to the boys managing to sort of "sneak up" on her and generally it hasn't lasted very long. But this was the first time I'd ever seen a clearly mutually-acknowledged-and-approved snuggle occur between Nikki and any of the other cats. And the two of them stayed that way for a good 15-20 minutes (15-20 minutes during which I was trying not to move for fear of startling them -- that's why I don't have a picture, as getting up to find the camera would surely have led to Cat Scatter).

Anyway this pretty much confirms to me that Nikki might very well be willing to make friends with Brodie, and that I was right about Brodie having amazing Kitty Social Skills -- he's such an impeccably polite gentleman-cat that not even a Cat of Little Patience like Nikki can manage to stay perpetually irritated by him. Which is just all kinds of awesome. Again, I'm happy just so long as the cats are civil to each other, but this is really nice to see regardless.

The Sit-With Invitation: A Second Video

2010-10-13T16:24:00.000-07:00

Below is Part 2 in my ongoing Respecting Your Feline Housemates video series:

I called this video "The Sit-With Invitation" because it is about the situation when one might want to invite a cat to sit with them. (A future video will concern the "Participation Invitation", which is when you-the-human invites a cat to come share in some activity or play a game or whatnot.)

Of course there ought never be any obligation for the cat to sit with you, but cats are generally very polite creatures, and hence may just appreciate some signal from you that you're available at a given moment.

Anyway, Part 2 features Brodie and Nikki (it just randomly worked out that way, but seeing as Part 1 featured Coraline and Shadow, I figure this is a nice balanced way to start out the series).

Brodie and Nikki, as you'll see if you watch the video, have very different styles and preferences.

Nikki generally doesn't mind being approached (and will sometimes, though she doesn't do it in this video, yell at me until I walk over to where she wants me!).

Brodie, on the other hand, very much prefers to be the one doing the approaching. He very much likes sitting with me but he's got a very strong "flight" reaction and will usually run away if someone walks up to him too quickly, stares, points at him, etc.

This isn't due to anything being "wrong" with him -- it's just his temperament. Frankly, part of the reason I wanted to make sure and include a video of him responding to an invitation in this series is because I know how often cats like Brodie get written off as "unfriendly" or "standoffish", when really they're just extremely sensitive to movement, etc.

Oh, and another thing I wanted to mention in the video but forgot to is the concept of "social timing" when interacting with cats. You will notice that I do a fair bit of waiting in these videos. This is in deference to something I've noticed about cats, which is that very often they don't react immediately-in-human-terms to something, but rather seem to "process" for a while before taking action.

And...I've found that it's often beneficial to (as the human half of any human-feline interactive exchange) know how to wait out the cat's "processing interval". I've seen a lot of humans, when a cat doesn't respond immediately, start doing all kinds of other things to try and get a response out of the cat. Of course particular cats vary in how they're inclined to react to this, but a lot of them seem to (again, in my observations) just get annoyed and leave, or appear to ignore the human.

And...as odd as this may sound, I am beginning to suspect this may have something to do with differences between the typical human's sense of time and the typical feline's sense of time.

Again, I can't claim to literally see inside their heads, but much of what I've seen them do in various situations suggests to me that cats don't readily distinguish between something that happened a split second ago and something that happened up to, say, five minutes ago.

In other words, it looks to me like felines have a relatively large "now" compared to the typical human's sense of "now". To them, perhaps, it just looks like we're being weird and irrational when we start waving our arms and making googly-eyes at them when they were just about to respond to our first invitationary gesture...which can compel them to figure that maybe they don't actually know WHAT the heck we want, and hence, perhaps we're better off left alone.

I can relate to this in some respects myself, as my own sense of time probably isn't human-typical, but even so I've definitely come to realize lately that cat-human interactions benefit tremendously when the human is willing to wait and sit still and not demand an immediate-in-human-terms response.

Approaching Cats: A Video

2010-10-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

I want to do a series of videos showing interactions between cats and other cats, between cats and their environment, and between humans and cats. Mainly I want to highlight two things with these videos: (1) things cats do and ways they might respond and communicate that aren't commonly noticed or mentioned, and (2) how humans might, by taking feline nature and individual cat-personalities into account, interact more respectfully and on a deeper level than before with cats.

The first video of this sort is embedded below:

It's a bit "rough", especially in terms of the audio...unfortunately when I was filming the water heater in my house (which is old and nearing time for replacement) was making all these obnoxious banging noises, which the camera microphone picked up even though I was in a separate room from the heater.

I also didn't script the video due to the fact that I was not sure what the cats (Cora and Shadow in this case) were going to do, and hence my narration is not super articulate. I did attempt to add captions, though, so hopefully that compensates for some of the audio issues.

Anyway, basically in this video I am trying to convey something about approaching cats (as a human living or otherwise interacting with them). Because one thing I see a lot is humans who don't seem to consider whether or not a cat might WANT to be petted or picked up. And a lot of people don't seem to even have an idea that cats CAN communicate this kind of thing, I mean outside something really egregiously obvious like running away or squirming.

But I am quite certain there's a heck of a lot being transmitted by the cat before they get to the point of needing to do something really blatant. While of course I can't claim a direct pipeline into the feline mind, I've definitely gotten the sense over time that cats prefer a modicum of politeness on the part of their human(s) when being approached by same. And while I'm not perfect at the finer points of feline politeness myself, I certainly plan to keep trying to get better.

This particular video just sort of introduces the topic of approaching cats, without getting too deeply into explanations. Initially Cora and Shadow were sitting on the bed together, but then they engage in a few seconds of grooming leading to (unserious) face-biting followed by Cora deciding she was done napping and proceeding to amuse herself jumping about the room and climbing on things. Shadow, meanwhile, stayed on the bed for some more relaxation with me. The end of the video hence trails off a bit into a rambling description of Shadow's tendency to pick up human words...of course that's not the ONLY thing he does that's interesting or worth noting, but it's what I ended up talking about in this case.

So, like I say in the video, hopefully future chapters of this will be better planned out. But I do really like the idea of observing cats in real-time like this. The next video, which I hope to have up before this week is out, will be on the concept of inviting cats (to sit with you, to share in some activity, etc.).

Not sure if I should take this as a compliment or what...

2010-10-07T17:14:00.000-07:00

...but, um, I've noticed as of late that all four felines-in-residence here seem to have developed a habit of running to the litterbox (a) right when I get up in the morning, and (b) if I go out during the day, right when I get home in the afternoon.

Seriously. Take today, for example. I've been home a good forty minutes at most (today was a lab-volunteering day; I'm helping out a biotech research group, mainly in the capacity of Fix-It Girl for various bits of equipment). And I am pretty sure every single cat here has gone #1 AND #2 at least once just since I've been home. I've gone around scooping once, and as soon as I get up from posting this I'm going to scoop again (I am an obsessive scooper -- I can't stand stuff piling up, and my guess is the cats wouldn't like it much either).

But really, kitties -- what AM I supposed to think of this? Are you just so pleased to see me that you literally can't contain yourselves? Or is it more along the lines of "oh hey look, the janitor is here, let's all go crap now and she'll make it disappear again!"?

I've also noticed another interesting trend in which someone runs to take a dump (in the litterbox -- thankfully everyone here is pretty good about that) as soon as I myself happen to sit down somewhere with a plate of food.

Perhaps some questions shouldn't be dwelt upon. And I shall keep this post brief as the scooper once again beckons.

An Intriguing Bit Of Feline Communication

2010-09-29T16:43:00.000-07:00

Today I let Nikki out of the spare bedroom (where she'd been convalescing since her vet visit this past Sunday). She is mostly back to having the run of the house (but NOT the outdoors!) with the other cats now. So far everything seems to be going very well on that front...Shadow has continued to hiss at her if she gets close, but there's been no actual fighting, which is of course quite a relief.

To give some background for the video and commentary to follow in this post, Brodie is very shy around most humans (other than me and Matt) but he's a regular social butterfly when it comes to other cats. If you're feline, Brodie wants to be your friend. And he's been trying to make friends with Nikki pretty much since she got here in January.

Nikki, however (being eight years older and not all that keen on other cats even when she politely tolerates them) has not really seemed interested in reciprocating. This doesn't bother me -- I don't see why it should, so long as everyone is at least civil to everyone else. Really I'm just happy to be able to have four cats in the same household who aren't hell-bent on tearing each other to shreds. But it's still just incredibly interesting watching all the intercat negotiations that occur inevitably in a multi-feline environment.

Anyway, I was folding laundry this afternoon and Nikki and Brodie were resting on the bed throughout most of this process. Nikki spent a while getting really frustrated at not being able to groom herself properly due to the cone, and Brodie watched this entire affair with considerable interest. Then, (as the first video shows) at some point Brodie started rolling over on his back, blinking at Nikki, and doing ridiculously cute things with his paws! And while Nikki didn't crawl over for a snuggle or anything, she didn't get angry either.

And then, about 15 minutes later, I filmed this:

Basically the second video shows what I believe to be Nikki's response to Brodie's earlier friendly overtures. They still don't end up cozying together in a purr-pile or anything, and at one point they sort of seem to startle one another a bit...but I was quite thoroughly amazed to see Nikki acting this way toward another cat. (And no, she isn't on pain meds anymore, so this couldn't have been due to chemically-lowered inhibitions). Again I leave it entirely up to the cats that live here whether they want to be friends or just coexist or whatnot, but this is still really cool. It would be nice for Nikki, I think, if she knew she had a feline "ally" in the household.

Also...in both these videos, it's worth paying close attention to the kitties' tails. You can sort of pick up on varying levels of curiosity, apprehension, etc., just from watching the little flicky movements they make at different times.

Finally, no, the videos aren't captioned, but I'm not really saying anything of interest in the narrations anyway. (I almost uploaded them with the sound off entirely because really it's the cats' actions that are the most interesting part, but there's this one bit where Brodie makes a seriously adorable mew that I am hoping is audible.)

A Brief (Positive) Update

2010-09-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

It has now been three days since Nikki's vet visit regarding her abscessed wound and broken tooth. As mentioned in my previous post about this situation, the tooth was not deemed in need of emergency treatment, so we're going to deal with that when she goes in for her dental cleaning (which won't be until after the side wound has fully healed). And as for the side wound, it still seems to be draining a little bit...I've been following the vet's advice to make sure it stays open (i.e., applying warm compresses).

