Happiness 6

I have been a cat lover all of my life. It is a testament to how much I love cats and how much my husband loves me that we have as many as we do. He's allergic, after all. However, he seems to be able to tolerate our black and grey cats.

I love this picture of Sampson and Rosco. They are both asleep and didn't wake up when I took the picture, even. Rosco with is arms around Sampson's neck....




And right now we have a visitor who came along with Erin when she came back home. This is Saetia. She is a rather crabby cat but the way she hisses makes me laugh - she gets so 'into it' that she snorts between hisses. Rhiannon can mimick her perfectly.

Rhiannon took this picture of Saetia making herself comfortable in Erin Traxel's guitar case.

Cats know right when you need some loving. I know when I am counselling and it is intense, Rosco makes his way in and curls up comfortingly on their lap.

My cats. They make me happy!

Firsts

First planting (tulips).
















First view of hollyhocks














First catnip.









First stoned cat.














First fire.














First hot dog.


















First entire day spent outside.

Feeding the King (don't tell Dean...)

Last night having a delicious dinner of lettuce wraps and strawberries and whipped cream for dessert (lettuce from the garden and strawberries picked that morning). Tigger absolutely loves cream and he smelled it from outside. Soon he was sitting on a chair looking longingly at the table - maybe he was wishing we would leave the room so he could jump up on the table and help himself. We couldn't resist his orange cuteness. So we fed him whipped cream from a spoon.... Isn't he cute? Doesn't he look so polite there, sitting up so straight? Don't tell Dean....

Curse of the Black Cat

Its funny how things work out. Just over a year ago, we got Sampson (Delila) and Coppellia after Sheeba's sad disappearance. Coppelia for Rhiannon to be mainly indoors and Sampson (Delila at the time) for Drew to be mainly outdoors to help Tigger with the outdoor mousing responsibilities.

But it turns out that Sampson preferred sleeping with Rhiannon and hanging out indoors and Coppellia preferred to be outdoors or hanging out with Drew.

In fact, I started to have my doubts about having 3 cats as Coppellia turned out to be a ferocious killer. And she killed a lot more than mice. She killed birds. Lots of birds. She killed all 5 starlings nesting around the garden. And started on robins.

We joke that the birds banded together and put out a hit and hired an owl. Because Coppellia is gone. Its been more than a week now. Too long to have been treed somewhere. And the liklihood of her being lost are slim. She is tatooed so if she was found by someone, we should have been called. There has not been the grief that there was for Sheeba and I feel a bit bad about that. Rhiannon who has long preferred Sampson, has only been upset about proprietorship. She doesn't 'own' Sampson and demanded for awhile (and probably will again) to 'own' another kitten.

But I am thinking that 2 cats is nice. Its a bit more manageable. And neither Sampson nor Tigger are that into killing birds which I was not entirely comfortable with... but both are great mousers. And Dean hasn't had allergic reactions to Sampson's dark grey fur. Maybe if Tigger and Sampson don't bond more and Sampson gets too lonely, I might consider another black female kitten....

But in the meantime, I am sad for Coppellia, our little black friend. I think Sampson misses her, too. I find him curled up in the places she used to curl up.

Coppellia was our 4th black kitten. Our first, Mina (pronouced meena) lasted only a few months. Then there was Jake who lasted exactly a year. Then Sheeba who lasted for 2 years and captured our hearts totally and now Coppellia who also lasted a year. Curse of the black cats!

Good bye Coppellia. Thank you for sharing your short life with us. God speed you on the next part of your journey!

His Royal Marmalade Majesty

So, he hasn't taken long to make himself at home. Maybe his point had nothing to do with annoying dogs or other cats.... maybe in his cat old age, he went looking for more comfortable accommodations - someone to let him sleep on the couch, maybe? On a feather pillow (so he could dream of all the birds he's killed?

You can get an idea here of his increased girth.



It didn't take him long to fit right in with the other felines in this house... a furry, cuddly mound of black, grey and orange...


But please, please tell me that these 13 hives she woke up with have nothing to do with the fat orange cat currently prowling the premises... She's only ever had 1 or 2 hives and they have always been from high emotions, not from environmental stuff... They're itchy and they're not going away....

The Cat Came Back

Okay, so he didn't come back... I had to go and fetch him and force him to come back.... but he is back, nonetheless.

I feel a little weird about it. Like I've been snubbed by my own cat... We have had Tigger since he was 6 weeks old and we got him more than 11 years ago. He has been a constant in our changing lives. He was Erin's cat - well beloved by us all. He was born in the Toporchuk barn and was always a mainly outdoor cat. And always very loyal. Although he roamed far and wide, he was always home for dinner at 5pm. He loved it when we moved here and spent hours in the fields catching mouse after mouse - gorging on them until he would throw up....

Then something happened. He disappeared for a couple of days and then he was back... then it was a few more days.... and then a week... and then he didn't come back. His food sat on the back porch uneaten. I didn't feel like he was dead... We called and called and called and reported him missing to the lost cat registry. Nothing. We look for him around the neighbourhood. Nothing. 2 months go by and I still don't feel like he is dead but I am beginning to think that he has moved in with someone else...

Then I get a call from the cat registry. There is a cat near us. Someone has been feeding him for 2 weeks. Turns out it is him. He was just across the field from us. I have a hard time believing that after spending a lifetime outdoors, he got lost across a field and couldn't find his way home.... I have to believe that he chose to leave. Why? After all these years? Was it the new dog next door that was harrassing him? The black male cat that he was fighting with at night? Unlike him to back down in a fight with a dog or a cat... Was it the addition of Coppelia and Sampson? Was it that Sampson turned out to be a male, too? But we have had so many other cats - some male - and he has never left before; he always makes friends with them.

So it is kind of weird to have him here. He runs to the back door where we have always fed him when it is feeding time. But he is slow to come to his name which he always ran to before. It annoys me that other people took him in and fed him without trying to find out who he belonged to for so long - he's fat for the first time in his life - he's been fed a little too well... He has an obvious tattoo in his ear but no one called it in for 2 months to find out who he was. So, is it safe to let him outside again? Will he run away? Do I make him come back? What do you do when your cat wants to move out?

A Case of Mistaken Identity

Or maybe it is just 'gender confusion'. Here is Delila eating her first mouse. I hope it was the one that was pooping in the drawer under the stove and in the cupboard under the sink... It was a huge mouse - must have been a field mouse. She ate the entire thing except for some part of the digestive system. The gall bladder? I'm not sure. It was the shape (although not the size) of a human pancreas.

We just got home from our little shopping holiday in Calgary. We did the outlet thing and Kaetlyn and I did pretty good. But when we got home and were petting our quickly growing kittens who seemed to have grown so much while we were gone for just 5 days..., we noticed something strange about Delila.

'She' has a certain part of anantomy that should be lacking in a female cat... See those furry little protusions just below her anus? They are testicles... Hey, even the farm guy said 'she' was a girl. But... Yes, Delila is a he. Now there is the issue of the name. Delila is such a femine name, there is not chance of keeping it... Dean is favouring Dell - that corny name from the '50's. I'm favouring just calling her (um, I mean him) Dilly which has been our nickname for her/him thus far. Drew is undecided...

But I do maintain that cat testicles are the cutest testicles. Aren't those furry little balls cute? Tigger's were orange and even cuter. I'm sure I'm demented, but still, c'mon, admit it. Cat balls are cute. Admire them while he has them, they won't be there for long...