Tag Archives: Kittens

Collared

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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.

 (Click on first photo to enlarge all.)

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.

Frannie and the New Toy

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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.

(Click on first photo for larger views of all.)

In the Catbird Seat

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Accumulated
My view to the side, overlooking the spare lot and lake.
My garden

jdbphotos. Click on first photo to enlarge all and read captions.

If you aren’t familiar with the term, “in the catbird seat,” it means to be in a position above the action or perhaps in control.  This is what I am when I’m in my studio, which has one wall entirely comprised of windows looking out on my garden and another window to my right that looks out over my spare lot down below and ultimately at the lake spread out on a lower plane with Mount Garcia and Colima Volcano behind it on the other shore.

In the Catbird Seat

After a year of no time at all in the studio, I’ve spent 4 days there in the past few weeks. It feels wonderful, even though the last day I spent there was entirely spent organizing, sorting, putting away, reorganizing.

My studio is a separate small building I had built in the garden below my house. My dogs, unaccustomed as they are to my being there, followed me down, no doubt remembering I keep a bag of dog biscuits down there. Fortified, they wandered off, but eventually returned to spend the morning outside my door––Morrie plastered horizontally across the base of the locked screen door, Diego perpendicular to him, stretched out along the brick walkway.

The kittens, relegated to the front yard and house, have seen neither the back yard nor my studio. I fear what my dogs, intent on doing away with every soft fuzzy creature that enters my yard, would do to them, even though they’ve been seeing them for almost four months now through the glass, bars and screens that form most of the walls of every room in my house.

That is why I was so distressed when I heard the plaintive meow of one of the kittens coming from the wrong direction. Not from the side of the house where they have a walled-off outside run all their own, but seemingly from the street behind the studio or from the empty lot down below me. I listened closely, hoping it was just my one hearing-impaired ear that was misdirecting the direction from which the sound was coming; but, when I stepped out into the yard, I could hear it clearly.

I called out to Pasiano, telling him I thought one of the kittens had made its way out of its safe zone.

“No, senora,” he insisted.

“Yes! Listen,” I insisted as the loud meow came again––several times.

He shook his head, laughing, and gestured up into the pistachio tree, from which one bird was cawing an insistent bird call, another creature mewing back an insistent interspecies reply. It was a bird, he told me. He led me closer to the tree and as he did, a black bird flew down from that tree to a large castor bean plant in the spare lot. The bird in the tree cawed and chirped. The bird below in the spare lot meowed back,

It was a magpie that had evidently been hanging around the kittens for too long. A mother knows her kids’ voices and this was a perfect replica of my kittens’ bossy demands to be fed.

When I told Yolanda about this strange occurrence, she laughed and said she had done exactly the same thing two days earlier, sure one of the kittens had escaped.

Now this story, as unbelievable as you might find it, has a precedent in my family. When my 11-year-older sister was a tiny girl, she was in the habit of coming to the back door and calling out, “Mommy, Mommy! This occurred so many times during the day that my mother had told her that unless it was an emergency, she should come into the house to find her instead of expecting her to drop whatever household task she was doing to come to the door. Betty heeded this request perhaps one time out of three, which was an improvement, at least.

One day, my mother heard he calling out to her, but when she came to the door, no Betty! She went back to her work on the other side of the house, only to hear he call out again. Once again, she went to the door, but no Betty. This time she called her in from her play, gave her a scolding and told her not to do it again. But Mommy, she hadn’t done it, my sister insisted, but in that way Mommy’s develop, my mom just shook her head and said, well, not to do it again.

Barely had she gotten back to the kitchen however, when she heard my sister demanding her presence again. This time really angry, she stamped back across the house to the screened-in porch to see—absolutely no one standing on the front door stoop. This time, however, the mystery was quickly solved. In a large cage on that screened in porch was a magpie with a damaged wing that my father had brought in from the ranch. Even as my mother entered the porch, he had called out once more in my sister’s voice, demanding her presence.

Most mimics only get themselves in trouble due to inappropriate material. This mimic was most adept at passing the blame. True story, as is the more recent magpie story above.

 

 

Hibiscus: Flower of the Day, Sept. 23, 2017

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Stages of Growth

(Click on first photo to enlarge all)

A bud one day, a flower in two days more. Watching everything grow so quickly during the rainy season brings the miracles of nature constantly to mind. The kittens of three months ago are now nearly cats.  The hibiscus of three days ago is now one more plaything strung out across the bedroom floor that is their playground. They bring in every one they find. I think they think they are little mice!

 (Click on first photo to enlarge both)

Peek under the blown leaves.

 

 

Now, go here to see Cee’s flirty dahlia and other flora!  https://ceenphotography.com/2017/09/22/flower-of-the-day-september-23-2017-dahlia/

Oy Vey! Life with Cats

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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.

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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.

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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!!!!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

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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.

Please click on first photo to enlarge all and see captions.

Queued for takeoff.
I see a bear! Where? Over there! I see a bear! Where? Over there! I see a bear! Where? Over There! I see a bear! Where? Over there!

For Paula’s Thursday Special blog challenge: Imitation.

Kittens as Blanket

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This is okcforgottenman posting for Judy. Her electricity has been off for hours now, but she was able to use her iPhone and Kindle to send me these photos along with an explanation. The rest is Judy, from her own Skype texts. (As always, you can click on the photos to enlarge them.)

