Cooking and other observations

Happy New Year

Here's a random conversation between myself and Onyx, one of my foster cats:

(I walk up the stairs with bags from Target; Onyx is sticking his head through the second-floor railing.

"Hi Onyx."

"RAAAAAR!"

"You can be quieter, you know. I'm about six inches away from your mouth."

"RAAAAAAAAR!"

(Some time passes, during which I sit down at the computer to check in with the world online.)

"RAAAAAAAWR"

(Onyx jumps onto my lap and settles in.)

"MRRRRRRR"

"OK, Onyx.... Hi. You have tiger stripes on your legs! And you have striped feets!"

Proving once again that I am, and always have been, an idiot. Onyx is a pain in the ass, but he really just wants to be loved. At least he doesn't annoy the girls.

I mean, much.

Missing Otis

I took Otis to his new home yesterday. Otis, as you may recall, is the hard-luck kitty I took in last spring. I nursed him back to health and glory. He is a beautiful, affectionate, smart, active cat now. His new people are friends of mine, which is almost harder than sending him away to live with strangers.

I miss him terribly. One of my new fosters, a Maine Coon like Otis, has occupied his spot at the top of the stairs. She's a brown patched tabby, and she's smaller than Otis, but she has a brown tail and white paws, and when I walk past the stairs, I see her there and I want her to be Otis.

It's sad, because he really belongs in a home that's not mine. He wants to have kitty friends, and my girls didn't like him. Already, Amelia has come out of hiding. She is back where she belongs, sitting on my lap, chirping her little heart out. I know that I did the right thing for her, she was here first. I know I did the right thing for Otis in placing him in a home where I know they'll cater to him, and where I know he will be taken care of.

Still, rehoming Otis feels like the wrong decision for me. I sent my big brown guy away. He spent most of his time sitting at my right hand, spilling over the top of my desk. Once, he erased a story I'd been working on for two weeks in such a way that I had no useful backup. He probably knows more about Mac OS 10.4 than I do.

Sometimes he kept me up nights pawing at my head. He was so big that I couldn't sleep through him walking across my stomach, but when it was time to get up, he was Happy Good Morning cat.

I miss you, big guy.

In which Eyeroll frightens the new cat

There's a new cat in my household, another Maine Coon. This one happens to be a boy, which means that my girls are not particularly happy with me. They are retired breeders; they know that boy cats means that it's time to make kittens, and that boy cats live in cages, the way Lucinda intended.

(Have I told you folks about Lucinda, my own personal deity who looks after trivial things that annoy me, such as the presence of boy cats in my space? She's handy to have around, and she doesn't care when I fail to capitalize pronouns thaty refer back to her. I shouldn't say "she;" I should say "anybody." Not that I know anybody who would be deeply offended at me not capitalizing pronouns referring to either deities or deity-like religious figures. I have issues, OK? This is not news.)

Anyway, the boy cat. His name is Otis, and he needs to lose a few pounds. He has had most of his fur shaved off, and he is diabetic. His family was going to put him to sleep if I hadn't adopted him.  He also has an infected eyelid because the move from his former home, where there are only boy cats, to my home, where there were only girl cats until he showed up, was rather stressful.

So I have to put ointment in his eye three times a day, and the eye itches. Number one rule of caring for an infected eyelid is "don't touch it, you moron." But you can't tell that to a cat. (You could, but that would be a waste of time, and you'd look really stupid, so I don't recommend it.)

To make a long story short, I got him an e-collar, which is apparently called a "recovery collar" now.  I think it's made out of Tyvek.

I tried putting the collar on him, and he backed up until he hit the wall, then he ran as if somebody had hollerd "Free Chicken!" in another room. Otis is currently hiding under the bed in the front room. He hasn't had dinner, and he hasn't had his insulin, which is kind of good. It's better for him to be hiding without insulin than hiding with insulin and no food. I don't want to deal with a hypoglycemic cat, but I especially don't want to deal with a hypoglycemic cat under the bed.

I did't fasten the collar, so he may not even be wearing it at this point.  So much for the idea of putting clothes on cats.

Marilyn's gift

Marilyn is the larger of my two Maine Coons. She's a big girl who checks in at a little more than 15 pound, by which I mean that she's a few ounces more, not a few pounds more. It's not like being a human and saying that you weigh "about 135," which really means that your scale stops at some number between 140 and 150. Anyway. she used to be a few pounds more and I could hardly pick her up, which was fine with her.She doesn't like to be picked up.