I might have to ask the vet again how long it's important for the wound to stay open, though, because at this point it seems to be "trying" to close up, despite the fact that Nikki is now literally climbing the walls (there are shelves in that room going nearly up to the ceiling) out of boredom. I really don't trust myself yet to be able to gauge whether the infection has really gone down enough, given I apparently couldn't even tell she had an abscess at all until it leaked! But the area is a lot less puffy and isn't as warm to the touch anymore, and I haven't seen any actual pus since Sunday. That seems like good progress.

I am also wondering (and yes, I will ask the vet about this when I ask about wound-closure again) when it will be okay to remove Nikki's conehead collar. But that's less of a priority, seeing as (despite my worries) she seems to be able to eat, drink, and crap just fine with it on. The one thing she can't really do is groom herself and that must be really annoying for a cat. I might try wiping her off all over with a damp towel tonight just to hopefully finally get the last of the lingering vet-smell off her.

As for the other cats, they're all back to eating normally and are only a tad twitchier than usual. I've started periodically opening Nikki's door enough for the cats on either side to sniff each other, etc. That way, I figure the others are less likely to write her out of the household's feline social dynamic. I mean it's not as if she was actively friends with any of them prior to this recent epoch, but everyone was at least being mostly civil to everyone else, and I don't want to set that back if I can help it.

On that note...one of the really odd things I've been noticing over the past few days is that Cora and Shadow (who are normally "the bold ones" in the sibling group) have been a lot twitchier than Brodie (who is normally the most skittish). Brodie was the first one to investigate the cat carrier when I brought it out, the first one to come out for dinner on Saturday when everyone was wigging out a bit, and overall has been more curious than scared regarding Nikki's presence on the other side of the spare room door.

I have no clue why this is but it's kind of fascinating. Just goes to show you how complex cat-personalities can be, I guess!

Colony Cousin Cats

2010-09-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

My partner Matt's parents live fairly close to us (in the same town, a few miles over). Matt and I often go over to feed and check up on their cats whenever the parents are out of town -- and they do likewise for us (for which we are of course very grateful).

It is always very interesting to watch the feline social dynamics in and around Matt's parents' house and yard. Between two and five socialized (tame) cats living there might be considered officially resident at any given time, but the house is also located right at the epicenter of a mid-sized feral colony. In other words, when you see a cat eating out of the food bowl on the patio, he or she might well be a feral cat OR a semi-feral cat OR a fully "domestic" cat.

By sheer numbers, most of the cats that cruise by at mealtime are feral. Some of them only come out at night and slink quickly away into the shadows when done eating, so I don't know those very well. Others come out pretty much whenever (as long as there's food) but scamper off if a human comes within ten feet of them.

Still others are probably more toward the "semi-feral" end of the human-socialization spectrum -- they generally don't permit touching, but they'll happily play with wand toys and a few will even take treats right out of my hands. And of course there's the odd stray cat here and there -- for some reason these tend to usually be male, and I can always tell they're stray rather than feral because they initially look very scruffy and unkempt, in addition to being more likely to meow at or approach humans.

But I digress. The real reason for this entry is because I wanted to post some pictures I took yesterday when Matt and I went over his parents' to check on the kitties there.

This lovely long-haired girl is Toby. She's one of the tame residents -- in the photo above she is rolling over happily on her back to greet me and Matt. She was born right behind Matt's parents' garage and was actually the first feral kitten I ever actually managed to catch. She was only about four weeks old at the time, weighed less than a pound, and had a serious upper respiratory infection (as in, she was literally sneezing blood).

I would have adopted her myself but at the time (almost three years ago) I still lived in a tiny "no pets" apartment. So, she moved in with Matt's parents and was treated for her infection, spayed, vaccinated, etc. She definitely knows who I am, though, seeing as whenever I go over there she pesters me for things she is NOT allowed to have (like water straight from the water cooler tap). As Matt puts it, I must have a sign on my head that only cats can read which says "SUCKER".

But anyway, Toby is a cool cat with what would definitely be described as a "strong personality". She's super affectionate, bossy, territorial, and assertive. I am always happy to see her.

This neat little ladycat is Harmony. Unlike the other local felines, she did not originate in the feral colony, but instead found her way to Matt's parents' via another relative (who developed health problems last year and could no longer care for Harmony). That relative, in turn, had adopted her from a shelter, and had specifically gotten a black cat due to learning that black cats tended to be either not adopted out of superstitious fear, or (more commonly) simply overlooked and considered "too ordinary".

And...having gotten to know Harmony a bit over the past few months, I can say that she was certainly well named. She gets along with everyone, regardless of species. She's also very much a Greeter Cat...whenever Matt and I go over his parents', Harmony is always the first cat we see, running up to us in the driveway chirping happily with her tail straight up in the air.

Initially when I met her I was actually kind of worried about her because she was so laid-back...I hoped it was just her innate temperament and that she hadn't been scared into submission or something. But at this point I am pretty sure it IS just the way she is. She does actually have self-respect, and while she's less nervous around children (Matt's niece and nephew, for instance, who are nine and seven years old) than a lot of other cats I've seen, she won't put up with any nonsense, either.

(Also, referring back to my post on cats looking different even when they're the same color or coat pattern...Harmony is a great example of a black cat who looks completely different from, say, my black kitty Shadow. Like their whole facial structure is different, their ears are differently shaped, etc.)

Buttercup! One of a litter of kittens born to feral-mama Rosie, Buttercup is now nearly seven months old. Here she is kittyloafing in the warm fall sunshine. And to me she does actually look a bit like Coraline here...who knows, maybe she and Cora had the same father despite different mothers? They've both got the huge eyes and the fluffy cheeks (and also the cleverness, along with that Knowing Look).

Anyway...Buttercup is a super excellent mega energetic firecracker kitty. When not at rest she seems to move in an entirely different timescale than even most other cats. She kind of seems to teleport when she jumps!

Buttercup's littermates Buddy (brother, foreground) and Olive (sister, background) enjoying a lazy afternoon. Buddy is a sweet little guy who will very likely grow up to be a very BIG guy. His paws are huge! He reminds me a little bit of Brodie, actually...again I wonder about paternal parentage. Their heads are sort of similarly shaped -- long, yet solid. He's cuddly and teddybearish but with that mile-wide mischievous streak...Matt's mom calls him a "little devil" given his propensity to seek out and conquer houseplants no matter what shelf they might be located on. He very much resembles his uncle Gryff in pattern...very cool marble tabby, which is actually unusual in this colony.

And Olive! If Buttercup is kinetic energy, Olive is potential energy. I need to get a video of the two of them playing, because it's neat seeing Buttercup sproinging around like popping popcorn while Olive sort of waits for just the right moment and then LEAPS. She seems to be the more pensive and cautious of the siblings in this litter and is a little on the shy side. She is also a black cat that looks nothing like any of the other black cats in the vicinity...she's got this elfin look to her and I suspect she'll be longish but not large when she grows up.

...and THIS little black kitten, gender unknown, as-yet-unnamed, is one of the newest feral litter we've seen wandering around. S/he and siblings look to be about five or six weeks old. Personalities are difficult to gauge at this point, but I was definitely surprised at how close this kitten let me get yesterday.

Here is the new black kitten again, eating at the food bowl alongside Rosie (Buttercup, Buddy, and Olive's mom, Toby's younger sister, Serena's daughter, and probable second-cousin-or-thereabouts to my guys). It's so cool how these two are just eating together, being perfectly civil. Rosie is spayed now but she could conceivably be helping baby-sit -- female cats in feral colonies will often team up to raise kittens, and there's certainly more to that than just nursing them.

Here is the mother of the newest litter (the one including the little black kitten in the previous pictures, the little grey tuxedo kitten in this picture, and two others supposedly which I've not yet seen). Yes, there are a lot of black cats in this neighborhood! This mama does not have a name yet but I've seen her around enough times I think she needs one. I am impressed at her tenacity given that she keeps coming back to the yard even though Toby always chases her away when she sees her! (Toby seems to be a little worn out on kittens lately).

I am fairly sure this mamakitty is a daughter or granddaughter of Coal (who, again, is the founding matriarch of the Neighborhood Feral Black Cat Dynasty). She's quite a bit less skittish than Coal, though -- Coal is a "feral's feral", and unless she is actively nursing or bringing babies to eat, she's rarely even seen at all by humans these days. This one of her descendants, though, shows up pretty much whenever, and is surprisingly stubborn about doing so seeing as Toby invariably runs her off the property if she sees her!

Anyway...in this mom-cat's face I can see a slight resemblance to Shadow, and to Coal, due to the slightly squarish jaw thing. But her eyes are sort of differently spaced, and while she IS quite on-edge here she also has a tendency to always look "worried" because of how her forehead is shaped.

...and finally we have a closer-up shot of tiny grey tuxedo kitty! We don't actually see too many tuxedo kitties around here...the last one I recall seeing was actually Coal's brother (Spooky, who actually decided to give up on the whole feral thing when he was about a year old, and has lived 100% indoors with a neighbor ever since!). I think this new kitten here is a male but I am not certain...either way, whenever I see kittens turn up like this I wish I could do more for them.

Matt's parents have done a GREAT job so far, since they started noticing cats coming into the yard, of taking the ones they or I have caught in for neutering and shots. Much of the colony remains at large, of course, but nine cats (Cora, Brodie, Shadow, Toby, Rosie, Buttercup, Buddy, Olive, Suzie) isn't a bad start. I would love it if we could somehow get a more systematic and effective TNR project going in that neighborhood, though, to help cats like Coal whose bodies are being worn out by litter after litter.

Honestly if I could have one wish on the TNR front it would be for some kind of "taxi service", where basically someone would come with an appropriate vehicle and help you transport the cats to a facility for neutering and vaccinations if you actually managed to catch any. It would also be GREAT if there were low-cost "drop-in" TNR clinics, because right now you basically have to make an appointment, hope you trap a cat, and then IF you trap a cat, go in and get him or her seen to. Which gets all kinds of logistically complicated, and I have massive logistical fail issues.

In the meantime, though, I guess I will stick to just doing whatever is in my means to do, as a little bit of progress is certainly better than none.

