Month: January 2012

Last night, I wasn’t able to sleep.  I tossed and turned until the wee hours, and then finally, at 5am, I decided just to get up and read the juicy mystery novel I’ve been devouring.  I lounged in my reading chair next to the love-seat Mister likes to sleep on, put on my trusty space-heater, and settled in to read for an hour or so before having to get ready to go to work. 

Mister was completely taken aback by this turn of events.  At first, he got up and was rubbing on me, and sat with me for a while.  I petted him absently while I read.  Finally, he jumped back on the love seat and I could tell he was settling down again.  A few minutes went by and I glanced up to find Mister, lying in a soft curve on his back, gazing at me lovingly with half-closed eyes, a big smile, and a purr you could probably hear from our bedroom.  I gazed back at him, thinking how lucky I am to have a friend like Mister.  It seemed to me that he felt pretty lucky, too.

I think by now we’ve already established that Wanda is…not like other cats.  She likes to be chased; she can hold a grudge for about a year, more or less; she eats spiderwebs.  (Have I not mentioned that part?)  What we definitely haven’t told you yet is that Wanda is an accomplished equestrienne.  It’s true.  Okay, not with real horses, but I wouldn’t put it past her.

One of Wanda’s favorite play-time exercises is to cling tightly to your leg, length-wise, and dig her sharp little needle-claws in for a “horsey ride.”  You know those rides you used to take on your Uncle Arthur’s knee as a kid?  Yep, just like that, only it’s the cat riding bareback instead.  She indicates her willingness to ride the bucking bronco by jumping on your leg and then kind of wiggling expectantly.  At which point, the leg she is “riding” will start bobbing up and down, to Wanda’s great delight.  At this point, we sing the (by this point, entirely expected) song:  “Horsey ride, horsey ride, horsey horsey horsey ride!”  (I’d tell you what tune that is set to, but it’s actually an original.)  Then, when she’s got a pretty good stranglehold on the leg, the leg will start going side-to-side, and Wanda will ride the thrilling ride to its logical conclusion, sliding off the side of the “horsey” as it goes to one side, but righting herself again as it swings to the opposite direction.  Not unlike an ill-fated actual horsey ride I took while in college.  But that’s another story.  And thankfully, not for this blog.  Right now, this is about Wanda–the wind in her hair, the bugs in her teeth, as she goes riding off into that sunset atop her trusty steed.  She may be getting up in years, but the old girl still has a lot of moxie.  And a heck of a lot of imagination.

Buddha Kitty; Bully Kitty.  (Try to say that five times fast–I dare you.)  This is what Otto was being yesterday.  On the one hand, he sat in Sean’s lap with the most wonderfully contented smile on his face.  On the other, he was being so mean to Elroy that Elroy was even avoiding us.  Poor little Elroy just kept trying to make it right with Otto, and no matter how he tried, it just ticked Otto off more.  More yowling, more Elroy diving under the bed.  I just wanted to hug poor Elroy, but he was too skittish to even let me near him by that point.  

It’s exactly these dichotomies that make me realize that our feline buddies are really not that much different than us.  They’re never just one thing.  Wanda’s a sweet love bug, and a dangerous banshee when the boys try to mess with her.  Reggie is an outgoing one-cat-welcome-wagon with guests, and a complete pest when you’re trying to sleep.  Elroy wants nothing more than to win Otto’s affection…and to bite Mister on the backside.  It’s never just one thing or the other.  Like most things in life, they’re complicated, and things are never just black and white.  (Except Elroy, our tuxedo cat, but he was just born that way.)

Treats!!!  That’s the name of the game around here.  And when we’re loaded up on them, we can afford to be generous.  Which is why, this weekend, when handing out the treats to the Buddies, I learned that Otto will gallop with glee across the living room floor to chase down a shakey treat.  Over and over, Otto galloped away after the elusive bits of kibble, running back with a smile on his face and an expectant “brrrrroooooo!”  (It’s kind of like a “wooo,” only with a purry trill all the way through it.) 

This gave me enough time to toss Wanda and Mister some, who eat slower than the others and often get left out.  Meanwhile, Elroy (who’s already proven he’s no dummy) figured out that that he didn’t have to go running off and chasing the treats–if he stood right beside me, I’d just hand him one.  Duh.

So, Wanda, Mister and Elroy got to have their treats, and Otto gets to have play time and some treats.  It was a win-win.  With Otto scooping up every grounder and running it back (theoretically) to home base, Otto got to win a lot.

The other night we were sitting on the couch with the wood stove going, enjoying the last few bites of fudge that a co-worker graciously made for us for Christmas.  Otto had migrated from Sean’s lap to mine, and Wanda had done the opposite, moving over to Sean’s lap instead.  Elroy was stretched out in front of the fire, Mister was plopped behind us, his rear falling off the front part of the couch-back.  Reg was on the love seat, sound asleep.  As I picked up the box of fudge and brought it towards me, I heard Otto make a retching sound and instantly felt penitent.  It’s not that there was anything wrong with the fudge–quite the opposite.  It was precisely the fudge’s chocolately goodness that Otto was complaining about.  Perhaps this deserves an explanation…

It all started many years ago, when we had put some of those malted milk balls that they make for Easter, with the pastel-colored candy-coating on the outside, out onto an end table in a little glass bowl.  We thought it would be pretty, festive, and inviting for our guests.  Otto apparently thought differently.  The first time he discovered they were there, he jumped up onto the table, sniffed the bowl carefully, then did this gagging motion, like he was going to vomit, then didn’t.  He immediately jumped off the table and didn’t jump back on it.  