She has been with me for about three years, and for most of that time, she has been happy to sleep on my bed, or to sit on my lap when the sitting is her idea. Frankly, her favorite place to lurk is on some expensive piece of clothing. She likes cashmere sweaters and leather jackets best of all. But over the past few weeks, Marilyn has taken to sleeping on me.  It seems that I am a comfortable place to rest, and that in her walnut-sized brain, I am every bit as warm and comfortable as a cashmere sweater.

I think this would come as a bit of a surprise to most humans that know me.

Anyway, yesterday, Marilyn laid down on my chest, and then she did something she had never done with me. She laid her head down on my chest and went into a deep sleep. I could tell she was really asleep because Marilyn snores. It's a gentle little snore, but she definitely snores. Girlfriend was sacked out. Now, cats see humans as bigger cats with inadequate coats, which is why we need cashmere sweaters and leather jackets. I see her willingness to fall asleep on me as a gesture of absolute trust.

And that's a gift.

This morning I was sleeping on my side, so she curled up next to me and laid her head on my cheek. Lola used to do that. Marilyn's whiskers tickled my nose, just as Lola's used to, but she was purring softly, so I reached over to give her belly a scritch, then I went back to sleep.

I guess that if you are a cat, finding a person who is a comfortable place to sleep is a pretty good thing.

The straight obit

Hecate, a chocolate brown domestic shorthaired cat, died at the vet's office Monday night, shortly before 8 p.m. She was 15 years old. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor and mammary cancer earlier this year. Treatment for the brain tumor was effective until Sunday, when she began experiencing trouble getting into her litter box. Her condition deteriorated Monday evening, and she was rushed to the Capital Cat Clinic, where Marcus Brown, DVM, administered a lethal dose of anesthetic after a routine examination.

Hecate was born in Washington, D.C. on June 9, 1989 into a family of witches. She and her human appeared on the front page of the Washington Post as part of a story about modern witches that appeared Oct. 31, 1996.

Survivors include her human caretakers; two Maine Coon cats, Marilyn and Amelia; and many friends, both feline and human. Another human caretaker and two companion cats, Honey and Lola, preceded Hecate in death.

I think it goes without saying that my heart is heavy today. I miss that cranky old girl more than I can say.  Knowing that I can still write a straight obituary is cold comfort at this point.

Amelia blogs!

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Amelia is the pretty one. She is also pretty stupid, even by cat standards.  She talks to the birds outside through the closed windows. This requires a very cool noise that I call chattering. Basically, she voices throat clicks. Imagine the prettiest little cat you've ever seen saying "Come here so I can kill you and eat your flesh and bones."

Well, don't imagine it for too long or you'll give yourself nightmares.

I'm going to protect my mental health by imagining that what she means by that mess above is  "Mr. President, you don't want to schedule your news conference for Thursday night. That's TV night. People will hate you. Even the ones that totally don't care about you."

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

The ones I cannot save

Today I drove up 95 to Columbia, Maryland, to rescue a cat. He's 11, and he stopped using his litter box when the family had a new baby. So they dumped him at the shelter. I didn't see him until I got him home and took him out of the carrier.

His black coat was badly matted. He  was described as having "an attitude problem," which, when coupled with his litter box issues, forced the shelter to deem him unadoptable. He would have been killed tomorrow. I found out about him through CFA Purebred Cat Rescue. They asked me if I could help, and I said yes.

So I took him upstairs and put him in the safe room, where he retired to the closet. That's what most of them do. After he came out, he let me pet him. He rubbed up against my legs and he thrust his furry head into my hands. He doesn't have an attitude problem; he hurts. His fur is pulling on his skin, and that hurts. He had been at the shelter for three days. I know a little about long-haired cats, having cared for many of them, and his coat was in bad shape when he was dumped. That coat had not been cared for in at least two months. No wonder he was cranky.

I didn't get to see the other "unadoptable"cats, and it's probably better that I didn't.  With love, wisdom and patience, most of them could be adopted into the right homes and live out their days as pets. But those things are in short supply, and the stream of unwanted animals seems never to end.

I try not tothink about the ones I can't save.

Like the tiger in Los Angeles. A tiger is not a pet, but this one had escaped from somebody's home. He "terrorized" the area around the Reagan Presidential Library for a month until California wildlife officials sent men in a helicopter with guns to kill him. They made no attempt to tranquilize and capture him because of a perceived risk to humans in a "nearby" shopping center. The tiger was not in a parking lot, and none of the media coverage I have seen quantified "near."

Another cat, killed without sense or reason; without  a second thought.

