Tag: cat

A Few Minutes to Think

I’ve had a few minutes to think between final project grading and final exams, so I’ll share my thoughts:

  • I don’t believe in “manifesting”. God is not an ATM. But just in case I’m wrong, you’ve heard it here first: I want my niche to discover my writing. I want an engaged group of readers who can identify with the small magics of Barn Swallows’ Dance and the power of InterSpace.
  • On being 60: I have to accept that I’m now reminding my students of their grandmas rather than their mothers. It’s a shock to the system; I don’t feel that old. Moreover, I think it’s affecting my ability to write romance, because I’m not getting those looks anymore. You know, THOSE looks. (Not lustful, but playful. That’s just how I roll.) It’s not bothering me; it’s just weird, like I’ve lost a color in my vision (say magenta) and I barely remember having it.
  • If I didn’t have a third item in this list, you would feel vaguely dissatisfied. That’s because three is a magic number. It’s not universally magic, but in a list, we feel satisfied when there’s a third item. Two becomes magic because of its connection to ‘either … or’. And couples, of course.

That’s enough. It’s time for me to write for a while. But first, a cat:

Update on the Kitty

Kitty’s name is Pumpkin, even though she’s pure black. Not sure how that happened, except I called her a little pumpkin.

She’s a sweet cat. She does not like being picked up and emphatically doesn’t like her belly rubbed like Chloe, but she enjoys rubbing against my legs and getting petted.

Richard needs more quality time with her. We want him to have a cuddlebeast in his life.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

Old Girlie-Girl

An old cat

I have an old cat sitting next to me my Girlie-Girl. I don’t know when she got old; I’m not even sure of her age. She could be anywhere from 9 to 13 years old, which I think is young for a cat getting old.

She feels lighter than she did when younger, as though her form has been filled with air. She’s not skinny; she’s not even smaller than she’s ever been. She just feels less substantial than she had. She’s in fine health despite it, and other than a touch of arthritis she has no health complaints.

She yowls in a cranky way when she’s not in the room with us. If we call out for her the yowling settles into a calmer meow, almost like she has found her way again. I wonder about dementia; as there’s nothing to be done about that, we just live with her peculiarities.

Cats’ lives

Cats live for a shorter lifespan than we do; it’s just reality. The average indoor cat lives on average 13 years of age, but keep in mind that some cats die younger and some much, much older. I’ve had cats live to 19 and 20 years of age. To be a cat owner is to watch your beloved cats die before you. (I have seen seven of my cats die in my 57 years of existence, including a newborn foster cat. Which averages out to 13.)

So Girlie won’t live forever; at this point it’s hard to say when she’ll die. If she’s like most tortoiseshell/calicos I have known, she’ll live to 19 or 20. But it’s hard to tell. For now I’m going to have to enjoy her and keep an eye on her.

Guest Blog from Me-Me (Weebles) the Cat

I’m hanging out with my human. She sits on the cushie place with the light box she stares into and moves her fingers in patterns. Sometimes I sit beside her and beg for pets; other times I sit behind her and clean her hair.

She always sits at her place, and I consider it my place too because she’s there. Sometimes the other human (the one who walks loud) walks by with something foul-smelling in a tall dish. Notice I said “foul-smelling” and not “fowl-smelling”. I like “fowl-smelling”. I don’t understand the tall dish with the loop on the side nor why my human drinks out of it. I tried once and got my face stuck in it.

Oh, there’s other cats. I don’t pay much attention to them because of my undivided attention to my human. They don’t pay much attention to me, even the spotty black demon who joined the household most recently. I have another sister who tries to sit in the same place as I do, but she takes one look at me claiming my space and plods away.

It’s naptime now (it’s always naptime) and so I need to curl up into a comfy space now.

Chloe’s New Adventure (which she would rather avoid)

 


Chloe (AKA Little Girl) is going to the vet today to get spayed. Right now she’s in the cat carrier and very unhappy. I doubt the surgery is going to make her much happier. 

Chloe is about 8 months old at this point, and just as much a devil as she was as a youngster. She still bites my toes to wake me up, and she crawls up on my clothes rack to hide. I can’t see her getting any calmer as a grownup cat.

I worry a little about putting any cat through surgery, but I also wholeheartedly believe in spaying and neutering cats. There are too many kittens and cats in shelters (as Chloe was an unwanted kitten at the Humane Society). There are too many feral cats out there having kittens. 

So Chloe will go to the vet’s, and then she will come home groggy and disoriented and not very happy with us. And we will shower her with love.