At first I thought it was a fluke.  One of the only reasons I put the candy out open on the table was that I figured none of the cats would mess with it.  It didn’t smell like fish or chicken, or even oil or cheese.  It was coated in candy, for heaven’s sake!  It shouldn’t smell like anything “food-like” to them at all.  So, at first, Otto’s reaction didn’t register all that much.

Then, the second time we had something chocolate (my memory is failing me on precisely what it was), Otto jumped into our laps to see what we were doing and did the retchy thing again.  Once is random, but as far as I’m concerned, twice is starting a pattern.  None of the other cats react this way, and I’ve never met anyone else whose cat reacts this way either.  It was totally weird.  

So then, the scientist part of me came out and I wanted to find out how sophisticated Otto’s chocolate palate was.  Would he have the same reaction with white chocolate, I wondered?  It’s not even really chocolate, since it usually has nothing from the cacao plant in it.  (Well, maybe super-expensive white chocolate does, but we don’t buy those kinds of chocolate.)  I put it under Otto’s nose to sniff.  Blech! from Otto.  Same response, even though it’s not even chocolate.  Bear in mind, this is the only food product that he reacts this way to.  We’ve never seen him do it with anything else.  

You have to ask yourself, what could cause such a violent reaction to such an innocent item?  Most cats will just turn up their noses and walk away when they smell food they don’t like.  As a matter of fact, they’re famous for it.  How many cat lovers haven’t had at least one bag of cat food that they have had to give or throw away because the cat simply refused to eat it?  But I’ve never heard of any other cat making retching sounds and motions when he doesn’t like something.  That’s a new one.  And further evidence that Otto, as well as the other Buddies, are no ordinary cats.  Bless their little hearts.

Happy New Year!  Here in the Buddy household we celebrated New Year’s Eve with some special “party mix” treats that the Buddies got from their extended family.  Otto nearly took my hand off reaching up in his bear claw grip to grab one.  One time, he knocked three pieces of treat out of my hand at one time, conveniently allowing them to bounce in two different directions, directly under the noses of Elroy and Reggie.  Honestly, there’s no way in the world we could have planned that.  It was kind of priceless.

But New Year’s wouldn’t be New Year’s without a few resolutions.  This year, I’ve got a pretty long list, but topping that list are the following:  1.)  Meditate more, in keeping with my Buddhist leanings, and 2.) Never let a moment go by that I don’t acknowledge the Buddies when they’re needing attention and shower them with love whenever possible.  I’ve noticed that I can sometimes, though rarely, be dismissive of them, particularly when I’m stressed or extremely busy, or working on something on the computer that needs my undivided attention.  Inevitably, that will be when Reggie also needs my undivided attention, which he communicates by trying repeatedly (and failing) to jump into my lap.  Eventually, I will pull Reggie up to my lap, at which point he will walk around on my desk, my keyboard, my laptop, my fingers, and anything else he can get his little paws on.  Mister will usually jump behind me on my chair and wait patiently for me to pet him.  Sometimes I do, but sometimes I don’t, and that kind of bothers me.  He is turning 15 this year, after all.  And none of the Buddies are exactly Spring Chickens at this point. So this year, Rule Number One, (even though I named it second up there) is to always give the Buddies attention when they ask for it.  And slip in some extra attention liberally, even when they don’t ask for it.

Meditating this morning presented me with an interesting dilemma:  concentrate on meditating, or acknowledge that Otto is standing right next to me going “MRRRRROW!!”  I opened my eyes, gave him a scritch, and said his name lovingly.  He moved along, and I went back to meditating.  Then Mister started rubbing up against my back.  I reached behind my back and gave him a little rub-down.  Went back to meditating.  Heard Otto jump up on my desk, which sometimes can spell trouble, particularly if he’s in the mood to mark something.  Asked him nicely to jump down, and after looking at me incredulously for a few moments, his big blue eyes wide with what looked like mock annoyance, he did jump down.  Onto the windowsill.  Hey, it was a start.

After several minutes of no interruptions, I thought I felt a tickle on my right hand, which was resting on my knee.  I glanced down, and there was Mister, meditating right alongside me.  We were sitting in front of a space heater (even enlightenment can be chilly sometimes), and he had his eyes nearly closed, facing into the warm.  He was very still, in that way only cats can be, ears relaxed, whiskers slightly forward, and I’m certain that he was going deep within, trading his “Om” for a “Purr.”  The best part was, I didn’t have to choose between my two resolutions.  Mister, bless his wise sweet soul, made sure of that.