These cases seem completely unrelated, but they are not. With the tiger, and with the housecat, the fault rests squarely at the feet of "owners" who were unwilling to properly care for their pets.  The black Persian's family could have read any number of books about feline behavior, and they could have brushed him regularly. The idiot who was almost certainly keeping that tiger illegally could have turned him over to a private sanctuary when he realized he was in over his head. (To clarify: if your tiger escapes, I think that's a pretty clear indicator that you are in over your head. By the same token, if you think you are equipped to control a tiger, that says to me that you are out of your mind.)

So I have been calling the black Persian Keith. He has big eyes, like new copper pennies. He is going to a rescue in Erie, Pa., and I am taking him to Baltimore in the morning.

I saved one today. I can't save them all, but I will not let the tragedy of the ones I cannot save shadow the joy of the ones I can save.

Rowr

The National Zoo has tiger cubs. The tiger cubs have a blog.

The tigers had a day out in the snow a couple of weeks ago, and some intrepid zoo staffer took pictures.

The blog is kind of nice,  so I recommend that you read the whole thing. In particular, look for the picture of a baby tiger in a box in one of the early entries. They can kill you, tigers can, but they are so like house cats. They are! The last time I was at the zoo, I heard a loud, rumbly kind of noise; familiar, yet not.

A tiger lay in the sun, stretched out. He was purring.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that the little shaggy beasts who deign to share the nice big bed that I got for them with me, and the magnificent, endangered tigers that an ordinary person can't get closer to than a hundred feet away, separated by a wall and a moat, are distantly related.

They both make the most wonderful noise. And that, of course, is purring.

It's better to know

Hecate, my eldest cat at 16, has been losing weight since some time in the fall. I didn't notice it at first because I was busy, and then I was in New Mexico. I took her in to our regular vet, who is great, last month, and it turned out that she had lost two pounds since her last checkup in June. Dr. Brown said it could be diabetes, or hyperthyroid, possibly kidney failure, but test for those troubles were negative. He suspected that she had irritable bowel disease, because her appetite was good but she was still losing weight. IBD is very difficult to diagnose in humans, and even harder in cats since they don't actually talk in a language we understand. A second round of testing was inconclusive, and Dr. Brown said that my idea of going to a specialist was a good one.

Today I took her to SouthPaws, which is a practice in Springfield that has a number of specialists. We saw Dr. McClure, who is a veterinary internist. She performed an exam and observed several things, notably a weakness on Hecate's left side. She said something about a neurological problem, possibly a brain tumor, and mentioned the possibility of an MRI to be sure. We had planned to do an abdominal sonogram, and she felt like that would be a good idea. There was still a possibility that the weight loss was caused by IBD and the left-side weakness was caused by Hecate's arthritis.

When Dr. McClure came in to tell me that the sonogram was clean, it was the worst possible news. Not only does her GI tract not indicate IBD, she found evidence of agressive mammary cancer, which would spread to a brain tumor. It was the only diagnosis that made any sense to me, so I am willing to accept it rather than put Hecate through any more tests.

There is no treatment at this point. The plan is to keep her comfortable, let her eat whatever she wants, let her walk on keyboards and circle as long as it takes her to get to a comfortable spot on whatever lap she chooses.

I guess it is better to know than not to know. But I am not reassured by the knowledge that cancer is eating cranky old Hecate and all I can do is hope that she will allow me to pet her and tell her how pretty she is.

Everybody who loves her feels a little numb right now.

To top all this, I can't seem to find my phone. Yes, I have another phone, but I want my phone. It has all my numbers. And it would suck to have lost it.  So if any of you have tried to call me, that's why I'm not picking up.  Well, that, and I don't really feel like talking to anybody right now.

Plans for the weekend

I doubt that most people would think I have very exciting weekend plans, but I'm driving to South Hill, Virginia, to pick up two Maine Coon kittens. They'll be on their way to their new family in New Hampshire, coming all the way from Georgia.

I get to keep them Saturday night, then Sunday morning, I'll drive them to Maryland to meet the next leg of the transport.

Along the way, we'll pick up two Siamese that are going from Virginia to Pennsylvania, and a small dog that's going from Kentucky to Massachusetts.

This is how breed rescue works. People take time out of their weekends to drive pets from the place where they are to a place where they are wanted. On this transport, I am taking four legs, but doing them over two days, so it won't seem like that much driving.

The bonus is that I get a bit of a kitten fix. I haven't been around a kitten in years. They are cute, and Maine Coon kittens are the cutest possible kittens if you ask me, but they drive me crazy with their antics.

One day is just the riht dose. It's enough to remind me that kittens are lovely, and enough to remind me that my favorite thing about kittens is that the grow up to be cats.

I hope I can manage to take some pictures.  I need to get some Rescue Remedy for the trip.

It's for them, not for me.