In Which Nikki Visits The Vet And Her Young Roommates Are Unnerved

2010-09-25T21:32:00.000-07:00

Nikki had her vet appointment today. It lasted from approximately 11:30 AM to 1:24 PM, which actually isn't that bad considering all that was done and discussed during that interval. Nikki was quite a trooper herself, I have to say...I can only imagine all the pain and confusion and irritation she's had to put up with over the past few days. Hopefully now that she's had her wound well cleaned out, been given a shot of powerful antibiotics, and prescribed a few days' worth of pain medication she will recover quickly.

The picture below shows Nikki this afternoon, at home following her appointment. She is, for the moment, wearing an "Elizabethan collar" (yes, the notorious Head Cone -- thankfully she's taking it a lot better than Cora did after she was spayed!) and her injury site has been shaved of fur in order to permit better drainage.

The reddish fluid running down her side LOOKS alarming but is actually a really good sign -- the vet was able to clean out all the really awful infected pus, so now what's running out is mostly lymph fluid. I was wondering if they were going to bandage her up but apparently it's better with this kind of injury to leave it exposed to the air.

The liquid also needs to keep draining continuously as the infection heals, in order to keep anything nasty from getting trapped under the skin again. I am to apply a warm compress three times daily and clean the area periodically, mopping up any exuded fluid and making sure the wound isn't scabbing over or closing up just yet. The vet's office was also kind enough to send Nikki home with a container of pre-measured doses of pain medication, which thankfully comes in the form of clear liquid in these little syringe-like things I can just squirt into her mouth (getting Nikki to take a pill is...challenging, to say the least; the liquid is MUCH easier).

As far as the forensics of the injury go, per the vet's observations, there is presently only one puncture wound causing trouble. When I first realized Nikki had been bitten I could see two puncture wounds, but apparently one of them was a lot more superficial than the other, leading me to figure she was probably bitten with asymmetrical force. Not sure exactly how this could have happened, but I suppose if she was trying to get away from something, it could have latched onto her side with its mouth in a kind of sideways manner.

The vet also noted that the deep, infected puncture had actually gone all the way through into the muscle, which was scary to hear...that must have been very painful when it happened. On the plus side, though, it didn't puncture through into the abdominal cavity (though the fact that it COULD have freaks me out terribly to even think about).

Of course the matter of Nikki's broken tooth (that being the original reason for the appointment, after all) was also discussed. Thankfully it doesn't look like she is facing an actual dental emergency...the break wasn't down to the pulp, and the vet didn't see much in the way of dental problems at all aside from "mild gingivitis" (which is very common in middle-aged and older cats). However, she (the vet) is still inclined to extract the broken tooth when Nikki goes in for her cleaning (which will have to happen after she's completely healed from her side injury).

I would rather Nikki be able to keep the tooth if possible just to minimize trauma to her mouth, so they'll do an X-ray when she gets the cleaning and determine at that point if her canine is salvageable. I can understand the rationale for removing it "just to be on the safe side" but I at least want the vets to make sure that's really absolutely necessary, rather than randomly pulling it out as a matter of tradition or procedure.

Oh yeah. And another thing. The vet we saw today was new...the kitties' previous vet apparently moved to the Midwest (!!!) at some point during the past few months! I was rather dismayed to hear this as I really liked our old vet...she was ALWAYS willing to get completely technical with me about what she was doing and why, and so patient with the youngsters when they were tiny fierce fearful feral babies.

The new vet seems...okay so far, but younger, and she made a comment about food that has me a little worried. She approves of Nikki's diet (currently a mix of wet and dry commercial cat foods, mainly Fancy Feast and Blue Buffalo Wilderness) but something tells me I'll be getting a bit of tsk-tsking from her when she finds out my other three kitties are mostly raw-fed. Oh well, I was bound to run into that conversation with some vet at some point anyway...perhaps it will be good to get it out of the way.

Coraline, Brodie, and Shadow also had an interesting Caturday today due to Nikki's vet trip and all that entailed. First of all...apparently they all have very long memories, because none of them have been to the vet in over six months, and yet when I brought the carrier into the living room all three youngsters tucked their tails down between their legs and disappeared into the bedroom! Shadow's reaction was the most profound...he's actually spent most of the DAY under the bed, poor guy. Brodie and Cora eventually went over to examine the carrier, but only when I tossed treats sufficiently close to it, and even then they seemed very twitchy.

Then when Matt and I and Nikki got home from the vet's, apparently we all smelled like the vet's office, because the youngsters were even twitchier than before. They were also very rattled by the sound of Nikki (who is, for the moment, confined to the spare bedroom so that she won't potentially get into scraps with the others and risk worsening her injury) banging into walls and furniture with her head-cone. Everyone was so unnerved that they didn't even really want dinner at the usual time...Cora the Bold ate most of hers, but Shadow still hasn't gone for anything other than a few treats, and Brodie only just ate shortly before I sat down to write this post (which was almost four hours after dinnertime proper).

(Picture above shows Brodie, having finally decided dinner sounded good this evening)

(Cora makes an apprehensive face this evening, as if she still doesn't quite trust what's going on around here. Picture was blurry but it captured her expression well.)

(Shadow was still hiding under the bed as of this evening. :/)

...so, yeah, not quite what the cats would likely consider the most ideal of Caturdays today, but I am relieved Nikki has now at least seen the vet and been started on the path to getting better.

Infectious Lessons

2010-09-24T20:02:00.000-07:00

Well...it appears I spoke too soon in my last post in stating that Nikki's leg wound (from the mysterious fight she got into recently with a member of the neighborhood wildlife population) was totally healed. She certainly seems to feel better now and is in less pain than when she first acquired her injury -- like I noted previously, she's walking and running and jumping and climbing normally -- but today it became very evident that the wound was infected, contrary to my prior appraisal.

The picture below is of her upper right thigh area, and is included here NOT to gross anyone out but for the potential edification of any other cat-folks out there who might be wondering what an infected bite wound abscess looks like.

Note that this picture was taken AFTER:

- a significant amount of drainage had occurred
- I had cleaned the area with peroxide
- I had moved her fur out of the way to get a better look at the wound
- I had actually cut away some of the fur to allow for easier drainage / "airing out" of the site.

Part of why I started this blog was because, well, I consider myself to be accountable to my cats. Writing about them, and all that living with them and looking out for their well-being entails, is sort of a way of tangibly acknowledging that accountability. I don't expect to do everything perfectly no matter how I might try, and I think it would be inappropriate to present myself as never making any mistakes.

And on this occasion I think I made a pretty serious mistake in not examining Nikki's injury more carefully and monitoring it on a daily basis even after she seemed "better". I am now trying to read up a lot more extensively on feline first aid, because somehow until today I did not actually realize that the structure and function of their skin makes cats particularly prone to abscesses.

Basically, their skin is very tough and small wounds heal VERY quickly. Which might be a good thing for injuries that are actually superficial, but which makes it very easy for infections to develop and go undetected until they get really nasty.

I'd seen two tiny puncture wounds on Nikki's upper thigh a week ago, but since they weren't bleeding and I didn't see any sign of infection then, I didn't pay much more attention to them. It did seem like her fur was sticking out oddly on her right side, but since her fur is so incredibly dense (like polar-bear dense...she's rather unique for a Siamese in that regard) that didn't strike me as unusual enough to worry about. She regularly creates bizarre cowlick-esque structures when grooming herself, so until today I sort of offhandedly figured the "poofiness" on her side was just a combination of that and a bit of skin irritation.

BUT, I was wrong. And oddly enough, I have to credit Coraline with helping me figure this out.

See...earlier today, at around 1 PM or thereabouts, I decided to brush Nikki (given her astounding shedding prowess) and clip her nails a bit in preparation for her trip to the vet tomorrow. She doesn't mind brushing or nail-clipping so this was largely an uneventful process.

Things started getting vaguely eventful only when, shortly after Nikki's brushing session, Cora started acting weird. Specifically, when I laid down on the couch, she (Cora) walked up to me like she normally does and went to sit on my chest. But rather than settling down, she sniffed my shirt and backed up, almost as if something had frightened her. Then, when I got out some treats, Cora was happy enough to eat them off the floor, but refused to take them out of my hand.

This led me to wonder if maybe I'd touched something that Cora didn't like the smell of...and then it hit me that Nikki had basically crawled all over me when I was brushing her and holding her to clip her nails.

Eeek.

So, I went and found Nikki and picked her up to inspect her. I didn't see anything initially...but I noticed that part of my shirt sleeve was wet. Not only that, but it (and Nikki's right side) smelled really, really bad. Like a combination of...I don't know, rotting liquid garbage and swamp gas. I'd never smelled an infected wound before that point (lucky me...) but as soon as that reek hit my nose it suddenly dawned on me what was going on. And sure enough, when I parted Nikki's fur so that the skin was visible, there was...well, it sort of resembled a crater.

Nearest I can tell, she managed to pull a scab out sometime today, which released a cascade of whatever had been festering under her skin. After doing a bit of reading on abscesses in cats I was actually rather relieved to consider this, seeing as it's a lot worse if they don't drain -- sometimes the vet will end up having to open the wound manually, or insert some sort of drainage tube. And I am even more relieved that Nikki managed to essentially lance the wound herself seeing as I didn't realize something was seriously wrong until she did.

So...off to the vet tomorrow we shall go, where hopefully they can more accurately assess the extent of the damage and perhaps prescribe some antibiotics, or at the very least give me some additional helpful instructions on caring for the wound properly until it heals. I am not TOO worried, seeing as Nikki does not seem to have lost her appetite or become feverish (she definitely isn't lethargic...) but I do want to get this dealt with in addition to her tooth so it doesn't get worse or cause her any more undue pain.

Oh yeah. And I also want to take this opportunity to say HOORAY FOR VACCINES! If Nikki hadn't had all her shots (which she has, as have all the other kitties here) I would be utterly freaking out right now about feline leukemia or worse. I know, I know, they're not 100% guaranteed to be effective but they're a whole heck of a lot better than no protection at all.

The (No Longer) Whole Tooth

2010-09-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

(NiKki resting on the electronics bench)

So, I had a bit of a shock yesterday upon looking in Nikki's mouth. I try to do this periodically with all the cats in order to keep track of their dental health and check for any issues...and Nikki definitely appears to have an Issue. Specifically, her top left canine tooth (the long fangy ones) has apparently been partially broken off!

