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The story of the four kittens abandoned on my doorstep 3 1/2 months ago continues. As you can see, they are barely kittens anymore, and once they’d had all their shots and been neutered and spayed, it was time to make their transition outside. I knew there were dangers, but 5 cats inside is just too much for me to handle anymore, let alone for housesitters allergic to cats to handle, so the day came when they were finally let out to the wide world as it existed within my compound walls. I am hoping they won’t be tempted to go over the walls but know it is inevitable. A bigger worry is that they’ll venture into the backyard where Morrie and Diego are accustomed to dealing with animal interlopers in a predictable manner. I’ve kept sliding glass doors open (screens and bars closed) hoping they’ll get used to each other, but the dogs are jealous, curious, and, well, they are dogs. Here are the events as they have unwound over the past week, ending yesterday. All in all, a scary day.
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Heartsick. When I went out to feed the kittens this morning, only two showed up. I put out the food, which usually brings them out, but Ollie and Kukla never appeared. I called out over and over, opened the garage door, looked outside, nothing. I was sobbing by the time I thought to pen the dogs up and look in the backyard. It was the worst sort of suspense thriller–the kind of movie I hate–as I combed every inch of the backyard, expecting to find their little bodies everywhere I looked. I had heard the dogs take after something last night and a loud screech, and I had brought the dogs in immediately, but the screech was not catlike and when I called out for kittens, no one answered. Now I regretted not looking closer last night.
I looked everywhere again. As I searched behind the studio, both dogs came around the back way as though they were helping me to look, but nothing. I wondered if the cats had gone hunting in the lots across the street because I was a half hour late in feeding them this morning, thanks to my spider poem. Finally, I went back to the house and let the dogs out, then once again combed the plants around the studio. Diego kept running behind a monster pot containing aloe vera on the terrace near my bedroom, and eventually Morrie joined him. Beside it were two other pots too large to move and they were all tangled up in the thunbergia vine that covered the wall, all of the tall plants around the studio and behind my bedroom, and also had grown up the telephone post and along the wires. I tried to pull the pots back but they were too heavy. I finally pulled one smaller palm pot out and searched behind all the pots. Nothing. But, I thought I detected a tiny squeak.
I put the dogs in again and went back and repeatedly called “Kitty, kitty, kitty.” Finally, Ollie jumped down out of the vine tangle and nonchalantly strolled across the patio, looking very closely for dogs. I called again and a few minutes later, Kukla joined us. I was so relieved!!! I carried them around the house as I’d exited through the doggie domain and was not about to carry them through the room occupied by Morrie and Diego. I put them in the front yard, closed both of the barrier gates, let the dogs out and put the two wayfarers into the house so I could feed them separately from their sisters, who had already eaten. When I went out to get a collar to put on Kukla, however, the other cats got in, so I put another dish of food out, got a collar on Roo and Kukla but not Ollie. Fifteen minutes later, Frannie is the only one who has kept hers on for two days. The rest of the collars are lost somewhere out in the cat jungle. Phew. Motherhood.
A few days ago I bought collars with little bells on them for all the kittens. I put the first one on Roo, and it was a disaster! Her eyes went round and she went bucking like a wild bronc all the way across the patio. She tried to claw and scrape and bite the bell off. Then the other kittens joined in the chase and they went careening off into the dense jungle underbrush of the front yard. There was no way I could follow them there, but eventually she bucked her way out of the thicket and I grabbed her and tugged the collar off. Luckily, I had insisted on easy release collars, fearing that they’d get caught up in a tree branch or vine, so it was easy to free her.
It was not so easy to cut the bells off all the collars. It took heavy metal cutters and even at that, I had to twist and twist to get the little bells off, actually cutting them off their soldered link and then had the fun of cutting the sharp metal pieces off the loop still attached to the collar. I’d ordered tags with my phone number to attach to the collars–my guarantee that no one would think they were feral cats once they inevitably climb up the bougainvillea vines and make their way out onto the street side of the wall. I was to pick the tags up a few days later, and since the man who did the engraving insisted I put “recompensa” (reward) on the other side of the tag, I could visualize neighborhood children ringing my doorbell daily, kittens in arms. Ah well. What was a few pesos bribe, anyway? It was a bit like the insurance given to neighborhood thugs in the barrios of NYC in bygone days, and perhaps in the present. At any rate, I eventually got bell-less collars on all of the cats except for Roo, who to this day is a collar virgin. Within minutes, however, the opened collars lay scattered like breadcrumbs across the terrace. Only Frannie retained her collar. I gave up on the rest for the time being.
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Ollie will stand in as spokesmodel for all the rest. Needless to say, he hated his collar with or without a bell. The bells, here seen isolated from their collars, will no doubt be welcome toys if not welcome jewelry for the cats.
I bought Yolanda one of those new (rather expensive) self- wringing mops at Costco. It is microfiber and the strings were looped at the end with a twist handle so you could just circulate the handle and the mop would wring itself without having to put your hands on the wet part. The other day I asked how she liked it and she said it was fine, but she had cut the ends off so it was like her old mop. Oy vey!!! At any rate, it is just as good a toy for the cats either way. Here Frannie does a little dance with Yolanda. Usually, she puts them out when she mops, but thought you’d like to see the fun.
