Going for a drive always appealed to me.
With the luxury of time, overland is preferable.
It would have been the ultimate challenge, to drive with 13 cats from Seattle to New York.
But that would have involved many complications, so instead I entrusted 11 of the little darlings to professional movers.
Grant and I entrusted ourselves to American Airlines.
There was no question that Willow would be my “cat in the cabin” but how did I select Muffin to fly with Grant?
It was fortuitous
As it turned out, she suffers from awful motion sickness and although the flight was extremely uncomfortable for her, at least she was saved from 48 hours in a car.
At the time of our move, Muffin had not been with us very long and we knew none of her history.
Later we learned that stones in her bladder accounted for her extremely sensitive tummy.
Once sorted, she settled down in a third new location, having been abandoned by her previous owner.
Grant thought she seemed sad. So he in particular spent extra time petting her. Soon she was besotted, much to the annoyance of Dee Dee.
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Dee Dee after all, is The Man’s Chief Cat.
She claimed this title the moment dear old Tom passed on. She had had to accept his seniority.
Then there had been Colin, our huge ginger boy that was suffering from kidney disease. Terminally sick animals always have to come first.
Dee Dee is much less tolerant of Muffin’s needs!
Fortunately though, Muffin has at last decided that my lap is quite comfortable as well and she often comes to sit while I am typing.
It is a little problematic when Toby is on the desk, as I then have the keyboard in my lap, but we manage.
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Since Muffin’s close-call in the summer, she has become quite vocal.
“Well yes,” she says:
“It was just a hairball and they were going to cut my tummy open!”
“A girl has to speak up around here!”
She has become our cuddle-cat. Most of the others like to be petted but not picked up. So I spend quite a bit of time these days, looking into these beautiful eyes and sending up profound thanks that the suspected tumor was regurgitated as a hairball mere hours before planned surgery.
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Toby now stays close to me for a lot of the day, quite often just sleeping on my desk or on my bed. He eats ravenously but never gains a fraction of an ounce.
Since Panther died, Toby has been my man-cat but it is really only in this past year that he has appeared to need to be near me.
One adjusts to cats and their moods.
If you live with cats, you basically have to!
Your sense of self-worth will otherwise soon be shredded along with your furniture.
Somewhere I have a plaque that says:
“You are nobody until you have been ignored by a cat”
So true!
Take Lily, for example. She is my senior cat, the only one who was with me when I had Panther. I adore her. But she is totally independent.
When the mood strikes, she will come and poke me until I allow her to climb onto my chair, behind me.
Then I must fondle her. If I stop for a moment, more pokes and a vocal protest.
And just as suddenly, she’ll be off again.
Tinkerbelle is just one of several cats I have known that did not, and still do not like me.
That index finger was permanently modified by another antsy cat.
But one does not take offense.
You simply learn to safeguard your appendages.
.
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She arrived wearing the collar, hence her name.
Beautiful Tikka. Lucy’s mother.
Or maybe her daughter! We never got the story straight.
A slight nip from her hospitalized me for 5 days.
Perhaps not dislike. I just got her at the wrong moment.
Willow ignores me for hours on end.
But she has a lock on my heart.
There is no accounting for the relationship between humans and cats. They are mysterious creatures.
There may be some who don’t like me, but I have never met a cat I couldn’t like.
Love hem all.
Than you, Carolyn, for the Ode to Cats. They all are beautiful and very lucky to live in paradise.
Joanna
Thank you, Carolyn, or your Ode to Cats. Yours are all beautiful and very lucky to live in a paradise!
Joanna
Have you wrapped their presents yet?
Why, um, of course!
On top of my wife still testing positive for Covid, and me having bronchitis, (but not Covid) Ollie has developed a bad case of diarrhoea, cause unknown. He has decided to self-treat thus far, by refusing to eat anything, and drink a lot of water instead. Pets can teach us stuff.
Best wishes, Pete.
I never had a cat as a pet, but when we visit friends who do have cats, they always come to me for some TLC. They do seem to be complicated when it comes with whom they want to share their lives … but I’m not denying the fact that they are gorgeous animals … and your cats have the most beautiful eyes!
They are contrary little beasts and in my experience they zero in on the person the least likely to welcome them. My Yeti actually converted my old dad. While I was at work he was using my computer and suddenly felt something on is lap. Yeti had climbed up to sit with him. He was touched and he was a man without much in the way of feeling. How are you feeling?