Spotted Cat Designs

Last night, Jennifur slept right next to my leg, all stretched out and just high enough that I could put my arm next to her.

I stayed up as long as I could to treasure the feeling and finally fell asleep with a big smile on my face.

We have three fish aquariums, partly for Susan and partly for our cats’ enjoyment. One tank is on the kitchen counter. Jennifur loves to chase Otis and Pepperjack, our two corydoras catfish (“Cory cats”). They swim up and down the sides of the tank while she frantically tries to get at them by scrabbling on the glass tank wall.

Yin and Yang, Agile and Charger also like to lie on the counter and watch the fish. Capt. Barbossa (a huge tinfoil barb) is Charger’s favorite. Good thing it is glass, acrylic would be clouded with cat claw scratch marks frustrating everyone’s viewing pleasure.

This morning Charger seemed out of sorts. He started wrestling with Yang, but Yang thought things were getting too rough, started fighting back in earnest, and finally jumped up and ran away. Next, Charger went over to look out the glass door, joining Jennifur and Yin (who were getting along for once). Suddenly there was a shriek from Yin, who took off like mad with Charger chasing him.

Charger doesn’t normally hurt anyone like that, so we became concerned and Susan said, “What’s the matter with Charger?”

Like I knew. So (not being the cat whisperer in the family) I said, “Why don’t you ask him?”

There was a long silence. Things were quiet…too quiet (insert your favorite similar cliche here). Finally Susan told me what Charger had to say.

It seems that Charger’s mother had “called” to say goodbye. She was sick and her human had decided not to spend the money to have her made well again, so they were euthanizing her. In fact, Charger was saying his last goodbyes to her at that moment, having shown her what his life was like here, surrounded by friendly humans and other cats.

That kind of put a serious damper on the morning, but we’ve taken extra time with Charger to comfort him today.

Today I decided to see if my guess was right about Jennifur talking to Little Kitty yesterday. I asked Susan to ask Jennifur whether this had happened.

Susan came back in a little while and said that while Jennifur was her usual laconic self, she had said that Little Kitty had been talking with her about survival and loneliness. Apt topics for feral cats to discuss!

But I’m really happy that Jennifur is talking to an outside cat. This is a nice change for her.

This morning when I woke up, Jennifur was looking out the window. Not just “out”, but “down”, so I figured she was watching someone. I crept over and saw a feral cat we call Little Kitty, who’s kind of a petite patchy calico, and who we think might be not only female, but pregnant as well.

Little Kitty also spooks easily, so as soon as she saw me she took off around the corner.

The odd thing about this is that Jennifur usually growls, hisses, spits, or otherwise attempts to convince outside cats to go away. While Jenni has been mellowing lately, this particular habit is pretty ingrained in her purrsonality, so I suspect that either (a) we’re wrong and Little Kitty is a male and Jenni likes him or (b) Jennifur actually deigned to talk to Little Kitty, because that’s exactly what it looked like she was doing.

Today while I was working at my computer, Steven called me over with some alarm in his voice. “I think it’s a lizard”, he said.

I walked over to the entrance to my office to find Steven and three or four cats staring intently at something wriggling on the ground. They (the cats) were trying to grab it and were huddling over it, so I whipped out my ever-present LED flashlight to take a look.

It wasn’t actually a lizard, but only a tail, bending fantastically this way and that, like a demented ballpoint pen refill on drugs. From the looks of it, it had belonged to a small alligator lizard that was now hiding somewhere amidst the cardboard boxes in the immediate area. Dropping a tail is a last-ditch survival trick of lizards that I had heard of many times, but had never seen in real life.

I thought it was pretty cool. Steven vowed not to eat anything longer than it’s wide, at least for several days.

Yang eventually carried it away proudly and presumably ate it. Yech.