I suppose it's worth backing up here a bit because something else happened recently that I haven't mentioned yet...which is to say that Nikki was in a fight with some other animal (another cat, or a raccoon, or a squirrel, I'm not sure).

She came home limping one afternoon, about nine days ago, and while initially it wasn't obvious what was wrong (I didn't know if she'd fallen off something or what), I eventually found two small puncture marks on her right thigh. The area around the marks was slightly swollen but didn't appear to be infected, and Nikki was eating and drinking and using the litter box just fine, so I just did the "watchful waiting" thing and kept her indoors, rather than rushing her off to the vet. And as far as I can tell now, she's totally recovered from the bite injury...not only is she walking normally, she's back to her usual level of high energy athleticism and has been busying herself climbing and jumping on everything she couldn't investigate when her leg was hurting.

So yeah. Let's just say I'm VERY glad she was up to date on her shots. I'm also seriously considering looking into some sort of cat fencing system, because Nikki seems to NEED the outdoors for the sake of her mental health, but it would be nice if I could at least reduce the risk of things like fights and traffic.

But...that aside, right now my immediate concern is her broken tooth. She has an appointment to see the vet this Saturday as I know THAT isn't going to get better on its own, and while she's eating fine and doesn't seem to be obviously in pain, I don't want this potentially escalating to a nasty infection or something (which it could if the tooth is cracked in a manner I can't obviously see). I've not thoroughly investigated feline dentistry so I don't know what options there will be for treatment regardless...as in, will they just want to pull out the tooth entirely, or do some vets offer dental crowns for cats? Guess I'll be finding that out soon...

Resemblence / Divergence

2010-09-21T22:44:00.000-07:00

Prosopagnosia is a perceptual phenomenon in which a human tends to have difficulty recognizing other human faces. This definitely falls into the category of things that I was kind of amazed to learn about (as in, "you mean there's a WORD for that?!") as well as things that I thought "everyone" experienced until I learned otherwise.

In my case I am capable of learning to recognize my fellow apes once I'm very familiar with them, but when someone I see only casually or infrequently gets a haircut or something, I'm liable to not know who the heck they are unless they happen to tell me.

I also used to run into amusing situations when I worked at my last job, as there were some people I only EVER saw in the lab or manufacturing areas. Everyone in those areas was required to wear blue lab coats, and for some reason my brain ended up integrating "blue lab coat" into whatever algorithm it used to recognize those folks. Hence, if one of them randomly walked up to me in the grocery store, initially I would find myself going "gah, who IS this person?" and then finally having to just come out and ask them who the heck they were.

Oh yeah. And when I first saw "Star Wars" as a kid I knew I really LIKED it, but I could not for the life of me tell those two white guys (Han Solo and Luke Skywalker) apart...not until I figured out that their SHIRTS were generally a different color. Seriously. I also spent several years of my childhood under the impression that removing/replacing my glasses was an awesomely effective disguise, seeing as I CLEARLY looked like a completely different person based on whether I was wearing glasses or not.

But! Regardless of whatever issues I might have with HUMAN faces, apparently this doesn't carry over to feline faces. Because every cat I've ever seen looks different from every other cat I've seen, and this is almost always immediately obvious to me. (Any neuroscientists reading this want to take a crack at explaining this one, I'd be very curious to get your thoughts!)

Case in point: two of the three ex-feral littermates sharing my home happen to be blue mackerel tabbies. And I've noticed that a lot of humans persist in classifying cats based almost solely on their coat pattern/color. Several people have, upon seeing Coraline and Brodie, asked me "...but how do you tell them apart? They look like twins!"

Um...no they don't. Not to me at least. They're siblings (brother and sister) so there are certainly aspects they share in common. But they do NOT look anywhere near identical.

Heck, they're not even the exact same color (despite falling generally into the "blue tabby" designation). Brodie is a lighter/softer grey, whereas Cora is "higher contrast" and has some areas of lighter fur that range almost toward a brown-tan color. You can sort of see this in the picture below (in which the tabby siblings survey the new shelves I just put up in the spare bedroom recently):

These two kitties are also quite different in size, though admittedly that's a lot easier to perceive in person than it is in photographs. Cora is a little compact kitty with a "roundness" to her (which isn't anything to do with weight...she's only 7 lbs). She also has this rather unusual fur that isn't quite long enough to be "medium" but which is extremely fluffy and kind of sticks out rather than flopping over (if that makes any sense). Brodie, meanwhile, presently weighs 14 lbs and is much longer-bodied than Cora.

This picture (above, in black and white), with Brodie on the left and Cora on the right, shows some pretty dramatic differences in how their faces are shaped. First off, there's the ears: Brodie's are more triangular, whereas Cora's are more oval-shaped at the tips. Cora also has kind of a heart-shaped face, while Brodie has a pointier chin and overall a more triangular face (with a squarish jaw...he's got some Maine Coon in there somewhere I think, despite his very short, fine hair).

...and here we have a really clear view of their differing profiles. (And it's just the camera angle making Brodie, on the left, appear smaller than Cora, on the right...again, he's a lot bigger than she is IRL). Brodie has a rather long head and muzzle, almost to Oriental/Siamese proportions, whereas Cora has a shorter muzzle and a little vaguely up-turned nose. Again, very different-looking IMO.

Of course their personalities are also quite different -- you'd NEVER mistake them for the same cat if you actually knew them. But even on the level of "mere" appearance, to me there's just no question they're not identical by any stretch of the imagination. They're both beautiful, certainly, but not in the exact same ways!

Cat Cognition Capers: Knocking Stuff Over Edition

2010-09-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

Cross-posted from Existence is Wonderful

(A sort-of followup to Cats, Dogs, Strings, and Causality and A Small, Informal Cat Cognition Experiment)

Recently I tried looking up studies and/or scholarly articles on the phenomenon of Cats Knocking Things Over, but didn't come up with any interesting results. The majority of writing on this subject seems to be in the context of advice on "cat behavior problems", e.g., Dealing With Cats That Knock Things Down, How can I get my cat to stop knocking stuff over?, etc.

(Of course, if anyone has any links to papers on this subject please feel free to share!)

But anyway. It occurred to me, upon seeing Shadow (one of three ex-feral littermates sharing my home) push a container of cat treats off my desk for the nth time earlier today, that (if it was indeed being done deliberately) such an action might represent a fairly well-developed understanding of certain physical principles. I.e., the fact that if one cannot readily access the contents of a treat-containing object, one might be able to gain access via utilizing the tendency of objects to fall over when pushed or similarly manipulated.

(Full disclosure: as a person on the autistic spectrum who is also interested in neuroscience and relevant cognitive research, I must admit it tends to catch my attention whenever I encounter what to me looks like an interesting ability or trait, in any species, being largely written off as a "behavior problem". Often it seems to me something is being missed when this occurs, so I'm driven to investigate in situations like this!)

Certainly the standard "I am not a professional researcher, this was all done completely informally, my home is not a laboratory, etc." disclaimer must be applied to these results. Moreover, I am well aware that interpretation is not data (and vice versa), and in truth the only thing that can be said for sure is that at least one of my cats pretty consistently knocks over objects when is is conceivable that he has reason to believe these objects could contain treats.

The following three videos appear in chronological order. All were filmed on 5 September 2010, in the afternoon, within the space of maybe twenty minutes.

In this first video ("Cats and Gravity I"), Shadow is shown pushing a sealed container of treats off my desk.

He had precedent for doing this, as this particular container is the usual one I put the kitties' daily allotment of treats in. Once, about a week ago, I left the lid part-way off, to see what he would do (seeing as he'd definitely be able to smell the treats within). And in that case he proceeded to nudge the container around with his nose until it fell off the table, scattering treats hither and thither, much to his and his siblings' delight.

Now, I am fairly certain that this first knockdown was an accident. However, since then, Shadow has pushed the treat container off multiple other surfaces (besides the coffee table), on multiple separate occasions. "Cats and Gravity I", then, seems like it could very well represent Shadow's having learned that "if I push this container, sometimes treats fall out!" I don't know that anyone in the cognitive research field actually believes this level of reasoning is beyond the domestic feline (I suspect not) but in any event, it makes for a good "baseline" data point in terms of the variables I am interested in observing.

In this next video ("Cats and Gravity II"), we have an interesting situation involving three cats. You may remember Coraline and Brodie from all those string and zip-tie trials I ran as a rough check of what experimental design conditions might be improved so that cats could better demonstrate their actual cognitive capacities in string-pulling tasks. In the case of that set of puzzles, Cora and Brodie were the only participating felines; Shadow preferred to simply watch.

However, in "Cats and Gravity II", you will observe that Brodie "experiments" with the treat-containing bottle but doesn't succeed in getting anything out of it, whereas Shadow makes one single decisive swipe and sends the thing crashing down. Note that this bottle is different from the treat container in the first video, but it is one that I've put treats in several times prior to this, so the cats would definitely be familiar with it.

(Coraline, meanwhile, is ignoring the whole business and seems more excited about the fact that I've gotten up from my computer chair, giving her an opening to steal it. To me this mainly suggests that at different points in time, different cats may have very different priorities!)

And then we come to "Cats and Gravity III". The outcome of this scenario completely caught me off guard (you may even be able to hear me exclaim "HOLY CRAP!" at one point). In this case I took a treat container that would be new to all the cats (another empty vitamin bottle, this time a dark purple one slightly larger than the white one used in "Cats and Gravity II"). I let them watch me putting treats into it, and then placed this bottle on top of a small end table in the living room (a different surface in a different part of the house than my desk, to control for position habit).

In this case, the video shows that initially none of the cats really showed interest in the new treat bottle when I first placed it on the end table. However, after I went over and shook it a bit, Shadow went over to the table, put his front paws on the top surface, and then proceeded to lift the bottle up with his mouth and throw it down onto the floor. (That's where I exclaimed "HOLY CRAP!", by the way.)

So...what to make of this?

Subjectively speaking (yes, I'm about to offer an interpretation), it looked to me like Shadow spontaneously came up with a really creative way of getting the treats he knew were inside the purple bottle. Which would suggest that he's learned to generalize beyond "if I paw at this maybe it will fall and treats will come out" and now understands that it is not the mechanical motion of pawing or nosing that's important, but rather, the falling of the bottle itself, if one's goal is to get the treats out of the bottle. This, to me, seems pretty significant, and again I'm curious to know if there's any literature out there saying one thing or another about this type of cognition in felines.