A Convalescing Chloe

 

 

 Sorry I’m running late today, but I had to take Chloe to the vet for what ended up being an infected cat bite on her foot. Despite our efforts to keep the other cats quarantined from little Chloe, Me-Me keeps barging in, and occasionally they get in a scrap.

Chloe is sitting next to me today — no, she’s not sitting. She’s making an immense effort to stand, which isn’t happening because she’s wobbly from the sedation she’s gone through to get her abscess drained. 

So right now (blesssedly I have a work-at-home day) I am supervising the wobbly little monster. She isn’t feeling much like being petted; she’s laying on the bed next to me trying to escape … somewhere. I’m not sure she knows where, because I don’t think she can see straight yet. She sort of stands up, wobbles, and falls over. She’s scared of me but doesn’t mind curling up next to me. I feel so bad for her!

There are worse things than trying to get your work done next to a wobbly cat.

On the Verge of Querying Again.

I have minor corrections to do on Whose Hearts are Mountains today, and then I will query the last 30 agents. Wish me luck.

I don’t know what I’m going to do if these last 30 come up empty. Yes, I do. I’m going to query Prodigies (the improved version) in a few months, and start the cycle again. 

I feel like a glutton for punishment. But at this point, I have documents as good as I can make them, and I can’t not share them. 

Nothing more to say today, but: here’s a cat.

Me-Me, aka “Brussels Sprout”


For a dying cat

My cat Snowy is dying.

My husband and I think she had a stroke because we discovered her laying in front of the dresser and occasionally meowing strangely last night. We don’t have an emergency vet here, so we have to wait till the vet opens at 8.

The next morning, she hasn’t moved, and she meows piteously when moved. She’s limp, except for her two front paws, which seem curled into themselves. Eventually, she doesn’t even meow, only breathes. Barely breathes.

I doubt there’s anything the vet can do. If she’s indeed had a stroke, the chances of her having another are high, and she may not recover from this one. As I’ve said, it’s highly likely we’ll say our goodbyes at the vet’s office.

I will remember Snowy as a peculiar cat. Black and long-haired with a white locket (we didn’t name her), she carried herself like a diva and sat with her front feet crossed daintily. She had a fascination with doors, and would paw at them trying to get to the other side. 

Soon, she will be on the other side of the door, where I am told she will climb a grassy hill to the Rainbow Bridge and wait for us. All pets go to the Rainbow Bridge, it is told, which makes it more charitable than the Christian view of Heaven. We, the humans, stay behind, taking care of our other cats, missing the presence of our Snowy.

Sasha, my ghost cat

I’m hopeful my ghost cat has moved in again.

I suppose I should explain my ghost cat. Some thirty-two years ago, when I was a graduate student, I owned a small, feisty black cat named Sasha.

I lived in a second floor, one-room apartment in an old house, with the porch roof just outside one window and access to the wooden fire escape out the side window. In the Illinois summers I had no air conditioning, so I tried to keep cool with a box fan and open windows.

I wanted to keep Sasha an indoor cat because I lived on a relatively busy thoroughfare in Champaign. Sasha had her own agenda. She found a way to pop the screen out of the front window, stroll across the porch roof to the fire escape, then bound down the stairs. She would eventually sneak upstairs with one of the other residents and sit outside my apartment door until I returned home.

Until the time she didn’t. Tommy, the alcoholic hippie down the hall, strolled upstairs that evening to announce that he put a dead cat in the dumpster and figured it was mine. My friend down the hall and I actually raided that dumpster at 10:30 at night to find the reeking garbage bag that contained the remains of my Sasha, and buried her on university farm property.

Soon, another cat found me, a grey and white polydactyl I named Kismet, who followed me halfway across town to become my cat. It was fall by then, and I no longer needed to keep my windows open. Kismet, like all young cats, would go into a chasing-nothing sort of frenzy, running around the small apartment, bouncing off the walls.

Except. Except that he would stop at the window, the window that Sasha used to break out of, and peer around the corner to the side of the porch, then run around to the side window as if watching something go down the stairs. And then friends would come and ask me if I had a cat, and I explained that Kismet was out somewhere, and they would ask, “What about the black cat?”

Eventually I moved, and moved again, and moved halfway across the country and back again, and I forgot about Sasha. But then, day before yesterday, my cat Chuckie started chasing around the living room. I thought nothing of it because cats do that. But then he turned a hard right and slammed into the French doors to the dining room. He stared into the dark room as if he saw something we didn’t, something that crept away from him.

If Sasha has found me again, I welcome her with open arms.