Something Is Happening, Mommy

Cat Walking

You're Our Llama, Mama, Part One

HERE IS THE BALLAD OF MAMA BOO, THE MOTHER OF MY CHILDREN

In early spring 2007, I noticed this sweet kitty loitering on and near my back deck on a regular basis. I used to have a bird feeder back there. Here she is hanging around under my finch feeder hopefully waiting for a little bird snack:

I took this photo through a window (on May 5, 2007) because she always ran away when I appeared outside. I thought she might be one of the kittens that was born here in 2005, so I was very interested in her reappearance. I had no clue that she was already a Mama Cat, but I should have known.

[When a long-haired black cat loitered here two years before in 2005, her presence predicated the sudden appearance of five kittens from underneath the deck and I fervantly believe that one of them grew into our Mama Cat, the mother of my children. The working theory here is that the dark recesses under my deck are somehow very attractive to pregnant cats...I have since removed the bird feeder because it just didn't seem fair to the birds. Oh - and let's call that long-haired black cat "Grandma".]

FLASHBACK TO 2005 WHEN MAMA CAT WAS BORN
(my journal entry from August 19, 2005):

"Yesterday was Friday and I had to go to work. I was making breakfast, washing dishes, etc. when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of animal movement on my deck which I thought was a squirrel (likely) or a woodchuck (also likely.) On my second look, it turned out to be a kitten! And on my third look, there were two kittens!

"Kittens! Kittens alone are definitely strays. Kittens alone must be fed. I have no cat food! Milk! I have milk. Wait. Milk is bad for cats. But I have milk. OK, milk. Jeff gave me a bowl for the black cat. How does the black cat fit into all this? Oh-milk! OK-I put the milk out and they scurry under the deck over near the hose. Wait. Watch. They're back! They're drinking milk! There's three kittens!

"Then I thought of canned chicken in the pantry. Wait! Tuna fish! Flew on tiptoe to plant rack and got a plate. Put half a can of tunafish on the plate, chopped it up and scared them away again when I opened the door to put it out. They came back. Now there are five. Five kittens! Five was my favorite number when I was five!

"Last night was exhilarating. I stopped on the way home and bought cat food. I saw a couple of the kittens on the deck when I got out of the car. I divided a can of cat food onto three plates and some kitten activity was just starting when Jeff arrived. I went to the front door and hushed him and we tiptoed into the house to watch the fun through the back door.

"The most handsome kitten has tufted ears like a Maine coon cat and is very shy-sometimes only his eyes and ears show as he peeks at us over the edge of the deck. The bravest kitten is soft gray stripes with wispy white paws (now read carefully - this is me in 2010 talking to you - here is the evidence that I first met Mama Kitty when she was a little kitten recently born) and the second bravest kitten is just the same except that the whiteness of her paws is bold and well defined and she has a brilliant white chest and chin ( Now look at this photo of Mama Kitty in 2008. Look familiar? Hmmm? Doesn't she have a "brilliant white chest and chin"? And doesn't the photo to the left show that "the whiteness of her paws is bold and well defined"?) There is a long-haired black who looks just like his mother and #5 is a nondescript tabby that I don't remember very well.

"But this morning I am bereft...Where did I go wrong?...Did I peek at them through the door too often? Did I talk to them too much?

"A bowl of water and three dishes of food sit out on the deck now. Waiting.....waiting.....except for the birds, things are very quiet. Very different from my fantasy of them waiting for me outside my door this morning, alert but less afraid, until finally I would be able to sit outside with them while they ate, unperturbed....oh well." (end of 2005 journal entry)

TWO WINTERS PASSED WITH NO MORE CAT ACTIVITY.

FAST FORWARD TO 2007...

Sailor appeared under my truck parked in the driveway as I arrived home in the car during a midnight monsoon on a dark, rainy Sunday night - June 3, 2007. He spent our first night together in a cat carrier in the bathroom. By the next night he had a name and he’d been to the vet. Dr. Poster said he was about 7 weeks old (but he was probably closer to 5 or 6 weeks.) He could eat solid food, but his eyes were still blue.


I had a sudden revelation that the bird-feeder kitty was probably this little boy kitten's mother. With the vague idea of somehow helping her, I shamelessly decided to use her kitten to lure her to stay in the area. The next day, even though it was still wet and drizzly, I cruelly put Sailor into the cat carrier and placed him alone outside on the back deck. It took only a combination of his pathetic mewing and some judiciously placed food for me to discover that not only did he have a devoted mother - he had two adorable twin sisters!

(note Mama Cat on the path in the background)

It was a very cold & rainy June, so I set up a feeding station on the deck under a blue tarp to keep the rain off. I photographed the two sisters through the kitchen window on June 16, 2007, barely two weeks after Sailor came inside.

From outside, Sailor’s family watched Sailor and me. They waited for mealtimes. I put a lawn chair on the back deck and the two sisters (I had started calling them T.C. - for Tortoiseshell Cat and Smokey) would sleep there in a knot, sometimes all night - sometimes with Mama. Life changed again in August 2007 when T.C. casually walked into a cat carrier that I had baited with food and allowed me to close the door behind her (now it was her turn to spend the night in the bathroom.) Within 24 hours I caught the more timid Smokey in a raccoon trap and, after their hysterectomies, Sailor's sisters started living in a giant dog cage in the back of my pickup truck. For a while I was too busy to take pictures (but check out this short movie of life inside the cage.)

In October 2007, Smokey Boo Boo went to live with Jeff. T.C. Sissy stayed in the house with me and Sailor.

Mama Boo was left outside all alone.
To be continued.............

(A visit from Mama Cat on Halloween 2007)

I'm Homa, Roma!