How many cats in this Photo?
And how many cats here?

The girls were all girlcatting it around outside when I lay down on the sofa. Only Ollie, the boy, was asleep on the arm of the divan, all tangled up in my hair as usual with him. I woke up after a 3-hour unplanned nap. I guess the girls found mama after I fell asleep and just piled on. When I woke up, they were covering about all of me, but Ollie was on my chair by desk. No electricity – beeping of the UPS is what awakened me. About out of juice now on phone and computer (still no electricity) so gotta be faaaast. I had been listening to a book on my Kindle when I fell asleep, and suddenly realized it had a camera on it, so I learned how to use my Kindle to take photos and how to send them to my computer, all while lying under a cat blanket! The book finished while I was sleeping, by the way. Wonder if it entered my dreams. I’ll have to rewind it. I love it that I’m just the bottom cat in the pile. And so funny that the boy cat went over and slept alone on my chair instead of joining in.

Kitty Pileup

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Thought I’d go in and say goodnight to the kittens in their suite.  As usual, they piled right on.  I was Skyping to forgottenman and said I hated to disturb them, but the mosquitos were dive-bombing.  He asked if I’d gotten photos and I said no and I couldn’t get out from under to go get my camera.  He then suggested my computer cam, but it actually isn’t that easy to get photos when you can’t see what you are shooting. An additional problem is preserving one’s modesty while shooting random photos of kittens draped all over your nightgowned body.  At any rate, here are the photos that made it past the censor: 

As usual, you can click on the first photo to enlarge all and view as a slideshow.

The Hardest Way: Which Way Challenge, Aug 11, 2017

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(Click first photo to enlarge them all.)

The Kitten Way (Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way!)

Ollie is now eight times the weight he was when the kittens were left beside my garage two months ago and his sisters have increased in weight four times. They now reside in the guest bedroom which has a sliding glass door to the outside that I leave open.  I’ve built plywood walls that block their progress outside to a 20 foot long outside terrace devoted completely to them.  It is shaded by napa palms whose trunks are too slippery for them to climb to gain access to the wall that seals my house off from the street.  We bought a big bag of sand to put in the planter that runs along the wall so they now have inside and outside litter places. They sleep piled on top of each other on the newest and most comfortable bed in the house and also have access to a new very large outside doghouse with raised entry so the rain can’t get in. This will hopefully be their sleeping place once they’ve had their rabies shots and/or spaying and neutering.

Kukla and Roo, however, are not content with their roaming area.  A few days ago, I was in my bathroom feeding Annie, my 15 year old cat who has decided to become an inside cat.  She refuses to stir outside of my bathroom and has commandeered the large tub/shower area for her own, complete with cushy bed and litter tray.  She will deign to leave her sanctuary only for meals and affectionate head scratchings. At any rate, I was getting ready for a party, so I left the bathroom but was back and forth doing those sortings and puttings-away that seem to mainly get done when company is coming.  I was just passing the door to my  (Annie’s) bathroom when Kukla came streaking out of the door.  How in the world?  She was supposed to be in her own room or run with all doors closed and walls constructed!  She ran into my bedroom which had sliding glass doors, two of which were open to the back yard where the dread dogs were!

I slid the sliders closed, then glanced into the bathroom just in time to see Roo spread-eagled at the window, inside the bars, about to climb through the glass slats and the screen, which evidently they’d forced open in spite of the fact that it was screwed in place!  This window was immediately over Annie’s bed. She looked surprised and stunned–too discombobulated to hiss as she usually did in their presence.  I extracted Roo, pushed the screen shut and cranked the glass louvers completely shut.

R.I.P. Annie. (No. Not departed.  Just literally resting in peace, quietly purring, happy for her restored solitude.)

Resourceful kittens will find their own way.

 

For Cee’s Which Way Challenge. (Sorry, but WordPress won’t let me establish a link.)

 

Share Your World, Aug 7, 2017

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This challenge, posted each month by Cee, asks that the participant answer a number of questions.  Here are this month’s questions and answers:

What was the last URL that you bookmarked or saved?

https://narami.wordpress.com/category/tuesdays-of-texture/

Do you believe in the afterlife?  Reincarnation?

I find it easier to believe in reincarnation than the afterlife.

If you were or are a writer do you prefer writing short stories, poems or novels?

Poems. I don’t have the patience for writing novels and although I started out writing short stories, I haven’t written a short story for a long time.

What inspired you this past week?  Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.

I’m always inspired by the WordPress Daily Prompt word.  Sometimes they seem impossible to write about, but it takes me into a different part of my mind when I go ahead and accept the challenge.

Even though I oftentimes will add photos to my answers, it is not a requirement to participate in Share your World.

Here are a few pictures chronicling my week so far (Click on first photo to enlarge and read captions):

Herbert read at the writer’s group at the Nueva Posada….
Frank proudly displays his game-winning Mexican train–winning the game before it started!
Yoli sketched this happy scene at my dining room table.
Yoli’s self-portrait with kittens Kukla, Fran, Ollie and Roo behaving well on leashes. The two creatures at upper right? Butterflies.

If a movie was made based on your life, what actor/actress would play you?

Laura Linney.

If you could be famous for one thing, what would it be?

Writing.

For Cee’s prompt:  https://ceenphotography.com/2017/08/07/share-your-world-august-7-2017/