However, this was of course a tiny sample set. And I did not do this series of "mini-trials" in response to another study I'd be able to cite and/or comment on -- like I said at the beginning, I couldn't find any studies about cats knocking stuff over. No peer-reviewed references = not "ResearchBlogging". Plus, for all I know, cats' understanding of gravitational cause-and-effect is already well documented and known and I just fail at searching for this documentation.

That said, at the very least, I think anyone who really wants to study cats' understanding of cause-and-effect as it pertains to objects in a broader sense would do well to try out a variety of different scenarios involving different types of objects, and requiring different types of attentiveness and planning on the cats' part.

I find it terribly problematic (and this goes back to my discussion of the string experiments again) when a single particular test is taken (whether by the study authors, the media, or both) as meaning something globally significant about a given population's abilities or lack thereof. In the absence of a single task (or task type) with huge amounts of existing data backing up its ability to test "general" cognitive ability in a given domain, multiple tasks of varying attributes would seem to me required for appropriate levels of rigor.

Also, I have to say that another reason I wanted to post these videos is because now more than ever I am beginning to think it is very important to have as much of an experiment on record (for multiple parties to view and evaluate) as possible. Even though I (hopefully) disclaimered the heck out of my string experiments, I still would rather do things as close to "right" as possible for a layperson -- just because I'm not a real researcher doesn't mean I can't practice holding my informal stuff to higher standards.

Finally, I would just like to say that I would be extremely interested to get people's comments on what it looks like is actually happening in the videos above. As in, if you think Shadow is doing what he's doing deliberately, what aspects of his actions lead you to think that? I'm curious about this because I see my cats doing all sorts of things all the time, some of which (to me) look "deliberate", whereas other things they do look thoroughly "accidental". Only I haven't come up with a good way to describe what "deliberateness" looks like in quantitative terms.

I suspect that in general this sort of issue comes up a lot in animal cognition research, which has me curious as to whether there even exists any kind of objective way to measure something so "internal". Behaviorism (in my opinion) fails miserably to account for everything that could potentially be important (for one thing it often seems to completely fail to account for, say, different sensory and perceptual modalities on the part of the researcher vs. subject), and much of what I hear from "evolutionary psychology" sounds like it's been pulled straight from someone's nether orifice, to put it politely. So I'd be really intrigued to know what other tools or paradigms may currently be out there that might be more promising.

The Cat-Monitor Sandwich

2010-09-03T15:53:00.000-07:00

I've been seeing a lot of this lately:

This being an image of my desk. That's Brodie curled up behind the monitor, and Shadow snoozing in front of it. My whole desk is basically a glorified cat tower at this point. Of course I am fine with this!

"Sorry, A Cat Is Biting My Elbows"

2010-09-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

For those who aren't aware of this, my previous employer (I'm an electrical engineer) shut down the plant I'd worked in since 2002 a while back. Hence, 2010 has thus far been the Year of the Job Search.

So, what does this have to do with cats, you may ask? Well, today I had my first-ever phone screening interview. And at one point during the conversation, Nikki jumped up on my lap and proceeded to bite my elbows. Repeatedly. Not enough to be really painful (no blood was drawn), but enough to be surprising.

So there I am, trying to keep up with the interviewer's questions about analog design and decibel conversions (a feat in itself, given my auditory processing difficulties, which the phone really tends to exacerbate), but also having to pause and apologize for being distracted because one of my cats has decided to chew on my arms.

Thankfully the interviewer seemed unfazed by this. I have an in-person interview scheduled for next week!

But what was Nikki trying to tell me with the elbow-biting? She has never, ever done that before. Did she just want attention? Was she trying to get me to stop doing whatever I was doing, as it was clearly making me agitated? (Again, it was my first phone interview and I was straining to parse the interviewer's words the whole time, so I probably looked pretty tense).

Honestly, while I don't like to over-interpret in light of only minimal data, I would lean toward the latter. Nikki is one of the most empathic cats I've ever met.

She and I sometimes get into these "loops" wherein I'm stressed about something (but don't entirely realize it), and then Nikki starts getting agitated, and I'm all focused on trying to figure out what is going on with her, until finally I realize that the agitation started with me. And so I calm down. And then she calms down. It's very interesting when this happens and it definitely suggests to me that cats can be really adept at "reading" and responding to human affective states.

So, while again I don't know FOR SURE what Nikki meant with the elbow-biting, I'm darn certain she meant something. I mean, it's not like I'd been dousing my arms in salmon juice!

Why The Fish Tank Is Taped Shut

2010-08-28T21:18:00.000-07:00

Nigel, the resident goldfish, lives in a 30 gallon tank here in the computer room. Nigel is about five years old and close to eight inches long -- quite the formidable fish! However, he's lately required a fortification of his living quarters, as a certain little alpha cat has proven herself to be incredibly persistent in her quest to breach the aquarium's defences.

Observe the bit of Scotch tape here. This is necessary to hold the lid down, because it opens pretty easily with the merest flick of a paw. (Also, Nigel himself has been known to flip the lid up when he goes acrobatically after his food, so it's really important to make sure that can't happen!):

Observe here that the filter/pump cover is taped down at the edges. This is necessary because Cora knows how to remove said cover otherwise. The white plastic thing adjacent to the cover is an after-market add on placed there by yours truly, upon realizing that a barrier was needed to thwart the paw of kitties who seem to be laboring under the fantasy that they are, in fact, raccoons:

The following set of images shows Cora in various stages of her recent attempt to breach the aquarium's fortifications. Fortunately for Nigel (and her as well...all kidding aside, if you have an aquarium and a cat in the same house, it's VERY important for the cat's safety as well as the fish's to make the aquarium into something approximating a fortress), she was ultimately thwarted in her efforts.

But she certainly made a good show of the whole thing, and the photos below are a very good illustration of what it means for a cat to be "constantly calculating angles"!

Crunch GROWL Crunch Crunch!

2010-08-27T14:53:00.000-07:00

Well seeing as I referred to Shadow's Happy Food Growling in my last raw feeding update I figured I would post a video of this phenomenon.

It's embedded below (and in case you are unclear on what "raw feeding" means, I should warn that this is NOT something you want to watch if you are extremely squeamish about raw meat or the sound of bones crunching).

(Note that he did NOT catch the bird himself, it's from the grocery.)

Shadow is taking on about a third of a whole raw quail here (the torso section plus a wing, I think) and enjoying himself immensely. What's weird is that when I'm preparing raw meaty meals for the cats (which, in the case of the quail, basically amounts to "chop into thirds and serve") it seems completely disgusting, but as soon as I give it to the cats my brain flips into "ooh, Discovery Channel!" mode. Like I'm watching some nature documentary about miniature panthers or lions. Seeing those carnivore teeth and jaws in action is pretty astounding!

Raw Feeding Update #1

2010-08-25T21:03:00.000-07:00

Well, we are now about four weeks into the raw feeding trial here. Again I am pleased to report that Cora, Brodie, and Shadow are still doing extremely well on their new diet (which is still, and likely to remain, in a state of flux, for variety's sake if nothing else). Nobody has grown wings or become telepathic or anything -- I am certainly not one of those who believes raw food is some sort of Miracle Serum, but everyone seems plenty active, playful, etc.

On the gastrointestinal front, I continue to be astounded at how little the trio's poops stink these days, and how even Brodie's, er, deposits have been so consistent in their consistency. Even on the grain-free regular cat food (which was far more friendly to his system than some of the early grain-based foods I tried) he often seemed to have intestinal gas. As in, I could hear his guts gurgling from halfway across the room -- which can't have been comfortable for him. That's possibly the thing I am most pleased/excited about in this whole endeavor...Brodie just seems to FEEL better to a degree he never could on anything else we tried. Yay!

We've had a mere one incident of puking in the past month. I don't know who it was, as it was one of those "woken up by the Hork Alarm, but cats are all arranged at opposite corners of the living room by the time I manage to get out there" affairs.

I am not super concerned about this, though -- anyone who lives with cats for any length of time tends to learn firsthand that the feline approach to reverse peristalsis borders on the recreational. Moreover, all the cats had eaten some grass (from the yard, during one of their supervised outdoor jaunts) the previous day and of course there's always the Hairball Factor to consider.

Truth be told, only one incident of Gastronomical Splatter Art in the course of a month is kind of amazing when you live with four cats! So whether it was grass, hairballs, or perhaps a tad too much liver (it's very rich and I've since been strictly portioning it out so nobody gets more than a dime-sized piece per meal), it doesn't seem to have been a sign of anything sinister.

So, I expect I'll be keeping this up. It's actually far more logistically easy than I ever imagined -- I mean seriously, plopping one-third of a whole thawed quail down in someone's dish isn't appreciably more complicated than setting out half a can of wet food.

That said, the kitties are still also getting some commercial cat food, though probably less than 20% of their diet is currently comprised of this. I know some raw feeders encourage a complete switch as soon as possible but as I am taking an evidentiary approach rather than an ideological one, I figure I should probably not rush things or even necessarily assume before I have more data that All Raw, All The Time is the Absolute Best Ideal Cat Diet.

I am convinced at this point that there are aspects of raw feeding that are truly awesome and ought to be studied/explored/acknowledged, and my cats seem to be doing great so far, but I see no reason to make a religion out of it.

But I digress. The trio take their supplemental taurine no problem when it's mixed into a spoonful of meat-byproduct-pate', and while their "crunchies" (dry food) have pretty much been reduced to "treat" status, they each end up getting some of those most days as well.

I find that the crunchies are very handy for "enrichment"-type games...like putting a few of them into a tall cup on the floor and seeing if they can figure out how to knock it over (yep, they can). Or putting them (the crunchies, not the cats!) into weird apparatusses (apparati?) like the one in my Informal Cat Cognition Experiment.

The youngsters also LOVE the "chase the crunchie across the floor" game, and Shadow has become incredibly proficient at catching his treats in mid-air (yet another thing he taught himself to do...I really must post a video of it sometime!)

