Tag: cat habits

Sunday’s Theme Music

Mood: mellow

It’s Sunday, August 27, 2023 in Ashlandia, where the beer and wine is above average. 65 F now, today’s forecast is for smoke and sunshine. Smokeshine? Sunsmoke? Don’t know. High will be 93 F.

Wedding stuff presently frequently preoccupies us. A nephew getting married, we’re down to a few weeks. I’m buying a suit, planning a haircut, making hotel, flight, and rental car reservations, talking to the floofs sitter. Wife has found her dress and is working on accessories. Thank dog we’re not in the wedding party.

Woke up with wet elbow syndrome today. Familiar with this? Tucker, my feline buddy, enjoys morning cuddling. He signifies this by getting up on the bed, finding a hand and tapping it with a claw until the hand is raised and offered for his use. Then he rubs his face against the hand and fingers, working it until I start participating. I guess today he couldn’t find a hand, but a bare elbow was discovered, so he engaged in it with his face until I woke up and felt the wet skin. Don’t know which part of the engagement actually brought me out of slumber, the rubbing, or the wet. I immediately began fulfilling the terms of the contracts (which I don’t remember signing) to scratch him. He threw himself down against me so that belly scratching could commence. A thick-furred booger head, his belly fur gets knotted and is often home to small sticks, leaves, etc. I work my way through the knots and remove all that stuff.

Read more sickening racist news. Blacks being targeted shot in Florida. Another black couple harrassed and handcuffed while touring their new home after a neighbor called the cops because he couldn’t believe that a Black could afford a house in HIS neighborhood. Ending after the builder came and confirmed that the couple had bought the house. THEN the cops uncuffed them. Then the neighbor flipped them the finger and yelled, “Fuck you” and retreated to his house. Really, WTF is wrong with people?

The Neurons have a battle of the bands happening in my morning mental music stream (Trademark problematic). First up is Alabama 3 with “Woke Up This Morning”, known as being the theme song for the defunct TV series, “The Sopranos”. That’s not a surprise; I posted it to someone’s page yesterday, and “woke up this morning with a wet elbow in the bed” crossed my mind as song lyrics, forcing The Neurons to reprise the song. The other bit of music is the Rolling Stones with “Under My Thumb”. Don’t know what brought that out. I was busy with the feeding routine for me and the cats (they’re fed first) when the song settled into the MMMS.

I think I’m going with Alabama 3 today. Just seems more fitting to my mood.

Coffee is ready. It’s pleasant out on the back patio, if you don’t mind a little smoke. Stay pos and be strong. Here we go. Cheers

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The Plan

They slumber in vinca

or under the grill,

but you’ll never see them

because they stay so still.

They only come out when

something is offered to eat,

and that comes after the sun is setting,

and there’s a lot less heat.

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Subfloofminal

Subfloofminal (floofinition) – 1. An animal who makes little impressions on others.

In use: “Dixie was such a loving dog with her people but was shy and withdrawn to the point of being subfloofminal. Many visitors claimed they didn’t know a dog live there, for Dixie always spirited herself into hiding when company arrived.”

2. Doing something for an animal without the need of conscious thought.

In use: “Petting Herc was subfloofminal; the big dog would steal onto a nearby space where Donovan’s hand could find Herc’s head, and that’s what Donovan always did, as if the pooch commanded him telefloofically.”

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Monsters and Food

They’re different, how they eat, these four felines that found our home and demanded sanctuary.

Tucker and Boo are big, upwards of sixteen pounds, with the frame to support them. They remind me of football fullbacks. Tucker also has large, white front paws.

Papi and Quinn are both small. Papi is ginger and lithe as a lion. Quinn, weighing in at under eight pounds in his entire life with us, can be mistaken for a miniature raccoon.

It’s a male group. My other insists that if we had a female among them, we’d have more order, and a tidier house. These four seem like the messiest beasts we’ve ever had. They also fight and anger more than any of the others did. None, save Quinn, can walk around the others without threats, warnings, or chases ensuing. It’s wearying.

Commonalities are limited. Besides being male, Tucker and Boo are cats with unknown pasts while Papi and Quinn both ran away from their homes and started living at our place. Three of the four have lost one of their canines. Years ago, Quinn showed up here at home with one missing one day, while Tucker had one removed. Boo has had one missing since he joined the household. Papi is the only one with all his canines. He’s the odd cat out.

Their eating highlights how different they are from one another. Papi, the newest, is a licker. He’ll lick his pate from one side of the bowl and up the other. Then, since it’s going up the side, he’ll quit and turn to the kibble. This is what caused me to notice their eating habits. Pepper, the neighbor’s cat who we feed on the front porch, is a licker, too. I’ve watched her. But when the food goes up the side of the bowl, Pepper walks around the bowl to where it’s moved, and begin eating from there, licking it into the other direction. My wife says, yes, Pepper is a female, and she’s smarter.

Tucker is a chomper. He grabs a piece of pate and chomps it down, no problem. Boo likes to relocate his food from the bowl to the floor and eat it from there. Quinn is a licker like Papi, but as he licks and moves the food forward, he leans forward to get ahead of it. Sometimes that means he gets food on his ruff.

Where do they learn these things? Their other commonality are their shadow styles. Like many cats, they like to follow along, to see what you’re doing. They act as if they’ve never seen these things before. “You’re on the toilet? Well, let me watch and see if you’re doing anything different.” Maybe they’re monitoring our health, or we’re part of a science experiment.

The toilet is just one place of fascination. Doors are others. “You’re opening that door? Quick, let me take a look.” Never mind that it’s the closet door, and we went through this yesterday. Perhaps I should learn from that, and adapt their stance, that you should never assume that it’s a closet today, just because it was a closet yesterday. Even if it is a closet, how do we know there aren’t monsters inside? We must check.

All of them also shed fur. My wife swears that our other cats never used to shed fur the way these four do. It’s her ritual to go around in the morning, picking up fur and muttering to herself about how much more she could get done, if she wasn’t picking up fur all the time.

They’re an interesting and exasperating quartet. Each manages to endear themselves, too. I guess that’s why they’ve chosen to live here and put up with us.

 

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