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Frannie is fascinated by the corn husk flowers on my dining room table. She sniffs them, bats, them, even tastes them. I don’t allow this, but she hasn’t quite gotten the message yet.
Kukla and Ollie, on the other hand, are very fond of lying on my computer keyboards. Sometimes they type very unusual coded messages. At other times, they just create music as they hit a certain key that trills a repetitive musical tone.
I think they like the light of the screen shining on them as they have also learned how to turn on the reading light behind the bed in “their” room and in spite of all of the times I have gone in and turned it off, when I next go into the room, it is switched on and all four cats are curled up in a ball on the bed underneath it.
When Ollie somehow landed on this particular spot on the computer or possibly connected with something on the screen that was making this repeated tone, I lifted him off the keyboard. Unfortunately, he resisted the idea by reaching out for a clawhold and when I finally got him detached, the key he had curled his claws around came off with him.
You should know that this is a brand new keyboard I’d had installed just a month or so ago after Morrie ruined the other one by jumping into the pool and splashing water on the computer, wiping out the keyboard. I fear my animals have proven to be a bigger item in my budget than I had expected.
Forty minutes later, I had figured out the correct assembly method for the three interlocking pieces. It was not easy, but it seemed right. They all fit together and everything seemed snapped into place—until I tried to snap it onto the little mounded nub on the keyboard. I had to force it down and although it caught hold, the key didn’t work unless I POUNDED it in a manner totally unacceptable. Prying it off again, however, proved to be even harder than making it work. When I finally did, on my third attempt, it launched itself—each part in a different direction. The kittens found this very distracting as they tried to locate the pieces before I did. In the end, I located the pieces and put them in an envelope in my computer case. Whether I tell the computer repairman the true story of how the injury came to be will be determined at a later date.
Sometimes it is necessary to resort to a foreign language to get the true level of your frustration across. I hope my Jewish friends forgive me as I once more vent in a language I have no claim to. Oy vey just seems the right thing to say. Did I spell that right?
Frannie? Get off the table!!!!
I just received notification from Word Press that I registered my blog five years ago today. It’s very strange, because although I set it up on September 18, I didn’t post a blog until March 27. Either I was trying to figure out how to do so or I was waiting for our book to come out, as I thought I was setting it up to promote the book. Little did I know!
I posted daily throughout April, when I joined NaPoWriMo and wrote a poem a day. I backslid after that and only started posting daily again the next April. I’ve posted every day since then. This is my 3,455th blog. Yes, if you are thinking it is an addiction, you are probably right, but a quite benign one. If you are curious, HERE is the first blog I ever wrote. What I’ve been doing since then is quite a departure from what I thought I’d be doing. Thanks to all of you who have kept me here, reading your blogs and reciprocating with mine.
My readership has increased by leaps and bounds (literally) since someone “gifted” me with four kittens. They take a very active part in my blogging life.
Including a bit of blind unauthorized editing.
OKCforgottenman even sent me a celebratory cake!!!
Cats are the best imitators of all. Their natural curiosity and herd instinct makes them just have to investigate everything, including everything their siblings are investigating.
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For Paula’s Thursday Special blog challenge: Imitation.
As usual, waiting for mom to feed us, to throw the ball, to finish her blog, to give us pats.
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The prompt word was waiting: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/waiting-2017/
Kukla, Fran, Ollie and Roo are home after 24 hours at the neuter and spay spa—newly clipped and snipped and seemingly feeling no pain. After three months of life either in the house or in the small walled-off area outside the guest bedroom (and kitten suite) barred but with screen land glass sliders left open door, the vet says it is now okay to release them to their greater environment within my compound walls. They have a new outside sleeping room, but as you can see, are still curious about their old digs as well. Frannie has decided to stay inside with me for now. That’s her tail you see curling around over my screen. They were at first suspicious of their food bowls placed outside, refused to eat, then gave in to hunger and ate, but refused their next meal which was being devoured by ants, so I moved it inside. I let them roam inside and out, then locked them out, now have let them in to sleep and left screen open but closed the door to front garden so their outside area is, as before, secure. Except for bats. Cross your fingers. Below the poem are probably too many photos depicting their first afternoon of freedom, including a bit of dialogue with the dogs.
Détente and the Wide Wide World of Cats
Home from the veterinarian––shot and snipped and sewn,
time to reexamine everything they’ve known.
But now there is a difference. That whole wide outside world
has suddenly been opened up, its wonders all unfurled.
They must examine everything in this big new place.
Unearth all its mysteries and all its dangers face.
What are their dishes doing lined up here outside?
Is this alfresco dining something they can abide?
All these swaying branches. This long wall to explore.
Who knew that all these wonders lurked behind the door
shutting off their private world in their “maison de chat”
where only their mom entered (and the scorpions and bat.)
Now there’s this new environment to jump on and to bat at
To peek in and to crawl through. To paw at and to pat at.
As they now investigate the outside world around them,
there are so many different things to puzzle and astound them.
That same world that they came from just three short months ago
becomes their playground once again––once more their status quo.
Walls protect them all for now from street dogs and from cars.
Morrie and Diego peek out from behind bars.
Neither cats nor dogs are sure what peace talks there might be
to turn this split menagerie into a family.
But five months old now, time to face that other world without.
Time for them to discover what the real world is about.
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lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 