I still haven't tried raw with Nikki and I am kind of afraid to. She is such a "Princess and the Pea" about food and pretty much everything (this isn't an insult...she just has extremely keen senses, even for a cat, and her sense of taste is particularly acute) that I suspect even a micron of raw chicken mixed into her Fancy Feast would set off her alarms. I would still like to try at some point but give how picky she is I am reluctant to risk potentially putting her off the only well-hydrated thing she will (at least when she's not going through one of her "I Hate Everything" weeks) accept.

Oh yeah. And the bone thing. Wow. I have never SEEN such enthusiasm at mealtime. Shadow especially LOVES his chicken and quail wings and legs and ribs, etc. LOVES them. Like to the point where he will stand up on his hind legs, paws on the kitchen counter (he is REALLY tall now!), shrieking at me as I portion out the carcass of whatever it is I'm preparing.

And then when he gets his Meaty Bone Of The Day he sits there gnawing on it and growling and making noises that literally sound like "OMNOMONONONMMNOM!"

Cora does this occasionally as well which just amuses me to no end because she's so little and sweet-looking...she is truly the epitome of badass adorable.

Brodie, meanwhile, tends to stand off in a corner (or, lately, under the dining room table -- he seems to prefer eating with a "roof" over his head) politely and methodically chomping away, then licking up the bits and quite daintily cleaning his paws when finished.

I've actually been having to put Shadow in a different room once he's finished his own meal, as he can be a bit on the pushy side and Brodie (the resident gentle Gamma boy) is more of a pushover. He doesn't challenge Shadow if said brother tries to steal his chicken wing...he's more liable to be all "Okay, bro, no problem...take it...backing up now, I'll just be over here..."). This is turning out to be a wholly manageable situation, though, and with the raw stuff I prefer to watch them eating anyway so monitoring isn't a big deal.

The Terrifying Hat

2010-08-16T21:41:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the poor quality image -- I had just wanted to take a quick picture of the hat (on my head) so I used the bathroom mirror, and then the image came out weirdly bright red so I ended up turning the saturation way down so I didn't look like I had some sort of terrible sunburn.

But all that is beside the point...the point being that my sister Katie gave me this neat kitty hat yesterday! She says she got it from a street vendor who sold various hand-made items. I think it is very cute personally...but the younger cats here do NOT agree!

I put it on last night and as soon as Shadow saw me, he put his ears back and ran out of the room. Cora and Brodie did the same thing when they saw it. So I took it off and let them sniff it, and they didn't seem afraid of it then.

However, when I picked it up again and they were able to see the face, they ran off again! Eeep. I guess it must look like some sort of GIANT CAT OF DOOM with EYES THAT NEVER STOP STARING to them.

So for now I am just not wearing it in their presence...I don't want to freak them out! I will probably let them examine it some more with it NOT on my head and see if maybe eventually they will realize it's neither "real" nor a threat.

Nikki, meanwhile, didn't seem remotely fazed by GIANT CAT OF DOOM HAT. She's older than the others so for all I know she's seen this sort of thing before.

Happy Birthday to the Formerly Feral Trio!

2010-08-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

Well technically we do not know the EXACT date on which they were born, but going by the vet's estimate of their age on their first visit last year, I determined that August 15 was close enough to serve as the "official" date. So I just wanted to post here in celebration of Coraline, Brodie, and Shadow reaching one year old!

Here are some photos from their first year:

Tiny Coraline and Brodie, during their first week post-adoption. They were still completely feral at this point (not to mention covered with fleas and infested with coccidia parasite). Both weighed just about 2 pounds.

Tiny Shadow during his first week here. He was trapped 3 weeks after his siblings, when they were all around 10 weeks old. I had been all prepared for a VERY wild kitten that would take ages to get used to (some) humans, if he ever did, but Shadow ended up surprising everyone by settling down and deciding I was okay (and Matt wasn't bad either) within a mater of days!

Tiny Shadow climbing the scratching post (a home-made one that was eventually incorporated into the Kitchen Cat Platform Thing). Nowadays the post isn't much of a "climb" for him, seeing as he is now taller than it when he stands up on his hind legs!

Tiny Coraline playing in my shoes!

Tiny Brodie sneaking across the bed (the kittens were JUST beginning to settle down...at that point they would sleep and play on the bed when there were no humans about, but they would dive under the bed whenever I or Matt walked into the room).

Tiny Brodie having just woken up from a nap (Cora can be seen partially in the background, still resting her eyes). I think they were maybe 12 weeks old here. In order to get these pictures I had to move veeeerrrry sloooooowly so the kittens did not get startled. (In general that is a polite thing to do around cats in general when the cats don't know you well, not just feral cats. Also it is important not to stare directly into their eyes because many cats find that threatening.)

The trio napping on my bed, at around 4 months old. (Cora had just been spayed -- that little outfit she is wearing was actually a sock modified with holes, so that she would have something protecting her incision.):

The trio playing in sunbeams on the bed, at around 5 months old:

The trio in the kitchen, dazzled by sunbeams again:

Cora in the sunbeams:

As they grow from kittenhood into catolescence, you can fully expect young kitties to start taking over the sofa, but it will be so adorable you won't care. (Nikki stays at a safe distance on the arm of the couch):

Honestly, could YOU move these guys?!:

Takeovers of beds also increase in magnitude and intensity as the youngsters near 6-8 months of age:

...and by the time they're a year old, you may expect to find folding the laundry simply isn't what it used to be!

Raw and Whole Prey Feeding: A Trial Run

2010-08-11T20:29:00.000-07:00

...is something I've actually gotten up the nerve to try recently. There will probably be several lengthy posts about this, but for now here is a picture of Cora polishing off a quail:

I should also note that I am not doing 100% raw for the moment...I am still learning about and evaluating what research there is regarding this sort of thing. But the younger cats have been getting around 50-60% of their daily diet in the form of raw meat, bones, organs, etc., for nearly two weeks now. (Nikki won't touch the stuff but that's no surprise -- for the moment I am just glad she is back to liking grain-free wet food.)

Briefly I will also say that:

- Nobody has gotten sick
- Poop output and stink seems to have been reduced by at least half
- Coats are getting softer and shinier
- Brodie seems to have a lot more energy (which makes me wonder if he is just really, really bad, even for a cat, at getting any benefit whatsoever from carbohydrates, which even grain-free commercial cat foods generally have some of)

Hence, so far I would say things look very promising!

(And yes, I am supplementing with extra taurine -- technically cats "should" be able to get all the taurine they need from raw prey or prey-model food containing enough heart and dark muscle meat and such, but I don't want to take ANY chances with that particular amino acid.

One study in which two groups of cats were fed, respectively, a commercial diet and a diet of whole ground rabbit, resulted in one cat in the raw group suddenly dying of cardiomyopathy due to severe taurine deficiency. When examined, other cats in that group were also found to have signs of deficiency, so their diet was supplemented with taurine for the remainder of the study. So while I would guess tentatively that the process of grinding the rabbit was responsible for the loss of taurine, again, not taking any chances here.)

I also tried (in addition to the chicken, turkey, quail, and beef that the trio have been quite happy with so far) getting some frozen feeder mice at one of those pet stores that caters to reptiles. Yes, I know, kind of gross (and the mice were so cute despite being dead!), but in a way I sort of feel like feeding whole prey is a way for me to really come to terms with what a carnivore is. Store-bought kibble may come in cute little shapes reminiscent of children's cereal, but it still (if it's of any quality) contains dead animal bits and something in me finds it a bit unnerving to be so disconnected from the "source" of said animals. If that makes any sense at all to anyone.

In any case, so far only Brodie seems willing to actually eat the mice. Cora and Shadow played with them a bit, but didn't seem to recognize them as food. (Which I am sure Brodie is just fine with...he got what they didn't eat!).

With Sideways Mind: On Listening To Cats

2010-08-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

Scene: computer room, my house, around 7:30 PM this evening

Shadow (from the floor behind my chair): "YAAAAAAOW! YAAAAOW! MYOOOOOUUUU! MRRREW!"

Anne: "What?"

Shadow: "YAAAAAOW! REEEE! MIEW! MMMMM!"

Anne: "What, little guy?"

Shadow: "Nrrrrrrr. Miew. YAAAO!"

Anne (gets up from chair): "Okay, fine, Lassie, show me what you want."

Shadow: *gets up, trots into the hallway*

Anne: *follows, waits to see which direction Shadow seems to be going in*

Shadow: *heads toward kitchen*

Anne: *follows*

Shadow: *plunks self down on linoleum, looks at Anne, looks out window*

Anne: "You want me to sit down?"

Shadow: *motions in the affirmative*

***

So, I sit down, right on the linoleum (which is actually linoleum and not vinyl). Shadow proceeds to snuggle up against my leg. I hear the purr motor start going.

Seated there, I notice that there's quite a lovely breeze coming through the back screen door. The air smells fresh and carries little notes of back-yard with it: tomato leaves, pepper, dry grass. Then I look out the large window overlooking the patio.

Through the trellised semi-roof over the concrete surface next to the garden I see a huge flock of birds making their way across the sky. They're too far away for me to tell what type of bird they are; all I can see is that they're dark-colored, too small to be crows, too large to be sparrows.

Shadow and I both sit there for a while. I don't keep track of exactly how long. The birds pass in waves: one group, then another, then another. The breeze continues to blow. Shadow climbs into my lap, still purring.

Eventually, of course, I have to get up, so I do. But not before thanking Shadow.

***

Cats communicate. They may not speak (in English or any other human language) but they certainly have plenty to say. I do not claim to understand cats in general, or any specific cat, perfectly, and I find it unnerving (and often a sign of bad ethics) when any human makes such a claim.

However, in living with cats and noting the patterns of how they interact with me, with other cats, with objects in their environment, etc., I have definitely come to realize certain things about listening. Not listening with ears, per se. -- more like (and readers of Michael Ende will know what I mean here) Momo-listening.

What cats have to say can be very subtle. Shadow meows loudly and often but that is only a miniscule part of what he says. Yes, he often wants a snack, and sometimes it's clear he wants me to get one of those wand-type toys he loves and wiggle the string so he can chase the feather-tailed mouse or whatever happen to be attached. But other times he just plain surprises me.

