Bella's kittens at 3 weeks: open eyes and exploration!

Bella's kittens were three weeks old this past Saturday!

Their eyes are open now, and they're getting very curious about their surroundings. When I visited this past weekend, they got to explore the bathroom a bit:

They seem to want to be together all the time, even when exploring. They stuck close together as they wobble-walked across the vinyl tile. We're really hoping to find a forever-home with someone who can adopt them as a pair. 

They're getting a lot more wiggly and active, but they're still babies and thus they get tired pretty quickly. Here above they are after a vigorous round of nursing (Bella was off taking a break when I snapped this picture -- I don't blame her!).

Above, Matt's mom (that's her hand) is holding the larger, darker grey kitten, as she was checking for sticky eyes. Both babies are breathing just fine and not sneezing or anything, thank goodness -- just a bit of the crusty-eyes thing, which has been getting steadily better since their eyes opened up.

...and here we have the other/smaller kitten, who seems to be following in Cora's pawprints as far as a sense of adventure goes. The kittens were moved to a much larger, nicer crate shortly after this photo was taken -- one with openings that should be narrow enough to avoid anyone's head fitting through. This actually scared the crap out of me when it was happening...I was worried she was going to get stuck, or worse, injure her neck somehow. Thankfully she was fine but still.

...and finally, one picture showing 2/3 of the family. The larger kitten is barely visible nursing at left. You can see one grey paw but not much more than that. Bella, meanwhile, is sniffing at some treats I put in for her, and the smaller kitten is looking at the whole affair with considerable interest (ears forward and everything!).

Oh and while of course whoever adopts them may well re-name them, we're sort of tentatively trying out the names Ella (for the probable-girl kitten) and Bruce (for the probable-boy). I think it's good to be able to refer to kittens to something other than their fur color and/or size. Matt's niece actually suggested Ella because it rhymes with Bella. Personally I think that could get confusing, but at the same time...it does seem to fit! And it reminds me of Ella Enchanted, which would work with this kitten's personality. As for Bruce, I have no clue where Matt got that one but, again, it weirdly fits.

Coraline, Calendar Cat!

A while back, on a whim, I submitted the photo below (which I've posted on this blog previously, but am re-posting for easy reference) of Coraline climbing the orange tree in my yard to Alley Cat Allies in response to a call for pictures for their 2013 calendar.

I didn't expect anything to come of it, but lo and behold, I got an email last week indicating my picture had been accepted. So now, presuming the designers can fit the photo to their layout (there was a disclaimer in the note I received) Cora gets to be a calendar cat.

Of course this isn't some kind of earth-shaking event, but Alley Cat Allies is definitely doing good work (advocating for TNR and encouraging/educating people to take responsibility for the cats in their community) and I am delighted to be able to contribute something that they can use in their literature and publications. I suspect Cora would approve as well, given she herself started out as a feral kitten and if not for the material on ACA's website I might not have had the confidence to actually try my hand at Trap-Neuter-Adopt (for Cora and her brothers) or Trap-Neuter-Return (which many of their colony cousins have since benefitted from).

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In Which Cora And Shadow Join Forces

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Coraline Climbing

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!

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

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.

The Office Closet Desk Shelf Cat-Climbing-Gym Project

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!

A Brief (Positive) Update

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!

The (No Longer) Whole Tooth

(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...

Why The Fish Tank Is Taped Shut

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"!

On Barn Cats

This past Saturday, Matt (my SO) and I attended his family's annual picnic. Usually these events are held at a park local to us, but this year some of Matt's mom's cousins, who live on a sizable piece of farmland about 2 hours north-ish from here, offered to host at their place. The primary crop produced by Matt's relatives on this farmland is almond trees (they've got something like 40 acres of them) but there are also a few chickens and some sheep, etc. This setting definitely made for an interesting picnic experience, but most interesting (to me) was getting to meet a whole lot of cats!

According to the farm-resident relatives, there are actually something like 40 cats (!!!) living on the property, a population consisting of about half kittens and half adult cats. I did not see all these cats personally, but I did not expect to, seeing as we were there during afternoon hours (a.k.a. naptime for kitties) and the place was huge (meaning there were lots of potential hiding and secluded sleeping spots).

The first cat I met, pictured below, is named Diamond. Matt's mom was actually holding her when Matt and I walked up to the picnic area.



She was extremely curious, social with humans (and dogs, and other cats), and persistent -- eventually one of the younger cousins was told to go put her in the barn because she kept jumping on the picnic tables and trying to stick her nose in the chip-dip. But she got out of the barn easily. Hee. And she was also one of the most unique-looking cats I've ever seen: small (she was about a year old and probably weighed about six pounds) but with a feathery Maine Coon-ish tail, blue eyes, light-colored body, and "tortie point" coloration.

Diamond is now spayed but she did have a litter of kittens a few months ago. Matt is shown holding two of them: a little marmalade boy named OnyxTiger and a calico girl whose name I unfortunately cannot recall.



Like their mother these little ones were very sweet and inquisitive, though the girl kitten was quite a bit more adventurous. When I was holding her she sort of tried to climb up the back of my neck and probably would have ended up IN my backpack if the zipper had been open. Reminded me a lot of Cora in that regard!

Diamond's brother Mooglu (was originally going to be "Mowgli" but the kids kept saying "Mooglu" and it stuck) was similarly curious about all the strange humans gallivanting around. He hung out and watched the festivities from the porch or front garden most of the time. He was about Diamond's size (must be a "small cat gene" in that population) and a very handsome tuxedo brownish-black-and-white.



These two young kittens were lounging out by the barn most of the day. They don't have names yet.



This pretty marble tabby girl is called Pocahontas.