Julia and I visited Sarah in Rome and it was fabuloso. Wanna see some pictures? I'm on Flickr here (no account needed) and Julia is on Snapfish here (you have to have an account to view.)

Join the Gang, YinYang

Unbelievable. She sneaks up on him and compromises him in his sleepy vulnerability.

Keep in Touch, Dutch!

I got lots of great emails about the photos of Phil, Beryl and Sailor. I took the liberty of posting some of your notes as comments after those entries. Hope that's ok with y'all.

I also received some wonderful photographs.
Alice sent a lot of fun images from the last six months or so.
Here's one with her caption:

"Mommy got me a peticure, pretty color huh?"


My friend Ben collects cat photos (his mom tells me) so I created a new category here called "cats4ben". If you like pictures of cats, just click on cats4Bben (over in the right column, Mom!) to see posts with cat photos. If you'd like to share pictures of cats that you are actually acquainted with (there are already lots of cute cats out there on the Internet, so please don't send those - no need for us to reinvent the wheel) just email them to me and I'll post them here.

Jenni(fer) is going to kick off our new cats4ben series with CatFink the Supreme Ruler:

(and yes, he looks JUST like Sailor - probably inevitable that my earliest longtime friend and I would eventually end up with twin cats!)

Jenni says, "He was rescued out of a plastic bag in a dumpster (along w/his brothers and sisters) eight years ago (shudder). He's been reigning supreme ever since (nickname: The Dog). GRIN"

Need a Mitten, Kitten?

It's hard to believe that little baby Sailor (now known alternately as Demon Cat, Sailor Longpaws or Big-Ol'-Handsome-Man Cat) arrived two years ago today. It was a cold rainy midnight and he was under my truck in the driveway where my car headlights found him screaming for his mama. I had a split second to decide whether to brave the monsoon and rescue him or to let him fade off into the night. Thus do our lives change in a heartbeat.

Jeff sent me this poem in August 2007.

I think it's quite apropos today because Sailor scratched my nose two days ago. I contend that it was not his fault because he was overexcited from playing under the table with a towel that was dangling down and he just didn't expect to have anything, let alone my face, suddenly appear within claw range. He's very sensitive, you know.

(indulgent mother smiles nervously and wonders if anyone believes her)

Jeff's poem (one of many!):

I have a friend name Scooter
He really likes my computer
He likes to watch the screen
It's really quite the scene

He likes to walk on my back
it's like a love attack
He likes to bite my toes
He even bites my nose

I have a friend name Scooter
He just couldn't be cuter
His real name is Sailor
but nothing rhymes with Sailor

:)

Copyright 2007 Jeff Wignall

got her!

See You in the Spring, Bing!

A Patch of Blue just started on TCM. I love love love this movie! In other news, today I made lentil soup and it's wonderfully good. It's snowing again..the third time in the last 24 hours, AND Mama Cat is back and hanging out in the barn. I haven't seen her since the first week of August. Maybe she left because of this guy :


I used to call him Sailor's Daddy. I call him Uncle Daddy now. Jeff calls him Elvis. I trapped him late in the summer and my sainted vet said that he had already been neutered. The fiend. Notice the tip of his right ear. The vet clipped it so that any future cat trappers will know that he's already "done." He still comes around late at night and walks along the railing on the back deck, taunting poor Sailor who makes wierd wuffling noises and throws himself against the window trying to get out.

Or maybe she left because of Auntie Cat (looking very pathetic here):


I'm pretty sure that Auntie Cat is Mama Cat's sister. She had her hysterectomy and disappeared upon being released, but not before causing much mayhem. My neighbor said that he used to see Auntie and Mama sleeping all curled up together in the sun, but in my experience they have a less than cordial relationship. Lot's of hissing and suspicion. Mama Cat was cuddling on my lap and purring one day and then, after a surprise encounter with Auntie, she was gone. For five and a half months!

Here's pretty Mama Cat in our halcyon days of summer (you can see why we mourned her and thought that she had been eaten by coyotes):



Meanwhile inside, we have much napping on comfy pillows and snuggly afghans (with the snow and everything, it's no wonder that I don't want to go anywhere...I've been reading books by sleeping cats!):



Here's a link to my other child, our darling Baby Boo, who lives far away and looks disturbingly like (and yet not like) her (ragged and desperate) Auntie Boo.

So-that's the whole family, brought all up to date. And now, after almost six months, Mama Cat has started coming to my back deck and telling me that she's home. Today she crouched in her old spot with snow falling softly on her beautiful self. It's a Martin Luther King Day miracle!

In a Zoo, Kangaroo!

Back in the summer of 2007, BooBoo used to be called Smokey and SissyCat used to be called T.C. They lived in isolation in a cage in the back of the pickup truck while they had shots and got tested for ferocious diseases. BooBoo now lives with Jeff and SissyCat lives with Sailor and me.

What's the Scoop, Monkey Poop?

Today's glob is brought to you by my crack team of globbers. The title of this post is from Annie-anne, fondly known to many of us as Anne K. (she's quite the poet, and don't I know it...) And then, when I opened up my email today (for the first time this week probably) there was a little Halloween gift from Patricia---->Follow this link to draw yourself a cute jack o' lantern. The Halloween Cat photo was taken by Jeff last year (I don't THINK he'll mind...) I am SO in the Halloween spirit this year. I have the day off to celebrate!

In the House, Mouse?

With the onset of autumn came a sudden (obsessive) interest in a certain spot under these steps. The interest has waned a bit now, but we had 36 hours or so of nonstop fun (and I mean nonstop!)

What's Shakin', Bacon?

I know a guy who is having a birthday today. Maybe he would like me to give him a pretty little kitty in a flower pot!

Whaddya See, McGee?