***

The incident related above is foremost in my mind as I write this, yet it is far from isolated. I have been astounded more times than I can count at the complexity and delicacy of what my cats tell me, how their actions illustrate what they're noticing and paying attention to in the world around them.

There is just not much in the human culture with which I am most familiar (or its common vocabularies) that prepares someone for this kind of thing.

For listening to cats involves a lot of what I would call "the cognitive equivalent of peripheral vision".

It involves a lot of not as well: as in, not immediately assuming the cat just wants food, or even play, or generalized "attention". It involves not placing fixed, arbitrary limits on your idea of what cats are capable of thinking, experiencing, and doing.

This is, in part, because cats are so good at being cats, they don't actively require our approval or permission to continue doing so throughout their lives. In other words, their catness is not dependent on being judged proper or sufficent by humans; catness simply is, and cats are surely cats even when no-one is looking.

This means that a human might "keep" a cat, feed her, change her litter, pat her head and call her a good cat on occasion -- presuming the whole while that their human view of their coexistence encompasses the whole of the cat's existence and experience. When in fact nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that only cats have subjective knowledge of what being a cat feels like, and the truth is also that cattish priorities very often differ from typical human ones.

As for me, while certainly I am not a cat, I am very interested in what they have to say. I want very much for them to feel like they can show me where to sit to let a nice breeze wash over one, and where one might get to witness a dazzling display of avian migration. I want them to know that I see their priorities and interests as valid and genuine. I do not know the degree to which this will ultimately be possible, but I am sure as heck willing to keep trying my darndest to listen.

Update: Nikki is eating!

2010-08-01T18:01:00.000-07:00

Hooray! While she still seems to be "off" wet food, Nikki has eaten about her usual amount of dry food (including some of the EVO she was rejecting last week and some of the Blue Buffalo Wilderness which she'd never had before at all) yesterday evening and throughout today. She is back up to her normal (high) energy level, and was even running around on the neighbors' roof this morning!

(Image shows Nikki, patrolling the rooftops)

I do hope she eventually accepts some sort of wet food but for now I am just glad she is eating something with a reasonable amount of basic nutrients -- she certainly would not be able to live indefinitely on whipped cream and cheese!

In any case, I am compiling a list of things to try in case this ever happens again. So far that list consists of:

1.) Whipped cream (the Reddi-Whip spray stuff). NOT in large quanities, just a little lick off the finger. This type of whipped cream contains a bit of sugar as well so it might help resolve a glucose crash and inspire her to eat more before she starts getting heartburn.

2.) Shredded cheese (she is partial to the Mexican 4-Cheese blend). Again, only to be given in very small amounts. Provides a small amount of protein at least.

3.) Wellness brand Turkey & Salmon Jerky treats (as many of these as she wants -- they don't have the full litany of nutrients needed for a complete diet but at least they're meat)

4.) Purina Cat Chow Indoor Formula dry food. I don't like feeding her this as a primary diet (as it's basically meat-flavored cereal, NOT the best thing for an obligate carnivore) but it seems to be a "comfort food" for Nikki, sort of her version of saltines and ginger ale. And it is at least a source of taurine and other vital nutrients.

I would be quite curious to hear from anyone else out there who lives with a very picky cat -- what s/he eats when s/he will hardly eat anything, etc.!

Picky Cat Is Picky, But She Still Needs To Eat!

2010-07-31T10:51:00.000-07:00

Well, it appears I spoke too soon regarding Nikki's acceptance of the new-ish EVO dry food (the weight-management stuff). She WAS eating it just fine until earlier this week, but she's been turning her nose up at it for the past few days. She is also still rejecting the Fancy Feast, and hasn't liked any of the other wet foods I've offered recently. I still haven't tried the Whole Foods brand she seemed to like a few weeks back so hopefully I can get some of that soon, though I have a feeling she's just "off" wet food completely right now.

Anyway, the past few days have involved a fair bit of worry on my part, because I know cats who go on hunger strike for whatever reason are at risk of hepatic lipidosis if they go more than 24-48 hours without food. Nikki isn't fat (she weighs about 8 pounds) so she's less likely to develop liver problems than a larger cat would, but obviously it's still not good for her to not be eating.

She had a full workup at the vet's a few months back (they did a comprehensive "senior wellness" checkup, which is standard for cats over seven years old) and all her results were very good (vets often comment that Nikki, who will be nine in October of this year, seems "unusually healthy for her age") so it's doubtful she has any chronic or serious illnesses. And while certainly I would call the vet if she wasn't eating anything, or if she couldn't seem to keep anything down, or if she was having elimination issues, none of those things are true at this time, so I don't figure it's worth stressing her further with a trip to the clinic just yet.

For now I am watching her closely to note any changes in her behavior that might indicate either illness or that she's feeling better. I do suspect she's had a bit of a stomach ache this week, as she's spent more time than usual in the "hoverloaf" position (sort of an elevated kittyloaf, which cats will sometimes sit in when they feel fine, but which is also commonly engaged in by cats who don't feel well as it lets them partially lie down without their abdomen touching the ground)and has gagged even when offered some things she usually likes (such as the chicken-and-fish flavored hairball remedy gel I give all the kitties occasionally).

My tentative theory is that (due, possibly, to a recent ingredient alteration/less tasty batch of byproducts in her Fancy Feast) she went a bit too long without eating, which irritated her stomach, which led to barfing the next time she tried to eat, which led to further aversion to her usual food, which led to low blood sugar, which led to even less of an inclination to eat.

Last night I tried giving her a little bit of honey to address the possible blood sugar issue -- I put a tiny bit on her lips and paws and while she didn't seem particularly enthusiastic about this, she didn't gag and licked it all off. She seemed a bit sprightlier after that so I suspect she probably was getting a bit crashy (something I've experienced myself -- as a kid I would often refuse food to the point of hypoglycemia, and my parents would have to coax me for hours into nibbling on a piece of cheese, etc.).

This morning I offered her:

- Fancy Feast salmon again (she didn't gag, but ignored it)
- Wellness Core Chicken and Turkey wet food (she ignored this too)
- EVO dry food (sniffed it warily, picked up one piece in her mouth but spat it out)
- Purina Indoor Formula dry food (her "old" food, which my parents left when they brought her over in January -- she ate some of this, albeit without enthusiasm)
- Whipped light cream (she ran up to me meowing when I got the container out to put some in my coffee, and happily licked some off my finger)
- Shredded cheese (she ate this enthusiastically)
- Plain yogurt (I tried to trick her into eating this by putting some cheese in it but she just ate the cheese and ignored the yogurt, though she did lick off what I put on her paws -- I figured the "good bacteria" might help her stomach)

Given that litany of responses, I've concluded that she DOES have an appetite -- which is a relief. Not having any appetite at all is pretty bad for a cat, but being extremely picky is, well, par for the course for Nikki. She seems to have an extremely sensitive sense of taste and smell even for a cat, and goes "off" things very easily, so I expect this won't be the last time I'm dealing with a mass trial-and-error session. Of course she is completely worth the effort -- it's not even something I would consider NOT doing...she NEEDS to eat, and it's not like she's rejecting stuff on purpose. It's not a power struggle -- her sensory system is just set up in a way that means, sometimes, there's only a very limited selection of foods that won't trigger a nausea response. And she can't help that, so there's no sense in my getting upset or frustrated with her.

So, for the moment she's going to be getting occasional bits of cheese and whipped light cream, along with as much dry food as she wants (which isn't a lot right now, but at least it's something). I've been mixing the EVO with the Purina Indoor and while she's mostly eating "around" the EVO, she's at least not being so turned off by the smell that she doesn't eat the other stuff. I may try getting some more Innova Cat & Kitten (dry) food again since she seemed to like that a lot and it's far healthier than the Purina -- I've already had to feed her the Purina separately from the other cats so Brodie won't get into it, and that hasn't been a major hassle, so perhaps I should just accept that and not be so concerned about finding a food I can give to everyone here all at once.

A Small, Informal Cat Causality Cognition Experiment

2010-07-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted to Existence Is Wonderful)

My post referencing the 2009 cat-cognition study noted that:

(a) Most of the popular articles regarding that study made what looked to me like unwarranted interpretive leaps (sadly not much of a surprise there these days), and

(b) While the study itself read as more "neutrally investigative" and data-focused than the popular articles, it did not seem as if the experimental setup necessarily accounted for feline sensory modalities, and hence may not have permitted a true test of the cats' cognitive capacities in the area of physical causality.

So, in light of item (b) above, and in light of the fact that I had all the necessary components on hand to create a setup similar to that used in the aforementioned study, I decided to see if my own feline housemates might be interested in trying their hand (or rather, paw) at some string-pulling.

Of course I am not aiming to present my own "results" as Real Scientific Data; they were, after all, quite informally obtained from a tiny sample set. At the absolute most, observations presented herein might represent a sort of "proof of concept", i.e., how setups could be improved in future experiments to increase the likelihood of meaningful results. Overall, though, I mainly did this for fun -- for me, and for the cats!

BACKGROUND

Four cats were offered the opportunity to participate in this activity:

(1) Brodie
DOB: 15 August, 2009 (approx)
SEX: Male (neutered)
ANCESTRY: Domestic shorthair

(2) Coraline
DOB: 15 August, 2009 (approx)
SEX: Female (spayed)
ANCESTRY: Domestic shorthair

(3) Shadow
DOB: 15 August, 2009 (approx)
SEX: Male (neutered)
ANCESTRY: Domestic shorthair

(4) Nikki
DOB: 28 October, 2001
SEX: Female (spayed)
ANCESTRY: Siamese (Chocolate Point)

The three younger cats (Coraline, Brodie, and Shadow) were littermates, born into a feral colony. I adopted them when they were between 7 and 10 weeks of age. The elder cat (Nikki) is unrelated to the others, was born into a cattery, and lived with my parents until early 2010.

All four cats had lived with me for at least six months prior to the experiment, and since the experiment took place in my' home, they did not have to acclimate to an unfamiliar environment beforehand.

PREDICTIONS

Predictions going into the experiment were as follows:

(1) At least one cat (of the four) would demonstrate both motivation and ability to complete at least one task case successfully.

(2) Performance (in motivated cats) would improve when the treats were made more visually obvious, i.e., via use of color and size contrast.