And then there was this little grey fellow -- a very young kitten, probably no more than 3 or 4 weeks old.



When I first saw him something definitely seemed weird about the situation because it is not often you see a kitty that young without his mama. He was just sitting on one edge of the concrete platform thing at the barn entrance all by himself. I went over to let him sniff my finger (a cat greeting that is more polite, IMO, than just going up and petting them) and he did so. But when I got close to him I saw that his eyes were fused shut!

I thought at first maybe he was REALLY young and his eyes just were not open yet, however it turned out that he had some sort of eye infection that was causing his eyelids to stick. Kittens' eyes should be open by around 9 days and (tiny as he was) he was definitely older than that. I also learned that he was apparently the sole survivor of a litter that had been very sickly from the start, and that the mother kitty (who I did not see) had not been very attentive. Just as with humans, not all cats necessarily have the best parenting skills. And while Little Grey Kitten was apparently being sporadically nursed by another female cat, he was definitely not getting enough milk to thrive on. Kittens are supposed to have fat little round bellies and this little guy just felt like fur and air.

But! The day had somewhat of a happy ending for Little Grey Kitten, because another relative at the picnic (who I briefly spoke to -- she was definitely a Cat Person) got permission from the farm-folks to take him home with her, where she would be able to bottle-feed him, get him antibiotics for his eyes, etc. I really hope he pulls through, and I am SO glad there was someone else in attendance whose household cat-carrying capacity was not at its limit (as mine is with four felines-in-residence).

I would guess that most modern humans who did not grow up in farm-type settings and who've known cats primarily in the "companion" context might find the life of a barn cat to be quite unusual, perhaps even disconcerting. These are definitely not "kept" cats. They face some very harsh realities, such as the fact of being not just predators in the rural zones they inhabit, but prey for coyotes and the like. Aside from rabies vaccines, they probably rarely see the vet; sick barn cats either get better on their own or "disappear" as they succumb to illness. Most of them have a few fleas here and there, and this is not considered a big deal.

However, they have a lot more autonomy and freedom to come and go than the average house-cat. And their lifestyle certainly permits them to constantly engage in normal feline activities (hunting, territory-marking, etc.) without human interference or scolding. Some of them are spayed or neutered, of course, but not all, as (due to the aforementioned coyote predation issue) the farm-folks want to assure there are enough cats at any given time to properly deal with crop-threatening rodent pests.

Furthermore, these cats looked tremendously happy; trotting around the farm, eyes bright and sparkling, tails aloft like banners, greeting humans, dogs, and other cats alike with purrs and face-rubs. They also, aside from the aforementioned miscellaneous flea, looked to be extremely healthy: lean (but not too skinny) and glossy-furred.

Of course housecats can be, and often are, just as happy and healthy. Most will not wander far even if allowed outside, and hence I would certainly not consider them to categorically be "prisoners"; cats are territorial and tend to get very attached to places, after all. And there are ways to provide cats with plenty of human-acceptable outlets for necessary feline actions in human homes and suburban yards. My point here is hence not to suggest that either the housecat life or the barn cat life is fundamentally "better", but rather, to express considerable awe at the impressive adaptability of cats.

We humans call them "domestic" felines, however it seems clear to me that cats can do very well in any number of situations. It is almost as if they have a number of different "programs" they can potentially run depending on their early life circumstances. It rather amazes me to consider that the silent feral cat who only comes to the food bowl at night when humans aren't around, the super-socialized housecat riding around on her human's shoulder, and the friendly-but-scrappy mouser-extraordinaire barn cat are, genetically speaking, members of the same species.

Moreover, having observed cats in all these settings, I find myself amazed even further at the way each sort of life can be equally rich despite every path looking so radically different from every other. Of course I am not saying that it doesn't matter at all how we (humans) treat cats, so hopefully it does not come across that way. But I think there is a difference between treating someone ethically and respectfully, and trying to prescribe a particular sort of life for every member of a given species as the only possible acceptable one.

Coraline is Clever at Climbing

One of the very first things I ever noticed about Coraline was how observant, and how much of a planner she was. Even as a tiny two-month-old kitten, I could see her looking around whatever room she was in and figuring out just how everything fit together, and how she might be able to use available objects to her advantage (i.e., to get onto interesting-looking high shelves).

And, last night she figured out how to get to what is probably the highest point in the entire house -- the top of the DVD cabinet in the living room. It was really amazing to watch. First she jumped onto the mantel over the fireplace, then she jumped to the entertainment center, and then she made it to the top of the cabinet. And proceeded to sit there like an amber-eyed feline gargoyle as Matt and I watched our pre-bedtime Buffy episode.

Anyway, below is a picture of Cora quite triumphant atop her newly-discovered perch:



...and here is a video I took this evening of her making the upward journey:




I put one of her favorite feather toys on top of the DVD cabinet (when she was sitting where I knew she'd see me). And within seconds she made her way up there, knocked the toy down, and returned to the floor via the same route she'd come...and went right to where the toy had fallen.

I just thought that was pretty neat. And very very indicative of the fact that, yes, cats can indeed have rather complex planning and problem-solving abilities. Not that this is a surprise to me!

Also, it is interesting to see the different interests/priorities/predilections of different cats when it comes to such things as vertical terrain-exploration. Both girl kitties here (Cora and Nikki) are majorly into the climbing and the leaping.

Whereas the boys (Shadow and Brodie) are still a lot more likely to try and grab onto objects with their claws and scramble/crawl their way up. They will sometimes jump high when going after interactive toys, but they're not so much for the indoor climbing-gym stuff.

Cora and Nikki both also seem to do this thing where they jump very high in a manner that looks practically effortless; that is, there's not a whole lot of "wind-up". Which makes it almost look like teleportation sometimes!

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