(3) Performance might improve if a less flexible medium (i.e., plastic zip ties rather than string) was used, as this would provide faster feedback to the cats regarding their efforts and would be less likely to induce distraction (cats often find strings, and their movements, extremely interesting in their own right).

SETUP

The setup used in this exercise was based on the description provided by the study¹:

The apparatus consisted of a box of base size 49 × 40 cm with clear Perspex walls on three sides and a wire mesh lid. The top of the box hinged off the base to allow access to the inside. The base was made of chipboard with a white plastic surface, and protruded from the box at the front by 9 cm, providing a smooth surface and good contrast for the strings. A 1-cm gap at the base of the front wall allowed the strings to pass from the front accessible end into the inaccessible part of the box. A clear Perspex bridge (base size 11 cm × 6 cm) was used in trials where there are two crossed strings to prevent the strings getting tangled. Every part of the set-up was visible to the cats at any time. The strings were blue rope (∅ 5 mm), with a length of 25 cm (long) and 10 cm (short). Cat treats were attached to the strings to act as rewards for succeeding in the task. The reward for each trial was approximately 10 g of mashed tuna or pilchards, or a small cat biscuit.

Some articles referencing the study also included a photograph of the apparatus used, which I attempted to replicate as closely as possible given available materials.

Main Structure

To make the main structure of the apparatus, I used several pieces of scrap, held together with blue painter's tape in a rectangular "frame" shape. To the bottom side of the frame I attached a sheet of thick white watercolor paper.

To the top side of the frame I attached a piece of Plexiglas with a grid pattern drawn on it -- however, upon closer reading of the study apparatus description (after I'd already completed my experiment), I noted that the original study had used a plain wire mesh on the top of the frame.

(Image showing main structure of test apparatus I built)

This meant that, contrary to my original (incorrect) impression, the cats more than likely would have indeed been able to smell the treats, as wire mesh blocked their physical access to the treats via the top of the box, but not the transmission of odors. If I were to try the experiment again at home I would use a piece of window screen or similar material for the lid of the box, rather than Plexiglas.

Another difference (albeit a deliberate one in this instance) between my setup and the referenced study's setup was the fact that in some trials I employed a central wooden divider that extended the interior length of the box (parallel to its left and right sides).

The purpose of this divider was to prevent the strings or zip tie mechanisms (more on that in a moment) from interfering with each other physically at all during "parallel string" trials, as I saw the potential for distraction if one string ended up touching the other while the cat was pulling on it, etc. However, in practice this divider turned out to be unnecessary, as when I removed it the cats' performance did not change and the strings/zip ties did not get tangled at all.

Treat Delivery Media

I experimented with two primary variables in terms of the treat-delivery media:

(1) Flexibility: In some trials I used actual strings (lengths of very flexible sisal twine), with or without a "treat container" at one end (see below):

In others I used plastic zip ties modified to include a small "cup" on one end to hold treats.

(Image shows one of the zip tie/treat cup mechanisms employed)

(2) Contrast: In the first few trials I used unmodified sisal twine lengths and simply tied a piece of dry cat food or chicken jerky to the end of the treat-carrying piece (see image below, note the lack of visual contrast):

In the second few trials I used yellow "cups" filled with a small amount of dry cat food attached to the ends of plastic zip ties.

In the third round of trials I went back to using the sisal twine, but attached the end of a white plastic spoon as a treat container.

The goal here was to see what, if any, impact visual contrast had on the cats' ability to correctly identify the treat-carrying piece (thus distinguishing it from the "dummy" piece). One major criticism I had of the original study was that (inasmuch as I could tell from the description and photos available) it did not seem as if the treats were sufficiently visible to the cats.

Since, as I noted in my prior post, cats have fairly poor close-range visual acuity for fine details, I surmised that the treat holder needed to be significantly larger/wider than the end of the string (or zip tie) in order for them to be able to distinguish it properly. I also figured that it would be helpful for the treats themselves to stand out color-wise against the background of their container or cup.

TRAINING

I did not employ a formal "training phase" as the study described doing. However, I did present the treat-delivering string and zip tie pieces to the cats for inspection (prior to inserting them into the puzzle box). During this activity some of the string/zip tie pieces contained treats and some did not.

I also left the apparatus on the floor for several hours prior to starting any task trials, so that the cats would be able to investigate it at their leisure and not be distracted by the sheer novelty of the equipment when the task trials began.

RESULTS & DISCUSSION

Participation Variation

Of the four individual cats presented with the test equipment, two (Coraline and Brodie) completed various task cases successfully. Shadow was very interested in watching his siblings but declined to participate himself, and Nikki seemed totally uninterested in the activity.

Having lived with these particular cats for some time now I am not surprised by this outcome, given their respective personalities and predilections; Coraline and Brodie (Coraline especially) have always been the most mechanically inclined of the group, whereas Shadow is more inclined to solicit favors from humans (i.e., he'd rather meow at me to GIVE him a treat than try and get one himself).

Nikki, meanwhile, just tends to operate on an agenda all her own, and while at some point I can see her getting interested in a string puzzle of some sort, she wasn't interested on the day(s) on which I ran trials.

I should note that I do not draw any conclusions (negative or positive) about the non-participant cats' understanding of physical cause and effect based on their non-participation in this particular exercise. Since neither of the non-participants even attempted to complete the task, all I figure is warranted in terms of conclusion is that the materials and situation failed to inspire their interest, which of course says absolutely nothing about their capacity to cogitate about string and its uses.

Social Factors

By "social factors" here I refer to the presence/absence of multiple cats near the apparatus setup during task trials. Initially I tried testing one cat at a time, however, for the younger cats this proved impossible. No single cat would participate or do anything with the apparatus at all when separated (via a closed door in the house) from his or her siblings. Instead, the lone cat would wander around looking for his/her siblings, while the sibling cats would scratch at the door.

Once I let all the cats wander about freely, though, the three younger ones were plenty interested in the apparatus and two of them participated consistently over the course of three days. To me this suggests social factors might be more important to cats (especially related cats who get along well) than many would necessarily suspect. Having all the cats accessing the setup simultaneously did make certain aspects of the experiment more difficult to organize but it was certainly a better situation than zero participation, as I had when I attempted to test a single lone cat at a time.

As for Nikki's non-interest in the setup, social factors may have played a role her as well -- she tolerates the others but does not seem to like being very near them. I may try taking the apparatus out to the patio at some point and seeing if she might show more interest there -- she seems to be a lot more inhibited indoors, will only play with toys in the yard, etc.

Basic Observations

Again, as this was an informal/fun exercise and not an Official Scientific Experiment, I did not keep a precise count of how many times a given cat solved a task -- since I was the sole person setting up and running everything, it was not possible to carefully track every variable. However, I did note whenever a cat was able to solve a particular task case 2 or more times, and I considered that to be my basis for "success".

As expected, none of the cats completed a task in which a treat was tied to the end of a string. They all seemed vaguely interested in the strings as strings, but did not appear to even realize that one of them had a treat attached. I expect that this effect was compounded to a degree not necessarily present in the referenced study due to my use of plexiglas rather than wire mesh (which they'd have been able to smell the treats through) as a box lid. Unfortunately I did not get any video footage of this phase.

During the zip tie trials, Brodie and Coraline both consistently solved the parallel case. Their success was independent of "position habit", meaning that I was able to switch what side the treats were on and/or move the apparatus to a different room in the house and they still knew what zip tie to pull on to get the treats.

Brodie solving parallel zip tie task (room #1, treats on left side):

Brodie solving parallel zip tie task (room #2, treats on right side):

Cora demonstrates her zip tie prowess here:

(This one is actually an "amusing out-take" candidate -- I had not yet properly secured the apparatus to the floor before this trial, and Cora got her claw stuck in the treat container after she pulled it out, so we had a bit of a treat explosion! Her brothers, of course, were pleased by this turn of events.)

I did not end up doing a "crossed" case with the zip ties, because I discovered that the ties were too thick to fit under the 1 cm gap at the front of the box when stacked on top of one another. Refinement of this task would definitely account for this issue.

In the "string and spoon" phase (in which the treats were placed into the end of a white plastic spoon attached to one of the pieces of sisal twine), again, both Coraline and Brodie were successful at the parallel strings task. Unfortunately (due to disorganization and logistical wrangling difficulties on my part) I did not get a video of Brodie doing this but I got two of Coraline:

In the "crossed strings" case, Coraline had no trouble with this at all. I don't think she went for the "wrong" string even once. Brodie did not do as well here, however, he has always been very interested in string as a toy, and it seemed like when the strings were crossed it was a lot more fun to play with them than try to figure out which one had a treat attached to it.

The video below shows Cora easily solving the crossed-strings case:

(To me it certainly LOOKS like she knows darn well what the function of the string is, but I am not sure how to quantify this observation!)

CONCLUSION

In conclusion I note that my predictions (1) and (2) turned out to be accurate inasmuch as I could tell. Two out of four cats-in-residence completed at least two types of task each, which to me suggests that their performance was unlikely to have been the result of "random luck". However, of course in a formal study many more data points would be taken and results might differ.

As for the contrast issue, while again more data would be a good thing to have here, it really did seem based on what I observed that if the cats could clearly see the treats, those motivated to obtain them had no trouble doing so.

As for whether the zip tie mechanism improved performance (due to it being easier to physically manipulate than the string), it did look like this was probably the case, at least for the parallel task. Again, physical constraints of the apparatus prevented me from trying a true "crossed zip tie" case.

Finally, I find myself really wishing there were some way to quantify or better express what looks to me like "purposefulness" in Cora's performance on the crossed strings task. Perhaps, though, the difficulty of quantifying such impressions is why well-designed experiments employ numerous trials through which many data points are obtained, so that one is not relying upon subjective impressions, but rather, probability.

And all that said, I do have to say that trying this experiment (fumbling as my attempt was...) definitely turned out to be highly enjoyable, both for me and for the participating (and spectator) cats. I've since been strongly inspired to come up with ways of feeding them more creative than just dumping food in a bowl, as they seem to greatly enjoy "outsmarting" their food, which I suppose is quite appropriate for a small carnivorous predator species!

1-Whitt, E., Douglas, M., Osthaus, B., & Hocking, I. (2009). Domestic cats (Felis catus) do not show causal understanding in a string-pulling task Animal Cognition, 12 (5), 739-743 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-009-0228-x